Nowhere Boy: Chapters 18–28

The only light emanated from his father’s phone, which blinked on with messages or news alerts—he had clearly forgotten to switch it to do not disturb.

His mood was buoyant when he knocked on the little door. It seemed contagious too, because when the door opened, Ahmed smiled.

“Right, Farah.” His mother smiled as if the thought of Farah made her happy before her expression turned serious again. “But Islamic extremism is also a real problem.”

There was a haunted look in their eyes—of weariness and resignation—that he recognized.

Ahmed glanced at the picture of the man with the cage body balanced atop the cliff overlooking the sea. He felt exactly like this man, on the brink of a precipice.

“What else you bring me?” he asked in his most imperious voice.

“I hereby present—” Max took the next book from the bag with a flourish. “The Calculus Affair, one of the better Tintins, or as you call him in Arabic—”
“Tintin.”

“Everyone was mad at me,” Max said. “But I was just being a good friend.”
He said this defiantly, but at the same time he peered at Ahmed as if he needed him to confirm this.

Oscar slumped down in his seat, but his narrowed eyes made Max think he was still gloating.

But the only idea he could come up with was to shout, “Run, Ahmed! Police!” and this seemed just plain idiotic, a good way to both incriminate himself and make sure half the Brussels police force went racing after Ahmed.

But she probably wouldn’t believe him, so instead he just said, “Most Muslims don’t seem violent.”
“Until they are radicalized,” Fontaine said.

But Max barely listened as he prattled on. Had Inspector Fontaine really come by just to pass on the name of a gardener?

The old Max might once have found this exciting—a dangerous criminal on the loose, being forced to hunker down inside like on a snow day but without the snow, even the zaniness of the cat pictures.

Max shifted on the brick hearth, thinking of Ahmed hiding below.

“How long do you think the city will be under lockdown?” Max listened intently. Ahmed would have to stay in the wine cellar until the lockdown was over.

“Who knows?” said Arnaud. “The Brussels government tries to show competence with this.”

Ahmed studied the wound solemnly. “Hurt during battle with cat. Belgium honor your bravery.”

Several passersby skirted the men warily.

He was certain that at least pictures remained of the vast tiled courtyard of the Great Mosque and its thousand-year-old minaret and the Al Madina souk, thirteen kilometers of covered shops selling everything from bolts of silk to nuts.

Ahmed wished he could describe the exodus—mattresses, carpets, children and old people crammed together in the flatbeds of pickup trucks; whole families teetering on a single motorcycle like some desperate circus act; even people on foot, carrying children and overstuffed sacks on their backs.

People were living in flimsy tents in the Turkish refugee camps, with no heat and very little food, and some reported it was even worse than being back home.

But it seemed too dangerous to venture out to a doctor.

He could smell the acrid smoke, the dust.

But before he could clamber onto the remains of the house, someone jumped down from the top of it and tackled him.

This seemed to reassure his mother, who had wavered about sending him back.

Police and security were everywhere, and the idea of trying to go to Calais or anywhere else seemed preposterous.

Ahmed’s instincts told him to stay put, but the thought of the outside—of the ordinary world, where people lived beautiful, ordinary lives—beckoned.

A bump jostled him out of the past as the bike leapt off the curb and Max steered it down a one-way street.

Max pedaled around a traffic circle and in between an enormous curving building surrounded by flags and cement barricades and another imposing building with a facade of glass windows.

Max pedaled around a traffic circle and in between an enormous curving building surrounded by flags and cement barricades and another imposing building with a facade of glass windows.

The whole idea of taking such a risk, of venturing out of the safety of the cellar just to go to an art museum, was extravagant, indulgent, as MAD as the graffiti.

“Claire?!” Max shouted.
At last, her footsteps receded. Ahmed let out his breath with a whoosh.

But ten minutes later, when she was still locked up tight with her friends, Max decided he didn’t care. He abandoned the gang and sidled up to her.

Now, he let it come pouring out—all the carefully memorized sentences, all the perfectly conjugated verbs.

Max’s voice was as broken as his French. This wasn’t the elegant speech he had so carefully prepared—he sounded emotional, his pidgin French idiotic.