Nowhere Boy: Chapters 42–67

All morning long, Max watched the same images loop in constant replay on CNN International and the BBC: screaming people running down the airport road as smoke billowed from the terminal behind them, bloody commuters stumbling out of the Maelbeek metro station.

As Fontaine stepped into the vestibule, Claire appeared on the stairs and bugged out her eyes at Max.

“I do not know, Madame,” Fontaine said somberly. “The counterterror division has transmissions from the plotters and their accomplices. Many of them are coded, but I can assure you we are following every lead.”

“I do not know, Madame,” Fontaine said somberly. “The counterterror division has transmissions from the plotters and their accomplices. Many of them are coded, but I can assure you we are following every lead.”

Everyone began to talk at once, and Madame Mansouri and the other aides were forced to shout over the hubbub.

Max’s breath came faster, his stomach tightened. But it was later than usual, he told himself, and Ahmed had probably just fallen asleep. He pushed open the door and stepped down into the cement anteroom.

Max’s eyes blurred with tears, but not before he noticed that the largest orchid was trying to say something. A scrap of paper was nestled among its roots.

He staggered to his feet, not bothering to wipe the tears that cascaded down his cheeks, but letting them fall on Camille’s gravestone.

Minutes later, he spotted a white building with an enormous red marquee that once must have featured the nights acts but now simply read FORUM in big white letters.

“It’s hard when young men can’t get good jobs and feel there’s no place for them here in Belgium. Some turn to crime and drugs, and there are radical mosques and imams who prey on them. But most people don’t get involved in any of this. They just want to be left in peace.”

A man’s curt voice crackled over the intercom. “Who’s there?” he asked in French.

Farah paused on the landing and pointed to a door to the right with an array of shoes laid out carefully beside it.

His stomach rumbled and he was thankful for the banana and stale baguette he’d squirreled away in his bag.

But the height between roofs was greater than they’d anticipated, and they flailed through empty air before landing hard on their knees.

Ahmed straddled the seat. He was relieved they’d ridden together before, knew exactly how to balance their bodies.

Ahmed mouthed along, pretending to know the song. But the soldier was too busy staring at Max in surprise to notice.
Then, with a self-conscious chuckle, he joined in.

A burly, black-clad police officer with an assault rifle slung over his chest had entered the car and was checking documents.

In Cologne, they transferred to another train, just over an hour later, it pulled into the glass atrium of Frankfurt Central Station.

Ahmed knew he must have been wracked by guilt and despair, just as Ahmed himself had been.

There was nothing to look at anymore—the world outside the illuminated train car was dark and seamless.

“I have passport,” Ahmed cut in, holding up the forgery.
The conductor glanced at the eagle and shield emblazoned on the front, then waved it away. “Is someone meeting you in Budapest?”

Ahmed had waited outside—keeping watch for the police—while Max had played the part of the American tourist, greeting the night clerk in English and mentioning his parents upstairs as he sauntered in to use a computer.

The rumble of the car lulled him; his eyes closed. In his mind, he saw his father, asleep on a dormitory cot.

Reka pressed a bell; a few seconds later, the door buzzed open and Max and Ahmed followed her into a sparsely decorated waiting area that reminded Max of a doctors office.

“Daniel sent me your father’s case file last night,” Reka said. “A few weeks ago, he crossed the Hungarian border from Serbia after a smuggler led him astray. So the border police arrested him.”

But even his kindness felt like treachery, like he was enticing Max to forget about Ahmed and accept the better treatment freely given to him as a white American boy.

“I have such happy memories of life there—football with my cousins, my confirmation party, the summer fête when all the neighbors would come and Grandfather would set up a tent by the roses. My childhood was peaceful, serene. But my parents’ was not—”
“Because of the war,” Max cut in.

“I have such happy memories of life there—football with my cousins, my confirmation party, the summer fête when all the neighbors would come and Grandfather would set up a tent by the roses. My childhood was peaceful, serene. But my parents’ was not—”
“Because of the war,” Max cut in.

The terminal was packed with travelers whose flights had been diverted from Brussels.

Ahmed began to understand the toll of captivity and uncertainty: the women who complained daily of headaches; the men who chain-smoked for hours; the little kids who clung to their mothers, peevish and whimpering, the older ones glassy-eyed from too much TV.

He slept more fitfully, even with his father beside him, and woke up gasping for breath.

Over the Easter break, the trees had unfurled a canopy of new leaves, and the birds had turned up their song.

Madame Legrand had tacked the drawing beside the map of the world, and the juxtaposition between the entire, vast earth—with all its fear and violence—and the peaceful, miniature world of the garden made Max miss Ahmed more than anything else.

But his sister’s face was blank, motionless except for her blinking blue eyes as they darted across the page. Max tried not to loom over her.

The single tree in the courtyard had unfurled its leaves, dappling the ground beneath it with shade.