Internment(16)

“NO! NO! NO!” I hear a boy scream and then see him run away from his mom—I suppose it’s his mom—a middle-aged woman wearing a bright-blue turban-style hijab. The boy, with curly chestnut-brown hair, is maybe eight or nine years old. She runs after him and grabs him, speaking to him in Arabic. The crowd parts around them. Then her son hits her in the face. There’s a collective gasp from the crowd. When the woman reaches up to her cheek, the boy breaks free, pushes against anyone standing in his way, and starts running back toward the main gate, where the buses entered. He doesn’t get far. Three Exclusion Guards draw guns and aim them at him. A kid. They’re pointing their weapons at a kid. A fourth guard grabs him and pins him to the ground. I’m frozen. I literally can’t move. The action slows down. I hear the muffled scream of the boy’s mother as she runs through the crowd, shoving past people, some of whom stumble and fall and curse, adding to the chaos.

“Please! Don’t hurt him! He doesn’t understand,” the mother cries. She claws at the guard who holds her son down. He shoves her off, and she falls backward. One of the other guards directs his gun away from the boy and toward the mom. The little boy is crying. The mom’s piercing wails seem to echo through the camp and into the mountains far in the distance. Then another man—Compass Tattoo from the train—appears. He says something I can’t hear, then puts his hand on the shoulder of the guard who has the boy pinned down. The guard nods and releases him. Compass Tattoo helps the little boy up. The mother scurries to her son on her knees and tenderly wraps him in her arms, trying to protect him, shifting her body away from Compass Tattoo. But he doesn’t touch his gun or hit her. He whispers something in her ear and then takes her by the elbow, helping her up. The woman wipes her face and keeps her arm around her son’s shoulders. The boy’s face is blank, expressionless. Quietly, the woman leads him back to their place in line, the murmuring crowd parting to let them through.

The guards put away their guns, and one of them shouts, “Show’s over.” And we continue, herded like animals, toward the Hub.

Show’s over. My God, a show. Like our pain is entertainment.

I look at the guard with the tattoo and then to the gun at his side. He catches my eye, nods, and takes long strides to a black-suited man who has been watching the scene unfold from a short distance. The man’s face is red and blotchy, but not like he’s sunburned—more like his tie is too tight and he can’t get enough air. Who wears a suit and tie in the desert?

When I turn to my parents, I see tears running down both their faces. We join the crowd and continue our walk. No one talks. Silent as the grave. I take a shaky breath, and then another. I say Nanni’s favorite prayer to myself. I’m so glad she’s not here to see this. I try to find solace in her memory. But as I’m saying the words, my muscles tense and my breathing grows loud. I say the prayer again. But it doesn’t feel meditative, as it usually does. It doesn’t calm me or quell my anger.

Thoughts and prayers. God, all the times I’ve heard politicians utter those words.

Aurora.

Orlando.

Las Vegas.

Sandy Hook.

Umpqua.

Virginia Tech.

San Bernardino.

Sutherland Springs.

Parkland.

Santa Fe.

I don’t have a measure for how I should feel or what I should think. But thoughts and prayers weren’t enough to save any of those people in any of those places from getting shot. And they’re not going to be enough for us now. Prayers can only go so far. I remember something else my nanni used to tell me: Praying is important. But you can’t simply pray for what you want. You have to act.

We line up outside the Hub by last name and proceed through the security check—full-body scanners and luggage imaging like at the airport, but with a ticket to nowhere. After the scan, we walk inside the main hall of the Hub, where dozens of registration tables are set up. I soak in this bizarre nightmare, scanning the camp and what appears to be the only entrance gate—heavily guarded—and the watchtowers and the razor-wire fence as far as I can see. And the people. Everywhere, all of them, dazed like me. It’s like a United Nations of internees. Old and young. Black and brown. Some in hijab and kufis and the traditional dress of their ancestral countries, many in T-shirts and jeans and shorts. But we’re all citizens of the United States, forced on a dead-end journey into the desert. The Muslims who aren’t citizens are going on a much longer trip—deportation. Green cards and visas instantly invalidated with a stroke of the presidential pen. Maybe they’re the lucky ones, if they have other homes to go back to, take their chances in. For those of us who were born here, America is literally the only home we’ve ever known. And all those angry mobs on television chanting “Go home,” they don’t get that this is our home.

Our turn comes to check in and get our room assignments. An auburn-haired woman with a tight bun and pursed red lips peruses the laptop on the desk in front of her, reading the data from our barcodes.

“Ali, Sophia, Layla Amin.” She says it like a fact but apparently wants an answer, because she gives us a hard stare when we stand there in silence.

“Yes. I’m Ali. My wife, Sophia. And this is our daughter, Layla.” My dad places his hand, in turn, on our shoulders, like he’s introducing us at a social event.

“You’ve been assigned to Mercury Home Number Seventeen, Block Two,” the woman says, and hands us three key cards. “Report to the Hub auditorium at seventeen hundred hours for orientation.”