A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea

by Melissa Fleming

  The thugs then circled around them, confirming Doaa and Bassem’s fears. They demanded that Doaa and Bassem hand over their money and their jackets.

  “We have nothing, we gave it all to the smugglers for the journey,” Bassem replied. He clutched Doaa’s hand and they took off back up to the main road as the thugs gave chase and shouted insults behind them. Doaa and Bassem reached the main road, gasping for breath and hoping that the thugs wouldn’t try anything in front of all the cars that were now roaring by. Doaa was crying from exhaustion and fear, and Bassem tried to wave down cars and comfort her at the same time. Doaa stood with him, hoping that a driver would be more sympathetic toward a couple than to a lone man. Her mouth was dry and she felt as if she would faint from a combination of thirst, fear, and despair. “Doaa, watch out!” she suddenly heard Bassem shout. The next thing she knew, he had lunged to her side and pushed her down. Doaa looked up from the ground and saw a truck had veered toward her and would have crushed her had Bassem not yanked her out of harm’s way.

  Several cars buzzed by, but none stopped to help. Doaa and Bassem were worried that the gang were watching and waiting for them to turn back. Finally, Doaa spotted a police car approaching and was strangely relieved. “Let’s give ourselves up, Bassem,” she said. “It’s better than being attacked by those thugs.” Bassem agreed and together they ran out to the street. The police car screeched to a halt beside them. The officers stepped out, guns drawn. First they slammed Bassem against the car to search him as Doaa began to cry again. Then the police asked about the rest of the refugees. “We don’t know where they are. We decided to give ourselves up,” Doaa lied. They pleaded for water when they got into the backseat of the police car and the officers handed them a bottle to share.

  The police drove up and down the area until daybreak looking for others from the group who were attempting to leave the country illegally. At about 6:00 a.m., the police stopped at the place on the beach where the sleeping coastguardsmen had originally spotted the refugees. In the light of dawn, Doaa noticed a small military post that had been hidden in the dark and recognized many of their fellow travelers, including about forty women and several children, sitting on the ground in front of it. The men had their hands tied behind their backs. Doaa and Bassem were taken to join the group. They sat down on the sand with their bag between them. Doaa felt sick and dizzy. She had run for hours without food, water, or rest. She recognized the pregnant woman from the truck when she said, “You look so sick, dear.” She handed Doaa a small carton of orange juice with a straw. Doaa sipped the sweet, warm liquid and instantly felt better.

  Soon, without explanation, the police began taking everyone’s bags. Doaa didn’t trust the officer when he said that everything would be returned, and she felt as if a piece of her identity was being taken from her. Around midmorning, when the sun was getting hotter, Doaa grew impatient and went to look for her duffel bag. An officer instructed her to go back to where she was sitting and said he would find it for her. A few minutes later he returned, claiming that he couldn’t find it.

  Doaa didn’t believe him. “Please, it’s important to me that I have my things. I don’t mind looking myself,” she said, rising to confront him. She was tiny against the big-shouldered man. The officer softened and sent three of his men with Doaa to look for her bag. She led them to the place where she had seen the luggage taken and saw only scattered pieces of clothing on the ground. When she spotted her cargo pants crumpled up and trampled on, Doaa returned to the officer and stood before him. “You took my luggage!”

  Looking down at her, he said, “How dare you accuse us of stealing!”

  But Doaa didn’t back down. That bag had held everything that she had. “It was stolen. The things in there are important to me.” But it was no use. Everyone’s luggage was gone. She thought of her treasured tiny jewelry chest from Syria and her Quran. Of what value were those things to these officers? She was grateful that she and Bassem had at least kept their passports and their money concealed under their clothes, but some of the others who had their passports and cash stashed in their bags had lost everything.

  After an excruciating wait under the desert sun, the group was asked to stand together for a photograph. Then the women and children were directed to climb into the back of an open-top army truck, which took them up to the main road. Doaa was seated in the back next to a woman who said her name was Hoda, who was about four months pregnant. Doaa couldn’t imagine making the difficult journey pregnant and said as much to Hoda. “We have no future,” Hoda said, her hand resting on her belly. “I’m leaving for the future of the child.”

