Chapter Nineteen
A smarina beckoned Rayan over when he arrived at the service office the following afternoon. A donated shipment of medical supplies had arrived at the camp earlier in the week, and Rayan had been working with several residents to get access to medication.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you…” Her lips pursed, and tiny lines appeared around the corners of her mouth. “Laurent heard back from the council. They voted against the proposal.”
“Right.”
They looked at each other, the disappointment palpable yet not unexpected.
“I guess we’ll head back to the drawing board and figure out where to go from here.” Asmarina attempted a smile, but she sounded defeated. They’d put so much into this already. It was starting to feel like a pipe dream.
“In slightly better news, we had dinner with Jules on Sunday,” she went on. Jules Lapointe was Laurent’s lawyer friend from university. Rayan had recently met with the man to submit Farhan’s bid for asylum. “He seemed pretty positive about the Taleb family’s chances. Which is promising.”
“Promising, maybe, but we’ve been let down before,” Rayan said. “I don’t want them to get their hopes up only for it to fall through.”
Asmarina nodded. “Of course. I would hold off on saying anything this early in the game.”
The door to the cabin opened, and there was a rush of noise from outside. Rayan glanced up to see Farhan with Amira and Zahra in tow.
“Something’s happening,” Farhan said, out of breath. There was a frantic look on his face.
The city had started sending surveyors out to the Jungle, and rumors were swirling about a potential forced closure.
This only served to heighten the tension in the camp as residents confronted the possibility of losing their temporary home.
The place felt increasingly unsafe, and Rayan had overheard Laurent telling Asmarina that he didn’t want her coming anymore.
Naturally, Asmarina had brushed off his concerns, so Laurent had asked Rayan privately to keep an eye out for her.
Rayan peered out the window and saw a stream of people moving through the camp with their belongings hoisted on their backs.
Police in riot gear walked alongside, systematically pulling down tents and kicking over makeshift structures.
Two officers in a motorized vehicle drove up.
One of them held a bullhorn to his mouth and was instructing—in a combination of French and English—that everyone stay calm and vacate the southern side of the camp.
Asmarina’s phone rang, and she answered it with a distracted mumble. “It’s Laurent,” she said to Rayan as she clutched the phone to her ear. “He said the government received approval from a court inLillethis morning to start demolishing part of the Jungle.”
“They can’t do that.”
“This is public land. The government can do whatever they want,” Asmarina said. “Laurent’s at the center, but he’s driving over now.”
“He won’t be much help.”
Who could the people here call on to keep them safe? Not the police. They were the ones carrying out the government’s orders.
Through the window, Rayan could see a group of men with sticks advancing from the other end of the camp. “There’s going to be a riot,” he said quietly to Asmarina, glancing at the other occupants gathered in the service office. “We need to get everyone out.”
Asmarina turned and began instructing people to gather their possessions.
There were several dull thuds and then a loud crash from outside the cabin, followed by a scream.
Inside, unsettled murmurs rippled through the group.
One of the girls let out a whimper. People began moving to the back of the office, shrinking against the far wall.
Outside, the men with sticks had begun to throw rocks and other debris at the police, who’d raised their shields and arranged themselves into a defensive formation.
“It’s not safe out there,” Asmarina whispered. “How are we supposed to get through?”
They could only watch as more people joined in the violence.
It had initially been directed at the police but was quickly becoming more indiscriminate.
A group of teenagers were yanking at the poles of a nearby food-distribution tent, sending its occupants scattering.
In the middle of the melee, a woman was struggling with the stuck wheel of a cart she was pulling.
Her children pressed against her, crying and covering their faces against the onslaught.
“Lock the door when I leave,” Rayan instructed Asmarina.
“Wait, Rayan—”
“I’ll be fine.”
Rayan strode out of the cabin. He heard the swift clank of the deadbolt closing behind him. He pushed through the crowd, and a man jostled him as he passed.
“Hey, Croix-Rouge, ” the man mocked, taking in Rayan’s aid-worker vest. “Haven’t you heard? They’re tearing this place down. We’re nothing but roaches to be squashed.”
“Animals in a zoo,” another man chimed in.
“And how does acting like animals prove them wrong?” Rayan countered, shoving past.
He made it to the woman and her cart, only to find a cop had gotten there first. The officer was waving at her to move on while the woman pleaded with him not to leave her things behind.
“Hey!” Rayan called out, startling the cop. “Let her pass.”
The man seemed momentarily taken aback, maybe because Rayan had come out of nowhere or perhaps because he was speaking to him in French. Rayan helped lift the woman’s cart and pull it to one side so she could continue with her children.
“What are you doing?” the cop blustered. “Aid workers aren’t supposed to be here.”
“Must have missed the memo. I thought the whole point was to take us by surprise.”
“Go on, get out of here.”
“No,” Rayan said, standing his ground. “I’ve got at least ten people in our service office who don’t feel safe crossing your riot line.”
A series of panicked shrieks came from behind them, and Rayan turned to see a plume of black smoke rising from deeper inside the camp. Someone screamed “Fire!” and then people began to run.
Rayan abandoned the officer and doubled back to the cabin. He thumped his fist hard against the door. “Everyone out—we need to leave.”
Asmarina opened the door, and together they ushered the group out into the surge of evacuees.
Rayan was helping an elderly woman down the steps when a rock hit the front window of the cabin, sending splinters branching across the glass.
Rayan looked over to see a cluster of boys standing nearby, their hands filled with rocks and broken bricks which they were hurling at the police.
