Chapter xvi
xvi
I HADN’T REALIZED IT CONSCIOUSLY THEN, GABE , but finding this address, going on this journey, it was a step to making space in my life for more, for changing the shape of the “Gabe” puzzle piece so I could add in another one.
Last year, in school, Liam learned about the butterfly effect. His class was doing a unit about World War II, and Liam’s teacher, Mr. Garcia, had them research a group of people he called simply “the heroes,” the people who continuously risked their own lives to save others: people like Oskar Schindler, of course, and Nicholas Winton and Corrie ten Boom and Aristides de Sousa Mendes … Liam was even quieter than usual at dinner the day Mr. Garcia assigned this project. I’d asked all the kids how school was, and after Violet and Samuel chattered on about their teachers and classes and friends, Liam’s response was: “Did you know that if Nicholas Winton hadn’t canceled his ski trip and then visited a friend in Prague who was helping refugees, six hundred sixty-nine children probably would have died?”
I was surprised by his answer but tried not to show it. “Tell me more,” I said, hoping for some context.
Liam took a deep breath, put down the fork he’d just loaded up. “He was a British stockbroker who was alive during World War II, and he was supposed to go skiing for a vacation. But he decided not to—Mr. Garcia didn’t know why, I asked—and instead this guy, Nicholas Winton, he decided to go to Prague to visit his friend. And his friend was helping refugees, and when Mr. Winton saw that, he decided he wanted to help, too. And he saved the lives of six hundred sixty-nine kids. Brought them to England and found foster families for them to live with. I just … I can’t stop thinking: What if he decided he wanted to go skiing?”
I nodded. Sometimes my kids say things and I don’t know how to respond. When I heard what Liam had been contemplating, I wanted to figure out why he was sharing that particular piece of information, what exactly it meant to him, what it was making him worry about or feel inspired by. Even with the additional context, I had no idea how best to respond to Liam that night. But then Vi said, “It kind of makes me think we shouldn’t ever go skiing.” And it clicked. In his own way, Liam was asking my question: How meaningful—how powerful—are our choices? Are our lives fated, or are we guiding our own journeys? Or is it a little of each, taking the current where it serves?
“You know what I like to think?” I told all three of them. “I like to think that even if Mr. Nicholas Winton went skiing, he still would have ended up saving those six hundred sixty-nine children. That maybe his friend would have sent him a letter, or he would have seen something else that caused him to make the same decisions. Follow the same path. And that the effect he had on the world would be the same.”
I’m telling you this now, Gabe, because of what I found out in Rome. Because sometimes I think you were destined to make certain choices, too, choices that affected people and changed the trajectory of their lives.
After I got to my hotel room, I watched couples, families, tour groups walking in and out of a church across the street, and I decided not to put off traveling to that address on the torn envelope any longer. As I got ready, washing my face, putting on makeup, braiding my hair, I started to backpedal. Should I find a translator? Someone to go with me? Was I ready to face whatever I found there? I took a breath. This was a chance to have a new conversation with you, to learn something more about who you were, how you lived your life. What if what I learned changed everything?
But I hadn’t come so far to turn away now. So I got in a cab in front of the hotel and showed the driver the address. We pulled up in front of a concrete apartment building painted in stripes of different shades of beige. The door was metal and glass, done in an interesting pattern. There were names written next to the buzzer for each apartment—many of them Italian, with a smattering of other nationalities. The one next to apartment 5A said Hassan . I swallowed hard. Who was I going to meet? What was I going to learn? My mind started spinning with new possibilities—another journalist you’d worked with, a translator you knew—and then back to my fear— a woman you’d loved more than you’d loved me. I rang the buzzer for apartment 5A and heard a female voice speaking Italian come through the tinny speaker.
I fumbled with my phone, trying to bring up the Google Translate app, but realized I was taking too long. I should have brought a translator with me. Or at least prepared something to say in Italian in advance.
“Um,” I said uncertainly, as I kept typing in the translation app. “I’m so sorry. Do you speak English?”
I heard the woman saying something in what sounded like Arabic to someone else in the house. Then the static stopped.
The moments stretched out and my heart plummeted. It seemed like my first attempt to learn why you were connected to this place was a failure. I turned to leave, to find someone who could translate for me, when the door to the apartment building opened up and a tall young man stepped out.
“Can I help you?” he asked me in accented English.
My heart rose in my chest again. I gave him a smile. “I hope so,” I said.
I pulled out the small square of torn light blue envelope and held it out to him. “I’m looking for someone who was living at this address approximately ten years ago,” I said.
He held out his hand for the piece of paper, and I gave it to him.
When he looked back at me, I was surprised to see tears in his eyes.
