to charge my phone and have a coffee, watching the two women, who I realised were mother and daughter, bringing out glasses of water and tea and coffee, interacting with the refugees, trying to communicate as best they could in the little Arabic or Farsi they had picked up. On this day, the father and son were also there, the son a smaller version of his dad, minus the moustache. I allowed myself to relax a bit, and lean back in the chair and close my eyes, listening to the conversations going on around me and to the distant thunder over the sea.
I waited there until the afternoon, but there was no sign of Mohammed. At four o’clock I went to the registration centre to find out if the authorities had checked the papers and granted clearance. There were hundreds of people gathered around a flustered man who was standing on a stool, holding up cards and calling out names. He didn’t call ours, but I was pleased because I didn’t want to leave without Mohammed.
The next day passed in a similar way – the sun dried up the rain and the wind was much warmer. It was as if the darkness had been washed away, and even though there were more people streaming onto the island, tossed in by the waves, and fewer people leaving, the place somehow seemed more peaceful. Maybe there was just so much noise that it all blended together and became like the drumming of rain or the sound of waves or the buzzing of the flies around the octopus, and away from the campsite the soil smelt fresh and sweet, and the trees were beginning to blossom and bear fruit.
And there was still no sign of Mohammed.
By the evening of the next day I started to lose hope. I took the coloured pencils out of their packaging.
‘What is that?’ Afra said, her ear tuned into the sound. ‘What are you opening?’
‘Pencils.’
‘Coloured ones?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there paper?’
‘Yes, a notepad.’
‘Can I have it?’
I placed all the pencils in front of her in a row and led her hand to them. I opened the notepad and placed it on her lap.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
I lay back and stared up at the ceiling of the cabin, at the spiders and insects and cobwebs that had gathered in the corners. I listened to the soft conversations through the sheets and out in the alleys, and the pencils swishing over paper.
Hours later, when it was almost dark, Afra finally spoke. ‘I made this for you,’ she said.
The picture she had drawn was so different from her usual artwork – a flower-filled field overlooked by a single tree.
‘But how did you draw this?’ I said.
‘I can feel the pencil marks on the paper.’
I looked at the picture again. The colours were wild – the tree blue, the sky red. The lines were broken, leaves and flowers out of place, and yet it held a beauty that was mesmerising and indescribable, like an image in a dream, like a picture of a world that is beyond our imagination.
The following afternoon my name was called out at the registration centre. I was given the cards and permission to leave the island for Athens: Nuri Ibrahim, Afra Ibrahim, and Sami Ibrahim. My stomach turned when I looked at Sami’s name, printed so clearly on the piece of paper in my hand. Sami. Sami Ibrahim. As if he was still among us.
I didn’t tell Afra that we’d been granted clearance. I didn’t even go to the travel agency to buy the ferry tickets. The days and nights passed and Afra was feeling restless.
‘I’m having nightmares,’ she said. ‘I am dead and there are flies all over me and I can’t move to shake them off!’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll be off this island soon.’
‘I don’t like it here,’ she said. ‘This place is full of ghosts.’
‘What kind of ghosts?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Something not human.’
I knew that she was right. I knew that we had to go, but I didn’t want to leave without Mohammed. What if the boy returned and wondered where I was? I knew he was coming back, he must be. As the police officer said – this is an island, he couldn’t have gone far.
The following night it was raining again and Afra had a terrible fever. Her head was hot, her hands and feet as cold as the sea. I dabbed her forehead and chest with a damp cloth – my