The Boy on the Beach

by Tima Kurdi

  Many residents of Sham had used up every penny of their savings, sold all their gold jewellery (for much less than the purchase prices), and liquidated every asset just to have enough food to eat, enough propane to cook meals, and enough mazot (diesel) to heat their homes. I was sending my family money for food, but the prices were sky-high. Like many other citizens, my family had to resort to burning their furniture just to cook and stay warm.

  War changes people. There were lots of people ready to take advantage of the suffering: they would steal money and cars, loot shops, kidnap and kill people, rape girls. There was nothing haram anymore. Money and power became number one. People would say, “, If you are not a wolf, the wolves will eat you.” There were very few people my family could trust.

  I could often hear the sound of gunfire crackling in the background when I called Baba and my sisters. The local schools hadn’t officially closed, but the teachers didn’t always show up, and it had become too dangerous to let the kids go anywhere. The sight and sound of gunfire became routine. Bombs would explode, the shock waves killing full flocks of laughing doves, which rained down from the skies.

  The war hadn’t crushed my father’s generosity, though. One day, he saw a family with young kids living in the park. He felt sorry for them and invited them to stay in his house. It wasn’t long before his guests started to call more of their relatives to join them. Baba’s house was like it was during my youth—a crowded hotel—but this time, it was filled with strangers. It eventually became too much, and Baba had to set limits, asking many people to leave. But that didn’t mean he closed his heart or his doors completely. He took in a young widow named Duaa and her baby boy, Youssef, who was born with a severe learning disability. It gave me some comfort to know that Baba had a woman and child in his home, and that one thing hadn’t changed: even in the midst of the destruction, my baba wanted nothing more than to cultivate a place in which love could grow.

  PART

  TWO

  Chapter 6

  Alan

  Alan

  Kobani was Rehanna’s homeland, the place to which she returned to give birth to Ghalib in 2011, the place she fled to in 2012 after the fighting and suicide bombings in Damascus made life too dangerous, the place she remained while her husband shuttled back and forth to Istanbul to try to eke out a livelihood. Kobani was Rehanna’s last safe haven.

  Every day that he was working in Turkey, Abdullah was thinking about his wife and son. Rehanna was pregnant with Alan, and Abdullah couldn’t wait to get back to Kobani to be with her. He returned safely before Alan was born, and I talked to them a few days before his birth.

  “I’m going to explode,” said Rehanna, laughing her lovely, contagious laugh. I had started calling her , Farhana, which in Arabic means “happy and laughing.”

  “It’s so hot—almost fifty degrees today—and this monkey inside is kicking me. Abdullah tries to put his ear to my stomach, but I have to move away before he gets kicked.”

  “What did you do today?” I asked her.

  “We went to your dad’s olive groves to clean up,” she said. “They’re so big, like me! I wish you could see them. I’ll take a picture and send it to your dad; he’ll be so proud.”

  Alan didn’t come on his due date.

  “This monkey is not coming out. I can’t wait for that moment!” Abdullah texted.

  Finally, Rehanna’s contractions began. Abdullah called Rehanna’s mom and my sister Maha, and they rushed Rehanna to the hospital in Kobani. The conditions at the hospital had degraded since the terrorists and the fighting had reached the surrounding regions. There was only one doctor there who could do a C-section. During the procedure, there were complications.

  “Rehanna’s heart almost stopped, and she had to be resuscitated,” Abdullah said when I called for an update. “She lost so much blood and the hospital had a shortage of her type. But Alhamdulillah, everything was okay.”

  Abdullah stayed in the waiting room, according to Muslim tradition. He prayed and paced and pestered Maha each time she returned from the delivery room with updates.

  “Maha, find out what’s happening now,” he demanded.

  When she returned, she said, “, Alf mabrouk. A thousand congratulations. You have another son!”

  Abdullah and Rehanna’s second son, Alan, was born on June 6, 2013, on the edge of one war zone and in the epicentre of another. Even in a war zone, the cycle of life persists.

  When I finally got to talk with Abdullah, he was proudly holding his baby in his arms.

  “, Habib albi. He is so tiny. , Mashallah mitl al-qamar, he’s like a bright moon shining, so beautiful. Say something to your ammeh,” he said, holding the phone near the baby’s ear.

  “Hello, my sweetheart. I can’t wait to meet you,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “I swear, Fatima, he’s smiling at you!” said Abdullah.

  “How’s Rehanna?” I asked.

  “. Thank God for her safety, Rehanna is okay now.”

