“And no one wants that.”

“Correct. We want them to get up again, and they are learning. How to have new lives. Here, in this small city, in this big country.”

Tom was thinking of the considerable effort his friend was making while trying to carve his own new life in a different—as he called it—system. The Canadian system. Always new things to figure out. Even the smallest things, Tom was realizing.

He stood now, and followed Allam back to the main room.

As they passed the tables where the children were drawing and painting, Tom looked over the shoulder of a boy of six or seven who was hunched over his art. With coloured pencils, he had drawn a woman lying on her back, her mouth open. Her dress, a Western dress, was torn, one leg awkwardly bent. Maroon-coloured blood was seeping from her head. Odd-shaped bombs were falling from the sky over the roof of a building. The boy was slashing strokes of grey rain over the entire scene.

The young woman in charge was suddenly beside the child. She pulled up a chair, lifted him onto her lap. The boy closed his eyes and allowed himself to be rocked.

Allam was frowning and gestured to Tom to follow. The young woman sang softly while she continued to rock the child.

“Once in a while,” said Allam, “a certain kind of story comes from memory, what you see here. We hope the children will express what they must, but with no one forcing.” He shook his head in sadness. “After a time—short or long—maybe this same child will come someday here and draw a house, a big yellow sun, green grass, a bird. Like a normal child. It is what we hope for when the children are healing. We try to pass on hope.”

Tom examined the paintings and drawings pinned to a board as they walked along the side of the room. What interested him was the way the children drew rooms, beds, private spaces of their own, damaged or not. Backgrounds depicted both Syria and Canada—it was easy to tell which was which. A jagged hole in a house showed a bed against the wall of a shattered room. A stuffed elephant lay on its side beside broken furniture. In another, the entrails of a house without a front were blatantly exposed. In the same drawing, a mattress hung over the edge of the floor in a child’s upstairs room. A stick child was holding a blanket and peering out. Tom could not help thinking of Will’s childhood and how privileged it had been. He wondered if Will realized this, too.

AFTER LEAVING THE WAREHOUSE, he drove the Jeep to a different section of town. Again, Allam gave directions; he really did know Wilna Creek’s streets and turnoffs. The items they’d packed into the car were to be taken to a three-bedroom bungalow that was being prepared for a sponsored family scheduled to arrive the following week. Allam had a key to the front door, and he and Tom began to unload. Tom immediately saw that there was still a need for small items: coat hangers, bedside rugs, glasses, extra chairs. He had two TVs at home and would bring one with the next load.