The sea stretched out like an endless sheet of black glass, rippling under the weight of too many people and too much fear. The rubber dinghy rocked with every wave, threatening to toss them all into the freezing dark.

Mahmoud sat pressed between his mother and father, little Waleed silent beside him, staring ahead like he was trying not to exist. That wasn’t new. Waleed had learned that silence was safety long ago, back when the bombs first started falling.

Their mother clutched baby Hana tightly to her chest, humming softly—an Arabic lullaby barely audible over the slap of water and the groan of the boat’s seams. Mahmoud could hear the baby’s breathing, fast and shallow. She was wrapped in a towel, damp and cold.

The Turkish smuggler had said the trip would be two hours. That was four hours ago.

“I can’t see the shore anymore,” Mahmoud whispered. His father nodded grimly, one arm around Mahmoud, the other braced against the boat’s edge. “That’s the point,” he said. “We’re in international waters now. No one can turn us back.”

Ahead, someone shouted in Greek. A flashlight beam swept the water. A voice on a bullhorn crackled, too distant to understand. Panic stirred in the boat like a gust of wind.

“Are they rescuing us?” Mahmoud asked.

“Maybe,” his father answered. “Or maybe they’re not.”

Mahmoud looked down at Hana’s face. She was still. Her tiny mouth moved just slightly with each breath. He remembered Aleppo—the sound of shattering glass, of screaming, of silence that followed. And now, they were floating in the middle of a dark sea, between one war and whatever came next.

But at least they were still together.

For now.