When I’m back in the room Narghes asks if the bathroom was okay, I nod, and try to explain that I didn’t know how to flush. The toilets are squat toilets, what my father called “Turkish toilets,” lined up in stalls. I forget to bring toilet paper with me. I use a plastic jug and fill it from the sink to pour water. Malihé understands, and ushers me to follow her back to the stalls where she shows me there’s a lever to flush. She laughs at my expression of surprise when water gushes through a plastic tube.
We gather on the floor, as Narghes puts the strawberries she carried from Geneva into bowls. There’s also cut-up bananas and melon. Malihé takes out a jug of lassie from the refrigerator and the yogurt she’s made; the lassie is rimmed with something dark; I think mold, but realize it’s a spice, maybe cardamom, and it’s delicious. There’s steamed rice, spinach with garlic, chickpeas, and potatoes. I eat and eat. We are using forks and knives and spoons that we never used when we ate together at the squat; we scooped the food with bread and our finger tips. There’s Malihé’s flatbread, and now, also, cheese. When we’re done Malihé gathers the plates and bowls and I pick up the empty pot of rice when she stops me. Narghes says, “Non, non, on fait pas ça chez nous!” Malihé tells her I’m a guest. “Don’t do work,” she says in English.
There are bowls of sweetened milk and a rice desert Malihé takes from the refrigerator, but I’ve laid down against a pillow on the sponge mat and start to fall asleep. I feel a blanket laid over me. I hear Fatima’s raucous laughter as she watches the Afghan channel. Narghes is on her cell phone and Malihé’s on WhatsApp chatting with someone in Iran. There’s a flash from Narghes’s cellphone as she takes a picture of me almost asleep.
It’s close to dawn when I wake up. I slip on one of the pairs of shoes outside the door and make my way to the toilets. This time I take a roll of paper towel with me. In the bathroom there’s the scent again. I crush the roll to my nose. First world, I think to myself, what if you had to do without for real? Back in the room I notice Unés asleep on the couch, his glasses on the floor. Malihé and Narghes are still up in their bunk. On the floor cell phones are plugged into a power strip of sockets next to emptied shells of melon seeds. I imagine Narghes and Malihé eating the seeds while talking on their phones. I scoop up the shells. Malihé comes down the ladder and points to the bunk for me to go use if I want to sleep some more. I gesture that I’m fine. “Chai?” she asks, pulling her scarf loosely over her head as she opens the window to fields of April’s green.
Maybe this is the scent in the air, the yellow of dandelion, or onions? The brightness of the yellow reminds me of a Van Gogh painting. Malihé spreads the souflan mat on the floor. There is her flatbread and a baguette that she takes from a cloth bag hanging on a hook behind an open window. There is cheese again and more strawberries from the night before and the cut banana slices that now look bruised. Narghes comes down from the bunk and sits with us, we talk of taking the bus into Geneva. We will buy groceries for today’s meal and visit the geyser on the lake. I realize that I’ve forgotten to pack a towel. There were things I brought for the family, things they sometimes asked for while at the squat — hair dye for Malihé and Fatima, a black jean jacket for Narghes, T-shirts for Unés and Ibrahim. Though Malihé has let her hair go white, she nods when I give her the dye. “Swiss good?” I ask, spanning my hands around the room and toward the window. Fatima nods vigorously, putting her hand on her heart. Malihé says, “Iran, no,” and Narghes explains. As asylum seekers, they must stay in Switzerland for five years before they can travel. Malihé is “Status F,” the lowest, or the most basic, migrant category; possibilities for citizenship only come with “Status B.”
