The man takes the passport and flips to the first page. He looks up at Jacob and then down at the passport again. Flips through the pages and is just about push it back to Jacob when he stops and holds it up again.

He looks back and forth from Jacob to the passport. Jacob swallows and tries not to blink. He can feel his armpits break out in a sweat.

The man doesn’t release Jacob from his gaze, as if nailing him into place.

‘Excuse me?’ Jacob asks. His mouth is dry, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Is there a problem?’

The man doesn’t answer; he just holds the passport in front of him, as if to get a better look. Then he meets Jacob’s eyes again. ‘Mr Andersson?’ he says.

Is it better to admit it? Will it matter? ‘Yes?’

The man closes the passport and puts it on the counter. ‘Your passport expires in six months,’ he says. ‘Just so you know.’

He pushes the passport over the scratched grey counter top. Jacob almost thinks he heard wrong, shakes his head in disbelief then grabs the passport.

‘Th-thank you,’ he says. ‘I’ll… make sure it gets renewed.’

He’s almost at the security check now when he feels someone take a hard grip on his shoulder. He spins around and sees a soldier in a beret, a small, efficient automatic rifle hanging across his chest.

Jacob instinctively holds his hands out so that the man won’t perceive him as threatening; the panic is almost paralysing. The man takes a step closer and holds up a backpack. ‘You forgot this,’ he says. ‘At passport control.’

Jacob shakes his head to make all the pieces fall in place. It’s his bag. In all that stress, he forgot it.

He stretches out a shaking hand and takes the bag. ‘Oh. Thank you.’

‘Keep track of your belongings,’ the soldier says. ‘Next time it will be confiscated.’

*

Just after six in the evening, Jacob lands in Brussels, and he’s convinced that his shaky hands and blurry eyes will make the woman at passport control look more closely at his passport, push some little button beneath her counter. But she just glances at him and the passport and waves him on. It’s so easy – he can’t believe it’s really happening, that he managed to escape Lebanon alive.

As he walks through the terminal, he realizes there are even more soldiers here than in Beirut. The Paris attacks just last week have left their mark. It feels absurd, but he slept for most of the flight, exhausted and wiped out after the stress at the airport.

What should he do now? He received no further instructions, just the tickets. Will someone come meet him? And what should he do if not?