  Abdullah texted a photo of that precious baby. Alan had such light hair that I joked, “You’re both so dark. Where did you get this boy? Mashallah, mitl el mala‘ekah. He looks like an angel.”

  A few weeks later, Abdullah took his two boys to a local Internet cafe and we Skyped so that I could see Alan while I talked to him. He was tiny and he looked so peaceful sleeping in Abdullah’s arms.

  “This boy’s an angel. He sleeps like a dream and when he’s awake, he’s such a peaceful, happy baby,” Abdullah said. “I’ve never seen a newborn smile this much.”

  Ghalib wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t impressed.

  “What do you think of your brother?” I asked him.

  “He’s a donkey. I don’t like him,” he replied. He looked at his dad and said, “Take him back to where you bought him from. How much did he cost?”

  “One lira,” joked Abdullah.

  Ghalib considered this. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go get our refund.”

  Our laughter woke up Alan, who started to coo like a dove.

  “Did you choose a name?” I asked Abdullah.

  “I’m shy, but I need to ask you something,” he said. “Can I name him after your son? Can I call him Alan? It’s a beautiful Kurdish name, and Rehanna loves it too.”

  “Of course. It would be an honour.”

  After Alan was born, Rehanna’s cheerful optimism prevailed, despite all the hardships of wartime life. When no water or food was available or the electricity was cut, she would say, “It’s the perfect time to gaze at the stars and enjoy the moonlight: it’s like a huge candle.” Or when they had to use firewood to cook, she would say, “, Al-asr al-hajari,” meaning, “We are living in the Stone Age.”

  “She was a young woman in love,” said Maha recently, when our talk turned, as it often does, to our dearly departed Rehanna and the boys. “She loved Abdullah to death. She was always telling him, ‘Don’t worry, the war will end and everything will be fine.’ ”

  “She was a wonderful wife and a loving mother. She never complained about anything. She had hope for a brighter future,” Abdullah often said.

  Soon after Alan’s birth, Abdullah had to return to work in Istanbul. He was saving every penny so that he could bring the family to Istanbul as soon as possible. Those goodbyes were always wrenching.

  “Ghalib would always hold my hand so tight,” Abdullah recalled to me later. “He would put the other hand up to Allah, and say, in a loud voice, ‘, Allah yerzaak ya Baba. May God give more and more.’ And when I got on the bus to leave, Ghalib would wave and call out, ‘Bring us bananas when you come back, Baba.’ And that would give me the strength I needed to persevere.”

  Soon after Alan’s birth, the violence began to escalate across the country. The Syrian War had ravaged many cities in the western and southern provinces, including my dad’s birthplace of Hama. Up to that point, with the Syrian forces battling the rebel groups in other parts of Syria, Kobani had been a calmer, safer place. That
August, in the province of Aleppo, many people were massacred by ISIS and Al Qaeda’s al-Nusra, including women and children. The terrorists then began to raid cities and villages closer to Kobani. Thousands of civilians had to flee their towns and villages. Some went to the city of Aleppo, others went to Kobani, and many others went to Turkey because it was the closest border country. People who stayed in the region increasingly risked being kidnapped, held for ransom, tortured, and beheaded. Rumours of increased warfare in the Aleppo region, in Idlib to the west, and Homs to the south, made travelling to Damascus a deadly prospect. The terrorists had the citizens of Kobani hemmed in.

  A few months after Alan’s birth, Rehanna and the boys left Kobani to join Abdullah in Turkey. The region was awash with terrorists, and they had to hire a smuggler to take them across the border. When their guide ordered everyone to walk in single file, they learned that the terrorists had placed land mines along the route. “Don’t step out of the line,” the guide barked. “Follow my path exactly.” But at some point, a little girl did step out of the line and a mine exploded, maiming her legs. Luckily, Rehanna and the boys made it safely across that dangerous region.

  Abdullah rented an apartment for the whole family for 400 lira per month—roughly $150 Canadian. He was working non-stop, making 650 lira per month, but it soon became impossible for them to afford the rent and feed a family on the remaining 250 lira per month. Regardless, life in Istanbul, free of the threat of daily violence, was something to be treasured.

  Back in Syria, with autumn and the cold winter approaching and no end to that terrible war in sight, my siblings had to face the same choice that Rehanna had: remain in Syria and risk her life and the lives of her children, or flee to Turkey. My family and friends were living in a constant state of fear, wondering each and every morning, “If I leave the house to try to find food, will the house still be standing when I get back? Will my kids survive another day? Will I die and leave them orphaned?” Each and every night, they wondered, “Will I wake up tomorrow? And if I do, what’s going to happen?”

