The bus ride was long, bumpy, and quiet. The Waziri family watched Turkey’s verdant landscape go by in silence. They were leaving behind a life they’d come to enjoy, days that passed with the comforting rhythm of a drumbeat. Again, Madar-jan was leading them into an unknown.
It was a day’s journey to Izmir, on Turkey’s western shore. When they neared Izmir’s port, Saleem’s senses were hit with the briny air, a smell unfamiliar to his landlocked nose. He looked at the others. Their eyes shimmered, reflecting the glimmering turquoise waters. The sea, a place where sunlight bounced from here to there, from water to the hull of a ship to the wings of a seagull. Samira smiled, the sun warming her face. Fereiba stroked her daughter’s hair. It was a brief moment of joy, but one that gave them reason to press on.
Saleem found a ticket booth and purchased one-way rides for the entire family. The ticket agent, busy chatting with the agent in the adjacent booth, barely looked at their passports. He waved Saleem off when he inquired about a ticket for Aziz.
Tickets in hand, they turned again to the cerulean expanse and marveled at the enormous ships docked there. Never before had they seen waters bigger than a river.
“Water is roshanee, it is light. To be surrounded by so much of it . . .” Fereiba let the sea air fill her lungs. “This must mean something good for us.”
Her family needed the light of good fortune.
The ticket agent had pointed out a navy blue ferry, a building afloat. Saleem’s stomach leaped with boyish excitement. He led his mother and siblings to the pier to claim their seats. The wind cast a microshower of cool droplets on their cheeks. Samira’s hair flew into her face and she giggled trying to brush it away. Saleem and his mother paused. It had been a lifetime since they’d heard that laughter.
Choppy waves lapped at the boat, and Saleem and Samira leaned over the rails to get that much closer to the ocean. The ride was too short and well before they’d had their fill, the crew announced their arrival in Chios, a Greek island where the Waziri family was to catch yet another ferry to Athens.
Surrounded by tourists in shorts and backpacks and commuting Greeks, Saleem and his family hoisted their bags over their shoulders and tried their best to look inconspicuous. Each leg of their journey had a checkpoint, a place where their pounding heartbeats and falsified documents could give them away.
But entering Greece turned out to be much easier than they’d anticipated, and they were soon on the next ferry. Chios to Athens was a longer journey, more opportunity for Fereiba to soak in the vast waters and pray they would herald brighter days. Eight hours later, they reached the port of Piraeus, and nerves began to kick in again. Samira had fallen asleep, her head resting on Saleem’s shoulder. Madar-jan bit her lip nervously as they neared the dock.
The men in uniforms standing at the pier ratcheted up the family’s anxiety. Saleem and his mother kept their faces steeled. Saleem’s stomach quivered as if he carried under his shirt a balloon stretched so taut that the slightest movement might cause it to burst, alerting the world to his transgression. They were ushered forward with the crowd. Saleem felt eyes boring into his back, but nothing happened. Soon they were standing amid the flurry of taxis in the port city of Athens.
Turkey has one foot in Europe and the other in Asia. Things will be different in Greece, Hakan had cautioned them. You will be outside the Muslim world, for better or worse.