  Although there was room in the back of the truck, the men, about fifty of them, including Bassem, were forced as punishment to walk, handcuffed, in the midday heat, for miles up to the main road. When they were finally allowed to board the truck, Bassem came and sat next to Doaa. “Are you okay?” he asked, taking her hand. His lips were dry and cracked. “I didn’t realize it was going to be this hard.”

  The truck started up again and the guards drove them to the Birimbal detention center in the swampy, rural town of Matubus on the outskirts of Alexandria. Doaa and Bassem were separated there, and Doaa had to wait in a line with the other women to have her mug shot taken and to sign a document confessing that she had attempted to leave Egypt illegally. An officer from the national security department asked her questions about the smugglers. What were their names? What did they look like? How much did you pay? Where did you leave from? She answered as best she could, replying that one was called Abu Mohammed.

  “Seems to me they are all called Abu Mohammed,” the officer joked. Another officer looked at her in concern and said kindly, “Don’t go with those smugglers. They’re no good.” She was told that she and Bassem were sentenced to ten days in prison for trying to leave the country illegally and was taken to a room that was already packed with women and children. Men were kept separately in another location. There was no running water and the toilet didn’t flush. The stench and the flies made Doaa feel nauseated and she couldn’t eat. Each inmate received a small mat to sleep on but no blanket, and there was nowhere to shower. Doaa had no change of clothes and no way to keep clean, which added to her misery.

  As the days wore on, the children developed scabies and their mothers found it hard to stop their children’s crying. Female officials from UNHCR visited to interview and check on the prisoners, advocating on their behalf and delivering food, toiletries, blankets, and medical supplies. Doaa was allowed to make one call to her family, and she was able to talk to her mother just long enough to calm her parents’ fears and to tell them that she would be released in a few days.

  A sympathetic medical officer from Doctors Without Borders visited and examined Doaa, urging her to eat and warning her to take care of her health. During his rounds in the men’s section, he also examined Bassem. He warned Bassem that he, too, was in poor health, pointing to his jutting cheekbones as a sign that his nutrition and food intake were low. But the doctor also noticed that Bassem’s spirits were high and asked him about his situation. Bassem told the doctor he was heading to Europe to start a new life with his fiancée, Doaa, who was in the women’s section of the prison. He described his plans to go with her to Sweden to open his own barbershop and get married. When he discovered that the doctor had examined Doaa, he probed him about her condition. As soon as the checkup was finished, Bassem rose and approached one of the guards, pleading with him for a visit with his fiancée. The burly policeman refused, but Bassem was persistent. “Just for a few minutes, please!” he begged. Soon the rest of the men chimed in to support him: “Can’t you see he’s in love?” The guard capitulated and let Bassem visit Doaa for a few minutes. This ritual repeated itself every day until their release, one day short of their ten-day sentence. The young couple became favorites of both the guards and the other prisoners.

  When their sentence was up, Bassem, Doaa, and eight other Syrians were driven to Alexandria, w
here they filled out forms to renew their residency permits and paid a fine. On their bus ride back to Gamasa, Bassem called one of the smugglers. “Why did you report us?” he demanded. The man denied any involvement and asked if they wanted to try again to get to Europe. He still had their money, he reminded them. Bassem said he would call him back and hung up.

  Doaa’s family was waiting for her and Bassem when they reached the apartment building. For the first time in ten days, Doaa and Bassem had a shower. Hanaa prepared Doaa’s favorite dish, stewed molokhia leaves with coriander seeds, garlic, and onion served with steamed rice. Neighbors came to hear about their ordeal and warned them that they shouldn’t try to leave again. The authorities were cracking down, they said, and they might not get off as easy a second time.

