We speak with Hannah from the UN in New York for an hour and 15 minutes. She turns out to be kind, not intimidating, which is a relief. She is interviewing Salma, a colleague of mine who is a refugee living in Zaatari, to feature her in an upcoming report about refugee women. Salma understands almost all of the questions, but I translate a few of the more complicated ones. And she says all her answers in Arabic, so I translate them back to Hannah.

The internet gods, amazingly, smile on us the whole time. But people keep opening the door and sticking their heads into the tiny office, and I keep putting my hand up to stop them from coming in while trying to focus on translating what Salma is saying.

This is Part 4 of 4 in my Day In The Life Series. In case you missed them, catch up on Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

The call is all about how Salma came to Zaatari, how she found RWG, how her work with youth in the camp has been and the challenges that come with it. It is nice to listen to her story again even though I know it already. I feel like she and her husband Malik, with as much shit as they went through, are more fine than so many others.

During the Skype, Leen calls me twice, Nadia once, Yasmin once, and Lara once. At one point Yasser comes in and mouths I’m leaving plus something else I don’t catch.

After the call, I step out and see that one car has left and the other is still here. I go searching for my Jordanian colleagues, hoping they have not left me alone for the drive back to Amman. I walk into the kitchen, looking for Sayf or anybody, but I only find my Syrian colleague Malik who says, When is the Aqaba training? Did any of the names get refused?

I almost lose it right here and now, with my frustration and stress and overwhelm boiling to the top, but I don’t. I grit my teeth and say, more snappishly than I intend to, I can’t talk about this right now.

I find Aisha in the library – I’m not alone after all. We can drive back together.

I call Leen back in Amman, trying to sort out what’s happening with the quarterly report. Standing there talking on the phone, I watch the huge crowd of teenage boys – with their ocean wave energy, excited, loud, spilling in all directions – stream into the center for their afternoon sessions of soccer, music, English classes. This must mean it’s after 4:00 pm. Each day we have girls’ shifts and boys’ shifts at the center, and if the late boys’ shift is starting, that means we need to go. We’ll get back to Amman late with traffic.

I get in the car as Aisha gathers her things. Kamal comes over to the driver’s side window.

With no beating around the bush, he tells me, “I think I’m going back to Syria in one month.”

This is shocking to me. I ask him why, how, when. Kamal of all people is not the first one I expected to hear going back. Having defected from the Assad regime’s forces during the war, he will not exactly be welcomed back into Syria with open arms.

He says, “Really, I don’t know. Just I was talking with my mother yesterday and she said Kamal, you have to come back.”

I asked, already knowing the answer, “But you can walk in just like that?”

He shakes his head with a bitter laugh. I don’t dare to ask more follow up questions. He says, “Really, Georgie, I don’t know what to do, I’m just listening to my mother.”

I’m afraid he will get arrested if he goes back to Syria. I think about his wife and daughter Noor. Would they go too?

I say what I always say when I’m at a loss for words: inshallah kheir. This loosely translates to “hoping for the best” or “hopefully it will all be okay.” I hate myself every time I say it.

Aisha climbs in beside me and we pull out of the youth center. I drive too fast over one of the ditches in the Zaatari dirt and the car slams to the ground. Oops. I ease the car forward more gently and we bump our way out of the camp and back onto the highway towards Amman.

On the way we play old Sara Bareilles albums that take us almost all the way back to Amman. Leen and Lara both call at different points and tell me we need to have the report uploaded to the portal by 5:00 pm. I say, I’m driving right now. I’m by the Marka bridge. I can’t do anything about it until I get back to the office. And I silently curse the Yes’s that got me here in the first place.

Back at the office at 5:30 pm, I stomp upstairs feeling overwhelmed. I call Raja, my then-boyfriend-now-husband, which for some reason only makes me feel even more overwhelmed as I struggle to think of what to say about my day. I take yesterday’s half of a takeout pizza from the office fridge and inhale two pieces of it. I open my laptop and work on uploading the report.

I finish around 6:30 pm, then try to triage other things, check the barrage of emails, make a list of what needs to be done tomorrow. The light fades from my office. I hear the sunset call to prayer as night time sets in.

Finally, when I feel I have a grasp on things, I leave the office for the two-minute walk to my apartment, down the street from my office, by way of the liquor store Babel. I know I’ll numb myself with beer this evening. I don’t want to think about the honor killings.

The day has been packed, has already morphed into a blur of faces and conversations and phone calls, but what sticks with me the most is Abu Fayez. I feel angry and completely helpless.

When I get home I open my work laptop and a beer and continue working until 7:30 pm, when the report is finally done. I finish that beer and open another, numbing myself, and it isn’t until later when Raja comes over and I tell him about my day, and he says Yatik al afiya, that sounds like a really overwhelming day, that I finally cry, and release into the air all the worries I’ve been holding inside me.