In the distance, Rayan heard the rising wail of approaching sirens. When there’s a chance the city might burn down, then they decide to interfere.
The police were shoving people back, herding them into a single column. One cop had his baton out and was swinging it wildly through the air, telling people to move faster. He caught a young man on the back and sent him sprawling.
Rayan pulled the kid to his feet then snatched the baton from the cop’s hand and tossed it to the ground. “Enough. They’re already frightened.”
The policeman’s mouth twisted, and he knocked his riot shield hard into Rayan’s shoulder, throwing him backward. “You—get out of here!”
Rayan flared with anger. He shoved against the shield with both hands, and it slammed into the visor of the man’s helmet, snapping his head back. Within seconds, two cops had Rayan by the arms and were yanking them behind his back.
Asmarina elbowed her way through the crowd toward them. “Stop! He’s an aid worker. You’ve got no right—let him go!”
Rayan heard someone yell, and then a brick whizzed past his ear and landed with a thud in the dirt by one of the officer’s feet.
“Asmarina!” Rayan called out. “It’s not safe. Keep walking. Go find Laurent.”
“I’m not leaving you with these thugs.”
Another projectile hurtled by, and she ducked. The two police officers pushed Rayan through the crowd. He could hear Asmarina following close behind. One of the cops began reading him his rights, and Rayan silently cursed his own rashness. Mathias was going to kill him.
“Unlawful force?” Asmarina echoed the charge the officer had cited. “I just saw you bludgeon a kid!”
“Would you like us to arrest you too?”
“Go ahead and try.”
Rayan scanned the crowd ahead for Farhan and the girls.
He’d just caught sight of Zahra’s pink sweater when something slammed into the side of his head, causing his vision to go black.
For a moment, it was as if he was falling, and then his sight returned, and he swayed on his feet, the chaos of the camp flooding back.
The officer dropped Rayan’s wrists as he lifted his shield to protect himself.
A river of warmth was running down the side of Rayan’s face.
He raised a hand to his temple, and it came away dark red.
He felt a stickiness gathering in the dip between his shoulder blades, soaking through the neck of his shirt.
And then Rayan was back at the old house in Maskinongé, lying in the grass and staring up at the cloudless sky as the front of his T-shirt bloomed with blood.
It had been a stifling summer’s day. His mother had gone to lie down, and he and Tahir were slinking around the house, hot and bored.
Their father was passed out in his easy chair with the TV on, head thrown back, snoring loudly.
Rayan’s father had a utility knife that he always carried around in his pocket, the kind with little tools that folded out—corkscrew, knife, screwdriver.
The knife was one of his prized possessions, and Rayan and his brother had long been fascinated by it.
They would watch with rapt attention when their father took it out once a month and meticulously cleaned and sharpened each tool. That day, Tahir decided to steal it.
Rayan was reluctant at first, but his brother talked him around.
They would only look at it and then put it back before their father noticed it was gone.
In the years that followed, Rayan returned often to that ill-fated decision—the single flap of a butterfly’s wings that set into motion a series of other, more horrific events.
Because if he’d said no, Tahir wouldn’t have taken the knife.
Boyish rebellion was no fun without someone there to witness.
Rayan had kept a lookout, eyes trained on his sleeping father’s face, while Tahir ducked behind the chair and carefully slid the knife from the man’s pocket.
They scurried off outside with their prize.
Crouched in the long grass behind the house, they were so absorbed in the task of unfolding each tool and inspecting it that they didn’t hear their father approaching.
He was furious. Not the clumsy, drunken fury Rayan was used to but a dark, simmering anger.
“You’re a pair of filthy thieves. And I didn’t raise thieves, not under my roof. Whose idea was it?”
When neither of them answered, his father decided to forgo the belt he was partial to using and opted instead for his hands. As they cowered before him, crying and sniveling, he asked again.
This time Rayan answered. “It was mine.”
His father looked at him for a long time, and Rayan’s stomach squirmed.
“You’re a liar,” he said finally. “A liar and a thief. I know it was him. You’re always trailing around like his little accomplice.
” He reached into his pocket and removed the knife he’d retrieved from the grass.
“And now you’re going to learn your lesson, boy.
Careful who you stick your neck out for. I’ll make sure you don’t forget.”
Perhaps it was because he kept the knife in such good condition, as though needed for more than just popping the cap off a stubborn beer bottle.
Or maybe his father had underestimated the easy give of a child’s throat.
He’d come at Rayan with the strength of a man, only to find his flesh soft and pliant.
The blood began to gush, and the front of Rayan’s T-shirt turned sodden, sticking to his chest. He saw the fear in his father’s eyes then.
He remembered that look more than the pain.
His mother came rushing outside screaming and pummeled the man with her fists.
His father clumsily wrapped the gash across Rayan’s neck, and then they sped to the hospital in Montreal.
Rayan had lain in the back seat of the car with his head on his mother’s lap, staring up at the tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Rayan!”
He opened his eyes.
Asmarina’s face filled his vision, her features flattened with fear. “Rayan!”
He returned to the present and blinked away the blood trickling into his eye.
“Are you all right?” she asked, gripping Rayan’s arm to steady him.
“Farhan… where are the girls?”
“They’ve gone on ahead.”
“Laurent told me to look out for you.”
“You just worry about yourself, Ayari.” Her hand was wrenched away as the police officer once again pulled Rayan’s arms behind his back and led him out of the camp.