Refugees (2 page)

“That's on the other side of the world!” The DiGiornos had scheduled a trip before hauling Dawn back to the
group home. Mrs. DiGiorno had claimed she needed space, but all that distance probably made it easier for her to dump Dawn. Well, if Louise wanted distance that badly too…“How long have you known about this?”

“I just found out.”

“Like the time you found out a week before your trip to Kansas and didn't let me know until the
day
before?” Dawn's face grew hot.

“No, not like that.” Louise hesitated. “I realize it's far from San Francisco.”

“What's in Pakistan, anyway?” Dawn felt herself flip off like a switch.

Louise adjusted her glasses. “The situation in the refugee camps has been deteriorating.” She leaned forward. “Afghans have been fleeing from civil war for years, and the border camps are stretched to bursting. Drought has worsened, and food will run out by winter if the International Committee of the Red Cross doesn't intervene. Malaria and pneumonia are rampant.” Her owlish gray eyes fixed on Dawn. “How do you feel about me going?”

Dawn said, “They need doctors.”

“But does it matter to you?” Louise asked.

Dawn's muscles clenched. “Do whatever you want. You'll do that anyway.”

“Well, if you
hate
the idea…” Louise wouldn't stop staring at Dawn with a pity that made Dawn's skin crawl.

“It's your duty, right?” Dawn replied. “And the refugees need help.”

The ticking clock punctuated their silence.

“I can
see
you're upset.”

This routine was beyond exhausting. But Louise had
never traveled so far. Usually it was a weekend of Louisiana flood relief or tornado relief in Kansas. And being alone with Victor for all that time would be awful.

“Who said I was upset? You're the one who's losing it,” Dawn snapped.

“Listen, Miss Rude, I've had enough of you!” Louise shouted. She breathed in deeply, exhaled, then spoke in a gentler tone. “I'll cancel my flight, Dawn.”

“Absolutely not.” Dawn was surprised by her own fierceness.

Louise seemed relieved and gave a tense smile. “Well, dear, as I said, it will only be for five weeks, just until food and medicine are distributed—you'll hardly know I'm gone. Victor can take you to some restaurants. You can bring along your friend Jude—”

“Please leave Jude out of this.” Dawn checked the clock. “Are we done?”

“Almost.” Louise held up a stack of papers etched in neat script. “Here's all my contact information—my numbers, the address for the ICRC's Suryast camp in Peshawar, my e-mail address. They say the Internet goes in and out, but a letter may get intercepted. E-mail and phone are the best,” she explained. “I'll show you how to use the sat phone in my office. Oh, I almost forgot.” She pulled out something from her cardigan pocket and handed it to Dawn. “A SIM card in case you need to call while you're away from the house.”

Victor shuffled in, puffing on his pipe. “Hello,” he said, taking a seat.

“How soon are you leaving?” Dawn asked, pocketing the card.

Victor started to cough, then glared at Louise.

“Tomorrow night.” Louise tapped the papers on the table to straighten them, then fastened them neatly with a paper clip. “You know I'll miss you, Dawn.”

Sure, just like the DiGiornos had said. “You won't miss me and I won't miss you,” Dawn blurted. “Go. Do your Mother Teresa thing.”

Victor stood up. “That's enough! What's wrong with you?”

“Let her be.” Louise's look pinned Victor back to his seat. “There's a lot she needs to absorb.”

“I've absorbed.” Dawn raced upstairs, anger and fear blurring her vision. Falling onto the bed, she curled into the fetal position. She hadn't meant to be so mean, but at times she just snapped. The argument between Victor and Louise and this sudden news only added two more off-key octaves to the discordant symphony of the day.

Earlier the math teacher had handed back Dawn's pop quiz with a C-minus. Urban had decent classes, but algebra, no matter how it was candy-coated with games and gimmicky charts, was hell. Then in orchestra Dawn found out that she had only placed as third flutist.
Third flutist!
Just because the other two kids' parents were PTA clones who spent their lives repping their doubtful prodigies didn't mean their brats could waltz right in and grab her rightful chair. It was guilt that had clouded the music teacher's eyes as he mumbled, “You know I think the world of your talent, but these two flutists have been at Urban since way back in the first grade.”

