Later that night, Mahmoud and his family at last reached the border of Austria. There was no fence, no wall, no border check post. Just a blue traffic sign by the side of the road with the words REPUBLIK OSTERREICH inside the EU’s circle of gold stars, and above it a sign with the red-and-white flag of Austria.
The Hungarian police cars stopped following them as soon as they stepped across the border, and the refugees paused to hug each other and celebrate their escape. Mahmoud fell to his knees, fighting back tears of exhaustion and happiness. They had made it. It wasn’t Germany, not yet, but Germany was just one country away. The refugees were still laughing and congratulating each other when the phone Mahmoud’s father carried beeped an alarm. So did another phone, and another, until the whole crowd was a chorus of alarms.
It was time for the Isha’a prayer, the last prayer of the day.
Mahmoud’s dad used an app called iSalam to find the exact direction they should face to pray to Mecca. Mahmoud’s family found a patch of grass all to themselves and the hundreds of other refugees did the same, and soon they were all bowing and praying together. It wasn’t ideal—they were supposed to wash themselves and pray in a clean place—but it was more important to pray at the right time than in the right place.
As he recited the first chapter of the Qur’an, Mahmoud thought about the words. Thee alone we worship, and thee alone we ask for help. Show us the straight path. Their path had been anything but straight, but Allah had delivered them to this place. With his blessings, they might actually reach Germany.
When Mahmoud finished his prayers and opened his eyes, he saw a small group of Austrians had gathered at the edges of the praying refugees. There were police officers there too, and more cars with flashing lights. Mahmoud sagged. They only see us when we do something they don’t like, he thought again. The refugees had stopped to get down on their knees and pray, and these people watching them didn’t do that. Didn’t understand. Now the refugees looked foreign again, alien. Like they didn’t belong.
Mahmoud worried what the crowd might do when the Austrians told them they didn’t want them. Their march through Hungary had been peaceful until now. Would this turn into another fight that would see them gassed and handcuffed and thrown into prison again?
“Welcome to Austria!” one of the Austrians said in heavily accented Arabic, and others yelled “Willkommen!” and applauded. Actually applauded them. Mahmoud looked around at Waleed, who was as stunned as Mahmoud. Was there some mistake? Did these people think they were something other than Syrian refugees?
Suddenly, they were surrounded by Austrians—men, women, and children all smiling and trying to shake their hands and give them things. A woman gave Mahmoud’s mother a handful of clean clothes, and a man worried over his father’s cuts and bruises. A boy about Mahmoud’s age wearing a New York Yankees jersey handed him a plastic shopping bag with bread and cheese and fruit and a bottle of water in it. Mahmoud was so thankful he almost wept.
“Thank you,” Mahmoud said in Arabic.
“Bitte,” the boy said, which Mahmoud guessed was German for “You’re welcome.”
The Austrians, they learned, had seen their march on the television, and had come out to help them. It was like that all the way up the road to Nickelsdorf, the closest Austrian town with a train station. White, native-born Austrians and olive-skinned Arab Austrians who had recently immigrated to the country filled the overpasses, throwing bottles of water and food down to them—bread, fresh fruit, bags of chips. A man next to Mahmoud caught a whole grilled chicken wrapped in aluminum foil.
“We are with you! Go with God!” a woman shouted down to them in Arabic.
Mahmoud’s heart lifted. They weren’t invisible anymore, hidden away in the detention center. People were finally seeing them, and good people were helping them.
At last, Mahmoud and his family reached the Nickelsdorf train station, where they bought tickets to Vienna, the capital of Austria. They traveled overnight by train, and when they arrived in Vienna the next morning they bought tickets to Munich, a large city in Germany. In Munich, the response was the same as in Austria, only bigger. There were thousands of refugees at the train station, and moving among them were hundreds of regular German people offering bottles of water and cups of coffee and tea. One couple had brought a basket full of candy and were handing pieces out to children. Mahmoud and Waleed joined the happy mob of kids around them and each got a couple of candies, which they wolfed down. A more organized effort was unloading a truck full of fresh fruit, and another group was handing out diapers to anyone with babies.
Seeing the diapers reminded Mahmoud of Hana, and he looked up at his mother. He could tell she was thinking of his baby sister too. She put a hand to her mouth, and soon she was working her way through the crowd again, asking anyone and everyone if they had seen her daughter. But no one had seen or heard of a baby plucked from the water. If the people who had rescued her made it to safety, though, they were likely somewhere here in Germany. Mahmoud and his family would just have to keep looking.
An official-looking German man with a name tag that said Serhat—a Turkish name—approached Mahmoud’s father with a clipboard in hand. “Are you and your family seeking asylum in Germany?” he asked in perfect Arabic.
Mahmoud held his breath. Was this it? Was the end of their long, horrible nightmare near? Could they finally stop moving, stop sleeping and praying in doorways and bus stations? In Germany, Mahmoud and his family could make new lives for themselves. Mahmoud could finally find a way to reconnect with Waleed. They could find Hana. Get his dad laughing and joking again. Find peace for his mom. After coming so far, after losing so much, it felt like Mahmoud and his family were almost to the Promised Land.
All they had to do was make room in their hearts for Germany the way it had made room for them, and accept this strange new place as their home.
“Yes,” Mahmoud’s father said, a smile slowly growing on his face. “A thousand times yes.”
This was the coda to Isabel’s song.
She stood with a trumpet in hand—a gift from Uncle Guillermo, Lito’s brother. She wasn’t on a sidewalk in Havana, but in a classroom in Miami. It was her second week of school, and the first day of band class. The day they auditioned for their places in the orchestra.
Isabel twiddled her fingers on the trumpet’s keys. She couldn’t believe she was standing here, in this classroom, less than a month after stumbling onto Miami Beach with her baby brother in her arms.