What Strange Paradise

Colonel Kethros confronts Madame El Ward in her office. He knows a child survived the shipwreck and suspects that Vänna has taken the child to see Madame El Ward. Madame El Ward insinuates Kethros is wasting her time. She explains the failed delivery of clean water and asks why even ordinary criminals are treated better than her refugee wards. The colonel replies, “Ordinary criminals commit ordinary crimes” (114). When she complains that the camp is hellish for refugees, Kethros talks about how bribes given to checkpoint guards undergo rapid inflation during wartime. He tells her that this is the situation with the refugee crisis. Because so many claim refugee status, he says, “Now the going rate for suffering is higher. Now everyone has to claim they’ve been raped, tortured, their whole family wiped out, down to the pet dogs and the goldfish” (115). Kethros threatens to have her arrested for helping “an illegal” (116). She tells him that if he wants to waste his time chasing a little boy, he can, but she cannot help him. He replies, “Yes you can, and you will [...] And I never said it was a boy” (116).

A sudden foghorn awakens and panics the migrants on the Calypso. They narrowly avoid a collision with a massive cargo freighter, and Mohamed has difficulty restoring order, resorting to firing a shot into the air with his pistol. He tells the passengers on deck that if they are caught, the ship will either be sunk on the spot or reported; Westerners do not want them in their countries.

At one point during the panic, a hand shot up between the floorboards, horrifying Amir. Now, with calm restored, Amir becomes increasingly aware of the smell and presence of the people below the deck. After some time passes, he hears Quiet Uncle calling his name from beneath. Quiet Uncle attempts to reassure Amir that they will be all right and that he always intended to return for Amir, Iman, and Harun. He desperately wants Amir to believe him. For the first time in Amir’s memory, Quiet Uncle apologizes. Before Amir can reply, Teddy’s alarm goes off, causing a stir, though it was only signaling his “shift change.”

The passengers on the deck are unable to settle down after Teddy’s alarm strikes their already rattled nerves. Walid sets up a lantern. Seeing Maher reading, Mohamed notes that he can tell undocumented migrants’ chances of survival based on what they bring with them: The people who bring books never last long. Kamal asks why Mohamed became a smuggler. Mohamed replies, “You know full well that where we come from whatever you end up doing is the only thing you could have ever ended up doing” (124).

Amir has to urinate but is shy due to the presence of all the other passengers. He is aided by Umm Ibrahim and Walid, who allows his coat to be used to give Amir some privacy. The ship jostles and some urine gets on the jacket. Furious, Walid throws it into the sea. He does not hide his distaste for Amir.

Amir asks Umm Ibrahim if she has any more fruit, and she shares a mandarin with him. Amir secretly passes his half to a hand beneath the floorboards.

Vänna and Amir leave the migrant holding facility. A mile up the road, Vänna looks back down the road and sees Colonel Kethros’s vehicle pulling up to her house. Kethros and Marianna Hermes have been friends since college; Marianna is a completely different person around the colonel—happier than Vänna has ever known her mother to be. However, she knows that the colonel is not making a social visit. She assumes that Kethros has discovered that she is aiding Amir and hopes that her father will stand up for her, which she knows he will not due to his passivity and smallness of character. Kethros’s visit does not last long, but one of the military jeeps remains at the Hermes house. Vänna knows she cannot return home until she helps Amir escape the island.

Vänna and Amir race downhill toward the Hotel Xenios. Seeing the way that Amir’s salt-caked clothes are chafing him, Vänna takes him to the hotel’s resort grounds to find him some new clothes. While the tourists are distracted, Vänna sneaks into a suite. While she is inside, Amir tricks Vänna into thinking that there is someone else there. When she realizes she has been fooled, Vänna is furious. Amir, however, cannot stop giggling, and she cannot stay mad at him.

In the hotel hallway, they come face-to-face with a maid pushing a housekeeping cart. Amir thinks he knows what to do: In broken English, he recites the plea Umm Ibrahim practiced repeatedly on the Calypso. The maid, miraculously, helps them. She loads an empty pillowcase with snacks and water and points them in the direction of an outdoor shower that should be vacant at this time of day. Before they go, she gives them a mostly uneaten lamb roast from a guest’s room service order.

They make their way to All Saint’s Beach, where Amir showers. The clothes Vänna stole are much too big for him, but they are clean. They leave before hotel security can find them, making their way to a sea cave safe from the tide changes. Once inside, they “become the strangers they never had the chance to be, discovering each other anew” (142). Seeing Amir’s locket with the portrait of Iman and his brother, Vänna attempts to ask if Amir came alone. Amir cries, and Vänna holds him consolingly.

Amir tells her that his name is not David. They reintroduce themselves. They eat the leftover lamb roast and fall asleep in the cave, side by side.

The passengers of the Calypso pass the time by discussing their intended destinations and plans. Mohamed scoffs at Kamal for choosing America as his destination. He claims that America is racist, afraid of sex, and that “no matter the crime, they’ll always find themselves innocent” (146). Kamal accuses Mohamed of segregating the Africans below deck; Mohamed maintains the arrangement on the ship is about the price they paid for boarding, not their skin color.

Umm Ibrahim’s seasickness causes her to throw up on Amir’s back. Nobody has an extra shirt for him because “they’d passed the point where human goodness gave way to the calculus of survival” (147). Berating the men who will not help a child, Umm Ibrahim loops a rope through Amir’s shirt and life jacket and throws them into the sea, hoisting them back up to dry once she deems them to be clean. Amir notices that the life jacket stays buoyant only momentarily. The shirt dries, but the life jacket remains soaked. He falls asleep that night lying against Umm Ibrahim for warmth.

Colonel Kethros watches an interview conducted by a nationalist television station. Both the interviewer and the interviewee, a politician, are critical of migrants and refugees. Lina Eliades, a childhood friend of Kethros and a Ministry of Migration Policy official, wants him to turn it off. Kethros does, but he agrees with the program’s sentiment, even if it is just a performance. They are at a coffee shop. Another migrant boat has wrecked on a neighboring island during an international film festival, drawing the reporters away from this island. They discuss rumors of more migrants on boats heading their way. Kethros complains that the migrants are colonizing the island; Lina accuses him of being hyperbolic.

Kethros looks back at his men waiting for him by the jeeps. They are recent recruits, too young in the colonel’s mind to have much responsibility. He hates that their questions about his past military career remind him “that the end of his military career should have come to this: babysitting four little boys, running around from migrant ship to migrant ship, swatting at flies” (154).

Lina asks Kethros for a death toll from the Calypso and becomes frustrated when the colonel gives her an estimate. Finally, he tells her that there are 124 bodies and lies that all have been accounted for. Kethros complains about the island’s reliance on tourism. He believes that the times are changing and that an industry geared toward treating people nicely will not last. Lina says goodbye and leaves.

Kethros turns his attention back to the politician being interviewed. The interviewer asks about the country’s policy on underage migrants. The politician claims the responsibility for a child’s safety lies with the parents, not the state. Kethros changes the channel to a soccer game. He nods off, lapsing into a recurring nightmare. A child watches the road as his mother tends to the corpse of his father. Kethros and his fellow soldiers walk up the road, playing a game where they make up new torture techniques and unaware of the explosive embedded in the dirt that will take Kethros’s lower leg. He jolts awake.

Upon waking, he is confronted by Jonathan Hoff, the manager of the Hotel Xenios, who claims that Kethros and his soldiers are not doing their job. Last night, one of the guests’ son’s favorite shirts was stolen. Taking an interest, Kethros instructs Jonathan to show him the scene of the crime.