Tonight, the stars are very bright. The coast guard’s light is a white dot on the horizon. It might be rescue. It might be return. I don’t know which is scarier.
I drew a map in the condensation on the window of the bus heading to the coast. My mother thought I was drawing a cloud. But I was drawing the olive grove behind our house in Homs. The one where my brother and I buried a tin box of marbles in 2011. The marbles were blue like the sky before the jets came. refugee the diary of ali ismail
When the water started seeping through the floor, Tarek took off his leather shoes. He didn’t throw them overboard. He held them up. Tonight, the stars are very bright
Note to the reader: This entry was found sealed inside a plastic bag, wedged between the inner and outer hull of a deflated dinghy washed ashore on Lesvos. The ink is smeared, but the pencil marks are legible. It might be return
Remember that I, Ali Ismail, age sixteen, once had a favorite cup (chipped blue ceramic). I was afraid of spiders. I hated boiled okra. I wanted to be an architect, not because I liked buildings, but because I liked the space between buildings—the shadows where children play.
I realized something strange: