The Greek Coast Guard boat swept through the choppy Mediterranean the rest of the night, pulling more people out of the water. The Coast Guard finally set Mahmoud and his family and all the other refugees down on the island of Lesbos. It was almost six o’clock in the morning, and the sky was beginning to lighten with the dawn. Mahmoud wasn’t sure, but he thought he and his mother had spent more than two hours in the water.
When they stepped off the boat, Mahmoud’s father got down on his hands and knees and kissed the ground and gave thanks to Allah. It was time for morning prayers anyway, and Mahmoud joined him. When they were finished, Mahmoud staggered up the rocky gray shore, squinting at the hills that rose just beyond the beach. Then he realized: They weren’t real hills.
They were piles and piles of life jackets.
There were mountains of them, stretching up and down the coast as far as Mahmoud could see. The way Aleppo had its piles of rubble, Lesbos had its piles of life jackets, abandoned by the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had come before them, shedding the vests they no longer needed and moving along on the road to somewhere else.
There were bodies on the beach too. People who hadn’t survived the sea in the night, who hadn’t been found by the Coast Guard in time. Men, mostly, but a few women too. And a child.
Mahmoud’s mother rushed to the infant, howling Hana’s name. Mahmoud hurried after her, horrified, but the child wasn’t Hana. It was someone else’s baby daughter, her lungs filled with seawater. Mahmoud’s mother cried into his shoulder until a Greek man in a uniform moved them both away from the body and recorded the infant in a little notebook. Tallying the daily dead. Mahmoud staggered away, feeling as numb as if he were in the freezing water again.
Mahmoud’s mother went to all the other refugees who had landed in the night and were still there, asking each of them if they had seen her little Hana. But none of them had. The boat with Mahmoud’s little sister on it was gone—it had either reached the island and its passengers had already moved on, or it too had wrecked on the rocks.
Mahmoud’s mother fell to her knees on the rocky ground and wept, and Mahmoud’s father held her close and let her cry.
Mahmoud felt gutted. It was all his fault. Hana might still be with them if he hadn’t gotten someone on that boat to take her. Or she might have died during their two hours in the water.
Either way, they had lost her.
“Mahmoud,” his father said quietly over his sobbing mother, “check the other bodies and see if they have any shoes that will fit us.”
Josef wished he was invisible.
Once the rest of the passengers discovered who had jumped overboard yesterday, everyone stopped to tell him how sorry they were. How everything would be all right.
But how could it be all right? How could it ever be all right?
Josef stood at the rail on A-deck where his father had jumped. Down below, the sea was no longer empty. It was dotted with little motorboats and rowboats. Some carried reporters shouting up questions and trying to get pictures of the ship. Other boats offered up bunches of fresh bananas and bags of coconuts and oranges. Passengers on C-deck tossed money down, and the fruit was passed up the ladder by the Cuban policemen guarding the top and the bottom. Lately, though, the boats were full of relatives of people on board. Mostly men, they had come ahead to Cuba to get jobs and find places for their families to live.
One man brought the same little white dog every day and held it up for his wife to wave to.
The boats with relatives came close enough for their families to yell back and forth a little, but they couldn’t get any closer. Thanks to Josef’s father, a handful of Cuban police boats now surrounded the St. Louis. They kept the rescue ships at a distance and watched for anyone else who tried to jump to freedom.
Or death.
At night, the Cuban police boats swept the hull with searchlights, and the St. Louis’s crew members, on the captain’s orders, patrolled the decks on suicide watch.
“Evelyne, there he is! There’s Papa!” Renata cried. She stood a few paces away from Josef down the rail, trying to point out one of the little rowboats to her sister.
“Where? I don’t see him!” Evelyne whined.
Josef was more interested in the small police boat that had navigated its way through the flotilla and was pulling up to the St. Louis. Any time they had a visitor now it was cause for conversation, and soon word spread throughout the ship that the boat had brought the Cuban policeman who had saved Josef’s father.
Josef ran down to fetch his mother and sister, and together they hurried to the social hall, where a group of passengers and crew gathered to give the Cuban policeman a hero’s welcome. They parted for the policeman, cheering and slapping him on the back and shaking hands with him as he went. It was the first time he had been back to the ship since jumping overboard to save Josef’s father, and Josef and his family strained to get a good look at him over the heads of the other passengers. Josef’s mother cried and put a hand to her mouth, and Josef felt a surge of affection for the policeman. This was the man who had saved his father’s life.
The policeman seemed genuinely flattered and surprised by all the attention. He was a short, stocky man with olive skin, a wide face, and a thick mustache. He wore blue pants, a gray shirt with epaulets on the shoulders, and a matching gray beret. Around his waist was a leather belt with a nightstick and holster hanging from it.
His name, they were told, was Mariano Padron.
Captain Schroeder arrived to thank Officer Padron on behalf of the passengers and crew. Josef felt a ripple of tension spread throughout the room. Josef had seen the captain less and less as the hot days of waiting at anchor dragged on, and he wasn’t the only passenger who had noticed. But they were there to celebrate Officer Padron, not badger the captain about why they were still on the ship. The mood became happy again when the policeman was presented with a gift of 150 reichsmarks that had been collected from grateful passengers. Officer Padron was stunned, and so was Josef—150 reichsmarks was a lot of money, especially for people who might need that money later to pay for visas and entrance fees. Officer Padron tried to refuse the money, but the passengers wouldn’t hear of it.
“I was just doing my job,” Officer Padron told the audience through a translator. “But I will never forget this. I will never forget any of you. Thank you.”
The passengers applauded again, and while many of them turned their attention to the captain to ask him for a status report, Josef and his mother and sister pushed forward to talk to the policeman.
Officer Padron’s eyes lit up at the sight of Josef’s mother. He said something in Spanish, and the passenger who had spoken for him in front of the crowd smiled and translated his words.
“Se?ora! Your father was a thief?”
Josef’s mother frowned. “A thief? My father? No—I don’t understand.”