Carnations Marco Etheridge — Cleaning up Glitter

Carnations

Marco Etheridge

I see the ghost on the U-6 train often enough to recognize him. He wears an old suit worn shiny at the elbows, a heavy scarf knotted at his throat. The weave of his suit is dusted with the finest skein of flour. A shimmer of white hangs in the cuffs of his pants, clings to his shoes, the residue of some transformation. Ghost to human, human to ghost; I cannot tell which.

His eyes are a thousand-yard stare in a train car ninety feet long. He sees things I do not see, far off down the darkened tunnels that we ride through under the cobbled streets of Vienna. The train screeches and groans in the darkness. He watches something in the unseeable distance as I watch him.

The man rises from his plastic seat as the train reaches Bahnhof Meidling, the station where the world gets on and off. The double-doors lurch open with a pneumatic hiss. He moves across the crowded platform, silent in the babel of languages from three continents. Stepping onto the crowded escalator, he raises three white carnations above the crush. The spindly flowers are wrapped in a tube of crumpled white paper. A battered leather bag hangs from the same hand; white carnations over brown leather, always white, always three.

Still in my seat, I hear the huge electric motors spooling up against the weight of the train. There is a lurch as the silver and red cars slide from the lighted platform, into the darkness of the next tunnel. The outbound train is half empty after the exodus at Meidling. Across the empty aisle, the ghost has left a vestige of his presence. Below his empty seat there is the faintest penumbra of white dusted over the gritty grey floor. The white shadow of flour outlines the dark umbra left by a pair of shoes, a negative image of the shoes of a man who sits perfectly still. This man has a story, even if I do not know it.

Abid Kahlil Nassir is a father, a husband, and a baker. He was born in 1972 in Tadmur, Syria; the modern town that abuts the ancient ruins of Palmyra. This oasis in the Syrian Desert has its roots in the antiquity of the Bronze Age. Palmyra was already an old city when it became a stop on the route of the caravans, the fabled Silk Road from China to the Middle East.

Before the civil war, before the long trek to Austria, his mornings began very early. As he made his way to the bakery, darkness still hovered over the ruins scattered across the Syrian desert. Like his father and his grandfather before him, Abid baked the flat, round loaves of khoubz, the daily bread for his neighborhood. His wife Fadwa cared for their two children, a son and a daughter. Ali was lean and quick, a natural striker on the football pitch. Sana was bright and cheerful, living up to her name. After bustling the children off to school, Fadwa walked to the bakery to help her husband. She worked behind the counter, selling the freshly baked bread.

The family baked bread through the Arab Spring protests of 2011. They baked bread through the beginnings of the civil war in 2012. Then came the UN ceasefire, during which the firing did not cease. By the end of 2013, civil war raged across Syria, and still the family baked bread.

When Ali Abid Nassir turned eighteen, his father tried to keep him out of the fighting that was engulfing Syria. Abid pleaded with the local officials, he bribed army officers. It did no good. The Islamic insurgents were on the attack. The Syrian Army needed bodies more than it needed bribes. Ali was conscripted; forced to serve in the army of Syria’s President. The young man was sent to fight a bewildering array of rebel factions. In early 2015, Abid had to find the words to tell his wife that their son had been killed. Then came the Battle for Palmyra.

The battle began in May. After eight days of hard fighting, government troops were retreating from the area. The black flags of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant swept into Palmyra and the modern town of Tadmur. When the fighting stopped, the executions began. The ISIL fighters executed anyone who they suspected of cooperating with the Assad regime. The soldiers of ISIL did not care that Abid’s son was dead. He had been a soldier for the government. That was enough to make Abid Kahlil Nassir’s family a target for their vengeance.

As hundreds of Syrians died at the hands of the executioners, tens of thousands more fled. Abid and his family joined the flood of refugees. They were only three drops of water in a river of sadness.

It was a straggling convoy of civilian vehicles; aging Mercedes sedans, pickup trucks, delivery lorries. Roofs were piled high with bundles. Families sat in open truck beds, wedged between their belongings and the baking sun.

In times of peace, the drive from Palmyra to the Turkish border would take seven hours. It took Abid Kahlil Nassir and his family seven days. Columns of regular and irregular military units forced the civilian vehicles from the roadway. Halted on the rocky roadside, the older boys and young men sought hiding places. The government forces, the Southern Front, ISIL; they all needed warm bodies to throw into the fight.