An Afghan woman who lives in the next room knocks on the door and hands Malihé a plate with a wedge of sweet bread she’s made. I hear the word “Unan” repeated, which is “Greece” in Farsi; Malihé lets her know this is where I have come from, that I helped get Narghes’s tooth fixed. The Afghan woman had arrived with her youngest daughter from Crete, where her husband and other three daughters still are. I am guessing that she is in her twenties, but maybe she’s younger. Malihé pours chai as they sit talking. Unés looks up from his cell phone with a smile and suddenly asks me how old I am. I’m not sure why I lie. I feel if I say 57 it will surprise them, as I know Malihé looks older than she is, so I say “50,” showing five sets of 10 fingers. Malihé tells me I am young, “Tu es jeune,” she says, and adds in Farsi, “I am younger, but I am old.” Narghes translates. I tell Malihé she’s had a hard life, and point to Narghes and Unés, say five children with my full hand of fingers. She nods. “Il m’a frappé,” she says, and gestures with her fist against her head. I realize she is telling me her husband was part of what made life difficult, that he hit her. I know she was married at 12, because Ibrahim told me, but hearing it from her makes the fact of it newly chilling. “C’est pas bien,” I say, it’s not good, and Malihé nods agreement, “Non, pas bien.” She shows me the same picture she’d shown me in Athens, her child self with make-up, a bride, then tells me she is 43. “J’ai quarante-trois ans. Mais je suis vieille.” I try to say I would be old or “vieille” too if I had had her life. “Tu es mariée?” she asks. I say I am not married, to which she says “Inshallah,” God willing, then, “moi, non,” to emphasize that she doesn’t want another husband.
We take the bus from Anières to the “Plage Genève” stop. Narghes and Unés want me to walk under the geyser. I take pictures. Narghes also wants us to take the boat to the other side of the lake. I’d like to walk some more, though this is more of a pastime for me than for her and Unés. She ushers me away from certain streets, explaining they are the ones with expensive shops; we pass a yogurt stall where we get extravagant, colored combinations. Unés wants his with chocolate chip sprinkles and M&Ms. We go into a pharmacy for something to treat Narghes’s acne and buy Avène liquid soap. We walk into a C&W department store. Narghes spots a yellow spaghetti-strapped dress and I suggest she try it on. I try on a bathing suit, and stare at my middle-aged body. My stomach no longer flat, my thighs and upper arms loose. But it is my skin and body; like the smell that seeped from the toilets in the building, it fills me with a vague revulsion; the body that pees and hurts, eats and ages, still dreams and is conduit to The world you are going to… already in your head. It would be too simple to say I didn’t like what I saw, or what I smelled; what I saw and smelled skewed a construction of reality already in [my] head. I needed to better trust where the road was taking me, remember Brand’s The road knows that wherever you find yourself you are.
Narghes tells me she will not take the yellow dress that looks “terrible” on her, and I tell her I won’t get the bathing suit either. Outside of the dressing rooms we find Unés who hands me a black T-shirt on a hanger and a black baseball cap. “Tu veux ça?” I ask. He smiles sheepishly. Narghes takes the shirt from him when I say I’ll get it for him. We head to the boat and cross the lake. It’s warm and Unés is tired. Once we get to the other side Unés takes off his socks and shoes and puts his feet into the water. Three swans approach us; they keep plunging their gorgeous necks into the water then pull them out fluttering their feathers. Their beaks glisten. I ask Narghes what kinds of shops are on this side of the lake, she says she doesn’t know. We walk to a pebble beach where a swan sits on a matting of twigs and brush. Two boys hang over the guardrail teasing her. I almost say something, but they move on.
“The re– in refuge means basically ‘back’ or ‘backward’ rather than ‘again.’”
The swan is magnificent. Her neck turns as she occasionally gazes at us with large charcoal-rimmed eyes. The last time I was in Geneva, I was visiting Benjamin, and saw the city through his eyes, the world of a professor with various happy advantages. On the pier with Unés and Narghes I was experiencing a different city. We didn’t go into cafés, certainly no restaurants, though we passed plenty of people sitting in both. I’d been warned of how expensive even a cup of tea could be. We had more in common with the swan, exposed as she was to passersby, the lake and city, everything as tangible as the quay’s warm concrete. Narghes said they had visited the area at Christmas with her older brother, Malihé and Fatima, “C’était très joli,” she says, describing how pretty the lighted streets were and how music played the entire time.
