No Safe Place Read Online Free PDF

after the boy, his long arms slamming through the waves.
    Several times he just about grabbed the child, only to have the waves carry him away again. Finally, he took hold of the boy’s jacket and held tight. They began the hard swim back to the boat, the Uzbek holding the boy’s face out of the water.
    There were oars in the boat. Cheslav and Rosalia held them out for the Uzbek to grab on to. Abdul steered the boat close to them, then cut the motor to hold it steady as the Uzbek pushed the boy out of the water for the others to haul back onto the boat. Then it was the Uzbek’s turn, and the boat dipped perilously close to going right over as he reached up and climbed on board.
    For a long moment, they could all do nothing more than breathe. Abdul took off his own jacket and put it around the boy, but everyone’s clothes were more or less soaked, and the boat held no blankets.
    Abdul had almost forgotten about the smuggler until he heard a voice roar up from the sea and felt a slap so hard on the side of the boat that the shudder ran up and down its spine. A fat hand appeared out of the depths and gripped the edge of the boat.
    A second hand followed, and then it was as if Neptune himself was trying to climb into the boat. It tipped over almost ninety degrees and was edging to a complete flip when Cheslav took up an oar and smashed it down on the smuggler’s hands. Abdul thought he could hear the bones break.
    One hand released, and the boat began to right itself.
    Rosalia picked up the other oar, and she and Cheslav whacked at the other hand until it was smashed and bloody. Abdul, his hands clutching Rosalia and Cheslav so he wouldn’t fall over, kicked at the smuggler’s head, smashing his nose, and pushed him away from the side of the boat. The oars pushed him farther away, and the waves did the rest.
    It was barely a minute before the sea sucked away his screams and curses.
    The migrants sat back down on the benches. No one spoke. The boy passed in and out of consciousness, and the Uzbek who had saved him shivered and shook in his wet clothes.
    The rain came down and the waves carried the boat this way and that. Abdul could not get the motor re-started. The others tried, but they also had no luck. Without the motor, the rudder was useless.
    The migrants huddled together so they could share what little warmth they had. They bailed out the boat with their cupped hands and scanned the sky for any signs of daylight.
    Abdul was sure that every slap of a wave against the hull was the slap of the smuggler, caught up with them and ready for vengeance in the cold, dark night.

FOUR
    Abdul was tired of huddling in the house.
    Bit by bit, he headed toward the door, trying to be invisible. It wasn’t easy. Not only did he have the handle of his guitar case tight in his hand, but there were wall-to-wall relatives packed into his parents’ small house.
    He’d been cooped up with them for more than two weeks while the earth shook and the sirens shrieked and Baghdad went up in flames. He’d tried his best to do the extra work his mother asked of him — the extra work brought on by all the people seeking refuge in their house because they thought it was in a safe neighborhood. He hadn’t even complained — well, not too much — when his older cousins and brothers had gone out with the men to find supplies and he was kept at home by his mother, even though he was eleven and hardly a child.
    But today was Wednesday. He’d already missed two Wednesdays with his guitar teacher, and he was not going to miss a third. All he needed to do was make it through the door.
    It helped that the glass in the windows had been shattered by the explosions. The family had covered the windowpanes with flattened cardboard boxes and sheets of newspaper. It made the house darker than it would normally be. And since most of the bombs fell at night, people slept during the day. Abdul