None of the passengers on board had any idea where they were. There were no landmarks, just a vast body of water surrounding them. Every now and then, people would test their mobile phones for a signal, but there was none.
That night, the passengers shivered in the cold, their thin layers of clothes soaked from waves that had splashed over the deck. Doaa stirred as she felt Um Khalil’s baby boy’s small fingers touching her face and pulling on her necklace. Instead of being annoyed that her sleep was disrupted, she found that his touch calmed her.
When the sun rose on their third day, their things slowly dried off, but it became swelteringly hot. Doaa’s clothes stuck to her, and the plastic-wrapped documents and phone underneath them felt as if they were melting into her skin. Late that afternoon another boat approached. “Move,” the smugglers said, ordering them to switch boats yet again. The passengers complained but did as they were told. They had to switch boats if they wanted to move on to the next leg of the journey. To Doaa’s surprise only about 150 passengers disembarked along with Bassem and her, while the other passengers remained on the last boat. One of the smugglers explained that the waves were too high for so many people so they had to split up, and Doaa and Bassem felt resigned to follow the directions of the smugglers. Bassem reasoned optimistically that they might reach Italy faster with a smaller number of passengers on board. Doaa looked around her, confused yet hopeful, and noticed that the two little girls Masa and Sandra, along with their parents, had boarded this boat as well. This was the fourth boat they had been on since they had started their journey and she hoped it would be the last.
On Tuesday morning, September 9, four days into their journey, Doaa and Bassem spotted another fishing boat in the distance, and as they moved closer, they realized that it was the same one they had been on the previous day. Again, without any explanation, the boats came together, and the smugglers ordered the refugees to switch boats yet again. On this windy day, the water was choppy. The smugglers tossed ropes to their collaborators on the bigger vessel. The boats crashed together, and Doaa was reminded of the crack of an explosion back in Daraa and the terror she had felt when she heard the sound.
A line of people formed to move back to the original boat. Children were crying as they were tossed like bags of potatoes into the arms of the burly men on the next boat. When it was Doaa’s turn, she slipped after they dropped her on the deck of the new boat, falling and sliding to the other side, bruising her elbows. Bassem helped her up. Then they watched in horror as Walid got his hand stuck between the two boats as he was leaping between them. The waves slammed the sides of the boats together and Walid screamed. When he finally pulled himself onto the deck, his fingers were severed from his hand and blood was gushing in all directions. Passengers rushed to wrap his hand in gauze to stop the bleeding, but his fingers were gone. He sat on the deck, sobbing in pain. Doaa stared in distress, too shocked to move.
The smugglers remained unfazed and continued to bark orders and push the remaining passengers on board. One man tripped and fell face forward into an iron pole, splitting his head open. Doaa’s stomach turned as she watched a woman who knew him calmly pull out a needle and thread from her bag and sew the gash shut.
When the passengers were settled and the boat started its engines again, a member of the crew circled the deck with a large bag full of stale pita bread. When he handed a few pieces to Bassem, he looked at Doaa and told her, “You need this to stay strong.” Doaa shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” she replied flatly. Bassem was furious with her as he took her share of the bread anyway. It was their third day at sea and she had only eaten once, just a few mouthfuls from a can of tuna someone had given her. Walid was nearby, in visible pain, clutching his hand. “I feel like I am going to die, it hurts so much,” he told Doaa, shaking. She knelt next to him and read him a few verses from the Quran in the hopes that it would provide him some comfort.
The crew on this boat was kinder than that on the first boat. Shoukri Al-Assoulli, a Palestinian passenger from Gaza who was on the boat with his wife and two small children, Ritaj and Yaman, learned from chatting with the captain that he was not a smuggler, but was also on his way to Europe in hope of refuge. The captain told Shoukri that he had been in prison for years, and that when he got out, he needed to find a way to support his family. So he and some of his friends made a deal with the smugglers to man the boat in exchange for free passage to Europe, where they wanted to look for work. He begged Shoukri and the others not to turn him and the crew in once they got to Europe. They were just like them, he explained, people who couldn’t get by in Egypt and were seeking a better life.