In a Coop store we run into Malihlé and Fatima. Malihé’s bright red scarf covers her hair, and Fatima’s glaucoma-filmed eyes are kohl-rimmed. They look happy, wandering the city with a shopping cart now filled with groceries. We greet each other with the gestures and repeated words we used in Athens, and now in this Swiss capital where Malihé and her family have found refuge — “The re– in refuge means basically ‘back’ or ‘backward’ rather than ‘again,’” according to Merriam-Webster. I was here because I was looking back to a place and time we had shared in Athens, one that had brought them, and us, to this day on a map of various tomorrows. It felt as if we had never stopped greeting each other.
At the Anières apartments, I ask Narghes which stall to use in the communal bathroom to take a shower. In the largest stall she puts a plastic chip against the faucet to show me how to keep the water running as they automatically shut off to conserve water. The vague scent of the toilets lingers as I quickly soap, wash, and rinse myself. I’m back in their apartment toweled and dressed when Malihé and Narghes look surprised. “You finish?” Narghes asks. I explain that the plastic chip kept slipping and the water didn’t run continuously. Malihé wants to show me how to place the chip more firmly, the way she showed me where the toilet lever was. She tells me I can now shower, but I say I’m done, and remember the trip to Rhodes when Judi and I took Narghes, Unés, Maedeh, and Amir Hussein on a retreat during the Greek Easter break. Narghes, 13 at the time, had been impressed that we washed the dishes so quickly. “We clean very very,” she had said, showing me that sponging the plates and pans involved a lot of soap and scrubbing. I’d written down the remark along with the fact that the German volunteers who arrived from Hamburg had kept their watches on German time throughout their stay.
When it’s Narghes’s turn, she spends close to an hour in the shower. We’re going to trim her hair. We bought a hair mask, but she forgets to take it into the shower. When she’s back in the room, her hair is bunched in knots. The supermarket-bought shampoo is probably full of chemicals; I say, “C’est pas bon, ça.” I spread the mask into her hair and Narghes smiles at how easily the comb’s teeth glide through the tangled strands. Malihé is again talking on the phone to someone in Iran. Later I ask about Malihé’s sister, who had come with us on the picnic in Malakassa. Elias, her nine-year-old son, had cried when we didn’t take him to Rhodes with us. Malihé shakes her head and gestures. Her sister is now in Germany; two sons are in Austria, a daughter is in Germany, another in Canada; Elias is in Greece with his father. “Pas bien,” she tells me, shaking her head that it’s not good that everyone is in different parts of the world.
I glimpse a woman and a man with a child on Malihé’s cell phone. She shows them who I am through the WhatsApp video cam, then goes back to the conversation. That Malihé is now in Switzerland instead of Greece is little consolation as her loved ones in Iran are her measure of geography. When she’s off the phone she explains, as Narghes translates, that it wasn’t always expensive to cross into Europe. That people, like her eldest son, walked. He was 16. Every year, she says it gets harder, and more expensive. Last year smugglers were taking 4,000-4,500 euros ($4,640-$5,220) per person; now it’s 5,000 ($5,800). Fatima has been watching another burlesque on the Afghan channel, and suddenly smiles at me. I gesture to her that it is nice to be here. Fatima gives me a wide toothless grin, her wrinkles deep as gashes, but her feet, their delicacy and skin, are youthful. Narghes touches the trimmed ends of her hair to her cheeks and tells me they are soft, “Mes cheveux sont très doux.” I pick up the packet of hair mask to say it’s all thanks to this, “C’est tout ça!”
Malihé wants to know if I’d like something to eat. “J’ai toujours faim,” she says, slicing an apple. I’m not hungry and tell her I’ll wait for lunch. She is often with a bowl of nuts and raisins, a plate of cut fruit. As with so many of the women I met at the squat, never far from children, I wonder if this constant giving isn’t what makes Malihé hungry for something that will feed her too. In the days I am at Anières, Malihé is always doing something, folding clothes, sheets or blankets, preparing a meal, on WhatsApp talking to someone in Iran. Now she scrolls through her phone to show me pictures. There’s a man dressed in black, bearded, wearing leather boots, leaning against a car. He looks like he could be a soldier, tall, heavy-set; this was my husband, she says. I ask how old he was when they married; she says 26. He had wanted a lot of children. “Toujours,” Malihé says, this time referring to her childbearing body. But I think she repeats “toujours,” with some bewilderment, as the child who was forced to provide “toujours,” always, for a growing family when she was a child herself.