“That’s a drawing of me,” he said, “from when I was a child. And this blue envelope … this is my mother’s handwriting. I remember sending it. Do you … do you know Mr. Gabriel?” His words were tentative.
I nodded, and the tears in my eyes matched his. “I do,” I told him. “I did,” I corrected.
“Yes, did,” he said. “Past tense. I saw it on the computer.”
There was a little café not far down the street with tables outside, and he pointed toward it. “Do you want coffee?” he asked.
I nodded and then he sent a message on his phone, and we talked as we walked to the café.
“My name is Lucy,” I told him. “I’m—” And then I didn’t know how to describe myself. What words could I use that would convey our relationship, Gabe? What we meant to each other? “I’m the mother of his son,” I finally settled on, realizing this man was now the fourth person whom I had told the truth to: that you were Samuel’s biological father.
“I’m Bashir,” he said. “Bashir Hassan. I met Mr. Gabriel when I was eleven.”
Bashir nodded at a man in the café, and we sat down at one of the outdoor tables.
“You like coffee?” he asked me.
“I do,” I told him with a laugh. It’s so strange how tiny preferences, small pieces of who we are can lead to so much. I met Darren because I loved coffee.
He motioned to the same person inside the café again, and two coffees appeared on our table, brought by a dark-haired waitress.
“My uncle, Farid, is one of the baristas here,” Bashir said.
I turned and gave the tall man inside a small wave. He inclined his head in return.
“So tell me,” I said, too eager for answers to spend time on pleasantries, “how did you meet Gabriel? Why did he give you his mailing address?”
I was pretty sure, since he called you Mr. Gabriel— and because of his age—that Bashir was not your son. Samuel didn’t have another half brother.
Bashir smiled ruefully. “Probably I was the most persistent,” he said. “My family came here to Italy from Syria,” he added.
I remembered the photographs you had taken of Syrian refugees. The articles they accompanied were about journeys to safety, what they risked to leave. I looked closely at Bashir’s face. Was he in one of those photos?
“It was a rough journey, especially for a child,” he added.
I nodded, trying to remember those photos. “I can’t even imagine,” I said, and took a sip of my coffee.
“Good, eh?” he asked.
“Very good,” I answered, as I felt this second cup of coffee work its way into my system, the caffeine fighting against my jet lag.
“So my family, we traveled from northern Syria to Libya when the war came to our town and our house was shelled. My aunt and baby cousin died in the attack. My mother, my father, my grandfather, my uncle, my little sister, and I all left after that. My parents paid a smuggler to take us through Jordan and Egypt to Libya. From Tripoli, we took a boat to Lampedusa. My grandfather”— he shook his head—“he didn’t make it to the end of our journey.”
I could see the pain in Bashir’s face when he talked about his grandfather, his aunt, his cousin. Even though he must have recounted the story numerous times, the wound was still there. It made me want to ask what had happened, and also not want to ask at all.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Thank you.” He took a sip of his coffee. “When we got to the reception center, we were there for longer than we should have been because my family had been deemed witnesses in a case against our boat driver, who was being tried for smuggling. The judge kept us on the island until the case was resolved. While we were waiting, a ship capsized offshore. It was horrific. Many, many people died, and many journalists came, including Mr. Gabriel. He was taking photographs for a reporter who was writing a series on us, on Syrian refugees, on our journeys and what happened when we arrived—here, in Turkey, in Greece, wherever we traveled to find safety. And Mr. Gabriel, he played with us, this group of kids—some who had just arrived, some who had come without adults so had to stay until there was placement for them, and some, like me, who had been marked as witnesses. We followed him around like a pack of puppies. He sat down and showed us how to use his camera, and then gave us each a turn. He told us, first in broken Arabic, and then through a translator, how important it was to notice what was around you, to share the world as you saw it, to tell people your stories.”
I wish you’d told me about this, Gabe. I wish I knew what you thought of these kids, of this experience. What moved you to let them take photographs, to use your camera, to share your wisdom?
“He promised us that when he got home, he would print our photos and find a place to display them on the island. Some of the kids didn’t believe he would keep his word, but I did.”
I smiled at Bashir, at the grin on his face. “And did he keep his word?” I asked.
Bashir nodded. “A woman from Rome was working with people on the island to start a children’s library,” he said. “Mr. Gabriel spoke to the group working on it, and they told him that when the building was finished, he could hang our photographs there. He had all of us write a statement about our photos before he left and said those would hang next to our images.”
“Have you seen them in the library?” I asked him.
Bashir smiled. “I have,” he said. “I went back to Lampedusa after I graduated from high school. The photographs were even more powerful than I remembered. Mr. Gabriel’s were there, too.”
