Refugees (17 page)

“Hello. May I help you?”

“Hello. Is this Johar?”

“Yes. And you, Miss Dawn?”

He remembers my voice.
“Yes!”

“Sorry, Miss Dawn. Dr. Garland out in camp. Shall I get?”

“Oh, no! Um… I'll just speak to you.”

“Not talk to mother? Why?” asked Johar.

Dawn scraped zigzags in the dirt with her fingernail. “I don't know.”
Because Louise scares me, that's why, because she'd be furious with me.
“Hey, Johar?”

“Yes?”

“What did Louise say about me?” Dawn's insides churned.

“Very good flute player.”

“Anything else?”

“You are little bit older than I.”

“I'm sixteen. How old are you?”

“I, fifteen.” His voice was almost delicate.

“Is everything still OK in Afghanistan, um, I mean in Peshawar? Uh, is Dr. Garland OK?” Dawn stumbled over words. “And are you OK? I mean—”

“Dr. Garland OK, and OK here. My cousin and I came here from Afghanistan.”

“Oh, that's good. That's great!” Dawn drew in a long breath. “Tell Louise I called, OK? Tell her I'm fine and I'm glad she's fine. Tell her I'll call soon.”

“Yes, Miss Dawn. She say she miss you.”

“Really? You're sure?”

“Sure.”

“Nice talking to you. I mean, thanks, and, um, talk to you later.” She hung up.

Dawn traveled down to the site early, before the crispcollared businessmen who had returned to work poured out of the trains, before cabbies inched along Broadway, pressing their horns. She sat on a bench looking out onto Greenwich Street's wide expanse, just a few blocks from the piles of ravaged metal that had come to be called ground zero. She imagined that exhausted workers were still searching for bodies. Dawn pictured them crawling out of the pile and heading home to Staten Island, the Bronx, or the brick apartments of Stuyvesant Town.

She gazed beyond the supermarket, beyond the bright bars of the jungle gym in Washington Market Park and just past the plywood fence, to the funnel of smoke, and the remnants of Building Seven standing several stories high. She gazed further back to the skeleton of the south tower, its broken lattices jutting east. After all these weeks it still seemed as if mere fragments of the metal graveyard had been piled on barges. She slipped her three flute parts together and practiced a B-minor scale.

Dawn's throat was scratchy from the fumes, and she had to keep clearing it as she practiced a trill, another trill, and then began a Mozart sonata, its sweetness trailing up
on the breeze. A National Guard soldier, posted at the fence, turned toward her music. The Mozart was buoyant. She hadn't played this unselfconsciously since she was young, before her feelings had gotten stuck.

As Dawn swayed through the sonata's allegro into the adagio, a weight settled on her chest. She tried to shake it by launching into a second sonata, but the pressure grew. As she hit a high B and trilled it, she felt a whoosh of incoming energy, as if birds fluttered underneath her coat. Alarmed, she placed her flute on its case, unzipped her jacket, and examined herself. She'd let herself get grubby, but she saw only her tattered jersey and the bulge of money tucked into her bra. She resumed playing. It was so weird; the pressure—almost as if she could feel the weight of souls trapped in this place. Icy fear branched into her nerves. “I'm out of here,” she muttered, yanking apart the flute pieces and plunking them into their case. A few curious storekeepers stared. Dawn hadn't noticed them before. She flung on her pack and hurried for the uptown train.

When she reached Union Square, Dawn crouched between the flower-strewn memorials.
Calm down,
she ordered herself,
or you'll end up in the loony bin.
Jude was sensible not to want to face the horror down at the site. Why was
she
so interested? Was she into self-torture? There was still time to run to Sander's and plead with Jude to forgive her, travel back west with him, and forget about this nightmare city. But what was there back in Frisco? Victor was probably delighted to be rid of her. It was weird to think of him going on with his work as if she'd never existed. She hadn't, except as an annoyance. And if it hadn't been for Louise running off, Dawn wouldn't have left. Jude had a home there, not Dawn.