In one photograph Malihé is 17, in another 29, in another 35; she is very specific about the ages, showing me the different expressions on her face, the styles of dress; sometimes she is without a hijab so I can see her hair cut in a bob. “Pas bien,” she repeats, as in not well, of a photograph of her newly married child self. I nod. She then shows me a picture of an attractive woman who wanted to marry her eldest son, and shakes her head, letting me know she didn’t accept her as a daughter-in-law. I learn it’s a tradition in the culture, the approval of a daughter-in-law by the groom’s mother. There is something shrewd about an arrangement in which a mother would have to approve the woman her son chooses to marry; in an economy that upholds gendered parameters and roles, it gives her a power. Another picture on her phone is of a girl who died. She was 29, “très belle,” a pretty woman. She gets up from the floor to get another bowl of fruit from the refrigerator. Would I prefer pears to the apples she sliced? Again, I say no, but feel Malihé is hurt that I don’t share her appetite, and say “oui, merci.”
The day before I leave Narghes and I take the bus back into Geneva. I tell her I’d like to go to the place she’d shown me on a WhatsApp video. Fatima and Malihé were dancing to a song in Farsi with the backdrop of the Alps; it was not a scene from The Sound of Music but it reminds me of The Sound of Music. We decide to go there after Geneva, where Narghes wants to buy makeup, but first we walk through the botanical gardens with its lush trees and various stone fountains. There are water taps with signs noting, “eau potable.” Narghes delights in drinking from them. I remember the guide in Pompeii telling us how drinking water was everywhere available in that city too. These days companies like Nestle are bottling once-freely available water to sell for profit. Perhaps the measure of a civilization lies in the extent to which it respects its citizens’ basic needs, from water to healthcare. “C’est tout propre ici,” I say to Narghes about how orderly everything looks. There are clearly marked public toilets, bus schedules posted at kiosks as well as bus stops, recycling bins outside shops and cafés.
In the department store Narghes lingers over the foundations and mascaras. She says they don’t allow mascara at school, but she likes to wear it, and tries it on, standing in front of a small mirror. A handsome saleswoman at the Guerlain counter says she has just the creams for Narghes’s acne; she wants to give her a makeover if we have a little time. Narghes nods, smiling as she seats herself in the make-up chair. The saleswoman pulls Narghes’s hair away from her face, and pats her cheeks and forehead with pads dipped in lotion. Tubes of cream come out of a stylish kit. I’m absorbed in the deft application of assorted products as Narghes lets her skin be covered with dabs of a thin-haired brush. The handsome saleswoman is telling us how good all of this is for her face, that Narghes’s skin is so much like mine. We laugh at her assumption that we are mother and daughter. Narghes is enjoying the attention and her skin begins to glow, the acne calmed and camouflaged. I think we might buy the tube of cream and say so to the saleswoman, who produces a second tube saying they go together: the one a therapy, the other a foundation. We follow her to another counter to see exactly what this amounts to. Narghes is happy with her face but takes a deep intake of breath when she hears the price. She tells me there is no need to buy anything. I’m thinking I would like to please her, convinced the acne cream is good. The saleswoman tells us that all Guerlain products are made of natural extracts. I manage to say they are also expensive. I toy with getting one tube. It’s tiny and Narghes is visibly anxious that I might buy it. Narghes and I would like to discuss this further, I tell the saleswoman, who looks disappointed. She lets us know that she’s always at the Guerlain counter and would be happy to help at any point.
As we push through the revolving doors Narghes lets out a loud sigh. I tell her that if she had really wanted the cream, I could have bought it for her. “C’est très peu ça pour l’argent,” she says, meaning we would be getting very little for our money. When we are back on the streets, Narghes lets me know that she doesn’t go into department stores because Mahilé says if they don’t have the money to spend, they shouldn’t be in them. I nod, and say sometimes when we see things, we get ideas. She also tells me that one day she’d like to be a translator or lawyer, or work in a bank.
