‘Mohammed!’ I call. ‘Stop running from me!’
I follow him all the way down to the river, and on as he zigzags through the lanes, round the bends and through the arches and beneath the vines, and then I lose him for a while, but I keep walking until I see him sitting beneath a narenj tree by the water. The tree is alive and laden with fruit. He has his back to me. I approach him and sit down beside him at the river’s edge.
I put my hand on his shoulder and he turns now to face me and his eyes, those black eyes, begin to change, becoming lighter, turning grey, and transparent, so that there is a soul in them now, and his features soften and morph like a swarm of bees, then settle, until I can see his expression and his face and his eyes more clearly. The boy sitting next to me, looking at me fearfully, is not Mohammed.
‘Sami,’ I say.
I want to hold him, but I know that he will disappear, like paint in water, so I sit as still as I can. I realise now that these were the clothes he was wearing the day he died, his red T-shirt and blue shorts. He is holding the marble in his hand and he turns now to face the city of glass. He takes something out of his pocket and hands it to me: a key.
‘What’s this for?’ I say.
‘It’s the key you gave me. You told me it opened a secret house that didn’t break.’
I see that in front of him are pieces of Lego.
‘What are you doing?’ I say.
‘I’m building a house!’ he says. ‘When we go to England we will live in this house. This house won’t break like these do.’
I remember now. I remember him lying in bed, afraid of the bombs, and how I had given him an old bronze key that once opened a shed at the apiaries. I had tucked it beneath his pillow so that he could feel that somewhere in all the ruins there was a place where he could be safe.
Ahead, the glass city shimmers in the sunlight. It looks like a city in a drawing that a child has made, a sketch, pencil outlines of mosques and apartments. He puts his hand in the river, scoops out a stone.
‘Will we fall in the water?’ he says, and he looks up at me with wide eyes. He was asking me this for months before he died.
‘No.’
‘Like the other people?’
‘No.’
‘But my friend said that to leave here we have to cross other rivers and seas, and if we cross those rivers and seas we might fall into the water, like other people did. I know stories about them. Will the wind take the boat? Will the boat turn over into the water?’
‘No. But if it does we’ll have life jackets. We’ll be all right.’
‘And Allah – have mercy on us – will he help us?’
‘Yes. Allah will help us.’
These were Sami’s words. My Sami. He looks at me again, his eyes wider, full of fear. ‘But why didn’t he help the boys when they took their heads off?’
‘Who took their heads off?’
‘When they stood in a line and waited. They weren’t wearing black. That’s why. You said it was because they weren’t wearing black. I was wearing black. Don’t you remember?’
‘The day we went for a walk?’ I say. ‘The day we saw the boys by the river?’
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I thought you didn’t remember. But you said if I held the key and wore black I would be invisible, and if I was invisible I could find the secret house.’
I have an image of walking with him by the river and how we had seen the boys lined up along its bank.
‘I remember,’ I say.
He is silent now. His face sad, as if he is about to cry.
‘What are you thinking?’ I say.
‘Before we leave I would like to play with my friends in the garden one last time. Is that OK?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘of course it is. And then we will go
to the moon, away to another place, another time, another world, anywhere but here. But we cannot escape this world. We are bound to it, even in death. Afra stood still by the window while I dressed her. She was like a doll. Her face had lost all expression now. Only her fingers trembled, ever so slightly, and I could see her eyelids twitching. But she said nothing as I put her in the red dress, as I tied the scarf around her neck and slipped on her shoes, and then she stood there like a different woman.
If I had seen her in the street I might have walked right past her without knowing who she was. Inside the person you know there is a person you do not know. But Afra was entirely changed, inside and out. I avoided touching her skin, and as soon as I had finished dressing her I stepped away from her and she dabbed her wrists and her neck with the rose perfume and the familiarity of it made me feel sick. This time we were really going somewhere, we were going away. Away from the war, far from Greece and further away from Sami.