The refugees promised him they would not turn him in, but they were beginning to grow impatient and more and more frustrated with the journey. They had all been told that the trip would take two days at most, and nearly four days had already passed.
At about 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, they watched in dismay as yet another boat approached theirs. Not again! Doaa thought. This ship was even smaller than the one they were crammed on. The boat hardly looked seaworthy, with paint that was chipped all over and all the metal parts covered in rust. The crew of about ten men pulled up alongside their boat demanding, “Everybody switch over or we’ll send you back to Egypt.” The refugees, bonded by days in proximity and their common goal of reaching Italy alive, collectively refused to disembark. The new boat was just too run-down. “We’ve already moved so many times,” one refugee complained. A parent stood up and protested, “There’s no way we’re getting on that boat. The children have already suffered too much!” Doaa thought of Walid’s missing fingers and shuddered at the thought of switching boats again. Everyone adamantly refused to move. Confronted by the passengers’ resolve, the smugglers had no choice but to oblige. A deal was struck—the passengers could remain on this boat as long as everybody agreed to stick to the story that the captain and the crew were refugees escaping the war in Syria as well and that no smugglers were on board, that they were steering the ship on their own.
The passengers readily agreed and the crew seemed relieved. The captain started up the boat again, leaving the other boat in its wake. “How much longer?” someone asked him. “Just nineteen hours and we will reach Italy,” the captain assured them. The passengers cheered and clapped when they heard this. “Inshallah”—God willing—“we will make it to Italy!” they called out. Um Khalil hugged Doaa first, then Bassem. For the first time since wading into the sea, Doaa thought that they might actually make it to Europe.
NINE
All That Is Left Is the Sea
Doaa and Bassem returned to their place on the starboard side of the deck, wedging themselves between the others and settling in for the last leg of the journey. Feeling so close to their destination, people began to relax and the mood brightened a little bit. Relieved parents helped their children remove their life vests so they could be more comfortable and set them on the hard deck. The boat seemed to move faster than before over the calm sea, as passengers laughed and joked together. The sun shone bright overhead and, feeling the heat of the day, some people took refuge under plastic rice sacks that were tied together and rigged to provide shade. But Doaa remained in the sun, relishing the feeling of warmth on her face. Nineteen more hours, she told herself, and all of this will be over. Then Bassem and I will be in Europe, on our way to a new life together. The time they’d spent in jail, the miserable hours in the backs of trucks and on crowded buses, the exhausting runs through the desert, would all be worth it. She squeezed Bassem’s hand and leaned her head on his shoulder. He gave her a confident smile and whispered, “We’re going to make it, Doaa.”
Doaa smiled at hearing this and allowed herself to close her eyes and drift asleep with the boat rocking her and the sun beating down on them. She’d only been napping a few minutes when the sounds of an engine and men shouting insults in an Egyptian dialect startled her out of sleep. By then a half hour had passed since their encounter with t
he other boat. She and Bassem stood up to locate the source of the conflict, grasping the side of the boat and leaning over the railing to see a blue fishing boat with the number 109 painted on its side approaching at full speed. A double-decker, it was a bigger and newer model than the boat that they were on. Doaa could see about ten men on board, dressed in ordinary clothes, not the all-black outfits of the smugglers. Some wore baseball caps to obscure their identities, but others didn’t seem to care if the passengers saw their faces. Doaa had never seen pirates before, but the malevolence she saw in the men’s faces brought the word to her mind.
“You dogs!” they shouted. “Sons of bitches! Stop the boat! Where do you think you are going? You should’ve stayed to die in your own country.”
When the boat was only meters away, one of the smugglers on Doaa’s boat shouted at the men, “What the hell are you doing!?”
