The Foghorn Echoes is, fundamentally, an epic: the story of two men, two cities, and between them, love and a war. Set in Damascus and Vancouver, it is the second novel from Danny Ramadan, himself a Syrian Canadian and an LGBTQIA+ refugee, and it is one that draws from his life without burdening the novel to conform to that, or to any notion of a “typical” refugee story. Ultimately, Ramadan decided that the scene he shares here, from Hussam’s point of view, wasn’t needed for the novel. “Still,” he writes, “this little gem is dear to me: The room described here is based on my room in my first year of arrival to Canada as a new refugee. The T-shirt he picks rests in my closet; I am too embarrassed to put it on. The moral, which still features in a different capacity in the final text, was inspired by a photo I took walking around Vancouver for the first time. I also had the audacity to tell one-night stands to stay when the morning came.”

— Jina Moore for Guernica

I wake up to the smell of eggs. A shuffling fills my ears. My eyelids are made of steel; they refuse to part. They feel rusty and locked. I squeeze them and try again. My right eye opens for a second before my left. Is my brain misfunctioning? I shield my face with the back of my palm. Too much light. Who opened the curtains? Is Ray making breakfast? What generosity was bestowed upon him overnight? The softness of the bedsheets feels foreign to my home. I finally manage to erase the blurriness in my vision and realize that I am not home. It’s clearly someone’s room in a shared apartment. There is a desk in the corner, a small TV hanging on the wall, and a mirror on the closet’s sliding doors. Oh God. Maybe this guy is living with his parents. I’d told Ray I would never sleep over at anyone’s home. You can sleep with whomever you want, he’d said, as long as you come back home to me. I’d agreed. It’s not like I had much of a choice; if I didn’t sleep at his home, where would I sleep?

My leather harness and jockstrap are tidied up on a little sofa in the corner by the window with opened curtains. I’m somewhere downtown; I can see the Trump Tower through the window. Maybe Coal Harbour? Maybe it’s West of Denman? I can’t tell directions yet. My head hurts. Another hangover.

I try to lift myself up, but my headache feels like a small metallic ball stuck inside my skull, and it keeps hitting on all of the corners, ringing loudly like church bells. BACKDOOR lasted until the early morning hours. Was I smoking weed or cigarettes? There was this guy in a red rubber harness with fluffy pink bunny ears. I held on to them when he gave me head.

“Oh, you’re awake.” The door cracks open, and Bunny Ears Guy walks in with a steaming mug in his hand.

“Hey, you.” I lift myself up and prop the pillow behind me. The metallic ball in my head hits the back of my neck and bounces to my ears. The ringing is impossible to handle.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

Where is my bag? Fuck. All of my clothes are in that bag. Did I leave it in the coat check at the party? I’m fucked.

“I’m making eggs for us.” He sits on the side of the bed, smiling. “Last night was fantastic.” He has freckles all over his cheeks, shoulders, and upper back. He is in homey shorts. “Do you want to wash your face or something?” He hands me the coffee.

“Yeah. I better leave soon.” I hate coffee, but maybe this will help with my headache? I grab the coffee and gulp. It burns my tongue.

“I thought we would have breakfast together.”

“That sounds fantastic.” Ugh, his face lights up. We have a lover on our hands. “Maybe I can wash my face?”

He hurries up and grabs a towel from his closet. He explains that the bathroom is shared, but his roommates are probably still asleep. He asks me to be quiet and directs me toward the bathroom. I tie the towel around my waist, then walk down the hallway and realize that this apartment is a bit familiar. By the time I pass the other bedroom, I realize that I fucked his roommate weeks ago.

I open the bathroom door, and it squeaks. Fuck. I have done this walk down these hallways before. It was at night, and his roommate asked me to keep it down so that I wouldn’t wake Bunny Ears Guy. If only I could remember the roommate’s name. Jason? Jackson? Jacob? It’s a “Jay” of some sort. Half of the gay community are Jays.

I wash my face with soap and cold water, then steal some of the gel I find on a little bathroom shelf and do my hair. Now my only challenge is that I probably don’t have any clothes on me. Walking around Davie Village at eight on a Saturday morning in a leather harness and jockstrap will get me arrested.

I tighten the towel around my waist and exit the bathroom, avoiding the cracked door of Just Jay’s room. I run into Bunny Ears Guy outside his bedroom door. He smiles as he carries a tray with a plate of eggs and a fork and a knife, cornered with a small paper towel.