The Technicals would parade by, Toyota pickups with machine guns mounted over their cabs. When the paras had passed, the civilians crept back onto the road. There were always a few vehicles that refused to start. Loads were reshuffled; more families crammed into less space. Dead trucks and taxis littered the roadway behind them.

The line of the convoy broke apart, coalesced, broke again. Abid and his family were lucky. The bakery van kept running. They took in another family whose vehicle had failed, a young couple with two little girls. Their mother was barely more than a girl herself, wide-eyed and terrified. Fadwa sat with her, pressed close and Sana braiding the young girls’ hair. Abid drove, the young father next to him, nervous and alert. They shared a precious cigarette, speaking quietly. Their talk was governed by two essential principals: avoid the refugee camps, somehow make it to Europe.

One day they made over a hundred kilometers, even after sitting at the roadside for hours. Nights were spent off of the road, hidden behind a hillside, or a narrow waadi. It took two days to work their way around the doomed city of Aleppo, driving small roads through a checkerboard of abandoned farms. The vehicles fell away until the bakery van became a convoy of one.

They reached the border village of Jarāblus, and luck traveled with them. Abid struck a deal with a family of smugglers. In exchange for the van and a little money, the smugglers agreed to guide the two families across the Turkish border. The way out of Syria led through a gap in the ever-lengthening wall meant to stem the tide of refugees. They could take only what they could carry on foot. Fadwa shed tears of grief over abandoning her wedding linens. She cried, dried her tears, then repacked one suitcase for each of them.

The two families huddled in the back of the van. The smugglers sat in front. The sun was setting behind rocky hills as the van pulled to a stop. The old smuggler nodded his head, motioning them from the van. The young man who was to be their guide stood with them as the van drove away. He waved his hand and they followed, four adults, a teenage girl, and two children. The rocky trail was not difficult to see. The discarded belongings of other refugees marked the way.

It was a twenty-mile walk to the Turkish village of Birecik. Their guide took them only part of the way. At a small road that followed the shore of a reservoir, he wished them luck and disappeared into the darkness. The women took turns carrying the little girls. The two men trudged down the pavement, heavy suitcases dragging at their arms. They were alone in the darkness, following a ribbon of road along the rocky shore.

It took two nights to walk to Birecik. They spent the daylight hours hiding in the shadows of a rocky waadi. When night fell, they walked again. The second dawn found them huddled at the bus station on the edge of Birecik, trying to blend into the small knot of early morning travelers.

Abid Kahlil Nassir bought tickets to the capital city of Ankara. The man at the counter heard the Arabic in Abid’s voice, his eyes sharp behind the dirty glass. Abid forced himself to meet the man’s look. The ticket vendor eyed the small stack of Turkish Lira. He pulled the pile of bills under the glass. A moment later his meaty hand pushed seven tickets onto the worn counter. There was no change. The man beckoned the next customer forward: “Bir sonraki.” Abid Kahlil Nassir scooped up the tickets and walked away.

The crowded bus seemed luxurious after two nights of stumbling down dark roads. They slept as the bus rolled across the seaside plains. The highway turned north, climbing into the rocky hills. When the little girls woke, Sana told them outlandish stories, making up the tales as the bus ground through the rugged valleys. They ate fruit and roasted nuts bought at stops along the way.

Night was falling as the bus rolled into the snarl of Ankara traffic. The two families parted amongst the surging crowds of the main bus station. The younger man had a distant cousin somewhere in Ankara. A cacophony of honking horns and announcements drowned out their farewells. The men wished each other Bil-tawfeeq and Al-baraqa. Good luck, My Friend, go with blessing, go with success. The women kissed cheeks, smearing their tears together.

The young couple walked away, the two little girls waving pudgy hands. Sana waved and cried as they disappeared into the shifting crowd. Two years later, Sana would get a letter from the girls’ mother. The letter would come from a refugee camp on an island just off the coast of Turkey. It was as far as the couple had gotten.

Fadwa and Sana slept as the midnight bus rolled towards Istanbul. Abid watched over them from the seat behind. He watched the darkness roll past the bus, his thoughts on the next leg of their journey. He carried a phone number and the name of a man in Istanbul who had a reputation for helping people. That was the next piece of this journey; find the man, this man whose name came from the friend of a friend of an uncle.

