The tanker had passed.
Amara stood at the back of the boat, keeping the rudder straight against the waves. But the engine was dead again. Like everything else, it had been swamped.
Se?ora Castillo reached for Isabel’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, Isabel.”
Isabel nodded, but it came out more like a shudder. She was freezing cold and soaked from head to toe, but at least she was back in her mother’s arms. Mami hugged her close and Isabel shivered.
“We need to get the water out of the bottom of the boat,” Papi said. It was strange to Isabel to hear her father talk about something so normal, so practical, when Se?or Castillo had almost drowned and the boat had almost rolled over and sunk. But he was right.
“And get the engine running again,” Iván said.
“The water first,” Lito agreed, and together they gathered up bottles and jugs and began the tedious work of filling them and pouring the seawater back into the ocean. Isabel stayed buried in her mother’s arms, still exhausted, and no one made her get up.
“Where’s the box with the medicine in it?” Luis asked.
There weren’t too many places it could be in the small boat, and they quickly decided it must have fallen overboard in the confusion. Gone were their aspirin and bandages, and Se?or Castillo was still dazed and weak.
It was bad, but if they got the boat bailed out and if they got the engine running and if they got back on track with the sun tomorrow and if they didn’t run into any more tankers, they could make it to the States without needing the medicine or matches.
If, if, if.
They bailed water the rest of the night, taking turns dozing in the uncomfortable, crowded little boat. Isabel didn’t even realize she’d fallen asleep until she jerked awake from a nightmare about a giant monster coming for her out of the dark sea. She cried out, looking this way and that, but there was nothing but blue-black water and gray skies tinged with the red of the sun all around them for miles and miles and miles. She closed her eyes and took deep breaths, trying to calm down.
The boat rocked again, and Amara struggled to keep the rudder steady. She had taken over as pilot while Se?or Castillo recovered, but they still hadn’t gotten the motor running again. The Gulf Stream would carry them north, toward Florida, but they would need the engine to reach the shore.
Isabel’s mother leaned over the side of the boat and threw up into the sea. When she slid back down inside, she looked green. The boat was rocking so much now Isabel couldn’t sit on the bench without holding on. The waves were growing higher and higher.
“What is it?” Iván said sleepily. “Another tanker?”
“No. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” Lito said, looking up into the red-tinged clouds. “A storm is coming.”
“God help us—that is what we’re to ride in?” Mahmoud’s father said.
The boat wasn’t a boat. It was a raft. A black inflatable rubber dinghy with an outboard motor on the back. It looked like there was room for a dozen people in it.
Thirty refugees waited to get on board.
They all looked as tired as Mahmoud felt, and wore different-colored life jackets. They were mostly young men, but there were families too. Women with and without hijabs. Other children, some who looked to be about Mahmoud’s age. One boy in a Barcelona soccer jersey didn’t have a life jacket but clung instead to a blown-up rubber inner tube. A few of the other refugees had backpacks and plastic bags full of clothes, but most of them, like Mahmoud’s family, carried whatever they owned in their pockets.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” one of the smugglers said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand Syrian pounds or one thousand euros per person! Children pay full price, including babies,” he told Mahmoud’s father. There were two more Turks in tracksuits like the ones who had turned them away from the mall, and they stood apart, staring at the refugees like they were something disgusting that had just washed up on the beach. Their scowls made Mahmoud want to disappear again.
Dad handed out their life jackets, and they put them on.
Mom stared out at the black dinghy bobbing in the gray-black Mediterranean seawater. She grabbed her husband’s arm. “What are we doing, Youssef? Is this the right decision?”
“We have to get to Europe,” he said. “What choice do we have? God will guide us.”
Mahmoud watched as his father pushed the cash they’d saved into the hands of one of the smugglers. Then Mahmoud and his family followed his dad to the dinghy, and they climbed on board. Waleed and his mother sat down in the bottom of the dinghy, his mother holding Hana tight in her arms. Mahmoud and his father sat on one of the inflated rubber edges, their backs to the sea. Mahmoud was already cold, and the wind off the waves made him shiver.
A big bearded man wearing a plaid shirt and a bulky blue life jacket sat down right next to Mahmoud, almost squeezing Mahmoud right off the edge. Mahmoud slid a little closer to his father, but the big man next to him just settled into the extra space.
“How long will we be on the boat?” Mahmoud asked his dad.
“Just a few hours, I think. It was hard to tell on the phone.”
Mahmoud nodded. The phones and chargers were safely sealed away in plastic bags in his parents’ pockets, just in case they got wet. Mahmoud knew because he’d been the one who’d dug through the trash for the resealable zipper bags.
“We don’t have to get all the way to the Greek mainland,” Dad said. “Just the Greek island of Lesbos, about a hundred kilometers away. Then we’re officially in Europe, and we can take a ferry from there to Athens.”
When the smugglers had packed the dinghy full of refugees, they pushed it out to sea. None of the smugglers came with them. If the refugees were going to get to Lesbos, they were going to have to do it themselves.
“Does anyone know if dinner is served on this cruise?” Mahmoud’s father asked, and there were a few nervous laughs.
The outboard motor roared to life, and the refugees cheered and cried. Dad hugged Mahmoud, then reached down to hug Mom, Waleed, and Hana. They were finally doing it. They were finally leaving Turkey for Europe! Mahmoud looked around in wonder. None of this seemed real. He had begun to feel like they were never going to leave.
Mahmoud had been so tired he could barely keep his eyes open before, but now the thrum of the motor and the chop of the boat as it hit wave after wave flooded him with adrenaline, and he couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to.