She was uneasy and now also a little resentful at the pressure being applied to her. But Naomi was in fervor now.
“There’s no other way. He’ll die out here. There are only a few shepherds in Episkopi and they use the houses for animal sheds. It’s the best place to hide him.”
For a moment Sam thought of ditching the charity and simply going back to her family and their afternoon games of chess and backgammon. It would be so much easier than this pointless exertion. She suddenly resented both her own passivity and the relentless charity-worker passion of the older girl, in which to boot she didn’t quite believe. Naomi’s playful cynicism—the thing about her that most appealed to Sam—seemed to have disappeared in a baffling way from one day to the next. She could understand the logic of it, but why the determination to make a stranger into a moral cause? You could help a stranger without making him into a cause. You could inform people who could help. As far as she could tell from the news, the Greeks had been rather welcoming to the refugees coming from Turkey. But then again, she also remembered the new police who had begun to appear at the port, and it was equally possible that since Naomi knew more about this country than she did, she also knew better what the current climate of fear and paranoia might be. It could go either way, she admitted to herself. But nevertheless a dilemma had been forced upon her and it was one that she had not asked to be a part of.
She looked across at the man cramming his mouth with bread and olives, and of course she felt sorry for him. Days at sea floating on some piece of garbage with a single bottle of water. A flight from war and chaos in Syria, as she had read in the European papers a thousand times. One knew the images. But there had been something vague about his replies to Naomi’s questions. Their embarrassment had kept them from asking directly, but there was no reason not to probe any further. She wanted to ask him then, where exactly he was from, who his family were, and why he had had no choice but to wash up on this island rather than one closer to Turkey. But again she failed to make the move.
Naomi turned to her again and her expression was more forgiving—she knew that Sam would play along with it, that she was more interested in this than in silly parties.
“Let’s go back soon,” she said. “I need a beer. And we need to think. Don’t you agree?”
They got up and shielded their eyes from the sun. The man looked up sheepishly and he understood everything; there was nothing to explain to him. He was intelligent at least, the eyes responsive and alert to every human beat. He said, “Will you come back tonight?”
“We’ll come back after sundown and take you round to Episkopi if we can find a house there. We’ll go to Episkopi now and see.”
“It’s a great favor,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
She wondered then if he had another plan. They walked back to the boat.
Out of earshot, Sam gave vent to her doubts.
“Oh, don’t think so much,” Naomi snapped. “He’s got a complicated story, so what? How could he not have a complicated story?”
But it wasn’t just complex, Sam shot back. It was vague and evasive.
“I didn’t think so,” Naomi countered. “What was evasive?”
“Do you think he’s a Christian or a Muslim?”
Naomi burst into laughter.
“What?”
“I said do you think he’s a Christian?”
“I don’t really care if he is or he isn’t. Should I have asked him? I’m not doing it for religious reasons.”
“What if he’s a Muslim?”
“I’d be even kinder.”
“Is it different if he’s Muslim?” Sam said. “Kindness isn’t the point.”
—
From the dock at the hamlet of Palamidas they climbed for an hour to Episkopi until they were among the ravines and uneven fields where cyclamen flowers survived. They sat on a stone wall and looked down at the sea, at the islands compact and bare, the shadow of Dokos and beyond it the pale mass of the Argolid. Hillsides swept down to a jagged coast met by water the color of gem silica, their steeply pitched surfaces maculate with gray rock and quivering sage. Lone gothic agaves thrust up unexpectedly, their heads torn sideways by the winds, and around them ancient wire donkey fences lay on the fields like tossed sea wreckage, patched up with discarded beds and old house doors. It looked like a land taking its time to die, to revert to prehistory. But its advantage was that there were many lonely ruined houses here which, since Naomi could speak Greek, she could bargain for if she found an owner.
By now the emotions of two hours earlier had dissipated. They were burned by the salt wind and their chattering minds had fallen silent. They walked around looking for people. Climbing to higher ground, they could see flocks of goats, a line of horses. Two men reclined in the wild grass, and it was clear they had been watching the girls for some time. Naomi had always thought that she knew everyone on the island, but these were unknowns, shepherds in their sixties in coarse patched shirts and braces, quietly alive beneath bursts of white hair. She spoke to them, they answered politely. She had to be careful what she said. It was enough to say that she needed a hut for herself and her friends to use occasionally over the summer. They liked to come out here to swim at the Nisiza peninsula nearby. She could offer a ridiculous price that they would never refuse.
They looked at the burnished American girl and something in them softened. It was her air of insolent innocence. One of the men had two huts he used for the animals; they were on high ground but easy to climb up to. He gestured to one of these buildings, a square structure about a hundred meters away, close to the path that ran all the way to the port. It could be hers if she really wanted it, though there was no electricity or water. There was a pallet the shepherd used to sleep on and some tools, including a bucket and a scythe. If she wanted to take it she could pay him later that day and the deal was done.
“All right,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”
They walked up to the hut together and looked inside it; the door had no lock. It was cool in the heat, and dry. There were no spiders and no drafts—it would do. She took it at once. The man was pleasantly surprised and did a little dance on his toes. She went over everything with him carefully. No one was to come up there after she had taken the hut. He was to tell no one that he had rented it out either. It was, she said, for social reasons. Her father would disapprove, and she didn’t want him to know. To seal the deposit she gave him a fifty-euro note, and she and Sam started back down toward Palamidas. The two men stood and watched them go with slightly mystified expressions. But soon the two girls were out of sight and the world returned once again to its normal state of torpor, heat, and boredom, a state in which they were both perfectly happy, offering as it did no expectations but divine and therefore inexplicable windfalls.