Abid Kahlil Nassir watched the darkness outside the grimy window. Perhaps the worst was over now, even if the worst was very bad. Their son was dead, the bakery was gone, the van was gone; almost everything was gone. But they had made it out of Syria; Alḥamdulillāh, praise be to God. And with God’s help, you must keep them safe. That means two things: avoid the refugee camps, make it to Europe. So you will find this man, you will cut open the seams of your jacket, of Sana’s jacket, take out the hundred Euro bills sewn into the linings. With that hard currency, you will buy passage to Europe. Then Fadwa and Sana will be safe, truly safe.

The morning light glistened on the waters of the Bosphorus. Many ferries crisscrossed the narrow neck of water that formed the ancient border between Asia and Europe. As Asian shore fell away behind them, Abid could see the Harem Otogar bus station shrinking on the Asian shore. Across the water was Istanbul. The voice that had answered the phone said all will be well. The man at the hotel will be expecting you. Do not worry, My Friend, he speaks Arabic. As I said, all will be well.

Then there was the taxi ride, the driver nodding at the name of the hotel written on a scrap of paper. There followed a long nervous day of waiting, the family too frightened and exhausted to leave the cramped hotel room. That night the man appeared at the hotel. He took Abid to a nearby café. The arrangements were made over cups of hot, sweet tea.

A truck would carry them on long road to Austria. From there they could make their way to Germany, where asylum would not be refused. Abid and his family must wait in the hotel until all was ready, perhaps three days. The man named the price for the transit: seven thousand Euro for each person. The figure was astronomical to Abid; more than all of the money sewn into their clothing, more than he had in the world. The man heard Abid’s words, nodding over his tea. Three thousand for the girl, seven each for the adults; this was the best that could be offered. Abid Kahlil Nassir agreed and the deal was struck. He and his family would be left with nine hundred Euro to begin a new life.

After four endless days, the call came. The money paid, the family was loaded into a windowless van. They drove through the darkened streets, stopping at another hotel. Two more families joined them, bodies and luggage crammed together on the floor of the van, as they twisted through the streets of Istanbul.

The door of the van slid open with a rasping clang. A long-distance lorry idled in the darkness, diesel engine thrumming. The rolling door at the back of the lorry was open. Inside the box, all was empty and dark. While they were loading the battered suitcases and boxes into the cargo box, two more vans crunched across the gravel, their headlights dark. More people emerged into the night, frightened faces eyeing the dark truck and the men milling about.

The traffickers called it the Black Box. There were seventeen people huddled on the wooden floor of the lorry when the door rolled closed. There was the sound of a steel latch, and a lock snapping shut. A small boy whimpered in the darkness. His mother cooed to him, trying to still his fears. There were men’s voices outside the Black Box, laughter, then the sound of doors slamming. The diesel engine revved, gears ground, and the heavy tires crunched across the gravel. The human cargo swayed as the lorry turned onto the paved road and gathered speed.

They were five days in the Black Box. During the long days, light glowed through a vent in the roof. By night it was utterly dark. They murmured amongst themselves, the same story told again and again. Aleppo, Hamah, Palmyra; the same bombs falling on different towns, the same homes destroyed, the same families splintered. They grew to know one another, taking turns holding the children. Sana and the three other teenagers invented games to keep the little ones occupied. The adults learned to look away as one of them squatted over the foul bucket near the locked door.

At long intervals, the lorry would lurch from the roadway, rocking up a rough track. The latch would bang, the door roll open, and blinding light would stream in. Bulgaria, the men would say, or Romania; we must wait. The drivers said nothing else, so they would wait, in a forest clearing, or behind an abandoned warehouse. One long day the lorry did not move at all. The men moved away from the women, spoke quietly amongst themselves. They shared cigarettes, wondering if the drivers meant to abandon them. But then came the signal, the families climbing back into the dark box; the sound of the latch and the lock.

During the third night, Sana became ill. By the next morning, she was feverish. She lay on the wooden floor, her head in Fadwa’s lap. The women tended to her, crushed aspirin in water, raised her in their arms to help her to drink. Sana vomited the water onto the wooden floor. The men beat on the front wall of the lorry, shouting, but the truck did not stop.

