Refugee

Still adrift in the Mediterranean Sea, Mahmoud and his mother struggle through the night trying to stay afloat. Mahmoud sees a Greek Coast Guard ship searching for them and raises a signal. To his relief, his father and younger brother are onboard. The family is taken to Lesbos where they find other refugees:

The way Aleppo had its piles of rubble, Lesbos had its piles of life jackets, abandoned by the hundreds of thousands of refugees who had come before them […] There were bodies on the beach too. People who hadn’t survived the sea in the night (195).

Mahmoud’s mother conducts a frantic search for her daughter Hana, but no one has seen the child. The family staggers forward on the next leg of their journey.

Aboard the MS St. Louis, the passengers give a hero’s welcome to Officer Padron—the policeman who rescued Josef’s father from the water. Padron tells Josef and his mother that Landau has been sedated and is recovering in a Cuban hospital. Someone asks Padron when they will be allowed to travel to the island. Josef already knows the answer: “In unison, he and Josef spoke the answer all the Cuban guards always gave: ‘Mañana’” (202).