So did the cheering.
The other refugees on the Coast Guard ship were hopping up and down and clapping and yelling encouragement, just like the crowd on the beach had when they’d left Havana. Isabel saw her grandfather running up and down the ship, waving them toward shore like a baseball player urging a home run ball around the foul pole. She laughed in spite of herself. The water was just below Isabel’s waist. They were almost there!
The Coast Guard ship cut its engines to run up to them, and that’s when Isabel heard her baby brother cry out for the first time.
The sound stunned Isabel and the others into stillness. It took her father a moment to cut the umbilical cord with his pocket knife. Then he stood up in the boat with something tiny and brown, staring down at it like he held the world’s most incredible treasure in his arms. Isabel gaped. All this time, she had known her mother was having a baby. Isabel had seen plenty of babies before. They were cute, but nothing special. But this—this wasn’t just a baby. This was her brother. She had never met him before this moment, but she loved him now with a deepness she had never felt before, not even toward Iván. This was Mariano, her little brother, and she suddenly wanted to do anything and everything she could to protect him.
Papi finally looked up from his newborn son. “Help me get Teresa out of the boat,” he told the others.
The Coast Guard ship was almost alongside the boat, and the adults scrambled for the other side.
Papi bent down over the bow and held out her crying baby brother to Isabel. As if in a dream, Isabel’s arms reached up and took him. He was covered with something slimy and gross and was screaming like somebody had slapped him, but he was the most amazing thing Isabel had ever seen.
Little Mariano.
Isabel hugged him protectively against the push and pull of the waves. He was so tiny! So light! What if she stumbled? What if she dropped him? How could her father have put something so new, so precious, in her arms? But then she understood—Isabel had to carry little Mariano to shore so her father and the others could carry Mami behind them.
“Go, Isabel,” her father told her, and she went.
Isabel held the baby up high to keep him out of the waves that pushed them both to shore, stumbling as the water crashed against the back of her legs, but step by step she staggered up onto the beach.
Onto United States soil.
Isabel turned in the sand, soaking wet and exhausted, to look behind her.
Papi and Amara and the Castillos were on their feet, carrying Isabel’s mother through the shallow water, where the Coast Guard boat couldn’t go. The ship had cut its lights and was backing out to sea. On the rear of the boat, among the waving, cheering refugees, was Isabel’s grandfather.
Isabel held the screaming baby up high for him to see, and Lito fell to his knees, hands clasped to his chest. Then the engines roared, the sea churned, and the Coast Guard ship disappeared out to sea.
The Castillo and Fernandez families helped each other up onto the sandy beach, and their wet feet became dry feet. Se?or Castillo fell to his knees and kissed the ground.
They had made it to the States. To freedom.
Still in a dream, Isabel wobbled up the sand toward the flashing lights and thumping music and dancing people. She stepped into the light, and the music stopped and everyone turned to stare. Then suddenly people were running to help her and her family.
A tan young woman in a bikini dropped into the sand beside Isabel.
“Oh, my God, chiquita,” she said in Spanish. “Did you just come off a boat? Are you Cuban?”
“Yes,” Isabel said. She was trembling, but she clung to Mariano like she would never let him go. “I’m from Cuba,” Isabel said, “but my little brother was born here. He’s an American. And soon I will be too.”
Hungarian people on both sides of the road stopped and stared as Mahmoud and the rest of the refugees marched down the middle of the highway. Men, women, children, they had all come pouring out of the detention center after Mahmoud, joined by the UN observers, and the police had done nothing to stop them.
The refugees stretched from one side of the northbound lane to the other, blocking cars from passing them. Packs of young Syrian men walked and laughed together. A Palestinian woman pushed a stroller with a sleeping girl in it. An Afghan family sang a song. The refugees wore jeans, and sneakers, and hoodies tied around their waists, and carried what little they still owned in backpacks and trash bags.
Mahmoud’s father and mother found him and Waleed in the crowd.
“Mahmoud! What are you doing?” his father cried.
“We’re walking to Austria!” Waleed said.
Dad showed them the map on his phone. “But it’s a twelve-hour walk,” he said.
“We can do it,” Mahmoud said. “We’ve already come this far. We can go just a little farther.”
Mahmoud’s mother pulled him into a hug, and then Waleed, and soon their father had joined them. Refugees streamed around them, and when Mahmoud’s mother let them all go she was smiling and crying at the same time.
Cars honked behind the marchers, trying to get past. More cars stopped on the other side of the highway to honk and cheer them on or boo them. A police van pulled up on the opposite side of the road, and through a loudspeaker a policeman told everyone in Arabic, “Stop, or you will be arrested!” But no one stopped, and no one was arrested.
Mahmoud and his family walked with the crowd for hours. Visible. Exposed. It was scary, but energizing too. They marched quietly, calmly, flashing peace signs at people who cheered them on from the sidelines. Police cars with spinning red lights paced them on the other side of the road, occasionally bweep-bweeping to warn some car away. News helicopters flew overhead, and a woman from the the New York Times worked her way through the crowd, asking Mahmoud questions and interviewing refugees.
See us, Mahmoud thought. Hear us. Help us.
Twelve hours had seemed like nothing when Mahmoud added up all the time they’d been walking since they’d left Aleppo. But this walk quickly seemed endless. They had no water and no food, and Mahmoud’s stomach growled and his lips were dry. He felt like one of the zombies from his favorite video game. All he wanted to do was lie down and sleep, but Mahmoud knew they couldn’t stop. If they stopped, the Hungarians would arrest them. They had to keep moving forward. Always forward. Even if it killed them.