After an eternity of shouts, they heard the engine winding down. The truck lurched to a stop. The driver rolled up the cargo door just enough to yell at them to be quiet, to tell him what was wrong. The driver’s Arabic was not good, but he understood sick girl well enough.

The man climbed into the lorry, wrinkling his nose at the smell. He knelt down, looked into Sana’s eyes, waved his hand at the pleading women. No, no doctor, not possible. This is a bad place, they do not like refugees here. We are almost to the Austrian border. In Austria is okay, you can get doctor there.

He motioned the men to the open doorway, away from the women. In a low voice, he gave them the choice. If they leave the girl and her family, the police will find them. If the police find them, they maybe look for the driver, for him. This cannot happen. Everyone gets out here, or everyone goes on. They must decide now. The men were silent, their eyes on Abid Kahlil Nassir.

That circle of faces became the circle of their stories. Abid saw bombed neighborhoods, skeletons of buildings that were once homes, the bodies of dead children, and the eyes of his dead son. Abid Kahlil Nassir did not turn to look at his wife and daughter, even as his heart begged him to. He nodded to the driver, speaking the hardest words since the death of his son: We will go on.

That last night in the Black Box was the longest night of Abid’s life. He prayed, silent in the darkness. Men sat unseen on either side, their hands on his shoulders. The voices of the women murmured over his daughter. The truck lurched along a one-lane road through a midnight forest.

Dawn brought the dimmest glow to the cramped darkness. Abid could see his daughter’s quiet face, the slight rise and fall of her breathing. His hands went to his forehead, fingertips kneading the ache in his skull. Outside the lorry, he heard the steady drone of traffic on a busy highway.

Then it was done. The cargo door rolled up, the morning light blindingly bright. The driver was silhouetted against the light, motioning them out, his voice rough as gravel. We are here, Austria, you must get out now. Put the bags here, quickly.

The lorry idled at the back of a parking lot, hidden under a line of overhanging trees. A fence separated the parking lot from a set of railroad tracks. The driver gathered the men together, pointing across the tracks. There, there is the train station. You go there, take any train going that direction. The man pointed a heavy hand to the right. Vienna station, main station, you understand? Do any of you speak German? English? Okay, a little English is okay. You say it in English, Vienna Main Station, yes? Then you find a train for München. In the English it is Munich. That is Germany. Then you are okay.

The driver turned to Abid. You go to the station. Wait until these others are gone. Then you find the police. It will be easy. You say you need a doctor, yes? Doctor, that is the English word: doctor is Tabeban. Abid nodded. He knew enough English to know the word. He knew he and his family were not going on to Germany. The driver pulled closed the rolling door, nodded to the men, and walked away. A door slammed, the engine whined, and the lorry drove off.

The men stood in a tight knot. The few that spoke a little English repeated the words, Main Station, Vienna, Munich. The other men nodded, repeating the words, memorizing them. The men shook hands, murmured Bil-tawfeeq and Al-baraqa, touched each others shoulders. Then the group fractured, reformed as families. They set out at intervals, walking across the empty parking lot with suitcases dangling from their arms. Abid, Fadwa, and Sana were the last to go, Sana leaning on Fadwa’s shoulder.

They sat in the busy train station, Abid Kahlil Nassir and his family, watching the other families board a sleek red train. As the train pulled away, Abid left his wife and daughter and walked to the ticket counter. The woman behind the counter said something he could not understand. He pointed to his daughter and said the words: Doctor. Please. Doctor. The woman looked past his pointing hand, frowned, reached for a phone.

The hospital was clean, modern, and busy. The police showed them where to wait, making it clear that they must stay in the room. The long morning dragged on. A woman wearing a business suit came into the room. She introduced herself in Arabic. First there was the news that Sana would be fine, just a kidney infection. The doctors were taking care of her. She pulled a clipboard from her briefcase. The long journey to Europe was over, but the journey of paperwork was just beginning.

The family spent over a year in the Traiskirchen refugee camp, twenty kilometers south of Vienna. Time in the camp moved as slowly as their request for asylum. Sana went to school, learning to unravel the intricate knots of German grammar. Abid and Fadwa spent the time waiting; waiting for food, waiting for word on their paperwork, waiting along with four thousand others. In the evenings, after standing in line for their dinner, they sat together on the cots in their white tent. Sana recited simple German phrases, waiting while her parents struggled with the strange words.