“Breakfast in bed?”

I shush him and rush inside. He walks in, and I close the door after him.

“Thank you…” I pause long enough, hoping that he will remind me of his name, but he is oblivious to my attempt. I grab the plate of eggs, then sit on the side of the bed and eat quietly while he sits on the small sofa, smiling. These eggs now taste plasticky. I just want to go home.

“Hey, so did you see my bag?”

Bunny Ears Guy is confused. He looks like the kind who would be confused by literally anything.

“You didn’t have a bag on you when we left BACKDOOR yesterday.”

Fuck. I must have left the bag in the coat check. I got in a cab with only my leather harness and jockstrap on? I must have been seriously fucked up.

“So, can I maybe borrow a pair of jeans and a T-shirt?” I ask Bunny Ears Guy. I don’t want him to think that we are building some sort of a connection. Next he will offer me a fucking drawer in his room.

“Why are you in such a rush?” he asks. “Stay for a bit? Maybe we can fool around?”

“I don’t feel well.” I’m not lying. “Maybe some other time?”

“Oh, c’mon. Just stay. Let me shower first, and maybe we can go out together for a walk on English Bay. The sun is out. Maybe it will help you feel better?”

I’m a fucking hostage here. I need a hostage negotiation expert. How do I get the fuck out of here?

“Yeah, sure. A walk would be fantastic,” I lie. “Maybe you should shower first. I will finish my coffee, then shower. Then we can walk.”

Bunny Ears Guy grins. He stands up, grabs a towel from his closet, and heads out. He stops by the door, then turns to me and throws me an air-kiss.

“I can’t believe I met you, Sam,” he says, and waits for me to reply.

“I can’t believe this is happening, handsome.”

He rushes to the bathroom. The minute he is out of the room, I jump to the closet and pull out the first pair of jeans I can find. I slip them on. They’re tight. Fucking twinks and their nonexistent asses. I pull my tummy in and buckle up. I grab the first T-shirt I find; it has a picture of a hairy-chested Mario in leather gear. Fucking sexy Super Mario. I throw the T-shirt on the bed, then pull out a plain one and put it on. At least I didn’t lose my fucking boots. They’re in the corner; I slip them on with no socks. I grab my leather harness and my jockstrap and exit the room.

“Sam?” Fuck, it’s Just Jay. He walks out of his bedroom into the hallway and finds me there. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m just leaving,” I tell him and head for the door. I open it, slip outside, press the call button, and wait by the elevator. It doesn’t show up. The door opens behind me in the hallway. By the time the elevator comes, I’m already halfway down the emergency staircase. At every turn of the stairs, I look up, hoping that no one is following me. At the final turn, right before I open the exit door, I look up one last time, and my father’s face appears at the top of the stairs. He is looking down at me. I pause. Is he really there? He suddenly slips from the top of the stairs and falls down, as if he has been pushed down the stairs. He is falling down upon me, and I see his face: menacing, remembering.

I open the exit door and run out.

On Georgia, the buses rush past, and the traffic lights take their time before switching to the walking white man. I cross the street to the Shangri-La. There are a couple of people cleaning tables at the ground-floor restaurant, and they all look up; they are all copies of my father, grinning. I look the other way and pass by a wall mural. It’s a map of the world covered with colorful threads. Each part of the world is connected with mutely colored yarn to another part. The map lights up at night; I’ve seen it before. But for now, it is dimmed, the threads quivering a bit in the morning breeze. Europe and the Americas are painted red, while the Middle East is painted blue. Some of the threads are only attached to one side of the map. They fall off and gather on the ground with no purpose. There is not a single thread connecting Syria to anywhere else. The little country on the mouth of Asia Minor sits disconnected. To Vancouver, there are at least dozens of threads coming from all over the world: from Australia and Europe and even Mexico and Egypt.

I wish I had a ladder. I wish I could just go up the wall and grab one of these threads and connect it to Damascus, then extend it all the way to Vancouver. I want it to be a tightrope, strong enough for me to balance on.

Another gust of wind shakes the threads. It gets under my stolen shirt and freezes my skin. I pull my shirt down and keep on walking.

Danny Ramadan’s second novel, The Foghorn Echoes, is out now from Canongate Books.