Chapter Two
“A nd this?” Mathias lifted Rayan’s fingers from his lips and pressed them to his neck.
“Raqaba.”
“How about this?” Mathias guided his hand beneath the bedcovers.
Rayan smirked. “My mother only used a diminutive.”
“There’s nothing diminutive about it.”
“That’s true,” Rayan murmured appreciatively, ducking his head to kiss the line of Mathias’s jaw. “But she had two boys and was painfully modest, so we never used the proper word.”
His Arabic had vastly improved over the past year and a half.
Strange how much of the language was set in context.
Rayan had known how to speak it within the confines of conversations he’d had at home with his mother, only to discover that his understanding of the world was limited to a child’s vocabulary.
In some ways, he was learning the language all over again, and he felt a quiet pride in reclaiming it.
They were languishing in bed the morning after Mathias had arrived home, catching up on each other.
Rayan had begun to see a curve to the man’s hard edges.
Mathias took a reluctant pleasure in their shared intimacy and seemed content to simply lie there with him, limbs intertwined beneath the sheets.
It filled a need that existed between the physicality of sex and the vulnerability of giving voice to his feelings.
A thin streak of sunlight from the gap in the curtains appeared on Mathias’s cheek, and Rayan realized how late it was. “I have to go,” Rayan said, disentangling himself from Mathias’s warmth and getting up from bed. “I’m helping at the camp today.”
“I don’t see the urgency,” Mathias grumbled, splaying his arms across the empty bed as Rayan dressed quickly. “It’s not like they’re going anywhere.”
“We barely get to half the people who come by each day, and the service office’s short on staff,” Rayan said, pulling a sweater over his head. “Not everyone makes their own hours.”
“You could if you wanted to. You just choose to let that insufferable couple dictate your schedule. Come work for me. I’ll make up a job for you, pay you whatever you want. You only need to show up when you feel like it.”
Rayan laughed. “Tempting.” He reached over to grab his phone and wallet from the nightstand. “Why do you care what I do with my time?” The thought sent a flood of happiness through him.
Mathias caught his wrist and pulled Rayan down onto the bed. “I don’t like to share.” He kissed Rayan deeply, leaving him lightheaded when they finally broke apart. Mathias patted Rayan’s cheek with his palm and pushed him away. “Fuck off, then. I’ve got things to do.”
Rayan got to his feet with a grin. He lingered in the doorway, savoring the image of Mathias stretched out on the bed, before heading downstairs to catch the bus.
Mathias had tried to strong-arm him into getting a car, but Rayan had little use for one, and he much preferred to walk.
There were only a handful of places in the city he frequented, and those could all be accessed on foot or by public transport.
The camp itself, the largest migrant encampment in the area, was located on the site of a former landfill east of the Port of Calais.
To get there, Rayan caught the bus to the ferry terminal and walked the remainder of the way.
Aptly named the Jungle by locals and residents alike, the camp consisted of a sea of tents and makeshift shelters interspersed with the odd commercial venture.
There were barbers, food stalls, and even a restaurant.
Residents and aid workers had helped establish a library, a church, and several mosques—attempts to foster a sense of normalcy in a situation of extremes.
Still, the place was sorely lacking in basic amenities, and there weren’t nearly enough drinking water outlets and sanitary facilities for the sheer number of people living there.
Thousands of refugees had flocked to the Jungle within the past year, many of them attempting to cross into the United Kingdom, or waiting for their French asylum claims to be processed.
They came from a myriad of places—Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Iraq—and most had made the perilous journey to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea.
While the stories were different, they were all linked by the common hope that leaving was safer than staying.
It had become apparent to Asmarina Moreau and her husband, Laurent—who ran the Calais Center for New Migrants—that to be of most use to the growing number of displaced people in the city, the organization needed to go to them.
So they’d reduced the services available at the center and set up a portable generator-powered cabin within the camp itself.