  But now, in August 2014, the Syrian refugee population in Egypt was growing restless. The war had spread to the far reaches of their country, and their hopes of returning to Syria were growing dim. Extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda, and new terrorist organizations such as the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State, had filled in the gaps where the moderate opposition, who were now outgunned, had failed to take control. There were no longer two sides in the battle for Syria, but a range of players vying for territory and power. Most of those who had risen up in protest back in March 2011 had lost their lives or fled the country. By the fourth year of the war, few of those fighting the regime represented the values of the original resistance movement. Increasingly, opposition groups were battling each other. The more moderate militias such as the Free Syrian Army were fighting not just the government, but the radical extremists of ISIS as well. And on the government’s side, foreign fighters from Iran and from Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist militant group and political party based in Lebanon, boosted their capacity while starting an international proxy war that would bring in Russia on the government’s side, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey on the other. Eventually the United States, France, and the UK would join in the fight against both Assad and ISIS as well. Well-meaning UN-brokered attempts at peace talks would collapse, and pledged cease-fires would continually unravel.

  Cities such as Daraa were emptied of their original residents, who left behind their destroyed homes to seek relative safety in other parts of the country, across borders, or increasingly across the Mediterranean Sea. Many of Bassem’s friends who had made it to Europe continued to encourage him to do the same. The journey would be difficult for a few days on the sea, but after that things would be fine, they assured him. His friends had crossed the Mediterranean and made it to Germany, Sweden, and Holland, and now they were studying or working there. They told him over Facebook chat that they could learn the language in six months, and once they did that, they could easily find work.

  Europe had sympathy for Syrian refugees at that point. The number of Syrians arriving in Europe was increasing, but was still relatively small—fewer than eighty thousand in 2014—and governments recognized that they were fleeing from war, so they quickly waved them through the asylum process.

  European governments had always found it more politically expedient to contain refugee populations close to the countries they had fled from, including the 3 million refugees from Syria in its neighboring countries. Funding grew to enable UNHCR and its partners to provide shelter, food, education, health care, and other services for the many desperate refugees in countries such as Egypt. But the millions of euros that came from global governments didn’t match the growing needs of a swelling and increasingly needy group of people. Once middle-class, professional Syrians were now living off handouts, and scraping for rent in substandard dwellings, and taking work from employers who exploited them. Desperate for income, many resorted to sending their young children to work instead of school, picking vegetables for as little as $4 a day or selling flowers in the city streets. Meanwhile the refugees grew restless and anxious to move to countries where it was legal for them to work and where their children could go to school.

  When Syrians began to land on the shores of Italy in noticeable numbers, European politicians sought the cooperation of origin countries such as Egypt to help stop the boats. Financial incentives were offered for crackdowns on smugglers and detention and fines for refugees who attempted to leave the countries illegally. The message was clear: Stay in your own region. But for Syrians such as Doaa and Bassem, Egypt was suffocating their dreams.

  After Bassem and Doaa finished their welcome-home meal, Hanaa begged them not to leave again, but later when they discussed what they should do next, Doaa told Bassem, “It is better to have a quick death in the sea than a slow death in Egypt.” Hearing this, Bassem picked up the phone and called the smuggler back.

  A couple of days later, they got the call to leave again the next day. This time, they were given the address of a small flat in Alexandria where four families, who had arrived before them, had gathered to await the signal to depart. They boarded a bus that same night. Once again, the bus was packed with families, along with two smugglers who received calls every few minutes and barked orders at the driver, who would then veer off in another direction. “They don’t know what they are doing,” Doaa whispered to Bassem as she fell against him. The bus sped up and one of the smugglers announced that a police car was behind them. The driver steered the bus off the paved road and onto the dirt track of a big farm, accelerating. Women screamed and children cried as the tires hit potholes and narrowly missed palm trees. The police officers fired shots, hitting the back and sides of the bus. The next thing Doaa and Bassem felt was the impact of the bus crashing into a wall as it abruptly stopped. The police surrounded the bus, ordering the smugglers out first. They put plastic bags over their heads and tied each at the neck, then forced them to take off their clothes except for their underwear. The police tied the smugglers at the ankles and kicked and beat them, creating a show of humiliation for the stunned group of refugees observing the scene.

