What Strange Paradise

Vänna wakes before Amir and waits for him in the mouth of the cave. When he awakens, he is momentarily terrified by Vänna until he remembers who she is. He joins her, and they eat some of the snacks the maid gave them. Vänna helps Amir peel the dead skin from the sunburns on his back he received on the Calypso. Vänna points out the tip of the lighthouse, just visible in the distance, but Amir does not understand. Looking through the children’s books Madame El Ward gave them, Amir is delighted to see the comic is Zaytoon and Zaytoona, his favorite. Hearing the arrival of tourists on the beach outside, Vänna decides it is time to leave.

Vänna and Amir avoid Colonel Kethros and his soldiers, who arrived with the tourists and beachgoers, and follow the coastline for several uneventful hours. They rest near an abandoned fishing shack. A strange reptilian creature emerges from the brush near the shack and frightens them, but it merely observes them and slinks off toward a sea cave. Vänna “has never seen it before, but it looks as she imagined it, the bird-eating thing” (171).

After another three hours of walking and hiking along the shore, they reach the lighthouse at the undeveloped northern end of the island. They climb to the top, and Vänna clears them a space to rest. They pass the time making conversation using one of the translation books from Madame El Ward. Vänna knows the end of the journey is near, and she is ready to accept the consequences after Amir has gotten to safety. She also knows that “she has no idea where the ferryman will take him […] but she doesn’t even for a minute consider telling this truth because the truth is bereft of kindness while the lie is nothing but” (172).

In the middle of the night, Vänna wakes to what she thinks are fireflies floating along the dark beach: The raft of refugees Lina mentioned to Kethros has come ashore, and the migrants hold their cell phones aloft, attempting to catch a signal. Vänna falls back asleep, never sure if the scene was more than a dream.

Tensions on the Calypso build as Mohamed enlists Maher, Walid, and Kamal to deal with the body of the old man. Umm Ibrahim and others are horrified that Mohamed wants to throw the dead man overboard. Mohamed contends that the old man should be buried at sea by Muslims rather than put in a refrigerator by Christians on the mainland.

Walid objects that they should search the old man’s body for anything useful. Disgusted at Walid, Mohamed searches the corpse and finds an empty Tic-Tac container and a piece of paper with a phone number and a name. He gives the paper to Umm Ibrahim to call when they arrive. Walid wants the old man’s socks. Mohamed, fed up with Walid, throws them at him, saying, “Take them and go back to your corner. You say another word for the rest of the trip and I’ll throw you overboard myself” (176).

They lift the old man, and Mohamed shouts for someone to say a prayer. Maher recites a prayer he does not fully remember. They throw the corpse overboard. Umm Ibrahim blocks Amir from seeing, so Amir only hears the splash of the body hitting the water.

The Calypso sails on. Umm Ibrahim tells Mohamed she is glad he will die with the rest of them. She wishes she had taken a land route instead of risking dying at sea. Mohamed retorts that the Westerners would show no mercy to Umm Ibrahim or her unborn child. Umm Ibrahim spits in his face, and Mohamed grabs her by the throat; the other passengers pull them apart. Mohamed loses his composure and goes off on a tirade, forgetting those on deck are technically his customers. He calls them “stupid” for their unfounded belief in the mercy of the Western world.

Mohamed regains his composure, telling the passengers to believe what they want. Maher breaks the silence, telling him, “One should try to believe in things […] even if they let you down afterward” (180). He says it is a quote from his favorite author. Mohamed replies, “Your favorite author is an idiot” (180).

The Calypso continues through the light snow.

Colonel Kethros continues his search for Vänna and Amir. He finds traces of their presence in the seaside cave. He is fixated on finding them, ignoring calls about the new refugee raft that has come ashore. He searches along the beach that has changed so much from his childhood memories. It nauseates him “to see how nondescript these foreigners and their money and their utter absence of culture have made his island, his people” (185). A local woman asks him if something is wrong; his presence made her think more migrants have arrived. He smiles and tells her everything is fine.

Kethros buys a drink from a vendor and watches the beach, ignoring the incessant phone calls he receives from headquarters. After a while, he sees a little girl starting to drown. He springs into action, cutting across the beach to the chagrin of tourists, whose belongings he tramples. He dives in, fully uniformed, and swims with ease; despite his missing leg, Kethros has been a lifelong swimmer. He pulls the girl from the water. She is unresponsive.

Kethros begins CPR, shoving away his fellow soldiers when they try to intervene. Eventually, the little girl coughs up the water in her lungs, coming back to life. Her mother is overjoyed, but the soldiers have to hold her back to give the girl room to breathe. The girl’s father seems more embarrassed than anything. He starts to thank the colonel, but Kethros cuts him off, asking if he is from the island. The father replies that he is; his family has been there for 10 generations. Kethros slaps the man across the face over and over until his soldiers pull him away. He tells the father, “Then act from here” (188).

Kethros returns to the makeshift headquarters, showers, and changes. He dines at Hotel Xenios and falls asleep on one of the lounge chairs. He is awakened by a soldier, Nicholas, at 3:30 am. Nicholas reports that another raft has landed on the island.

The light snow turns to sleet. Amir gets seasick due to the rocking of the boat. Amir can now clearly hear the individual voices below deck. The engine has stopped running. Mohamed can no longer control the panicking refugees. In the worsening storm, nobody notices Kamal’s second attempt at calling the emergency number on his dying cell phone.

Kamal tries to talk to the emergency services in broken English and then reluctantly gives the phone to Maher, who is much more fluent. Maher explains, in Oxford English that is common throughout much of the formerly colonized world, that they are in danger somewhere south of the European continent and that they have a child and a pregnant woman on board. A violent wave knocks the phone from Maher’s hand, and it dies when a passenger retrieves it.

Amir reaches Quiet Uncle’s hand through the floorboards. He tells his uncle he wants to go home and cries. Quiet Uncle attempts to reassure him. He tells Amir that he knows the nickname Amir gave him and that Amir was right about him. He tells Amir, “Whatever kind of person you need to be—quiet, loud, violent, invisible—you be that person. Promise me” (195). Amir promises. Quiet Uncle lets go of his hand.

Coast guard workers attempt to deflate and take away the new refugee raft. One reflects that with the sudden influx of more undocumented migrants, the country will have to call in the army. Kethros watches the scene, thinking that the migrants must have made their way south toward the Hotel Xenios, “not by sight but by faith” (197). Kethros is still fixated on finding Vänna and Amir. He continues to ignore calls from Lina and the capital. He feels he is the victim of some absurd punishment, like those of myth; he feels “he is destined to spend eternity a step behind the happenings of things, unable to preempt or even witness any event of import” (199). He finds a cell phone in the sand with the coast guard phone number written on the back. It was common practice for refugees to call this number when they neared land, but the presence of vigilante ships on the water has made it less common.

The workers manage to get the raft onto a truck, and they depart. Kethros feels phantom pains where his leg used to be. The various ailments and weaknesses brought on by aging disgust him. He thinks of the places the youth go to party and have fun on the island, including the lighthouse, which he sees in the rearview window. He has the driver stop the jeep and turn around. When they arrive at the lighthouse, he sees “the fleeting glimmer of two shades of gold—blond strands of hair and a shimmering necklace, the boy and the girl, running away” (201).