He glowed when he talked about that memory, when he talked about you.
“Back when I was eleven, I told him I wanted to be a photographer like him when I grew up. I wanted to help give people hope, share their stories. And he gave me his mailing address. He said to keep in touch. And so I wrote to him to give him our address here in Rome. And he wrote back. I wrote again, and then nothing. I was mad for a long time, until I searched for his name one day at school. That’s when I saw he had died. And I knew why he never wrote back. I wasn’t … well, of course, I wasn’t mad anymore. I was just … sad I hadn’t been able to tell him how much he meant to me.” Bashir looked down at his hands, then back up at me. “I’m sorry, that was a lot of talking.”
“I appreciate the talking,” I said. “I wanted to do the listening.” I took a last sip of coffee and then he lifted his cup to his mouth, too. “And, for what it’s worth, I bet he knew. How much he meant to you, I mean.” We were both quiet for a moment. Then Bashir looked at me.
“So why are you here?” he asked.
I gave a rueful laugh and adjusted my position in my chair. “Well,” I said, “I can’t let a mystery go unsolved, I guess. When I saw your address in Gabriel’s box, I had to know who meant so much to him that he kept it. I had to know whose image he thought was important enough to draw.”
Bashir blinked back tears again. “I’m in journalism school now,” he said. “Because of him.”
I so wish he had been able to tell you that, Gabe. It would’ve meant a lot to him. And I know it would’ve meant a lot to you, too.
“I’m also working with his editor to commemorate the anniversary of his death, to commemorate his life,” I told Bashir. “And we’re looking at all his photographs. I would love to see the ones you just mentioned.”
“I imagine they’re still at the library,” he said. “You should go; it’s a beautiful island. In the summer it’s a tourist spot.”
“Really?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, though Lampedusa was in the news a lot this past autumn, when tourist season ended. The ocean was calm and there were so many migrants arriving. Seven thousand people arrived this past September in just one week. More than the population of the island. And those are just the people who make it across the sea.”
I shuddered involuntarily.
“ ‘No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,’ ” Bashir said. “That’s a quote from—”
“Warsan Shire,” I finished for him. “ ‘No one puts their children in a boat / unless the water is safer than the land.’ ”
“Right,” he said. “That poem says a lot of how I felt. How I feel.”
I nodded and reached my hand across the table to squeeze his. Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes there is only human connection. Human touch.
I first learned about Warsan Shire’s poetry in 2017 when I saw lines from it written on signs protesting the ban on people entering the United States from Muslim-majority countries. The lines made me want to read more. You would be so moved by her words, Gabe. They brought me to tears the first time I read her poems.
My mind was racing now—there were photos of yours I’d never seen before. I wanted, needed, to know what they looked like. Why you chose the ones you did. Why you hadn’t said anything about them.
“Bashir,” I said, “is it far from here? The island?”
Bashir drained his coffee cup and put it back on the tiny saucer. “It’s south of Sicily,” he said. “Actually, closer to North Africa than to Sicily. But you’ve already come all this way. It would be a shame not to complete your assignment. Or is it your mission?” He smiled shyly at me.
I smiled back. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ve come all this way. Might as well take the next step.”
“Before you go,” he asked hesitantly, “will you come meet my family?”
It made me feel like your ambassador to the world of the living. It made me feel closer to you, but at the same time further away. There were things about your life I didn’t know. That I will never know.
I nodded. “I would be honored,” I told him. And truly, I was. “I’d also love to see your photographs.”
Bashir looked at me, a bit bashful. “Really?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I told him.
He opened up his phone and then showed me his screen. It was a beautiful photo of his uncle Farid, standing behind the counter, serving coffee to an unseen patron, his eyes alight, a grin on his face, as he made some kind of joke or laughed at what the patron was saying. The way Bashir captured that moment of connection looked like something you would do. Then he swiped to show me his cousin, on a rocking chair with a baby in her arms, her eyes closed as she rocked. Then he swiped again and the edge of the Tiber came into focus, the moonlight and city lights reflecting off the water, a small silhouette standing at the edge.
“These are wonderful,” I said. “Gabe would have loved them. He would have been proud of the photographer you’ve become, the eye you have for light, for composition, for emotion.”
“Thank you,” Bashir said quietly. “Thank you for saying that.”
I nodded.
I wish you could have been there with me, Gabe. It should have been you seeing how you made a difference in this one young man’s life. It should have been you, taking me to Lampedusa to show me your photographs. It should have been you introducing me to Bashir and his family. But I guess, in some ways, it was you. I never would have been there without you.
You’re still altering my path, orienting my future, opening me up to new and exciting possibilities.
It’s always you, isn’t it.