But the worst was what had happened after last period. Dawn had turned down the hall, slipped past some giggling classmates, and hurried toward her friend Jude. He was bending over his locker, stuffing books in his bag.

Back when Dawn was new at Urban, Jude had rescued her from the sorry quagmire of freaks and geeks. They had formed a misfit musician-and-actor duo. The previous spring they had hung out at his house in the Haight, where every day Dawn swore she could feel the vibes of old hippie musicians like Hendrix, the Airplane, and the Grateful Dead—ghost trails of brilliant lyrical maniacs. They would sit on Jude's shag rug and plot their fantasy escape to New York, where they would take the plunge into professional music and theater. With each plotting, it grew more elaborate—her in a famous band, him a stage diva. This summer she had worked the counter at Melody's Music Store and Jude skipped off to acting camp. The summer hung on like a crusty scab, and Jude wrote only one half-baked letter. She wasn't quite sure where she stood with him now, but then she was never quite sure of things like that.

“Jude,” she called when she was almost to his locker.

He swung around. His hair was stylishly windblown, and he had on one of his trademark silk shirts. “Girlfriend, am I glad to see you!” Jude's chiseled features relaxed into a broad smile. “It's
so
depressing to be back among the heathens. I'm ready to blow this town for New York. Broadway needs the soon-to-be-infamous me, Jude Hahn.” He leaned in, his bony hands moving expressively as he spoke. “Pax would let us crash with him in New York. And you're so hot on flute that as soon as he heard you play, he'd get on his knees and beg you to join his band.”

“Every time you talk about crashing with your brother in Manhattan I get so charged,” Dawn admitted. “I mean, can you imagine? Me in a real band, you a real stage actor.”

“Let's do it,” said Jude. “No more hokey drama class, no more piddly high school band. You and I, we're destined for greatness.” He twirled and dipped in a spacey jig.
When he danced, his androgynous body held a sinewy charisma.

Dawn laughed. If only Jude meant what he said about leaving, she'd be on that next train or bus. But she doubted he was capable of following through; he was such a serious mama's boy. “What would your parents think? Your mom would just die.”

“Don't remind me,” he sighed operatically. “Dame Edith would have a cow.” Jude threw more books in his bag and shut his locker. “Even though she did the same thing when
she
was seventeen.”

“She actually ran away to New York?”

“Yup. Hard to believe, huh?”

“Hmm,” Dawn replied, then decided to change the subject. “Let's go to the Haight for some cappuccino, then go to your place and play.” At Jude's, Dawn could belt out salsa on her flute while he danced like a stripper, flinging Edith's fake furs around his giraffe-like neck. Or Dawn could switch to a flute concerto in between Jude's recitations from
Amadeus.

“No can do. Dame Edith scheduled a dental appointment for me without asking.”

“Can't you call to cancel?” Dawn didn't want to seem clingy, but she dragged with heaviness at the thought of spending the afternoon without him. And this was their first day back together.

“Believe me, I tried. I whined, I threatened.” Jude's face became animated in true drama-major vamp style. “Mom wouldn't budge, and to top it off she accused me of cheap melodramatics.” He flipped his long hair. “She said I was carrying on like
her
at sixteen. I'm sick of being treated like a baby. I'm ready to go, I really am.”

“I'm with you on that,” said Dawn. “But don't knock
your mom. She's an awesome painter.” And Edith wore flamboyant clothes—so different from Louise and Victor, thought Dawn. She felt her face go slack. “Hey, it's no biggie if you have to go.”

“Ah, I envy you.” Jude gazed fondly at Dawn. “Nothing fazes you. Maybe it's lucky that you're adopted. You'll never cringe when you hear yourself repeating your mother's most irritating phrases. You'll never have to deal with seeing the worst of yourself in your parents.”

