to go to Greece or not?”
Baba stops. We stand on the beach. There is the
boat. There are the men to launch it. Across the dark
water is Europe. We have no money. No food. No
belongings. What else can Baba do?
“We need to go,” Baba says. The hard edge to
his voice is gone. There’s only soft dead air in his
words. Like loneliness. Like darkness. “But my son
can’t swim.”
Alan whimpers. I realize I’ve tightened my grip
on him like I’ll never let go. I ease my hold and rub
his back to comfort him.
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The Turk grunts. Shrugs. He turns back to Dayah. Finishes strapping her in. He mutters under
his breath: Turkish words I don’t understand, but his
feelings are clear. The Turk doesn’t help Baba with
his life jacket. He’s still angry. But something unspo-
ken passes between the two men when he tightens
the cords at the side. Baba looks into the Turk’s eyes.
“My youngest,” Baba says. His voice is like dead
leaves. “I ask you. Please understand.”
The Turk grunts again. Shrugs. Baba nods.
I don’t understand this conversation. It has no start.
No words. Only some silent understanding between
two strangers.
The Turk snatches up the last life jacket. The one
he said is the smallest. He turns to me. Alan won’t
let me go. I won’t let him go either. I clamp myself
to him.
“Alan,” Baba says. He reaches over.
“Leave him,” the Turk says.
Baba lets go in surprise. I stare at the Turk, his
breath almost in mine as he straps on the life jacket.
“They go together,” the Turk says. “Both small
enough.”
“I’ll take Alan,” Baba says. “It’s too much for
Ghalib.”
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“No,” Alan and I say at the same time.
“We’ll stay like this,” I say.
And so Alan and I are strapped into the one life
jacket. The cords are crossed over and back, binding
us as one. Alan puts his good arm around me, his
bad arm curled snug between us. I wrap both my
arms around him. He peers up at me. “I’m with you,
Ghalib.” I hear the smile in his words.
The Turk checks our straps, slaps me on the back.
“In the boat,” he says.
He grabs Bushra and tosses her into the dinghy.
She tumbles onto the slippery floor and instantly
vanishes from sight.
“You,” the Turk says to Dayah.
She looks at him. Looks at Baba. She hesitates. I
can’t see her expression in the dark but I feel her fear.
I have the same fear in my belly.
“Go!” says the Turk.
Behind us, other people are ready to board.
Strapped in their life jackets or holding inner tubes,
some with nothing, they shuffle close, urging us on.
We’re the first.
Dayah wades into the sea until she’s knee deep
in swirling black water. The man helps her into
the boat with Bushra. The Turk grabs Alan and
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me by our life jacket. With a sickening swing, he dumps us into the boat. We slither along the floor,
splashing and spluttering in a shock of cold seawater.
We struggle to stand as the boat rises and falls with
a terrible rhythm. We grab Bushra and Dayah. We
cling together. Baba arrives next and we’re all here—
all five.
The boat fills quickly—ten, twenty people—
yet still the Turks push more in. The woman with
her baby. A family. Four men. Baba and Dayah pull
us close. I grip a length of rope tied to the side of
the boat. The seawater collects in a pool on the
dipped f loor. I fight not to slide toward it. My feet
slither on wet rubber. My new trainers are soaked
through.
The boat is so full, it no longer rises and falls
with the waves. Instead, we wallow deep and heavy.
A voice rises above the wind and waves. It’s
Baraa.
“Where’s the other boat?” he says.
He stands on the shore with his wife, strapped
tightly in their life jackets. The Turks ignore him.
“I said where is the other boat?” Baraa says again.
“One boat,” the Turk says. “Everyone together.
Get in.”
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“I paid extra!” Baraa says angrily. “For my wife and me.” His wife stands next to him. She says nothing.
“Everyone in one boat,” the Turk says.
“He’s right,” says another man still on shore.
“Too many people for one boat.”
A few people with him mutter their agreement.
“We won’t all fit,” the man says. He stands firm
with his family.
“One boat!” The Turk’s voice is louder now.
“Get in!”
People hesitate. The Turk lifts his stick. Other
Turks move next to him and raise their sticks. Two
people splash through the sea and into the boat.
“Start the engine,” the leader of the Turks says.
The Turk holding the rope clambers into the
boat. He brings a wash of sea water with him.
“You want in the boat or not?” the Turk onshore
says to the people left behind. “No refund if you stay.
Your choice.”
“I paid extra for a boat without that cursed boy!”
Baraa says. “We’ll drown with him!”
A sudden silence falls, even among the Turks.
Nobody says anything. My heart shrivels when I
realize which boy Baraa is talking about. I squeeze
Alan against me to protect him from the cruel words.
