Every day Doaa struggled with despondency, but fighting for her family’s safety gave her a new resolve, and over the next few months her life began to come together. Her story had captured the imagination of Greek civil society. The mayor of Chania called on national authorities to grant her Greek citizenship for her heroism. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, but the request helped Doaa see herself in a new light—as someone who was brave and strong.
Then, on December 19, 2014, the prestigious Academy of Athens presented Doaa with their annual 3,000-euro award for her courage. Her visit to Athens and the pride she felt in accepting the award felt like a watershed moment, and she began to look to the future. She told herself that she would not stop fighting until she was reunited with her family. After that she would study to become a lawyer, so she could fight for justice. She had seen too little of it in her life.
In pain from being away from her family, she struggled to overcome the despair and grief that would at times engulf her spirit. For the first nineteen years of her life, she had always been surrounded by family. Now that she was on her own, she found it easier to be alone with her memories than to share them. She felt different from girls her age, and while she enjoyed the company of her host sisters who were kind to her, she knew they could never understand what she had been through. She couldn’t find the words to express the horror of the deaths and suffering she had witnessed or the depth of her own grief. Her sorrow threatened to overwhelm her whenever she tried to talk about it. After the evil she had seen, it was hard to trust people again. Doaa felt that she could help herself and never turned to anyone else for aid in overcoming her trauma.
At times during the ordinary rituals of everyday life, a sudden memory from her days in the water would hit her so powerfully that the pain would come back all over again. One day, as she was brushing her hair and looking in the mirror, she smelled Bassem’s cologne and swung around to see if he was standing behind her. Friends back in Egypt told her of rumors that he was alive and in a prison there. Part of her wanted to believe it was true, although almost every night her mind replayed the scene of his drowning before her eyes. She tried to think of ways she could have kept him alive. It would take her hours to return to sleep after that, and the next morning when she woke, she would hope the visions of his death had just been a dream and that he would be waiting for her outside her door.
In the summer of 2015, almost one year after she had been rescued, Doaa was still struggling with her grief, nightmares, and the fear that she would never move forward with her life. One day she watched a news story about the thousands of refugees from her country that were arriving in Greece. They had crossed the sea from Turkey and were making their way through the Balkans to Austria, Germany, and Sweden. She often thought of taking her prize money and paying another smuggler to help her travel to Sweden like the other refugees. But staff at UNHCR who were working to help resettle Doaa warned her that the journey was dangerous, especially for a young woman traveling alone. They urged her to be patient for another solution. They were working on resettling her family to Sweden, and finding a way for her to join them. When the paperwork went through, Doaa could fly to Sweden and legally restart her life alongside her family. Doaa found it almost impossible to remain patient or to trust anyone who promised to help, but if it meant that she might get her family to safety, she would try. Until then, she would heal in the cocoon of her host family.
One day that summer, after a year of struggling with grief, nightmares, and the fear that she would never move forward with her life, Doaa joined her host family on a picnic at the beach. After they finished eating, on an impulse Doaa stood up, kicked off her sandals, and walked into the shallow sea until it reached her shoulders. The water was clear and cool and still. She stood there holding her breath, then calmly let her body sink down until the water covered her head for a few moments. When she came out and returned to the shore, she turned back to look out at the horizon and thought, I am not afraid of you anymore.
Epilogue
Doaa was safe in Crete, and she was healing, but she soon began to grow restless, worrying about her future. The Greek government offered her the opportunity to apply for asylum. Yet despite the kindness of the people around her, Doaa didn’t feel like Greece was her home. Every day that she was there she had to face the sea where Bassem had drowned, and although the sight of it no longer filled her with dread, she wanted to move away from everything it reminded her of. She and Bassem had always dreamed of making it to Sweden, and she wanted to fulfill that dream. At the same time, Doaa was also terrified for her family; the threats from the smugglers were escalating, and there was nothing she could do to help. Most of all, she missed the loving arms of her mother and sitting in the lively company of her family. Her entire life she’d been surrounded by their comforting chatter. That was something no WhatsApp or Skype call could replace. She also felt responsible for the danger they were in, and though she had no idea how she would do so, she was determined to get them all out of Egypt so they could start a new life together.
I met Doaa for the first time in January 2015 and spent several hours in her host family’s living room, drinking tea and interviewing her about her ordeal. I was struck by her determination to tell her story, and I soon realized she was entrusting me with it for two reasons—to help her and her family resettle in another country and to warn other refugees who were tempted to make the same dangerous journey. It soon became clear to me that she felt the responsibility that elder sons in Arab cultures would usually bear, that of having to take care of their families. Doaa felt that only she could change her family’s destiny. By that point, she had clearly lost trust in governments to help her and faith that the culprits who had sunk the boat would be found and brought to justice. “We Syrians have no one to support us except God,” she told me. “Maybe there is an interest in us, but only in words. I’m exhausted. I can’t go back to my parents; my family cannot come here. I have heard so many promises, but I want to see action.”