She jumped up and pushed through the midmorning throngs to the camouflage of the park hedge and set up the phone, praying that Johar would answer and not Louise. Each ring felt like a trumpet blast.
Come on,
Dawn pleaded, her hand spring-loaded, ready to hang up at a second's notice.
Come on…

“Hello, may I help you?” Johar's voice.

“Hi!” Her pulse was racing again. “Johar.”

“Yes. Miss Dawn?”

“Yes!”

“Sorry, Miss Dawn. Dr. Garland on rounds. Shall I get?”

“Um, no.”

His voice was hesitant. “You angry to mother?”

“It's not quite like that. It's more like she'd be angry with me, Johar.”

“Why?”

“You promise to keep a secret?”

“Yes.”

“Because I ran away to New York City.” Why was she saying all this, revealing to this perfect stranger her whole life? She had to. She just…Johar was silent on the other end. Had he hung up? “Hello? Johar?”

“New York City.” Johar's voice was a whisper. “What happened in your city? Is true big American buildings fell?”

He knew about the towers! Something in Dawn broke, and a torrent of words spurted out. “Yes, Johar, it was horrible!” she exclaimed. “People ran wild in the streets. It was like the world was ending! Black smoke. Fighter jets streaking back and forth. When you're stuck on a subway that's stopped between stations, I mean stuck in a black hole with
no exit and they tell you it's a subway investigation, for all you know your life's about to end in another explosion. I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have these weird nightmares. People are wandering around like zombies searching for lost relatives and friends. The whole city is numb.” Dawn paused. “They say the pilots were trained in Afghanistan. I read it wasn't Afghans, but do your people hate us too?”

“Some. Not most.” Johar paused. “We try just to live, to get food. Many run from their homes. My cousin Bija and I left from Baghlan when brother taken by Taliban army and aunt taken by their spies. We escape over mountains. Run to this camp. Most do not wish death on any soul. We under war for many years. Afghans are weak, so others grab country for self. American bombs hit Kabul. I afraid my friend Aman killed. Bombs kill invaders, but kill innocents also. All misery.” Johar continued in a whisper. “You hurt? Many people hurt?”

“I'm fine. But many people were killed, Johar, thousands of people.”

“Sorry,” Johar whispered. “Very sorry.”

“I'm sorry too. It's all so sad.” She wished she could just get the feeling out with words, with crying or even a scream.
It's sad
sounded woefully inadequate. She gathered her courage. “Johar, do you believe in ghosts, spirits?” There, she'd said it. It sounded nuts.

“Spirits, yes.”

“You do? You don't think it's all nonsense?”

“Not nonsense. I speak to my father. He spirit, and mother too. Songs of my mother come to me in dreams. Many, many dead here. Afghanistan full of spirits.”

“That's so awful.”

“Yes, but part of life, this death.”

“So I'm not just losing it.” Dawn sighed. Confessing her feelings was frightening, but also a relief, like a plunge into a cool spring, and surprisingly easy with no edgy face-toface.

“Losing it? What mean?” asked Johar.

“Crazy. Because… this is going to sound crazy.”

“Not crazy.”

“OK, not crazy. Well, I went down to the site where the towers fell.”

“Yes?”

“And the place… It's full of some weird energy.”

“Confused spirits, they.”

“But how do you know? It's hard to believe. Kind of scary.”

“People here. We believe in this. People in your country, not believe in spirits?”

“No. Most people in the U.S., they think ghosts are a silly superstition.”

“Ah, superstition of white things dressed in sheets. Like Casper the Friendly Ghost? I see this guy in American film.” They both laughed, then Johar went on. “Superstition, or belief, whatever you feel is true for you, no? I believe these spirits, they find a way out.”

“Really?” That was way far-fetched, but the terror that had Dawn's neck stiff as a plank fizzled away. “Thanks.” She felt light. “Tell Louise I called again. Tell her I'm thinking of her.”

“OK.”

“And Johar?”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind if I call or e-mail you?” Jude was gone. She was alone. Johar was a way to Louise.

“That would be nice, Miss Dawn. Internet less money, no? ICRC e-mail address, you have?”