The sky is dark with rainclouds as we head to the lakefront. We take two buses then walk through an upscale neighborhood with blooming islands of tulips in the middle of the road. Trees loom over high garden walls. Once at the lake Narghes walks to the end of the pier spreading her arms to the sky. It starts to rain, and I want to leave. “Pourquoi?” she asks, “C’est très beau ici!” A full storm is about to break. I insist we make our way back. We walk at a clip along the open fields with their bands of dandelion-yellows, past the perfectly kept tulips, pausing at a bus stop as we decide it would be faster to walk since the next bus isn’t for another 20 minutes. The sky splits open and the downpour begins in earnest. Narghes is smiling. I smile back, but anxiously. There’s thunder and the fields grow dark. Lightning and more thunder continue as we jog the last stretch toward Les Ateliers, soaked. Unés is in the entranceway with a young boy who looks about 10 or 12 and waves at us. Narghes tells me it’s always the young kids that ask to play with Unés.
Malihé laughs as we walk in, drenched. The woman from Afghanistan whose husband is in Crete is there too. She knows I’m leaving the next day. Ibrahim is unpacking a bag of food from the store where the Atelier residents get weekly supplies with their coupons. He tells me that the Afghan woman wants to know if I can help her find a Greek lawyer for her husband. He makes the overnight boat trip to Athens from Crete every week and is told at the asylum offices that his turn has not come up yet; they keep telling him to come back, and he keeps being turned back. Malihé has cooked chickpeas and spinach, and chopped onions, tomatoes and cucumbers into a salad. Everyone’s hungry. Narghes eats from the edge of a serving platter, Unés from the pot. Malihé says the rice isn’t good because the oil is burnt. I say it’s delicious, which it is. Again, Malihé refuses to let me gather the plates. I go to brush my teeth, and when I’m back in the room Unés is smiling as he hands me a gift wrapped in paper. Narghes is smiling too. Unés tells me it is for me to open when I’m back in Athens. I say they didn’t have to give me anything when Narghes says I’ll like it.
The Afghan woman has left and returned, and again there’s cake on a plate which she offers us. I ask her how she came to be in Switzerland. She says she was told it was a good country to live in, that she was looking for a country that would be safe and asked people. I’m struck by the naïveté of her statement, as much as its common sense. She needs to find a Greek lawyer who can speak to her Swiss lawyer. The Swiss lawyer is apparently optimistic but needs to talk to someone in Greece. I know as much to say that if her husband has filed for asylum in Greece, it would be impossible to file elsewhere. No, he had not; he’s waiting to find a way to join her in Switzerland with their children. Malihé is on her phone again with someone in Iran. After she hangs up, she says something happened. Ibrahim translates. A couple had left their sleeping child in the car as they were unpacking it when someone stole the car with the baby in it. Malihé is talking in rapid Farsi, clearly upset. “They forgot the baby?” I say in English. Malihé nods. “How old was it?” I ask Ibrahim. Malihé says two, a girl.
The Afghan woman says something to Malihé, then asks Ibrahim if I’ve understood her request. I tell him to tell her I’ll ask about a lawyer in Athens. I get her husband’s cell phone number and name. I suggest he could stay at the squat instead of going back and forth to Crete. She thanks me, tashakor, she says, and merci, and then offers me cake, but I’ve brushed my teeth, and thank her. She smiles, and takes a slice, “She’s not like us,” Malihé says in Farsi, “hungry all the time.” Ibrahim translates this with a short laugh. “Merci beaucoup,” I tell her. “De rien,” Malihé answers.
The sky is still dark when Malihé comes down from the bunk. She wants to make chai, but I tell her there’s no need. There is cheese in the refrigerator she asks me to take with me. I go up to the bunk where Narghes is sleeping. She wanted to come to the airport and told me to wake her but she’s sound asleep. Ibrahim offers to get me as far as the airport bus that leaves from Geneva. I kiss Narghes’s cheek, and say, “au revoir, Narghes; on se parlera quand je serai arrivée en Grèce,” telling her I’ll call from Athens. She murmurs something without waking. I’m anxious about getting the bus and climb down to see Ibrahim in the doorway with his backpack on his shoulder, waiting. I laugh at how awake he looks. He tells me he’s been up, and can’t sleep when he has something to do. Malihé and I hug in the doorway, “Tu vas revenir?” she asks if I’ll return, and I nod “Oui, merci,” and again she says “de rien,” and again we hug. Ibrahim insists on carrying my bag as we walk down the stairwell.