“Sending these filthy dogs to the bottom of the sea,” one of them yelled in reply. Suddenly they began hurling planks of wood at the passengers on the refugee boat, their eyes wild with hatred. The boat sped up and veered away for a moment, but then turned back toward Doaa’s ship. She stared in horror as the boat sped toward them on a collision course at the spot where she and Bassem stood, clutching the side of the boat. Doaa froze with fear.
“Doaa, Doaa, put on your life vest!” Bassem’s frantic voice screamed, shaking her from her paralysis. “They are going to kill us!” All around them, passengers panicked, scrambling for life jackets, as desperate prayers were interrupted by terrified shouts and children crying. The boat approaching them accelerated. Doaa had just reached for her vest when the boat rammed into the side of the ship with a shriek of metal and shattering wood just below where she and Bassem were standing. The impact was so sharp and sudden that it felt like a missile strike. Doaa stumbled forward, almost falling over the railing, but Bassem’s arms shot out and grabbed her. As she was pulled back to safety, she saw that other people weren’t so lucky and did fall over, landing on the hard deck and other passengers below. A scream sounded in Doaa’s ear, but she couldn’t tell where it had come from. Her own throat was too tight to let out a single sound. In the commotion, Doaa had dropped her life vest and couldn’t find it. She scrambled around looking for it, then Bassem pulled her toward him. She realized that the boat was beginning to turn on its side. Oh, God, Doaa thought. Not the water. Not drowning. Let me die now and not go into the sea. She had one hand on the railing to keep her balance, and the other clutched Bassem’s hand.
“Listen to me, Doaa,” Bassem said. “Keep hold of my hand. Don’t let go and we will make it. I promise I won’t let you drown.”
Doaa could hear the men on the attacking boat laughing as they hurled more pieces of wood at Doaa’s boat. Those laughs were some of the most horrifying sounds she had ever heard. She couldn’t believe they were enjoying themselves during their cruelty of trying to sink a boat carrying little children. All around her were screams of terror and people shouting desperate prayers.
The attacking boat finally reversed and pulled away from the ship, and for a moment Doaa hoped that the onslaught was over, that the men had merely wanted to frighten them. But seconds later, they sped toward them again, and Doaa understood that they had no mercy and had every intention of killing every man, woman, and child on board. This time, when they rammed the side of Doaa’s boat, the rickety vessel took a sudden, violent nosedive into the sea.
Bassem’s hand was yanked away from hers as he fought to regain his balance. Doaa lost sight of him in the mass of people tumbling forward. She was pressed up against the side of the boat, kept upright by the mass of people pushed up against her.
As people began to fall into the water, the men on the attacking boat jeered, calling out that each and every one of them should drown. “Let the fish eat your flesh!” they yelled as they sped away. The cold-blooded taunt echoed in Doaa’s ears.
Half of the refugees’ boat was already underwater and sinking fast. Doaa thought of the hundreds of people trapped in the hull. They’re doomed, she thought as she held on to the edge of the sinking vessel, and so are we.
She held as tightly as she could to the side of the boat, but as it plunged downward, her fingers slipped open and she slid into the sea, immediately sinking below the surface. Doaa found herself under the plastic rice sacks that the passengers had tied together for shade on the boat. She frantically moved her arms, attempting to reach the surface, only to see that she was trapped along with dozens of other people underneath the sacks. Fighting off panic, Doaa shut her eyes, then opened them again to see the people near her struggling to free themselves from under the heavy plastic. There was no air to breathe and no path to the surface. She remembered the time her cousin had thrown her into the lake and she had breathed in heavy, choking water. This time there was no family to pull her out, nothing but cold salt water and the pressure growing in her chest and behind her eyes as she struggled to catch her breath and choked down more water. Then she saw a glimmer of sunlight and noticed a tear in the plastic. She stretched her hands into the opening, feeling as if they were moving in slow motion, and pulled herself through the small hole and above water. She gasped for air at the surface. Doaa realized that the rice sacks were still attached to the boat, and if she crawled over them, she could reach the stern—the only part that was still floating—and grab on to the edge of the boat. She made her way along the sacks, and when she reached the boat’s edge, she grabbed it so tightly that she couldn’t feel her hands. She caught her breath in huge gulps, then turned to look below her. The people under the plastic had stopped moving.
