Summary
Narrated in the third person by an unnamed limited-omniscient narrator, Refugee begins with a chapter from the point of view of Josef Landau, a 12-year-old Jewish boy living in Berlin, Germany, in 1938. In the middle of the night, seven Nazi Brownshirts—Hitler’s “storm troopers”—break into the family’s home and arrest Josef’s father for continuing to practice law in contravention of a 1933 law prohibiting Jews from the profession. The men make fun of Josef for having peed himself and threaten to take him to the same concentration camp as his father. Josef and his family later learn that Josef’s father was one of thousands of Jews taken to concentration camps that night, on what would be known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Six months pass before Josef’s family hears from Josef’s father in a telegram. He has been released from the Dachau camp and ordered to leave the country. Josef doesn’t want to leave his home country, but his family doesn’t want to wait to see what the Nazis will do to them next.
In 1994, outside Havana, Cuba, a barefoot Isabel Fernandez feeds a starving cat. It is hungry, as is everyone in Cuba. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, communist Cuba’s economy has been suffering without the support of the larger communist network. Sugar cane is Cuba's main crop and there are US-led embargoes preventing countries from trading with Cuba. Isabel's neighbor Iván and his father are building a secret boat in their shed so they can sail to the US. Isabel’s father has been jailed by the Fidel Castro government for a year for trying to leave via boat. Isabel goes to play her trumpet in the city, busking for pesos from European and Canadian tourists. While listening for the clave beat, she hears breaking glass.
In Aleppo, Syria in 2015, 12-year-old Mahmoud Bishara tries to survive by going unnoticed by others, his hoodie pulled low to hide his face. Prior to the wave of protests known as the Arab Spring coming to the country in 2011, Aleppo had been a shining, modern city in the Middle East. The country is run by the fearsome Bashar al-Assad, a man who makes his enemies “disappear.” While the rest of the Middle East protested, most Syrians stayed inside, waiting to see what would happen. But when the public eventually poured into the streets demanding the release of political prisoners and for more freedoms, Assad turned his military on his own people. On his way home from school, walking his younger brother Waleed by the hand, Mahmoud sees two boys roughing up another boy and stealing his bread. Mahmoud knows he should help, but he turns and takes another route home.
In 1939, Josef and his family leave Berlin on a train. They have yellow Star of David armbands to mark them as Jews. They also sit in a segregated train compartment reserved for Jews. They plan to meet Josef’s father on the north coast and board a ship bound for Cuba, the only place that will take them. The US only lets in a certain amount of Jews every year, so they plan to wait for their turn in Cuba. Most other countries have stopped admitting Jewish refugees. On the train, Josef remembers how his teacher taught the class about the physical differences between Jews and Germans, using Josef as an example of how to spot a Jew. Josef doesn’t think he looks any different from other Germans. To test his theory, he removes his armband and walks through the other train cars, buying a newspaper from a German man who treats him normally. Josef knows that if it weren’t for the uniforms and armbands, everyone would get along like they used to. When his armband falls from his pocket, a Hitler Youth about Josef’s age steps on it, then brings Josef back to his compartment. Josef worries the Gestapo will punish his family for his action.
Isabel puts her lips to her trumpet. Just then, a pistol fires and shirtless men rush into the streets, overwhelming the few police officers on the Malecón. Havana is rioting, with men chanting for freedom and rocks and bullets flying through the air. Isabel stands on a car and tries to see her father, who she witnesses being arrested by a cop. She rushes through the crowd and finds the cop beating her father with a nightstick. She jumps between them and the cop rears back to hit her, but Iván’s older brother, Luis, who is also a cop, stops the man’s arm. As Isabel’s grandfather arrives to take Isabel and her father home, Isabel understands her father must leave Cuba—tonight.
At home, Waleed and Mahmoud take a break from watching cartoons and doing homework to wash their hands and roll out their prayer mats. They pray to Allah for about seven minutes, facing Mecca. While returning to his homework, Mahmoud hears an incoming missile. The apartment wall explodes. His ears ring and he can’t breathe. He pulls himself up from the rubble, knowing he must get to his sister, brother, and mother. When he stands up, he realizes that the entire outside wall of their apartment is gone.
The Hitler Youth member leads Josef past the compartment with a Gestapo officer in it. He pushes Josef into the Jewish car and whispers, warning him to never do that again. Josef thanks him profusely, grateful he hasn’t told the adult Nazis. At the Hamburg docks, Josef’s family goes to board the MS St. Louis. Josef doesn’t recognize his father when he sees him; Aaron Landau looks like an escapee from a mental asylum, smelly and disheveled and thin. Although they have tickets, Aaron insists they run up the ramp; he says they’ll try to take them away otherwise. He does so; Josef’s mother apologizes to the porters and sailors and shows her ticket. They say they understand and treat her with politeness, even though they are Germans. Once on board, Aaron says it’s a trick and they will come for them soon. Josef’s mother sends the children up to the promenade. Josef worries, thinking about what his father must have seen to make him act so scared.
