wartime orphans

“There are already eighteen children in this room, you must find somewhere else,” the matron said.

“But there is nowhere else. The judge ruled I should come here, this is the prefecture’s letter of admittance,” Narayan brandished his papers.

“Admittance pittance. Go away,” the matron spat, closing the door, “there’s no space for you.”

Narayan stared at the large metal door. His stomach sunk. While government housing had never been perfect, it had got a lot worse since the international charities had all gone kaput, and the remaining saviours had fled. The leftover rectangular buildings were turned into orphanages, or, rather, each office inside of these buildings were turned into privately owned orphanages. Belarus’ revolution was ongoing, the war with Russia had become quotidian thunder and children kept becoming unwanted.

Narayan had known thirty-eight homes. Born in a refugee camp just off of Beirut, a mixed breed thanks to his half-Hindu half-Russian mother and a Palestinian father, his earliest memories were of seawater on the burden boards of the boat. The man running the boat had promised them Italy, which none of them believed but had been willing to pay for. How can you put a price on dreams, on safety? When the boat started to crack, he could remember children wailing, and an old lady fuming in Arabic. Then a safety boat had arrived, and he and his mother were taken to a wide empty beach.

Narayan would have happily stayed in Greece. He had friends to play with and there was a sense of hope which hung in the air like the first mists of summer. There were many people in the camp, some who had lived there for twenty years or more, but Narayan had only ever lived in crowded places. At four years old, he had never known anything but rationed food and stuffy sticky bed-shares. Why, on the day he’d been born, his mother had been asked to vacate her bed early for the next mother-in-waiting.

His mother dreamt of something greater. She knew it might be possible, bravery and hard work and truckloads of luck combined, to have a room of one’s own. Fate smiled on her, it seemed. Taking their survival into her own hands, she got them both Russian passports, and they began their slow travel northwards. Narayan did not know the sacrifices she had made, but moaned constantly of the cold. Their trek to safety, which relied not so much on strangers’ kindness as on the inexhaustibility of debt, led them to Bielorussia.

His mother had cried for joy, and told him to always count his blessings, when they were granted work permits. Narayan was glad that before she died, she had got what she wished for. A room of her own. When the protests had accentuated, and crowds were being shot at, Narayan’s mother had joined the revolution. She died in prison, three years before. Fighting for the freedom of a country she did not belong to.

War had progressed since then. Fear and violence made people ruthless. The worst had happened, the city was on fire, and souls left living bodies to lie flat between cobbles and mud. The revolution and Belarussians hated the Russian army, which held the city under siege. It was well known that they took young children and made them work as errand boys and girls before indoctrinating them into the army.

Narayan was now fourteen years old. Being orphaned was tricky, but it was trickier still when you weren’t disabled or very young. Owners and runners and matrons of orphanages took one look at his quiet face and fired up, dissatisfied eyes -- and turned him away. In some he stayed for a week, but only when honest men or women treated him as free labour.

Narayan wiped the sweat from his brow and considered what his mother would have done. He tucked his papers into his back pocket and walked across town towards the Russian army. Soldiers were strewn across the border and watched him approach warily. Mud caked their tanks, hiding the uncomfortable reminders of communism. There was a smell of burning flesh in the air.

“What do you want?”

Narayan handed them his Russian passport.

“To join you.”