The sky is streaked in shades of indigo. Dawn light glazes the mountain peaks. The sheep are huddled in their shed as we walk toward the bus stop. Ibrahim tells me of a friend who killed himself, “because of a girl,” he says in English. The girl had left him after a year together. “He was my friend,” Ibrahim says, almost flatly, and then repeats the fact and says “yes,” when I ask if he was a good friend. He tells me he cried a lot. “It’s not worth it for a girl” he says in English, and then in French, “C’est pas grave, non? Pour une bonne amie,” noting that it was unnecessary, he doesn’t understand why anyone would kill themselves for a lover. I ask if he had any family. Ibrahim says they were in Iran, his friend had his papers and was going to bring one of his brothers over. “Now, nothing,” he says, and shakes his head.
We are the only ones at the stop when the bus pulls up. I don’t have the exact change, and the machine isn’t working. Ibrahim has a pass. The driver says “C’est pas grave” and lets me ride without a ticket. We get to Geneva and switch to the airport bus. Ibrahim comes with me. I’m happy he’s decided to come to the airport. He says he takes a bicycle from Anières all the way to Rive, “le vélo jusqu’à Rive.” Sometimes he has so much energy that he bikes the distance. He’s done it several times, met up with pals. They have a drink, then he bikes back.
A sign for a watch repair shop, “Master of Complications,” catches my eye from the bus window. Ibrahim describes the family’s arrival in Switzerland, the five of them with all their bags on a bus. People stared. He laughs. “It’s nothing now to go around,” he says in English, “but then I was afraid, once really afraid.” After a soccer match someone pushed back his shoulder. “Like that” he shows me, abruptly jerking his shoulder backwards. I nod. “Like the Golden Dawn in Greece,” he says, referring to the fascist party that had won parliament seats in the elections that brought the Greek left-wing Syriza government to power. “Now I fight,” he says lightly.
The family had mistakenly ended up on the Italian border when a policeman looked at their papers and brought them to Anières. I ask if he’ll stay for a coffee when we get to the airport. “D’accord,” he says and nods. This is the first time I order a café au lait and realize I’ve wanted to order one for days. “Café au lait et une petite tarte aux framboises,” I say to the young man behind the counter. I’m pleased with the sound of my French. I’ve missed the language. Ibrahim orders “Un chocolat avec un croissant.” He wants to show me pictures on his cell phone of a school excursion to a chalet. He’s with a group of classmates on their winter break; they look like they’re having a great time. “We snuck in some vodka,” he says. “It must have warmed you up. Il fait froid en hiver.” He agrees, “bien oui,” and shows me a picture of himself he’s proud of, him skiing down a mountain slope looking agile and expert.
Unés’s gift is a cloth bag he sewed that opens and closes with a pulled cord. The fabric is light blue with tiny white hearts. Unés had gone with Fatima for a free sewing lesson the day before I left. He said his favorite thing to do was to make bags. There’s also a WhatsApp message from Narghes saying she’s sorry she missed me. Then I get a row of weeping emojis. Her cousin Elias was taken off a plane in a country he doesn’t know; Malihé’s sister had made it to Germany and found a way to send for her son. I remember Elias’s expression when we didn’t take him with us on the trip to Rhodes.
After several frantic messages over WhatsApp, Narghes says the authorities put Elias on a plane to Germany from Austria. For my part, I called a lawyer whose name I found from Judi. When I tell the lawyer about the Afghan woman with her husband in Crete, she’s warm. She will get in touch with the woman’s husband tomorrow. “Me to kaló” I say, “with the good,” a Greek expression; it gives tomorrow a shape.
This lightly edited excerpt originally appeared in Adrianne Kalfopoulou’s collection The re in refuge, published by Red Hen Press in May 2025. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.