“I do,” Dawn said, and gave him hers. Now she had reason to venture into one of those trendy cybercaf's in the East Village. “And just call me Dawn.” She exhaled, sending sparky things through her limbs.

“OK, Dawn. Salaam.”

“Salaam, Johar.” She didn't know what
salaam
meant, but it was the nicest word she had heard in weeks.

D
awn flipped through her
Songs of the World
book past “Danube Waltz,” “Erie Canal,” and “Salsa Picante.” Here was something that spoke to the gravity of the site—the Irish ballad “Danny Boy.” Using her flute case, she propped the opened pages against the insurance company stairs and launched into the first measure. Over by the wooden fence, the National Guard soldier tipped his head her way, the hint of a smile showing.
Good,
Dawn thought,
he's gotten used to me.
Shadows of buses and people walking seemed, in the autumn sunlight, to sway in a ballad too.

Dawn tapped her foot to regulate the tempo. Some notes were high as a pennywhistle, and heads turned as passersby searched for the music's source. One tourist snapped a photo of her. Another man stopped to gesticulate
at the smoking steel beyond the walls, his wife nodding in solemn understanding. Dawn imagined herself in a ragtag military band playing a flute reveille on a bloody battlefield. The song took her to her feet. Was it the energy of performing that had Dawn feeling that peculiar tug again? It was so odd how she belonged here.

“Pretty music.” Dawn turned, startled. An old Chinese woman had climbed the stairs. Next to the old woman stood a young man—the old woman's son? He was trying to scrunch a dollar into Dawn's hand.

“Oh, no, no money. Music is free here.” Dawn smiled and raised her palm to make her point. It was inappropriate to charge money down here, where the wretched fumes still invaded her lungs. No, she'd save panhandling for a different neighborhood.

“Please.” The young man offered the dollar again, imploring. “My mother asks, can you play a Chinese song?” Dawn turned to the old woman. Her eyes held tears.

Dawn felt a flurry of panic. “What's wrong?” she asked.

The man answered. “Her son—my older brother, Lin Wong—was killed here. He worked in an accounting firm.” The guy whispered something to his mother in Chinese. Dawn stared at the old woman's tears as they spilled down over her wide cheekbones and onto her plain cotton jacket. The old woman whispered something back to her son, and he continued. “Our family comes from China,” he explained. “My brother's body has not yet been recovered.”

The old woman held up two photos. “Lin Wong,” she said. In the first, her son wore a black suit and modern glasses. In the second, a more youthful Lin Wong sat on a country porch. He beamed proudly, his wide cheekbones echoing those of his mother beside him.

“That one was taken in our village,” explained Lin's brother. “My mother thinks if you play for Lin, it might help bring his spirit back to China.”

“Me? Play for him?” A pang in Dawn's chest made it hard to speak. Were there actually spirits, as Johar said? It seemed irrational, but Dawn could almost feel them waiting for her music. Maybe it was all in her head, but if she played, it could mean something to this family.

“Can you play something for my brother?” the young man repeated.

“Yes.” Dawn's hands trembled as she flipped through her songbook. “I'll try.” Again the young man spoke Chinese, and the old woman nodded emphatically. Were there any Chinese songs in here? What would she play if there weren't? Johar had been brave to climb over icy mountains to reach the refugee camp. She imagined herself being brave too. Dawn kept flipping through the book and finally saw a possibility. “Ah, ‘Bamboo Pond.' ” She propped the book back on the stairs, downturned her lips across the mouthpiece, and attempted a measure.

The melody implored as the old woman's eyes had. The woman leaned toward Dawn, swaying and nodding with eyes closed. Dawn pictured herons on a pond. They ducked into the water, then unfurled their necks in the wind to shake off droplets. She pictured a bamboo forest, like she'd seen in a TV show about China, its tender leaves offering shade. Dawn entwined the notes—sheltering leaves on branches of sound—around the woman and her young son, over to the soldier, and into the air above ground zero. A crowd formed, but Dawn was far, far away now, honoring Lin Wong, whose body had been caught in a crush of metal.