When they left for Buenos Aires, Dehlia and Itzhak were grilled by friends and relatives about why they would go to a place in such economic disarray. “It’s actually turning around for them,” they said. “The shekel will go far, and the rockets cannot reach.”
“It’s been a good year,” their friends said, meaning not that many bombings. Meaning: how can you leave home?
“It will continue to be one,” Dehlia and Itzhak answered, and raised their glasses.
In Argentina the streets still showed signs of riots, but the glass had been cleaned up and stores were opening, and there was no waiting around for life to come to them. At the synagogue they met Jewish families who had them over for shabbat, though they’d never made it a priority to celebrate back in Israel. Shmuli and his little brother made friends, started rolling their tongues with ease. They played soccer in the streets and the parks, which would make the grassy fields of Shmuli’s future university’s intramural fields a luxury.
He would become fast and limber, bold in the way he threw himself at the ball on that luxurious grass, not having to fear for scrapes and cuts. A girl on his co-ed team would at first laugh at his movements, then feel a tingle of anticipation before their games, longing to see him again. The temporariness of his visa would cause her anxiety even before they were together, and eventually, when he had to cross a border yet again, she would decide how her life, too, would be shaped by migration.
But that would come later, after he learned to sit parallel to the table, after Spanish imprinted itself into him, after that little room in which he waited a mere half hour, and, without a hand clamped to his mouth, without anyone hunting him down, without him having to flee, his passport was stamped, and he was waved through into the country.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adi Alsaid is the author of several young adult novels, including Let’s Get Lost, Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak, and We Didn’t Ask for This. He was born and raised in Mexico City and now lives in Chicago.
More books from critically acclaimed author
ADI ALSAID!
More books from Adi Alsaid:
We Didn’t Ask For This
Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak
North of Happy
Never Always Sometimes
Let’s Get Lost
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ISBN-13: 9781488069383
Come On In
Copyright © 2020 by Adi Alsaid
All the Colors of Goodbye
Copyright © 2020 by Nafiza Azad
The Wedding
Copyright © 2020 by Sara Farizan
Where I’m From
Copyright © 2020 by Misa Sugiura
Salvation and the Sea
Copyright © 2020 by Lilliam Rivera
Volviéndome
Copyright © 2020 by Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Trip
Copyright © 2020 by Sona Charaipotra
The Curandera and the Alchemist
Copyright © 2020 by Maria E. Andreu
A Bigger Tent
Copyright © 2020 by Maurene Goo
First Words
Copyright © 2020 by Varsha Bajaj
Family Everything
Copyright © 2020 by Yamile Saied Méndez
When I Was White
Copyright © 2020 by Justine Larbalestier
from Golden State
Copyright © 2020 by Isabel Quintero
Hard to Say
Copyright © 2020 by Sharon Morse
Confessions of an Ecuadorkian
Copyright © 2020 by Zoraida Córdova
Fleeing, Leaving, Moving
Copyright © 2020 by Adi Alsaid
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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