They come on trains; they come on buses; they come on planes to our municipal airport. A handful even arrive on foot, having walked the whole distance to our City with what scant possessions they could carry on their backs—only a few, to be sure. But more than have ever walked away.

Sometimes it is just a young woman, just a young man alone. Other times they come as families, whole or broken, huddled together on the train and whispering in languages that our City has never heard before. Sometimes it is only a single old man, sitting solitary, staring into space, an old man who has lost everything and everyone.

Some of them cry, when at last they set their eyes upon our City—its towers and its boulevards and its swallows soaring by the sea. Some of them stop, and stare. Some of them even kiss the ground, which is of course embarrassing to see, but who could fault them for it? For all they know, all the peace and joy and pleasure of the City—our City—comes from the ground itself.

They don’t know. Not yet. How could they?

They come from all nations, from all peoples. They wear all manners of clothes, speak all manner of languages, for there are no places in this entire world untouched by war.

(Except for one.)

All of them are welcome. No one in the city would fault them for their differences, none of us is jealous of our splendor or our plenty—our parades and our farmer’s market and our clamors of bells and our remarkably good television—as much as all of it is ours, then it is ours to share.

Do you believe it? That this City, our City of towers and bells and festivals, welcomes all who come to us at last? The world being what it is, I would not blame you if you didn’t. But it is true. We welcome them. Of course we welcome them! What would our City be, if it did not welcome the poor, the immigrant, the widow and the orphan? Not our City, not the City, whose beauty and whose brilliance is known the whole world over.

Once, I am told, each arrival of refugees was greeted with a peal of the great bells, a proper sort of peal which set the swallows soaring, just the sort that still begins our Festival of Summer. But there are so many refugees, these days, with the world being what it is. And they arrive at all manner of times, in all manner of ways. If we rang the bells every time a refugee arrived, they would never stop ringing, and then where would the swallows nest?

So, instead, if you will believe it, we have brought them into our parades. For each month, for each particular Festival, there are amidst the processioners, behind the elders (robed, in mauve and gray), between the master craftsmen (stern-faced) and the young mothers (happy, laughing), there are the newly-arrived refugees, looking this way and that, their faces masks of innocent joy and wonder at the beauty of our City, at the simplicity of the procession, at the cheers that go up from the crowd as they proceed by.

What no one tells them—not because it is a secret, not exactly—is that when we look upon their faces, we can see for a moment our own childhoods, before we knew about the basement. We can see their wonder at the brilliance of our City and all its customs, untainted by the knowledge of their price.

They do not know. No one has told them. Even though there are no secrets in the City, not exactly—but to tell them would mean remembering that one awful day, that one terrible field trip you took when you were barely still a child. And what kind of City would we have, if we spent all our days remembering the worst of them? No, it is better not to think of it. Better to let them have their joy.

Life is not all parades and processions, of course. There are also the everyday necessities of life that matter just as much or more. There are, in our city, any number of clubs and churches and benevolent societies, not to mention all those elders who are disposed to be neighborly (whether clad in mauve and gray or in more casual attire). We are not a large City, nor are we a wealthy one, but we find places for them regardless. We open our houses, our spare rooms, our little cottages out back. These days, when there are more of them arriving every day, we have even built a few apartments—not the dreary gray assemblages that you’re envisioning, either, but comfortable places with joy and light and communal gardens and no more than five stories to walk up. Apartments big enough that, if they have come as families, every child that wants to can have their own room.

What kind of place would this City be, if every child here could not have their own room?

We even find jobs for them, at least the ones that want to work. They don’t have to work, of course. No one in the city has to work. Even our stern-faced master craftsmen labor by their own will and no one else’s. But the refugees, the immigrants—they do not come from cities like our City. Sometimes it makes them feel better, to have a job. And so we find halls for them to clean or gardens for them to weed or doors for them to open. No one needs to do it—but they do it all the same.

It isn’t simply habit, I think, that drives them to take jobs. It is gratitude, to us and to our City. For all our splendor and peace that they do not know the cost of.

It is not their fault, after all. No one has told them yet.

Some of them—many of them, even—do not stay long. They come for a few months, for a year, for two until, by some miracle, their homeland finds its way to peace. (Peace is always a miracle, of course. Even here, where we are accustomed to it.) Or, if not to peace, then at least to some stillness, perhaps a ceasefire, at least a moment of reprieve, and that is enough for them to pack all their things, to say their goodbyes to the neighbors, to the processions, to the farmer’s market and the train station and the sea and to the clamors of the bells that set the swallows soaring. We see them off, of course: We gather and hug (if they want to be hugged) and cry (although not to excess, lest they feel guilty for the leaving that they are well-entitled to.) Then they depart for home, carrying with them their memories of our City and all its joy and pleasantries, never knowing the price of it, so much the better for them.

Many of them leave. But, of course, many of them stay. Perhaps their homelands have never found their way to peace, or perhaps that peace—found at last, at last—has no place left for them. Perhaps there is no one left of their people in all the world, except in our City and some neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Is that too much for you to believe, that a whole people could be wiped out, except for those who fled to our City and some neighborhood of Minneapolis? I know that you do not want to think about it. But it is true. It happens every day.