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“Evil old goat,” Bushra says under her breath.
The man with his family looks at Baraa. He spits
on the sand in front of him, then clambers on board
with his family. Now only Baraa and his wife are on
the beach with the Turks.
The Turk in the boat lowers the motor into the
water. He points to the controls. “Speed, direction,
on, off. All from here.” His accent is thick.
A mighty roar from the shore splits the night as a
dozen men burst from the darkness. Waving life jack-
ets and car tires and thick branches, they charge down
the sand to attack us. A woman onboard screams.
“Men from the settlement!” Baba says.
Everything happens at once. Baba thrusts us into
the bottom of the boat. The Turks bellow and lunge
toward the men. Moonlight glints on long knives in
their hands.
Baraa turns to see, and his wife plunges into
the sea. She lunges for the boat. The motor coughs
and splutters. Two men onboard reach out to grab
Rawan. Baraa pushes the settlement men as they
pitch into the sea. They shove him to the sand. They
splash and wade toward us. Rawan slithers into the
boat. She coughs and splutters as settlement men
grab the boat to clamber on.
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Men in the boat snatch up paddles to beat them back. Paddles strike heads, backs, arms, with horrible crunching, battering sounds. The boat tips. Cold
seawater rushes in. Everyone screams.
With a sudden belch of smoke and a fountain
of white water, the engine kicks. The Turk in the
boat leaps into the water and wades ashore. The
boat lurches and spins. Two from our group tumble
into the waves and are lost. Baba digs his fingers
into my shoulder to hold me safe. People shout and
grunt and scream. Water splashes and churns. Most
of the settlement men let go. They sink into the sea.
The boat rocks and steadies. A man grabs the con-
trols. We gather speed and buzz from the shore into
deeper water.
Back on the beach, Baraa is on his feet. He wades
out, but we’re already too far. He shouts words we
don’t hear. He’s too late. His wife stares at him. She
says nothing.
One settlement man still clings to a rope trail-
ing in the water. He’s being pulled behind us in
the sea. He gurgles and splutters in the water. The
men in the boat pry his clutching fingers off the
rope. He screams as he drifts off to sink beneath the
black waves.
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I stare at the water where I last saw him. My heart pounds. My hands grip the rope and the wet
rubber. Alan howls.
Heads bob in the water. Small figures move onto
the sand. Baraa stands alone. Then everything melts
into the darkness as Turkey vanishes from sight.
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23
We’re the only humans in a dark and salty world.
We pitch and dip on a heaving sea. We cling to each
other and the slippery rubber.
I never thought a sea held so much movement.
I never thought a sea held so much fear. All I can
think of are the bones of drowned refugees, of our
brothers and sisters who went before us, lifting and
turning on the seabed below, drifting like bleached
ghosts pulled by moon and tide. Fish and octopus
and coral make watery homes in their empty eye
sockets and tooth cavities. Up above them, our little
boat rolls and plunges.
“We’re all going to drown!” Bushra says.
“Shut up,” I say. Her words make me more
frightened than I already am.
Black waves loom over us and roll beneath us,
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dark and shining. We lurch between cloud and water. Every wash over the side adds more to the
water sloshing in the boat. Men with seawater
streaming from their hair scoop up handfuls to toss
over the side, but their efforts make no difference:
the water still rises. It’s past my ankles now. The
man steering the boat fights to keep the engine in
the water.
“Turn into the waves,” one man says.
“Keep sidelong to the wind,” another man says.
“Head straight across the water,” a woman says.
But nobody knows for certain. Nobody knows
anything about steering boats across open sea in the
middle of the night. The engine splutters and coughs
and whines.
“It won’t hold up,” a man says.
Men grab paddles and sweep them through the
water. It changes nothing. The Turk said we would
see the lights of Greece as soon as we rounded the
headland. We’ve been plunging and rising a long
time. There are no lights. I don’t know if we’ve
rounded the headland. I see nothing of land or sea.
The water, the sky, the air are all made of the one
blackness. It seeps into my heart and crawls through
my blood. Only this dark, wet hell exists now. Wind
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whips my damp skin and hair, chilling me even though the air isn’t cold.
Apart from people shouting instructions to the
engine man, nobody talks. We’re too busy clinging
on, willing Greece to appear. But we aren’t silent
either. Noise fills our boat, and none of it is a
comfort. People moan and cry out and vomit. They
shriek when we dip beneath a trundling wave, gasp
when we crest its top. They send salty prayers up
to Allah or the contents of their heaving bellies
down to the fish. Alan has thrown up twice already.
