When they had first rolled up to the city it was past midnight. Everything was closed and they had set up their tent in a homeless camp outside the limits. It's not like they were the only ones. Refugees had been streaming in recent years, fleeing the Tyrant, a cynical man that had taken their religion and twisted it into something it was never meant to be. His storm troopers enforced a blind allegiance, and his network of informants had cast a pall of suspicion over everything, every neighborhood conversation, every holy gathering.
They had met Daoud and his wife that first night. Fellow refugees lost in a foreign land. He brought bread and shared it, even though his own were hungry, even though there was nothing left to offer in return. Whatever they had when they left home was long gone.
At daybreak they had gone together to look for work. Daoud knew men who would hire day laborers. They paid half what local workers got, but they didn't require papers or licenses, and they didn't ask questions. Which was good because they couldn't speak the language anyway. The hardest thing was leaving the women and children in camp all day to fend for themselves.
It was there he learned to dig ditches, to build fences, to lay bricks, to cut beams. The kind of work the undocumented always do. It turns out he was good with an adze and chisel, and came into a little demand. They traded their tent for a shanty with real walls, offering at least the illusion of security, of privacy.
When they didn't know the language, the women had gone together to the market. Together they negotiated by signs to buy a few overpriced vegetables. Together they endured the stares at their head coverings, their dress too warm for the climate, the color of their skin. Together they weathered the haughty looks of immodest women and the leers of the men. Together they hurried back to see to the children, left in the care of friends, strangers really.
Then came the day they had dreaded. Daoud had been squirreling away a little money.
"It is enough, finally enough," Daoud began.
"To go home? We will miss you like crazy. Do you think it's safe?"
"What does safe mean, anyway? Why don't you come, too? You could sell that house."
"No, not yet. In some ways it's safer to stay where you know everyone around you is an enemy. Still, I miss them."
"Family?" Daoud asked.
"There has been no word since we left. No one there knows where we are. They must think us dead."
"The world is crazy and everyone knows that. They haven't given you up. Where do they live? I'll try to get word to them."
"Nazareth. My people are in Nazareth."
