felt like an animal, and how she realised that we are less human in our times of greatest love and greatest fear. In those early days of motherhood she didn’t paint; she was exhausted and preoccupied entirely with Sami. Later when she took to the canvas again in the hours when Sami was asleep, these landscapes were the most beautiful, the most alive, with greater depth to the darkness and a luminous shimmer to the light.
When the crying stopped, Angeliki’s eyes closed completely. I was thinking about Nadim now and the way he had slipped the money into those boys’ hands. My thoughts turned to Mohammed, and now I was more afraid for him than ever before. And then, worst of all, I thought about Sami. First his smile. Then the moment the light fell from his eyes and they turned to glass. I didn’t want to think about Sami. I never want to think about Sami. I looked up at the vast sky and stars and they morphed into images that I could not dispel from my mind.
Night after night, the predators came out of the woods. Nadim became more and more friendly with the two boys, and as the nights passed the boys disappeared and reappeared again, in the same spot, each time looking more troubled than before. But they had new shoes, and even a new phone, and they bantered with each other and fought and laughed, and they clung to each other, especially in the early hours of the morning when they returned from wherever they had been. Then they slept, late into the afternoon, even when the sun was beaming down on them, their bodies immovable, their minds switched off.
Night after night, Angeliki slept against the tree beside us. I think she felt safe next to us. I wondered if she still went to the old school. It seemed so far away now, so long ago, though it had probably been only a week or maybe two since we had come to this place.
I had given Afra the pencils and notepad, but she would not take them this time; she pushed them away, even in her sleep. Her mind was exhausted and preoccupied. She listened to the sounds around her, she responded to the children’s playing and crying with facial expressions. She was afraid for them. She asked me sometimes who was hiding in the woods. I told her that I didn’t know.
Some days people packed their few belongings and left, though I had no idea where they were heading. In Leros, people were chosen by their country of origin. There was a ranking. Refugees from Syria had priority; that was what we had been told. Refugees from Afghanistan and the African continent had to wait longer or maybe forever. But here in the park it seemed as if everyone had been forgotten. Some days new people arrived, dragged in by an NGO worker holding new blankets. Adults and children with startled eyes and sea-swept hair.
10
I TAKE AFRA TO THE GP for her appointment. It’s a big clinic and there is a doctor here who speaks Arabic. Dr Faruk is a short, round man, probably around fifty. He has his glasses on the table in front of him next to a bronze plaque with his name on it, his eyes are lit up by the screen of the computer. He wants to record some details, he says, get Afra’s history, before he examines her. He asks her questions about the type of pain in her eyes: Is the pain sharp or dull? Is it in both eyes? Do you have headaches? Do you see flashing lights? Afra answers his questions, and then he pulls up a chair and sits beside her. He takes her blood pressure and listens to her heart with a stethoscope and finally he shines a tiny flashlight into each eye. First the right eye, pausing there for a moment, then the left, pausing again, then back to the right. He repeats the procedure a few more times and then sits there watching her for a moment, as if in contemplation or confusion.
‘Did you say you can’t see anything at all?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
He shines the torch into her eyes again. ‘Can I ask you if you can see anything now?’
‘No,’ she says, keeping very still.
‘Can you make out any change? A shadow or some movement or light?’
‘No,’ she says, ‘nothing at all.’
I can hear a tremor in her voice, she is getting