After a few years, or even a few years more, when they have at last given up all hope of returning home—or, let us not be so dreary about it, let us say instead: When they have chosen us, when they have chosen our City, when they choose to live here for the rest of their lives, when they choose to raise their children with our children, to love and hope and proceed in every festival, not as immigrants, but as young mothers (laughing, happy) or as master craftsmen (stern-faced) or even as naked youths (riding wild horses with ribbons braided in their hair), when they have chosen, at last, to join to make our City into their City, then no matter how much we might wish that it was not necessary, no matter how much we might wish to delay for another day, another year, another decade, when they decide at last to stay then it is time for them to know.

There are no forms to fill out, no papers to file. It is not that our City has no laws, but we have singularly few of them, and there are none concerning immigration. For us, citizenship has never been a matter of a passport or an examination or a loyalty pledge. In our City, all are welcome! In our City, there are no costs to pay, except the one.

We take them in groups. Once upon a time, it was something that a friend would do for a friend, taking them to the basement to see and learn and know. But there are so many of them now, and it was too much altogether for our people, for our happy lives. We should not have to see that basement except for once. So now, if you will believe me, we take them in big groups, just as if they were us as schoolchildren, accompanied by a single volunteer.

It is better this way. At least, it is easier.

She leads them down the stairs, into the basement. They see there, just as we saw there once, a child, locked in its own room, that child, filthy and maltreated, simple-minded and scared of a mop and begging, pleading, promising to be good. The woman who leads them down is middle-aged, and kind-eyed, and every time she sees the child she blinks back tears. But she does not help the child. She does not utter a word of kindness, she does not even for a moment come to its aid. Because she knows, as we all know, that without that child, without its suffering, there would be no City. There would be no processions of citizens, no farmers markets, no clamors of bells that set the swallows soaring, no last place in our entire world yet untouched by war.

She knows that without the child, there is nothing. So she shows them, all the immigrants, and she blinks back her tears, and she does nothing else besides.

When they see the child, the immigrants understand at once the price that they have paid. They are not stupid. They must have noticed the quiet looks, the gestures, the hushed whispers. They must have known that this City held a secret or, if not exactly a secret, then at least as good as one.

They do not cry, when they see the child, not even when it begs and mewls. They watch, serious, their faces set. One of them, perhaps an older woman, perhaps who once had children of her own, goes over to their volunteer and brushes away her tears, maybe even hugs her. The rest merely watch. Perhaps an old man nods, at last understanding the course of things.

No, if you will believe me, they do not cry. But they do not laugh, either, even though they might. Even though no one would blame them. The children they have seen! Children weak with hunger, children not yet dead and crawling with maggots, girls burning with napalm, babies bayonetted in their cribs, boys with guns taller than themselves, boys who have killed and killed and will kill again. Or even, if you do not believe that they could have seen such things, even with the world being what it is, then at least they have seen a child beaten, a child crying, a child without supper, a child afraid to set foot in their own home.

It does not matter if you believe it or not. There is not one among them who has not seen a child hurt.

One of them, a young woman, a mother, remembers the child she held at her breast, with all her family pressed around her beneath the floorboards, the wet and rotten earth pressing against them, while above them the soldiers ransacked the house, the soldiers that screamed and laughed of the murder and rape that would be their due. She remembers—of course she remembers, how could she forget?—how the baby, not even her baby, her sister’s daughter, began to fuss, and how she held her hand against its mouth. If it cried, if it even fussed, the soldiers might hear and then—and how she held her hand against its mouth until she felt that baby twitch, until she felt its breath grow soft and then still. She remembers afterwards, two days later when the soldiers at last gave them up for dead, when her sister held her daughter’s tiny corpse and would not even cry.

She remembers that, as she looks at this child. She looks, and thinks that she might cry, but she will not. Not here, in this foreign land where one child in a basement with enough to eat is an atrocity. Not here and not her, when her sister refused to shed a tear.

None of them cry, except the volunteer. None of them laugh, either. They understand, I think, how solemn this matter is for us. After enough time has passed—ten minutes? half an hour? no more than an hour, surely—they file out of the basement and make their way back to their houses, their apartments, their gardens and their children and their jobs. If they have thoughts, they do not share them. At least not with us who were born here—for now they are just as much citizens as we are; now our City is their City, as fully as it can ever be; now they know the cost of it—for even though we do not forget, we prefer our customary silence.

That is, at least, a mercy that they give to us. We have all paid prices, for our City. Compared to the prices they have already paid, this price of silence is no price at all.

None of them walk away, although they have every right to. Where would they even go?

And so, they stay. And so, they live. But a few of them, just a few, have certain ways. There is a middle-aged man—he came alone, whatever family he had is left long behind—who walks now at the head of each procession, singing songs of his old country. No one stops him, even if by right the elders (mauve, gray) should go first. There are a handful of doctors—some who learned in their own countries, some who studied here—who labor each day on vaccines and broken knees, working far harder than anyone should in our fair City. There is an old woman who takes the train out to that one house, just beyond the City limits, carrying a bag of frozen burritos in case someone gets hungry in the middle of the night.

We have our ways, those of us who did not leave the City. And as for those who came to us at last, they have their own.

Some nights, when the moon is clear, there is a woman who crosses in darkness down to the center of the City. She walks into that particular building, she takes the stairs into the basement without turning on a light. There is no one guarding the room; she could turn on the light and no one would take notice of her. But she knows the way without it.

Down in the basement, she sits on the floor by the glass, behind which the child is sleeping fitfully, with nightmares of mops. She sets her hands on the glass, first the left one, then the right. And then, quietly, softly, so that only she and it can hear, she begins to sing: her own song, a lullaby in a language that her children do not know.