The service office, as they called it, provided a place for residents to access legal and immigration aid, charge their phones, and queue for food bundles and personal-hygiene packs that the local churches put together for them to distribute.
Rayan still occasionally taught language courses at the center in town, but more often than not, he was stationed out in the Jungle.
When he arrived at the service office that morning, a line had already formed at the entrance to the cabin and snaked several meters through the camp.
Asmarina was seated at one of the tables inside, helping a woman with one child strapped to her back and another playing at her feet to fill out a series of forms in French.
The center was Asmarina’s brainchild. Her family had emigrated to France from Eritrea when she was in middle school, and she’d spent the better part of her life navigating the divide between two different worlds.
When she wasn’t working, she spent every free moment coming up with ways to improve the situation of the people in the camp, many of whom were her fellow countrymen.
“There was another incident last night,” she informed Rayan after he’d plucked his blue vest from the hook on the wall. The city had started requiring aid workers to wear them so they weren’t unintentionally targeted by police. Which said a lot about how the authorities were handling things.
“The police were here this morning,” Asmarina went on, adjusting the patterned scarf that held back her wavy dark hair. She turned away from the woman and lowered her voice. “A young girl was attacked. The bigger this place gets, the more dangerous it becomes.”
The French government had initially tolerated the camp and arranged for a series of shipping containers to be placed on the northeastern side of the site to be used as temporary shelters.
But it was clear that sentiment had begun to shift.
There was a growing police presence around the camp, and they were becoming more hostile, lobbing cans of tear gas down from the nearby highway and carrying out impromptu raids.
Rayan had heard rumors that these were intimidation tactics meant to deter people from coming.
The government was afraid Calais would become a permanent magnet for migrants—a prospect shared by many local residents, who considered the Jungle both a safety hazard and a blight on the city’s image as a quaint seaside holiday destination.
Rayan watched the child on the floor roll a fallen pencil back and forth across the threadbare carpet. “This isn’t good enough. We need safer housing.”
Asmarina’s expression brightened. “On that, Laurent has something he wants to talk to you about. He’s in the back.”
At the far end of the cabin was a small storage room that Laurent used for an office.
Inside, Rayan found the man flipping excitedly through a stack of papers with Karl Hakanen, a project coordinator for the national NGO, Groupe d’action, which had established itself in Calais in recent years.
Laurent and Karl were good friends, often trading information and supplies while sharing an exasperation with the lackluster efforts of the city council.
Karl, a frequent face at the service office, greeted Rayan with a wide grin. “Rayan, have you grown?” he teased, stepping forward to grip Rayan’s hand in his.
Karl was Finnish and stood at least a foot taller than him.
He was missing two fingers on his right hand, an injury he’d told Rayan he sustained in a training slipup during his compulsory military service.
Not one to be deterred, he’d completed his conscription then joined the Red Cross and bounced around Europe for a few years before settling with Groupe d’action.
Calais had become home to a range of aid groups, local and international, larger organizations brushing shoulders with the likes of homegrown initiatives like theirs.
Laurent beckoned him over. “Come have a look. I just got the renderings back.”
Rayan leaned over and picked up the top sheet from a pile of drawings on the desk.
Months before, he and Laurent had been tossing around ideas, frustrated with the lack of progress as officials handed the problem back and forth like a hot potato.
They’d discussed the feasibility of building a targeted housing facility to prioritize the most vulnerable refugees—women, children, and young families.
The complex could then be converted into private residences should Calais ever find itself on the other side of this crisis.
Laurent had suggested they reach out to other aid groups for funding, and he’d asked an architect friend to draft something they could take around with their proposal.
Rayan scanned the drawing in his hand. Here it was—everything they’d discussed.
He smiled ruefully. The project was ambitious, far beyond the realm of their collective expertise, but Laurent wasn’t easily deterred.
He’d quit his job as a computer programmer to open the center at his wife’s insistence after Asmarina had declared she could no longer stand around doing nothing.
“You’re seriously thinking of giving this a shot?” Rayan asked.