“We’re refugees!” Mahmoud yelled, unable to stay silent any longer. “We need help!”
The soldier ignored them and walked away. Mahmoud felt helpless all over again, and he kicked the bars in anger. There were similar cries of innocence and rage from the other cells, but soon they were overtaken by separated families trying to find each other without being able to see from cell to cell.
“Fatima? Waleed?” Mahmoud’s father called, and Mahmoud yelled their names with him. But if his mother and brother were here, they didn’t answer.
“We’ll find them,” Dad assured Mahmoud. But Mahmoud didn’t understand how his father could be so sure. They hadn’t found Hana, so what made him think they would find Mom and Waleed? What if they had lost them forever? Mahmoud was beside himself. This trip, this odyssey, was pulling his family apart, stripping them away like leaves from the trees in the fall. It was all he could do not to panic. His breath came quick and his heart hammered in his chest.
“I don’t believe it. They took us almost all the way to Austria,” Mahmoud’s father said, checking his iPhone at last. “It’s just another hour by car. We’re outside a little town in the north of Hungary called Gy?r.”
Almost all the way to Austria, Mahmoud thought. But instead of helping them along, the Hungarians had thrown them in prison.
Hours passed, and Mahmoud went from panic to frustration to despair. They sat in the cell without food or water, and only one metal toilet attached to the wall. All Mahmoud could think about was Mom and Waleed. Were they in some Hungarian prison somewhere too, or had they been pushed back across the border into Serbia? How would he and Dad ever find them again? He slumped against the wall.
“I have to say, this is the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in,” Dad said. He was trying to joke again. His father was always joking. But Mahmoud didn’t think that any of this was funny at all.
At last, soldiers with nightsticks came to their cell and told them in Arabic to line up to be processed.
“We don’t want to be processed,” Dad said. “We just want to get to Austria. Why not just take us all the way to the border? We never wanted to stay in Hungary anyway!”
A soldier whacked him in the back with his nightstick, and Mahmoud’s father collapsed to the ground. “We don’t want your filth here, either!” the guard yelled in Arabic. “You’re all parasites!” He kicked Mahmoud’s father in the back, and another soldier hit Mahmoud’s father again and again with his stick.
“No!” Mahmoud cried. “No! Don’t! Stop!” Mahmoud begged. He couldn’t bear to see his father beaten. But what could he do?
“We’ll do it! We’ll be processed!” Mahmoud told the guards. That was all it took—to surrender. The guards stopped beating his father and ordered everyone to line up.
Mahmoud helped his father to his feet. Dad leaned heavily against him, needing his son for support. Together they shuffled in line along the far side of the hallway, away from the cells. Men and women and children watched them with hopeful eyes as they passed, looking for their husbands and brothers and sons.
And then Mahmoud saw them—his mother and Waleed. They were in a cell with other women and children!
“Youssef! Mahmoud!” Mahmoud’s mother cried.
“Fatima!” Mahmoud’s father cried with relief, and he stepped toward her.
Whack! A soldier clubbed Mahmoud’s father with his nightstick, and Dad went down again in a heap. Mahmoud and his mother cried out at the same time.
“Stay in line!” the soldier yelled.
Mahmoud’s mother reached for them through the bars. “Youssef!” she cried.
“No, Mom—don’t!” Mahmoud cried. A soldier clanged his nightstick against the metal bars, and she retreated inside her cell.
Mahmoud got his father up again and helped him into what the soldiers called the “processing center.” There, clerks sat behind long tables, taking down information from the refugees. When Mahmoud and his father got to the front of their line, a man in a blue uniform asked them if they wanted to claim asylum in Hungary.
“Stay here? In Hungary? After you have beaten me? Locked my family up like common criminals?” Mahmoud’s father asked, fists clenched and shaking. Mahmoud still had to help him to stand. “Are you joking? Why can’t you just let us go on to Austria? Why do we need to be ‘processed’? We don’t want to stay here one second longer than we have to!”
The policeman shrugged. “I’m just doing my job,” he said.
Mahmoud’s father slammed his hand flat on the table, making Mahmoud jump. “I wouldn’t live in this awful country even if it was made of gold!”
The policeman filled in an answer on a form. “Then you will be sent back to Serbia,” he said without looking up at them. “And if you return to Hungary, you will be arrested.”
Mahmoud’s father didn’t speak again, not even to make a joke. Mahmoud answered the rest of the clerk’s questions about their names and birthdates and places of birth, then helped his father back to their cell with the other inmates. Mahmoud’s mother cried out for them again as they passed, but Mahmoud’s father didn’t acknowledge her, and Mahmoud didn’t respond. He knew that would only bring down the wrath of the guards again.
Head down, hoodie up, eyes on the ground. Be unimportant. Blend in.
Disappear.
That was how you avoided the bullies.
The St. Louis was throwing a party. Even bigger than the one it had thrown the night before they’d reached Cuba. This one had the euphoria of more than nine hundred people who had been at death’s door and were suddenly, miraculously, saved.
Belgium, Holland, France, and England had agreed to divide the refugees among them. None of the passengers were going back to Germany.
Josef’s mother wasn’t alone on the dance floor anymore. She was joined by dozens of couples, all dancing with giddy abandon. Josef had even taken a turn around the floor with her. Passengers sang songs and played the piano with the orchestra, and one man who knew magic tricks entertained Ruthie and the other little kids in the corner of the social hall. In another corner, Josef laughed as passengers took turns telling jokes. Most of the jokes were about taking holiday cruises to Cuba, but the best was when one of the passengers got up and read from the brochure that advertised the MS. St. Louis.
“ ‘The St. Louis is a ship on which everyone travels securely, and lives in comfort,’ ” he read. You could barely hear him over the hooting. “ ‘There is everything one can wish for,’ ” the man read, gasping for breath, “ ‘that makes life on board a pleasure! We hope you’ll want to travel on the St. Louis again and again!’ ” Josef laughed so hard he cried. If he never saw the MS St. Louis again in his life, he would die happy.