Night after night, Angeliki slept against the tree beside us. I think she felt safe next to us. I wondered if she still went to the old school. It seemed so far away now, so long ago, though it had probably been only a week or maybe two since we had come to this place.
I had given Afra the pencils and notepad, but she would not take them this time; she pushed them away, even in her sleep. Her mind was exhausted and preoccupied. She listened to the sounds around her, she responded to the children’s playing and crying with facial expressions. She was afraid for them. She asked me sometimes who was hiding in the woods. I told her that I didn’t know.
Some days people packed their few belongings and left, though I had no idea where they were heading. In Leros, people were chosen by their country of origin. There was a ranking. Refugees from Syria had priority; that was what we had been told. Refugees from Afghanistan and the African continent had to wait longer or maybe forever. But here in the park it seemed as if everyone had been forgotten. Some days new people arrived, dragged in by an NGO worker holding new blankets. Adults and children with startled eyes and sea-swept hair.
10
I TAKE AFRA TO THE GP for her appointment. It’s a big clinic and there is a doctor here who speaks Arabic. Dr Faruk is a short, round man, probably around fifty. He has his glasses on the table in front of him next to a bronze plaque with his name on it, his eyes are lit up by the screen of the computer. He wants to record some details, he says, get Afra’s history, before he examines her. He asks her questions about the type of pain in her eyes: Is the pain sharp or dull? Is it in both eyes? Do you have headaches? Do you see flashing lights? Afra answers his questions, and then he pulls up a chair and sits beside her. He takes her blood pressure and listens to her heart with a stethoscope and finally he shines a tiny flashlight into each eye. First the right eye, pausing there for a moment, then the left, pausing again, then back to the right. He repeats the procedure a few more times and then sits there watching her for a moment, as if in contemplation or confusion.
‘Did you say you can’t see anything at all?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
He shines the torch into her eyes again. ‘Can I ask you if you can see anything now?’
‘No,’ she says, keeping very still.
‘Can you make out any change? A shadow or some movement or light?’
‘No,’ she says, ‘nothing at all.’
I can hear a tremor in her voice, she is getting upset, and the doctor may have also picked up on it, as he puts the flashlight down and asks no more questions. He sits again at his desk, scratching the side of his face.
‘Mrs Ibrahim,’ he says, ‘can you explain to me how you became blind?’
‘It was a bomb,’ she says.
‘Can you tell me a bit more about it?’
Afra shifts in her chair, rolling the marble around in her fingers.
‘Sami, my son,’ she says, ‘he was playing in the garden. I let him play there beneath the tree, but I was watching him from the window – there’d been no bombs for two days and I thought it would be all right. He was a child, he wanted to play in the garden with his friends, but there were no children left. He couldn’t be inside all the time, it was like a prison for him. He put on his favourite red T-shirt and jean shorts and he asked me if he could play in the garden, and when I looked into his eyes I couldn’t say no, because he was a boy, Dr Faruk, a boy who wanted to play.’ Afra’s voice is strong and steady.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Please go on.’
‘I heard a whistle first, in the sky, and I ran outside to call him.’ She stops talking and inhales sharply as if she has just surfaced from beneath water. I wish she would stop talking now. ‘As I reached the door, there was a loud explosion and bright light, in the back of the garden, I’m sure, not right near Sami, but the force was strong. It was so loud the sky ripped open.’
I notice the sound of chairs moving in other rooms, the laughter of a child.
‘And then what happened?’
‘I don’t know. I was holding Sami in my arms, and my husband was beside me and I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t see anything at all.’
‘What was the last thing you saw?’
‘Sami’s eyes. They were looking up at the sky.’
Afra begins to cry in a way that I have never seen her cry. She is bent over and crying from her chest and the doctor gets up from his desk and sits beside her, and I feel that I am far away, that there is a growing desert between me and them. I can see the doctor offering her a tissue, then giving her some water, and I can see Afra’s body folded over, but I can’t hear her, and he is saying something, gentle words, sorry words, but my heart is thumping too loud for me to hear anything on the outside and I am so far from them. His voice is louder now and I try to focus. He is sitting at his desk with his glasses on, looking straight at me. I can tell that he has said something I didn’t hear. Then he looks at Afra.