Angel Missing Wings, Any News Welcome
I was too frazzled when first I met her to quite be paying attention. The center where we met, one of a line of strip-mall-shopping-centers-turned-community-centers, is not exactly sound absorbent what with its past life in the realm of capitalism and industry leaving only the concrete walls and floor behind. They make it as inviting as possible but no one has much money around here, even the Westerners whom refugees assume have stacks of cash as a financial airbag. The result is fold-up tables and chairs, cheerful kids’ crafts taped to walls, and noise that fills the room like an avalanche.
It was my first week so I can hardly be blamed for missing her, standing by the door and enjoying an animated conversation with Sarah, whose frayed bun displayed her own harried emotions. (That’s not quite true. I can always blame myself.)
When I slowed down and took notice, it must have been a few days later. She came in the door with her garbage bag of laundry and caught Sarah and me in enthusiastic hugs. She beamed to see us. I remembered the words Sarah had told me came from her, I smile and laugh but I am broken inside.
Sarah had returned to the apartment solemn-faced that day they first met, and told us that she couldn’t stop thinking about someone she just met. A girl, nineteen years old, who was marrying a man she barely knew.
“Why?” I demanded, flabbergasted.
Sarah reached up and pulled the pins out of her braid, letting it fall down her back. “She’s from Kuwait, and she doesn’t want to go back.”
“Couldn’t there be an easier way to stay? How does that even help?” I asked as I flopped onto the bed, bouncing slightly.
“I asked why she couldn’t just go back and live with her family. She said she couldn’t live with her father again.” She dropped her gaze, and the air stiffened as we tried not to think of why that would be.
“Maybe it’s something to do with that paper,” I suggested. “You know, the one that almost got you stuck back in Tunis. The one that a father or brother or husband has to sign to let you leave the country.”
Sarah shrugged. “Maybe.”
Standing talking to someone whose story I had heard felt different, not least because following her Arabic felt like catching on to a quickly moving rope. I nodded a lot while the words poured out of her.
<<There is no freedom in Kuwait,>> she repeated. <<I have to have someone with me, a mother or older sister, just to go out on the street. We have to wear this.>> She picks at her headwrap, then her vicious expression softens. <<It’s not the hijab itself. It’s that I can’t choose not to wear it. And I want to go to school more, I want to be educated!>>
Sarah interjects, <<You can’t do that in Kuwait?>>
She shakes her head, sorrowful, then moves on. <<And in Kuwait, we are stuck between Daesh (ISIS) and the sea. There is no getting out.>>
<<You are here, though!>> I offer, smiling. She smiles back, but shakes her head again.
<<My mother wants us to go back to Kuwait.>> This is why she wanted to marry. Not one man in particular, just anyone. Her mother intervened, pushing off the wedding.
I am left reeling. The conversation entered spaces I don’t want to have to consider. I shove it back in my mind, try to forget.
When I saw her again, Sarah and Mom had left to go back to Tunis. I sat at one of the tables, a curly-haired child preoccupied with coloring on my lap, in the midst of a stumbling conversation. She arrived, hair down, sad smile, the hijab she had worn conspicuously absent. I stood up and greeted her enthusiastically, then she said,
“I will go to Iran.”
I almost stepped back, but stopped myself. “What? Why?” The hijab, the lack of it, is this her last chance to do without?
“My mother,” she smiled bitterly. “She loves Iran, so we will go. My father will meet us there.”
And that was it. Nothing I could do, nothing I could say. All I could do was hold her tight and whisper, “God, protect her.”
She didn’t say goodbye. I suppose I shouldn’t have assumed that she would, but I did. And she didn’t. I have no way to contact her and no pictures.
Her name means ‘angel,’ and I will most likely never see her again. I can only pray that by some miracle, I’ll see her in heaven.