She gets off the train at the top of Tunel in the middle of the pack. It’s about ten o’clock in the morning. She knows most illegal migrants move about in early morning or late at night, so she figures moving about at ten in the morning will fool them, make any cops think she’s legal.

She is not a smart girl. But she has thought of this. Truth to tell, she would be a good addition to a country willing to take her, as most of the migrants in holding patterns here in Istanbul are – they’re the ones who did something, who showed initiative and got out of whatever hellish situation they were in, they’re willing to suffer hardships and work hard to get to America, to Canada, to Europe. 

But of course no country would take a 19-year old Moroccan girl who’s now three months pregnant by the human smuggler who dropped her off with the others on the Turkish coast one night, telling them it was Italy and to go over the side. Especially since she has no passport, no papers, no skills and nothing except a burning desire to get to a better life. 

Coming out to the tram stop at the end of Istiklal Caddesi, the great pedestrian boulevard at the heart of Istanbul, she sees the police car parked in front of the Kaffee Haus, the place run by an Austrian couple who were nice to her the first time she was here. She had to leave soon after with a group making another run for the Greek border – although she’d hated to leave such a good job, they’d actually paid her – and hadn’t had time to thank them for the work and their kindness. She’s too embarrassed to go back now – and there’s the police car.