  “You’re back, welcome back, dear visitors!” an officer said to Doaa, laughing. She recognized him as the officer who had caught them the first time. Bassem pleaded with him not to take them back to the prison and offered instead to pay him to be released. At first the officer refused, but he later returned with a preposterous offer. For $5,000 he would set them free. Bassem and Doaa realized that they were going back to prison.

  First they were taken to a stadium that had been used as army barracks to spend the night, then the next day they were taken back to the same police station as before to sign for a second time documents admitting guilt for attempting to leave the country illegally. They were returning to the same prison as before.

  On the second day in prison, Doaa awoke with a terrible headache and nausea. It was now August 28, the first anniversary of Doaa and Bassem’s engagement, and Doaa was in despair. How had others made it to Europe and not them? she wondered.

  A sharp pain gripped her lower back and was shooting into her sides. She sat in a corner with her knees folded up into her chest. Doaa asked the guards for the doctor, but had to wait in excruciating pain for the regular rounds of the Doctors Without Borders physician, who was due to come in the next day.

  When he saw Doaa’s condition, the doctor demanded that she be released and admitted to the hospital right away. After several phone calls to his higher-ups, the police officer in charge received permission, and two officers from the detention center drove Doaa and the doctor to the nearest clinic, thirty minutes away. Doaa felt humiliated being accompanied by the police and self-conscious from the stares of the people in the waiting room.

  The policemen, all men in their fifties who reminded Doaa of her father, had grown fond of her and told everyone that she was no criminal. They asked the hospital staff to take her in for tests. A nurse took her into an examination room for an X-ray and helped her take off her clothes. She took one look at Doaa’s body and started to cry. “You are so thin!” she said as she guided her to the scale and recorded that Doaa weighed only eighty-eight pounds. Doaa confided
in the nurse her story about how she’d ended up in jail. The nurse admitted how she despised Bashar al-Assad but loved the Syrian people. She then placed ten pounds in Doaa’s hand for a sandwich and began reciting a prayer from the Quran. Doaa was deeply touched by the nurse’s kindness. When the doctor entered the room, the nurse instructed him, “Take care of her as if she were your own daughter.” During the examination, the doctor ruled out appendicitis, but he diagnosed Doaa with kidney stones and a stomach infection and decided to keep her in the hospital overnight for observation.

  When she returned to the prison the next day, the guards were protective of her, knocking on the door to the women’s cell to check whether Doaa had taken her medication. Bassem visited, too, when they would let him, counting her pills and asking the other women to keep an eye on her. After ten days, they were released once more. “Don’t try escaping Egypt again,” the presiding officer told them, “and good luck.”

  Doaa again decided that they should make another attempt to leave for Europe. Her experience in prison had been demeaning, but it had changed her perspective. The idea of resuming their life in Egypt seemed intolerable. Bassem was more reluctant to try again, but the smugglers still had their $2,500. So Bassem made the call and was given yet another address in Alexandria. It was the same scenario, but a different apartment. They were greeted by another Syrian family at the house—a husband, wife, and four children, refugees like themselves with the determination to risk their lives for the hope of a future better than the limbo they lived in now.

  EIGHT

  Ship of Horrors

  At 11:00 a.m. on September 6, 2014, the call came. Doaa carefully packed a change of clothes for Bassem and herself, their toothbrushes, a sealed large plastic bag of dates, and a big bottle of water into the Mickey Mouse backpack she’d kept from her school days back in Syria. She carefully wrapped their passports and engagement contract in plastic wrap, then dropped them in a sandwich bag and folded over the end. Next, she wrapped her mobile phone and wallet with the five hundred euros and two hundred Egyptian pounds that they still had from their previous escape attempts in a separate plastic bag and secured each bundle underneath the straps of her red tank top, the first of four layers of clothes she had carefully selected for the journey. The plastic immediately made her skin sweat in the humid late-morning heat.