Because he’s strapped to me, everything he throws
up is down the front of our life jacket. We’re wet
through from waves washing over the side. His
whole body shivers.
“Are we going to drown?” I say to Baba.
“Stay strong, Ghalib.”
Baba was never one to sugar lemons. We can
only hold on and wait.
“Lights!” someone says.
I strain to see in the dark, but there is only
black. We heave over a wave. There! A sprinkle
of lights strung along a distant shore. We roll into
the next trough and the lights vanish behind a wall
of seawater.
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“Did you see them, Bushra?” I say.
“Alhamdulillah!” Bushra says.
The sight of land gives everyone hope. Bright-
ness wells inside me. This will end. With a direction
to aim for, the engine man hunkers down and grips
the controls, motoring our little dinghy through
choppy water. Even though I only see lights when
we crest a dark wave, it gives me something to live
for. Maybe we’ll get through after all.
“Greece, Baba?” I say.
“Looks like it,” Baba says. He grips Dayah’s hand.
“Look, Alan,” I say. “Greece.”
But Alan doesn’t look. He slumps low, head sag-
ging. He is heavy against me.
“Alan?” Baba says. He leans over and lifts Alan’s
chin. Alan’s eyelids f lutter. His skin is white, his
lips blue.
“Cold, Baba,” Alan says. His teeth rattle.
We have nothing to wrap around him. No blan-
kets, no bedrolls. We left everything in the back of
the truck. Our clothes are sodden.
“Not far now, son,” Baba says. “We’ll get you
warm and dry as soon as we arrive.”
The night isn’t so black any more. Stars glitter in
the western darkness, but the sky pales to gray in the
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east. Dawn is coming. Soon we’ll see where we’ve come from and where we’re going. The waves still
break with foaming tops, the wind still chills damp
skin, but with every rolling wave, I see the distant
shore. Greece swells to a dark shape on the horizon.
Its lights draw us in. I see the shape of the hills. Soon I’ll see trees and houses. Then cars and people.
The engine sputters and dies.
Everyone falls silent. After such bright hope, my
heart sinks.
“Water in the engine,” a man says.
Our eyes lock on the engine man. He pulls the
starter cord. The engine whines and dies. He pulls
again. Harder this time. The engine whines and dies.
“The choke,” a woman says. “Try the choke.”
With the choke out, the engine whines, gives a
little cough and dies. Whines, coughs and dies. It
burps a puff of black smoke. Nothing more. Some-
one curses.
“Empty tank,” a man says.
“Not even enough fuel to cross,” a woman says.
More cursing, this time directed at the Turks.
The engine man sinks to the floor like a deflated
balloon. I stare at him as fear rises in me. He releases the rudder, slumps against the sagging sides.
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“Keep steering! Keep steering!” a woman says.
“We’ll drift with the currents otherwise.”
The engine man leaps up. “I know nothing about
these things,” he says. He grabs the rudder. “I sold
shoes in Damascus.”
With no power, we drift with the mood of the
breeze and the pull of the tide. Seawater slops and
slaps over the side. The men with paddles dip them
in the water and pull hard. Greece gets no closer.
“It’s teasing us,” Bushra says. “Near but still
too far.”
The sky blushes from gray to pink to blue. The
sun peeks above the horizon. Alan lifts his head
to squint in the new day. “Are we nearly there,
Ghalib?”
“I hope so,” I say. “The sun will warm you.”
With the rising sun, the waves calm. The wind
stills. Sudsy foam no longer flies from the tops of
waves, which are now only sharp little peaks. We
have no power, but there are no scary waves either.
I dare to release the rope I’ve gripped since we left
Turkey. I straighten stiff fingers. My knuckles are
chapped, battered raw by salt water.
“Look! Look!” a boy says. He points across the
sea. For a second, I think we’re near Greece. I spin
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to see as something dark leaps out of the water. It plunges beneath waves and vanishes from sight.
“What was that?” I pull back with fear.
People scream. The boat rocks as they leap away
from the side. I grab the rope again. Wind it through
my fingers. Another something leaps from the water.
“What are they?” I say.
“Dolphins,” a woman says.
“They won’t hurt,” Baba says. “They’re curious.”
The dolphins jump around us for a while. Every-
one relaxes, settles into the boat. We watch. They
help us forget we’re drifting on the open sea. I let go
of the rope. Move my feet. Water splashes around my
knees. Our boat is lower in the water. Every wave
sloshes over the sagging sides, bringing more water.
I nudge Bushra to show her. She questions with her
eyes, but I’m afraid to say anything. Putting words to
it will make it real. But someone else soon notices.
“We’re sinking, we’re sinking,” a woman says.
Her voice rises and breaks like the waves. She grabs
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