Back at home, Isabel’s pregnant mother tends to her father Geraldo’s police-inflicted wounds. He says the riot started because the authorities ran out of food rations too quickly. He needs to flee again. The narrator comments that the current US "wet feet, dry feet" policy determines that refugees caught at sea are taken to be held in a refugee camp in Guantanamo Bay, a US naval base at the southern end of Cuba; refugees who evade US Coast Guard capture and arrive on land with “dry feet” may become US citizens. On TV, Fidel Castro appears to condemn the riot, claiming US agents agitated it. He announces that any boundaries for Cubans wishing to leave will be removed. Isabel’s father’s eyes widen. Isabel says they can all go together. She then runs next door to say they have to take her on their boat. Iván’s father says he needs gas. Isabel brings her trumpet to the house of a local fisherman who has gasoline for his boat. She trades the trumpet for two large gas canisters.
Mahmoud stares out at the sky beyond the blown-away apartment wall. Waleed, Mahmoud’s mother, and sister Hana are all alive. When the floor shifts beneath them, they leave the ruined building. From the street, they watch it collapse along with the buildings on either side. Mahmoud’s father runs down the street, relieved to see the family is ok. He says they’re leaving Aleppo and they should have left ages ago. He plans to sell their car in Turkey and make their way to Germany. He saw on the TV that they’re accepting refugees. He confirms with his wife that she grabbed the cash they’ve been saving.
Six days after having left home, Josef and his sister are enjoying the paradise-like MS St. Louis. Ruthie has seen her first cartoon on board during movie night. All 908 passengers are Jews, but no one wears armbands or is segregated. The children befriend two girls named Renata and Evelyne. They discuss Josef’s upcoming thirteenth birthday, which is traditionally celebrated with a bar mitzvah. After finding a bar of soap, they make a door handle so slippery that a porter drops his tray while fumbling with the knob. They watch from a distance, laughing. Josef realizes he hasn’t laughed like this for many years and wishes they could stay on the ship forever.
Analysis
In the opening chapters of Refugee, Alan Gratz introduces the three protagonists while establishing the novel’s major themes: displacement, prejudice, survival, visibility, self-sacrifice, support, and trauma. The first storyline concerns Josef Landau, a German Jewish boy whose middle-class family is displaced from their home and country because of the Nazi Party’s anti-Semitic prejudice in the lead up to WWII. Although they are reluctant to leave the country they have always known, political forces beyond their control turn the Landaus into refugees.
In the second storyline, Isabel Fernandez’s family is caught up in the 1994 Cuba rafter crisis, which saw the exodus of over 35,000 Cubans leaving for the United States on homemade rafts and watercraft. As with Josef, political forces beyond Isabel’s family’s control contribute to her displacement; however, the pressures are based on economics rather than religious persecution. That said, Isabel’s family still faces the threat of an overbearing political regime, which she fears will crack down on her father and imprison him unless they escape soon. To ensure his safety, Isabel make the self-sacrificial gesture of trading her prized trumpet for the gasoline needed for their crossing.
The third storyline Gratz introduces follows Mahmoud Bishara, a twelve-year-old Syrian boy living in Aleppo in 2015, which has become a war zone since the breakout of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. Gratz builds on the themes of survival and visibility with the narrator’s commentary on Mahmoud’s attempt to make himself invisible so as not to attract unwanted attention from people who might rob, bully, or harm him. With so many belligerents involved in the war, dividing allegiances across the country, Mahmoud finds it best to evade notice and make friends with no one.
The theme of visibility also arises in Josef’s storyline when he and his mother and sister ride the train out of Berlin. Frustrated that Hitler’s anti-Semitism has given rise to a circumstance in which he and his family are confined to a segregated train car, Josef considers how the supposed physical traits of Jews seem invented. To test his theory that no one will know he is Jewish, he removes the yellow Star of David armbands the Nazis forced German Jews to wear in the lead up to the war. Josef discovers that the white Germans on the train treat him with politeness and respect when his Jewishness isn’t displayed on his arm.
The theme of displacement comes up in Mahmoud’s storyline when his family’s apartment is made uninhabitable by an airstrike. Having stubbornly held on as long as they could, trying to go about their usual lives amid war, the Bisharas reluctantly decide they must leave Syria if they hope to survive. Luckily, Mahmoud’s parents have saved cash to prepare for an escape, and they begin the dangerous journey through several countries to reach safety in Germany, which at the time was among the most welcoming of the European countries to Syrian refugees. In an instance of situational irony, the country that pushed out the Landaus in 1939 has become a champion for displaced people in 2015. Similarly, the Landaus are seeking sanctuary in Cuba fifty-five years before the country has become inhospitable for Isabel’s family.