She heard screaming all around her, muffled only by the sound of the boat’s motor. She turned her head toward the sea and saw scattered groups of people, calling out the names of their loved ones and crying for God’s help. People desperately grabbed on to anything that floated—luggage, water canisters, even other people, pulling them down with them. Doaa noticed that the sea around her was colored red and realized that people were being sucked into the boat’s propeller and dismembered by its blades. Body parts floated all around her. It was worse than anything she’d ever seen during the war in Daraa. She watched in horror as one moment a child was crying and struggling to hold on to the boat, then the next he lost his grip and slipped into the blades, his small body cut to pieces. There was nothing but blood and screams. She forced herself to turn away and instead shift her focus over the deck. She saw a lifeless man trapped in the metal scaffold used for fishing nets, a rope wrapped around his neck, his arms and legs cut off, his face covered in blood.
Overwhelmed with panic and fear, Doaa began shouting out desperately, “Bassem!” She was terrified that he was also one of the dead. She shouted his name over and over, all the while staring at the mangled body of the man caught in the rope. A few long seconds later, she heard Bassem’s voice: “Doaa! Doaa, don’t look at him, look at me!” Doaa turned her head toward the sound of his voice and spotted him in the sea. The metal rim of the boat was cutting into her hands, and her legs dangled in the water. She wanted to go to Bassem but couldn’t bring herself to jump into the water. But the boat was sinking at an angle that was drawing her toward the spinning propeller. More people were being drawn into its blades. Somehow she still could not bring herself to release her hold and allow the sea to swallow her. “Let go, or it will cut you up, too!” Bassem cried out. He tried to swim to her, but the waves bore him away.
She heard a voice beside her: “Do what he says, Doaa!” It was Walid. He was holding on to the sinking stern with his one good hand, staring at the propeller. He tore his gaze away from it and turned to Doaa, a frightened look on his face, and said, “I can’t swim. I don’t have a life jacket.”
“I can’t swim either.” Her life jacket was long gone and they were both inching closer to the propeller.
Bassem cried out again: “Doaa! Jump! Now!”
“We have to let go,” Doaa yelled to Walid, although she was petrified of th
e idea.
A look of sadness replaced the terror on his face. “Leave your hope in God,” he said to her with a kindness that made her want to cry. “If you believe in God, he will save you.”
She closed her eyes and opened her hands, falling backward, arms and legs spread as she hit the water’s surface. She was buoyant for a few seconds on her back, then felt someone pulling at her head scarf, which slipped off her head and into the sea. As she lay floating on her back, she felt the ends of her long hair being yanked under the water. Those who were drowning below were beyond reason and grabbed at whatever they could reach for to try to pull themselves to the surface. Their hands grasped at her head, pulling Doaa’s face below the water. Somehow, she managed to push their hands away. She gulped for air, turned upright, and moved her arms and legs to try to stay above water. She remembered that that was what swimming was, so she did her best to tread water as she watched the last bit of the boat sink into the waves. Nothing was left but wreckage, blood, corpses, and a few other survivors. She felt things moving beneath her and knew that they were people drowning, and that any moment one of them might grab her legs, pulling her under.
Then she spotted Bassem swimming toward her holding a blue floating ring, the kind toddlers use in baby pools and shallow seas. “Put this over your head so you can float,” he said as he passed the partially inflated ring over her shoulders. Scared that someone might try to grab her legs, she pulled herself on top of the ring, her legs and arms dangling over the sides, then suddenly fainted from shock and exhaustion. Bassem splashed seawater on her face to bring her back.
The sun was starting to set over the horizon, and the sea had become still and flat, putting the scene before her in eerie focus. Survivors were gathered in small clusters, some wearing life jackets that were only keeping their heads just above water. Many of them had also been sold fake vests that could barely float. She wondered if the smugglers who gave them those life vests had intended to let them drown all along.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea Page 16