Nowhere Boy

Ahmed Nasser hugged his life jacket against himself. It was too small for a boy of fourteen, especially one nearly as tall as his father. He remembered the stories he had heard in Turkey of smugglers selling defective life jackets that made people sink instead of float.

A hand touched his shoulder. “Ahmed, my soul, don’t be afraid.”

Ahmed looked at his father, his large frame crammed against the side of the boat. A black inner tube was slung over his shoulder and he smiled calmly, as if he knew they’d be okay. But the smell of bodies, unwashed and sweating, the terrified gazes, the sickly toss of the sea, told Ahmed otherwise.

“The lady is right,” Ahmed whispered. “The boat’s deflating. If the motor won’t start-”

“Hush,” his father said.

His voice was commanding yet gentle, as if he were soothing a child. But Ahmed was old enough to know the powerlessness that lay behind it. He thought about his mother, his sisters, his grandfather-would his death be worse than theirs had been? His father had assured him theirs had been painless. Surely theirs had been quicker than this. There had been no time for false words of comfort.

Less than ten kilometers separated the coast of Turkey from the Greek island of Lesbos. Ahmed tried to make out lights from land or even from another boat, but he could spot nothing. Where was Europe? Where was the rest of the world? There wasn’t even a star to promise a better elsewhere existed. The sky was as dark as the water below it. He could barely see the face of the stainless-steel watch his father had worn until earlier tonight, when he’d fastened it around Ahmed’s wrist. It had been Ahmed’s great-grandfather’s Omega Seamaster, a name that seemed ironic now.

“Baba, you know I can’t swim,” Ahmed whispered.

“You won’t have to,” his father said.

But water was soaking Ahmed’s sneakers. He could feel it rolling back and forth across the bottom of the boat. People tossed bags into the sea, trying to lighten the load. Ahmed watched the bags bob, then float away or sink. A few people tried to bail the water out with plastic bottles, but it hardly seemed to make a difference. The woman in front of them started crying. For the first time, Ahmed noticed she was holding a baby in a sling.

“Don’t cry,” Ahmed’s father said to her, his tone light. “There is already enough water in this boat.”

But this only seemed to make the woman cry harder.

“Allahu Akbar,” several people prayed.

“Baba-”

“The woman is right,” his father interrupted. “We must keep this boat moving. But you will not sink. Nor will the others.”

Ahmed noticed him glance at the woman and her baby, then at the rest of the desperate, frightened strangers in the overcrowded boat. Baba pulled the inner tube off his shoulder and slipped it over Ahmed’s head and around his torso. Then he leaned over and whispered in his ear.

“Forgive me, my soul. For a moment, I must leave you.”

“Leave me? Where?”

But his father had already turned away.

“Baba!”