“We are going to have to arrest you, do you understand that?”

“Ma’am, can you hear what I’m saying?”

The officer said this with a bureaucratic monotony that struck me as
somewhat comical and brought back memories of ’90s news presenters
who hardly ever grasped just how hot the world was burning around them.
I looked back at the long and winding road I had just walked. A sea of frail
bodies, running from one monster or another, trailing what little
possessions and hopes remained. Tall maple trees offered unwanted
shade. They stood over us in their old age, older than lines men gave
themselves the liberty to draw across the land separating what was once
whole.

“Ma’am, you are under arrest… All of you… Do you understand that
ma’am?” Her voice echoed as if from far away.

I stared just past her—her face now a blur. I saw others who looked like
me; I had studied their backs while waiting in the long line. It appeared they
had made it through, each hauling their entire lives packed into a suitcase
or two.

“Do you understand English?” She said with irritation.
No reply.
She turned to her colleague and said, “We might need an interpreter for
this one.” Her fingers made this strange sticky sound whenever she
motioned with her hands, as sterile as her medical-grade gloves.
I could feel Rami glare at me from behind. He seemed so far away in this
moment.
“Rawiya,” he said. And then again, in Arabic:
“Rawiya, what is she saying? Why don’t you answer her? Oh God, what do
we do?! Do we go back? Do we move ahead? Will they send us back? Say
something before they send us back!”
I drowned his voice out, as I had learned to do whenever he panicked
about anything—which was a lot of the time.
“No sir! Do not take another step forward,” the other agent said as Rami
prepared to move ahead.
“STOP!” the agent snapped at him forcefully, and Rami heeded, his lower
lip quivering.
A tiny hand tugged at my sleeve—and there she was, in that white handknit sweater my mother and three sisters made for her during our last week
together. Petra, with her big brown eyes, wide as always and hungry for
the world.
Years later, she would come home from school in tears, inconsolable,
asking why everyone in my family had blue eyes except for her.

My arms were tired. So tired. I looked down at my feet as they buckled
beneath me and saw they were covered in blisters. Why the fuck did I pack
sandals for a refugee journey?!
I never wear sandals.
I suppose Moses did on his pilgrimage.
Sandals it is.
I scoured the long road and growing line behind me, people’s faces
genuinely concerned for my well-being. Somewhere in the crowd, I caught a
glimpse of Baba’s face- though I knew it couldn’t be him. He gestured for
me to move along.
My arms hurt.
“Ma’am, are you okay? Ma’am, do you speak—” the officer repeated
slowly.
“Yes,” I whispered in a voice that wasn’t my own.
I started walking toward her, my arms holding out their most precious cargo
as my ancestors must have done years ago in offerings to long-forgotten
gods—for a drop of rain or a beloved male heir.

“No, ma’am, stay back.” There was a panic in her voice.
I understood the words coming out of her mouth. But all I could think of was
the unending stream of images I had ever seen of children being restrained —do they have tiny handcuffs for tiny babies in Canada?
I imagined a scene where I was telling a grown-up Petra how I got her
arrested before she even turned two. It didn’t add up to the story I had
been rehearsing in my mind—how I braved the unimaginable and said
goodbye to everyone and everything I had ever known to get her to where
she’d had a safe and sheltered life for many years.
The officer grabbed Petra with her gloved hands just as I fell to my knees.
“I just need a minute, please.” Finally, a full sentence.
The breath caught in my throat.
I clawed at the dirt. I needed to ground myself in something, or else I would
shatter into a thousand little pieces.
In the ground, I could see a clear line dividing the two halves of me—one
said “Canada” and the other read “The United States of America.” Petra
was in Canada. Half of me was in the United States of America, the other
half in Canada, and Rami was entirely on foreign soil.
I would come to recall this image many, many times for years to come.

I got her here. I did it, I thought to myself.
I got her here, so can I go now? Can I please just get some sleep?
I sank even further into the ground, pressed my cheek to the dirt, and
closed my eyes.
“Get up. You have to get up,” a voice whispered in my ear.
Petra started crying. She searched the strange woman’s face for anything
familiar while the officer looked down at her as though she were some alien
life form.
I wonder what sense her little brain made of this, if any.
“Rawiya, get up!” Rami whispered—but really, yelled at me.
“Get up!”
“Mamaaaa.”
“Ma’am, are you okay? Do you need medical assistance?”
“Rawiya, yalla, get up!”
“Can you get up? Ma’am, do you need assistance?” She got on her radio
and declared, “Let’s get a medic down here.”

“Mamaaaaa.”
Their voices morphed into this loud, screeching train bent on destroying
everything in its way.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe.
“Mama.”
I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. I didn’t need to look up to know it was
Baba. He whispered:
“Get up and walk on. There is no life for you here anymore.”
I didn’t know who I would become on that other side, only that I would not
be the same woman who set out on this journey.
What I didn’t expect was that eight years later, I’d be sitting at my kitchen
table in Toronto, staring down two envelopes- one stamped “Citizenship
Application”, the other marked “Family Court”.