Refugee Prison Break

Chapter 15

It took days to get over the set back. By the next weekend, however, I was back to working on ideas of how to raise funds. The one I was reluctant to do, but which seemed the only realistic option I had left, was to take out multiple loans and credit cards. It would destroy my credit rating in the long run, but as long as they worked for a few weeks, the duration of my plan, I would be OK. I was busy making a list of lenders and card companies to apply to.

A few days later, as I was preparing to leave my apartment for work, a courier knocked on the door. In the middle of tying my hair back, I answered and signed distractedly for the package. It looked like any other delivery of an online purchase, and was the size of a large shoe box, perhaps one that contained boots. It was probably something my mother ordered for me, I thought, like a dress. She was always critical of my clothing. I set it on the table and headed to work—I was late.

I totally forgot about it during the day. When I returned, I grabbed a pair of scissors and sliced away the tape holding the folds together. As I opened it up, I gasped in shock.

I couldn't believe my eyes. There were stacks of American dollar bills! One hundred stacks, to be precise, each containing one hundred bills, and each bill representing twenty bucks. That meant... I had to recount the stacks to confirm what I had calculated... That meant the box contained two hundred thousand dollars!

There was no note saying who it was from or what it was for. I tried taking the box apart to find a secret compartment, but none was forthcoming. Pure, anonymous cash—I was suddenly in possession of pure, anonymous cash.

I turned to the mail I had collected on my way in. There were the usual flyers and post marked with corporate insignia, but there was a medium sized envelope that had caught my attention. I snatched it up and ripped it open. Inside, I found a passport, and a wad of roughly twenty sheets of paper. I felt like a secret agent!

The passport was for a man who looked like Ali but who had a different name. If there had been any doubt as to whether Noor and the Sarraf family were the ones who sent the package, this was confirmation. I understood immediately—once Ali was out, all he needed was this passport and a plane ticket home.

Going through the sheets of paper, I skimmed hundreds of names listed alongside dates and mysterious numbers. The names were arranged alphabetically, so I flipped through to near the end. And there he was, nestled between a Yuniesky and a Zan, "Zaidi, B.," my fresh-faced, troubled childhood sweetheart! I covered my mouth in disbelief. I checked to see if Ali was where he was should be, and, of course, he was.

One column of numbers corresponded to room labels on the last sheet of paper, a barely legible plan diagram of the building I had become so familiar with—the Florida detention camp. Now I had both Bas's and Ali's locations within the compound. I leapt in the air in excitement—it was on!