Refuge Read Online Free

phrases she’s learnt.
    Goedemorgen‌—‌Angenaam kennis te maken‌—‌Hoe gaat het met u? Goed dankuwel‌—‌Tot ziens.
    Noor lifts the pot away from the fire and the kindling disintegrates into a pile of ash. She pours the water into their chipped teapot. The corrugated door of their mud hut creaks open, and her father emerges. He runs a hand through his straggly, gray hair.
    “You are up early,” he says.
    “It’s like an oven in there. I don’t know how Bushra can stand it.”
    “Quite comfortably it seems.”
    Her father picks up the teapot, leaving the cups and saucers for Noor.
    “Care to join me in my study?” he says.
    His joke lost its power to amuse years ago, but for her father’s benefit Noor forces a smile. They head along a dusty path until they come upon a bedraggled eucalyptus tree and a carved bench that her father constructed some years back. They sit down and stare out at the barren graveyard. A rabbit pops up from behind a nearby grave and sniffs the air. Noor thinks she’s hallucinating. She shakes her head only to see it still there.
    How have you managed to survive in a place like this?
    The rabbit stares right at her, its ears twitching and makes a couple of hops in her direction. Noor holds her breath. The rabbit hops closer.
    “It should be ready by now,” her father says.
    The rabbit bounds away over the endless earthen mounds towards the crimson Khyber Mountains in the distance. Noor sighs and pours the tea. There’s no milk to go with it; that’s a luxury they’d had to forego a long time ago.
    “So, do you have a busy day ahead of you?” her father says.
    “The administrator’s visiting.”
    “That is a rarity.”
    “The headmistress wants each class to perform a song. I suggested one from The King and I .”
    “Ambitious.”
    “She deemed it too provocative and said we had to do Watan Rana Kawoo instead.”
    “Ah, that familiar favorite.”
    “She thinks the lyrics are inspirational.”
    “ ‘We are the army of education and bring light in the darkness.’ You must admit that tugs on the old heart strings.”
    “If you understand Pashtu.”
    “Maybe your fearless administrator does.”
    “I doubt it. None of them do.”
    Noor’s stomach rumbles. She figures if she gets to school early enough she might be able to scrounge some naan from the kitchen.
    “Do you think she might know the status of that scholarship?” her father says.
    “I’m trying not to think about it.”
    “And failing, it would seem; you were tossing and turning all night.”
    “That had everything to do with this damn heat.”
    Her father takes a sip of his tea. She knows he isn’t buying her explanation.
    Why should he? I don’t buy it either.
    “I had the strangest dream last night,” her father says.
    Noor waits patiently. Listening to her father’s dreams is another indulgence she’s never deprived him of.
    “It was raining, in a manner you could not imagine, and there we were, you, Bushra and I huddled up inside the hut. Water started seeping under the door, and soon it was so high that we resolved to flee. We waded outside to discover the whole camp engulfed by a flood and everything and everyone being swept away. At that moment all seemed lost, but then, right ahead of us, was a boat with your mother at the helm. It was so tiny she only had room for one of us, and do you know whom she chose to go with her? She chose you.”
    “I wouldn’t have left you.”
    “But you did, and as I watched the two of you drift away, I do not think I have ever felt happier. It is a sign, my love, I think your time in this camp is coming to an end.”
    “You always dream of Mamaan around her birthday.”
    “I do not deny that, but this felt different. Truly it did.”
    Noor kisses her father on the cheek.
    “I love you, Baba.”
    “I love you too, my dear.”
    Noor pulls her headscarf over her hair and heads for a nearby alley. Noor read once that the Eskimos had twenty words to