Their request for asylum was granted in September of 2016. They received their allotted refugee stipend and were allowed to leave the camp. Abid and his family moved to the Twelfth District of Vienna; Meidling, a working-class neighborhood home to many immigrants. Their apartment was tiny; a cramped bedroom, one common room, and a kitchen the size of a closet. The rent was six-hundred Euro per month, far above the market value.

That first Viennese winter was long, grey, and cold. Fadwa rose in the early morning, bundled in two sweaters and a shawl. She worked in the tiny kitchen, brewing tea and preparing breakfast for Abid and Sana. Fadwa placed dishes on the low table in the same room that served as Sana’s bedroom. Sana would slide from the tattered couch, still wrapped in a blanket. When Abid emerged from the bedroom, the family sat on the floor, eating sliced tomato and cucumber, hummus and fava bean salad. When Sana was off to Gymnasium, and Abid left to look for work, Fadwa spent the day with the other Syrian women in the neighborhood, speaking of their homes over endless cups of tea.

That spring, Abid found work in a bakery. He rose in the darkness before dawn, Fadwa already awake and brewing tea. They moved Sana into the small bedroom to allow her a full night’s sleep before school.

Abid spent his days feeding sacks of flour into stainless steel vats. Mechanized arms kneaded the flour into bread dough. The brightly lit room in which he worked, only one of many, was larger than his entire bakery back in Palmyra. His workday ended at noon. Abid hung his baker’s whites in his locker, put on his dark suit, and walked to the U-Bahn. Riding the train became his respite from the world, alone amidst all the other passengers.

At the end of each day, he returned home by the same route; threading through the crowded passageways that led through Bahnhof Meidling. He carried his leather bag, empty now of the lunch Fadwa packed each morning. In the same hand that held the bag, Abid Kahlil Nassir carried three carnations, purchased each day from the same Turkish woman at the same small kiosk. There is one carnation for each of them: Fadwa, Sana, and Ali.

Almost two years have passed since Abid began work at the bakery. He rides the night owl bus in the early morning hours; takes the U-6 train back home each midday. The war in Syria goes on. Sana has taught him how to read the news on the internet, but her father prefers the talk in the café. Abid Kahlil Nassir hears the voices over cups of tea. The men talk of families who have been bombed, their relatives shot down. They speak of attacks with poison gas, missiles fired in the night. Abid hears the words, but he cannot form a reality of them. Five million Syrian refugees, the men say, shaking their heads.

Sana is eighteen now, the age when her brother was forced to become a soldier. After countless hours of study, she has passed her Matura, the final examinations before entering university. She speaks German with a rapidity and vocabulary that baffles her father. With her mother, Sana speaks Levantine Arabic, the language of their home. Fadwa still struggles with even the simplest German phrases.

Every morning, Fadwa makes sure that Abid and Sana are awake, well-fed, and ready for the outside world. Once Sana is off to classes, Fadwa cleans the tiny apartment. Then she begins her real work, the work of writing letters. The other women call it the Tea and Letter Society. The Society has become one small hub of communication, with spokes running to refugee camps scattered across Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and Greece. The women drink tea, read letters, write letters; all the while trying to connect family members in one camp with those in another.

I see Abid Kahlil Nassir on the U-6 train, often enough to recognize his face. This man has a story, whether I know the story or not. He may be from Palmyra, or Damascus, or Aleppo. It does not matter. My lack of knowledge has nothing to do with it.

Still in my seat on the train, I see the traces of white flour on a grey floor. The ghost of a pair of shoes; a dark void at the center of white dust. This image will haunt me for weeks; gnawing at my waking hours, unraveling the threads of my sleep. Even then the images are there; the shadow of feet that have walked such a very long journey, and the three carnations.

About the Author

Marco Etheridge lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His short fiction has appeared in Literally Stories, Dime Show Review, Five on the Fifth, Storgy, Inlandia Journal, Manzano Mountain Review, Every Day Fiction, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Literary Yard, Mobius: A Journal for Social Change, and Czykmate. His non-fiction work has been featured at Route 7 and Bluntly Magazine. Marco's third novel, “Breaking the Bundles,” is available at fine online booksellers.

His author website is: https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/
His Facebook Author page is: https://www.facebook.com/SerialZtheNovel/