“You mean foster, not adopted.”

“Oh, right. Sorry. Sometimes I talk without thinking.” He paused. “You OK?”

“Sure.” Dawn's hands clenched. He was trying to make her feel better, but sometimes Jude was clueless. It wasn't totally his fault; she'd never gone into details about her former life—the foster homes, the never knowing when she'd be out in the cold. If Dawn found her real mother, things would change. “Got to practice for my lesson,” she said crisply.

“Adios,” said Jude. “Same time, same locker, tomorrow.”

Dawn watched him stride down the hall, taut body swishing under his shirt, bookbag bouncing against his narrow hips. Then she bolted the school in a daze.

Now, as she curled into a tighter ball on her bed, the memories of earlier that afternoon merged with her present resolve. There was nothing for Dawn here unless she counted dread. She turned over on her bed and listened for sounds outside the bedroom door. Victor and Louise must still be downstairs, she thought. Dawn picked up the phone and dialed.

Jude's machine clicked on: “If I don't pick up, it's because
I'm rehearsing
Hamlet,
or
Death of a Salesman,
or whatever, but leave a shout-out at the tone.”

“Jude,” Dawn whispered, her voice cracking. “I'm leaving San Francisco, and if you're serious about it, come with me.”

J
ohar's clan had once spiraled out from the village of Baghlan like vines from a Zanzibar pea. Most of his tribe had withered; only a handful survived. He'd not forgotten the dead—his mother stirring pilau over the cooking fire, his father telling stories as they leaned on the mattresses bordering the den in their mud-brick hut.

Johar, now fifteen, and his older brother, Daq, lived in the hills with their sheep. The world was colder with so few of his tribe to warm him. Johar's mind would have frozen like the caps of the Hindu Kush if he'd not persisted in his passions: his knitting and his poetic rambles.

Women's work. Language of unbelievers. A shepherd's mind stuffed with trifling patter.
That's what the boys in Johar's village whispered. They called him rose and flower, brainboy and Inglestani. They claimed he put on scholarly airs.

He couldn't help it if Aunt Maryam had been a brilliant teacher. She had taught Johar and Daq when they came in from the fields at night, no matter how tired she was from a full day of teaching her regular girls. She and her young daughter, Bija, still lived down the road toward the village. Johar's aunt had always been a well in a desert of sand. She had taught him to weave, to knit, to read, and to speak languages—Pashto and English as well as Dari, which was their native tongue. Her most inspired gifts to Johar were the books of poetry by Rabi'a, Rumi, Farrukhi, Khushhal, and Durrani. And of course the English textbooks. It was a miracle that her brother, Tilo, had been able to bring in such textbooks from England. No one else had so much as a notebook. Maybe that's why the other boys resented Johar. Words and languages were more essential than food or friends. But try explaining that to most village boys, who waited excitedly for their first guns at five. Johar could tolerate the name-calling, but at fifteen, with Johar now a man, these things he so loved—poetry, language—were becoming embarrassments.

The hills above Baghlan were pocked, and when Johar herded the sheep he had to tread carefully, inching around land mines and old battle trenches. This soil had witnessed many years of battering, army against army, faction against faction. But Johar could forget his troubles here, even these days when a group of humorless clerics called the Taliban were raiding towns and taking young men at gunpoint to train for the new jihad. Keen to install their punishing brand of sharia in the land, they decreed no laughter, no music, and no vices.
No vices? Pah,
thought Johar. Vices were reserved strictly for the Taliban. They had seized many villages and the hubs of power—Kandahar, Kabul, advancing on even the northernmost towns—and now they
wanted unwilling boys to help them gain even more. Johar's heart hammered fitfully when he thought about it. The greedy goats would not be satisfied until they had taken the whole of Afghanistan and the shreds of his family in the bargain.

Johar was called a coward by the villagers because he shied from guns, because he was afraid to join the Alliance to fight these Taliban, because he preferred to spend his time with children rather than soldiers.
Call me coward, then,
Johar thought,
for that is what I am.