I was determined to bring her story to the world stage, but also to help her restart her life in Sweden. Her heroism had been widely recognized by the Greek press, and she had been given the annual award by the prestigious Academy of Athens a few months after being rescued. But I felt strongly that her story deserved the attention of a global audience, and I was sure it would capture their imagination.
My colleagues launched a formal process for her resettlement, unusual at that time for Greece, another EU country. But Doaa was treated as a special case—a traumatized young woman with a family at risk—and so they appealed for special consideration. There was a system in place for resettlement from countries like Egypt that hosted refugees, and given the family’s precarious situation, they met UNHCR’s “vulnerability” criteria. Doaa and her family’s applications were linked together, and a request was made that they be resettled to the same place.
I was with Doaa at an outdoor café in Chania, Crete, in October 2015 when I received the call that the Swedish government had accepted her and her family’s resettlement application and that she should be prepared to depart in a few weeks. For the first time since we had begun working on the book together, I saw a look of real joy on her face. As I ordered ice cream sundaes to celebrate, she ecstatically called her parents to relay the news.
On January 18, 2016, Hanaa, Shokri, Saja, Nawara, and Hamudi boarded a plane from Cairo to Stockholm, switching planes to the provincial city airport of Östersund. They were greeted at the airport by the Swedish officials assigned to their case and loaded into a van that would take them to their new home a few hours’ drive from the airport in the tiny village of Hammerdal in the snowy northeast of Sweden. That same morning, Doaa boarded a plane from Chania to Athens, then to Copenhagen, Stockholm, and finally Östersund. When she arrived at their new home around midnight, trudging through three feet of snow to the entrance, she was shivering from cold that she had never before felt. When she knocked shyly on the front
door, within seconds, Hanaa threw it open, with her arms extended toward her daughter. Shokri stood behind her, his eyes full of tears. After one and a half years, Doaa finally felt the warm embrace of her mother, and she never wanted to let go again.
* * *
Despite having lost everything that used to define them—home, community, livelihoods—refugees like Doaa refuse to lose hope. But what choices were left to Doaa and her family? To remain a refugee in Egypt, with little opportunity for education or meaningful work? To return to a war zone where the future was even bleaker and, on top of that, dangerous? Or to take a risk by taking to the sea on a so-called boat of death to seek safety and better opportunities in Europe?
For most refugees, there is nothing left to return home to. Their houses, businesses, and cities have been destroyed. Since the crisis in Syria began in 2011, fighting has progressively engulfed all regions, and the economy and services are in a state of general collapse. Half of the Syrian population (almost five million people) has been forced to flee their homes in order to save their lives. Another 6.5 million are internally displaced. Since March 2011, at least a quarter of a million Syrians have been killed in the fighting (some estimates double that number), and over one million have been injured. Life expectancy among Syrians has dropped by more than twenty years, and an estimated 13.5 million people, including 6 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance. But half of those people in need are in hard-to-reach or besieged areas, making the delivery of aid very difficult, and in some places impossible.
At the time of publication of this book, the Syrian war rages into its sixth year, and five million refugees have made their way to neighboring countries to find shelter in bleak desert camps, makeshift dwellings, or crumbling city apartments in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq. Every day, they watch the news of their hometowns and cities being reduced to rubble and learn about the deaths of friends and loved ones, which has a profound psychological impact.
The once welcoming communities they live in are now overwhelmed with the burden of hosting so many people in need. In tiny Lebanon, a country struggling with poverty and instability, 25 percent of the population are now refugees. There are not enough schools, water systems, sanitation facilities, or shelters to support this swelling population.
After more than five years of conflict with little prospect for peace, many Syrians have now abandoned hope of ever going back to their homes. With nothing left and their places of exile under increasing strain, refugees feel compelled to travel much farther to find safe havens that would also allow them to educate their children and rebuild their lives, even if such a journey means risking death during a perilous crossing of the Mediterranean or Aegean Sea.
It took the sudden surge of Syrians arriving in Europe in 2014 and 2015 to rouse governments to pledge more support to the refugees in the region. Europe suddenly recognized that they could no longer leave Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey without support while refugees struggled amid dire conditions. An international conference in London in January 2015 garnered unprecedented funding pledges for humanitarian organizations and host countries, as well as for educational and employment programs. A deal was struck with Turkey that offered billions of dollars to the country in exchange for help in preventing refugees from fleeing. Border fences were installed in the Balkans to block refugees that were already in Greece and to discourage others from making their way to Europe. But the financial pledges that have materialized in the wake of the conference have fallen far short of the needs of the refugees, and there is little visible improvement to their living standards.
Doaa’s story is the story of millions who live in limbo waiting for asylum and watching the news of the fighting back home. It’s also the story of international powers becoming entangled in regional rivalries and how they are either unable or unwilling to stop the war.
Doaa and her family are now restarting their lives in safe and generous Sweden. Doaa, Hanaa, and Shokri spend their days in Swedish classes learning the language, and Saja, Narawa, and Hamudi are enrolled in local schools. But I have to ask, why did Doaa have to risk her life, lose her fiancé, and witness the death of five hundred others to finally arrive at this place of refuge and opportunity?
What if Bassem could have been given a visa to work abroad? What if Masa and her family had been given the chance to formally unite with their other family members already in northern Europe? What if none of them had had to take that risk? What if there were a legal avenue to reach Europe from Egypt to study abroad? Why is there no massive resettlement program for Syrians—the victims of the worst war of our times? Why are the neighboring countries and communities hosting five million Syrian refugees being offered so little funding and support for infrastructure and development? And of course, the main question: Why is so little being done to stop the wars, persecution, and poverty that drive so many people to flee for the shores of Europe?
The simple truth is that refugees would not risk their lives on such a dangerous journey if they could thrive where they were. Migrants fleeing grinding poverty would not be on those boats if they could feed themselves and their children at home or in bordering host countries. Nobody would resort to spending their life savings to hire the notorious smugglers if they could apply to resettle in a safe country legally. Until these problems are addressed, people will continue to cross the sea, endangering their lives to seek asylum. No person fleeing conflict or persecution should have to die trying to reach safety.
Doaa’s hope is that none of her fellow passengers on her boat will have died in vain. She is outraged that the bottom of the sea was the only place five hundred refugees, including the man she loved, could find refuge. She feels grateful to Sweden for offering her and her family asylum and a new start, but she worries for her two older sisters who are struggling with their families as refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon. Doaa spends several hours every day in Swedish courses and one day hopes to start university and study law. With a law degree, she believes she will be able to fight for more justice.
In May 2015, Doaa traveled to Vienna, Austria, to receive the OPEC Fund for International Development’s Annual Award for Development. The award committee chose Doaa for “her bravery and her determination to draw greater attention to the refugee crisis by sharing her story.” The prize money will go toward furthering her education and helping other refugee shipwreck survivors. When she accepted the award, she stood before an admiring high-society crowd wearing ball gowns and tuxedos and told them, “No man wishes to end his life by taking off his life jacket. No family ever dreams of displacement.… These journeys take refugees from despair to death. Tonight you have given me some peace.”
A Note from Doaa
In this book, I have shared my suffering with you. It is only a small glimpse of the hardship and pain that refugees around the world endure. I represent just one voice among the millions who risk their lives every day in order to live a life of dignity.
The perilous journey refugees take in order to reach safety in Europe often leads to despair and death. But we put our lives in the hands of cruel and merciless smugglers because we have no other choice. We have been confronted with the horrors of war and the indignity of losing our homes. Our only wish is to live in peace. We are not terrorists. We are human beings just like you. We have hearts that feel, yearn, love, and hurt.
Every family in my country has lost so much that they have had to rebuild their homes in their hearts. We have lost our homeland, and our dreams are all in the past. If only all the tragedies we have lived through were just a nightmare that we could wake up from.
The people responsible for the war in Syria don’t care about shedding the blood of a child, tearing apart families, or destroying homes. And the world doesn’t seem to mourn for all the people that have drowned in the sea during their search for sanctuary.
My fiancé, who was the love of my life, slipped out of my arms and drowned right in front of my eyes, and there was no
thing I could do about it. Now, my life without him feels like a painting without any color. More than anything, I just wish he were still with me.
When I was afloat in the sea, I did my best to keep Masa and Malak alive. Over those four horrific days, they became a part of me. When I learned that precious Malak took her last breath after we were rescued, I felt like someone tore my heart out of my chest. But I do find comfort in knowing that she has made her way to heaven. A heaven where she has at last found safety, and there is no fighting or wars.
I am grateful to all of those who refuse to remain indifferent. I especially want to recognize our Egyptian friends who made my family feel welcome, the captain and crew of the CPO Japan who came to my rescue, the pilots who pulled us into their helicopter, the doctors on Crete who saved our lives, and my host family on Crete, who took me in and gave me the space to heal. I also want to give a special thanks to UNHCR for arranging our resettlement and to the government of Sweden for giving us a safe and promising new home.
One day, I hope to return to Syria so I can breathe again. Even if it’s just for one day. That would be enough.
Author’s Note
I first came across Doaa’s story on the UNHCR Greece website. As head of communications for UNHCR, I am always on the lookout for distinctive accounts of survival and resilience that illustrate refugees’ predicaments while also building bridges of empathy to the public. It was March 2015, and I was set to speak at a TEDx event in Thessaloniki, Greece, in May about the refugee crisis on the Mediterranean. I knew at once that Doaa’s story would stir the Greek audience and resonate with people everywhere who were trying to understand what was driving thousands of refugees to risk their lives crossing the sea to Europe, pushing them even further away from their homeland after having already escaped the horrors of war.
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea Page 21