  Mohammad and Ghouson’s family of six decided to flee to Kobani and then to Turkey because, among other reasons, Shergo, their twelve-year-old son, had a hernia. Only in Turkey would he have a chance of getting surgery. But land crossing had become perilous for grown men, never mind children. At that time, Mohammad’s elder daughter, Heveen, was fourteen, their younger daughter, Ranim, was six, and their younger son, Rezan, only four. The family faced a chokehold of checkpoints and terrorists pouring in via the Turkish border, many of them from other nations. Yet these men had the gall to target Syrian citizens, calling them infidels for abandoning their country. The local Kurdish militia had closed all access roads to Kobani. Residents needed permission to exit the city.

  Ghouson is not the average person; she is just as tough as my baby sister, Hivron, maybe more so. And she was willing to do anything to take care of her child.

  “What would you do if your son was going to die?” she asked anyone who dared stand in her way. She had to spend the whole day at the city office, waiting for exit papers. She finally got what she wanted and returned home triumphantly.

  The permission papers from the YPG, the Kurdish militia, allowed Mohammad’s family to exit Kobani, but they still needed to cross a dangerous patchwork of land. As the family traversed the countryside toward the Turkish border, a group of rebels stopped them in their tracks. They seized Mohammad and beat him, calling him a Kurdish kafer, a rebel fighter and an infidel. Then they forced a rifle into Shergo’s hand and ordered him to shoot his father.

  “Minshan Allah, please don’t do this,” Ghouson begged, falling to her knees. “We’re just a family trying to get to Turkey to get an operation for our son.” She prayed until the terrorists took back the gun. They forced Mohammad to prove he was Muslim by reciting a line from the Koran. Finally, they let the family go.

  “Mohammad could barely walk after that beating,” Ghouson told me later. The family still had to get across a border crawling with Turkish police and smugglers, littered with land mines, and snared with barbed wire. They hid in a storm drain for hours alongside many other desperate citizens. When a man was stung by a scorpion and his arm had to be tied to stop the flow of potentially fatal venom to his heart, Mohammad and Ghouson made their move with their four kids. They found a gap in the barbed fencing, but each time a group of people got through, the guards in Turkey would fire their weapons into the air to scare the refugees as they chased after them. Eventually, Mohammad’s family gathered the courage to sneak through the fence. Four-year-old Rezan was cut by the barbed wire and started to cry out in pain. Ghouson had to cover his mouth so as not to draw the attention of the police. When a group of Syrians ran across the field, they began to run too, but in a different direction. Shots rang out, but they kept moving. Finally, they came upon a farm owned by an elderly couple who took pity on them, saying, “The police will be following you. You can hide in our barn until they leave.”

  In that barn, among the sheep and goats, they hid under the hay and tried not to breathe while they listened for any sounds of approaching Turkish police. The seconds and minutes stretched out. Later, the couple returned to the barn with bandages for Rezan’s and Mohammad’s wounds, and water, bread, and jam.

  Rezan told me his version of the story later, “Auntie, we hadn’t had anything to drink or eat for two days, and I had a stomach ache from eating so much bread and jam.” Ghouson added, “Allah yikattir khairon. I pray for that good couple every day. They saved our lives.”

  Mohammad’s family went to Istanbul and never looked back, except when they dared to dream of home. Sadly, his two youngest kids, Ranim and Rezan, took few memories of Syria with them, most of them stained by upheaval and violence. At first, the family stayed with a friend of Ghouson’s in Istanbul, but they soon had to find their own place. Mohammad was still in pain from the terrorists’ beating, but the UNHCR—the refugee agency meant to provide help and aid—was so overwhelmed by the flood of Syrians that Mohammad’s family was turned away every time they tried to register for help. After a month or so, he got a job at a warehouse, loading boxes onto a truck. He met a Turkish man there who offered his family an apartment, but it was too expensive, so after a few months, they had to move again.

  Back in Sham, Hivron had also been plotting her escape to Turkey. She had five children, including a teenaged son and three young daughters ranging in age from twelve to six. When the family finally left Damascus for Turkey, they had to say goodbye to Hivron’s eldest daughter, Rawan, who was married by then and living with her mother-in-law, a disabled widow in a wheelchair. The goodbye was hard on everyone.

  “Please stay safe,” Hivron said to her daughter as she left. It was impossible not to wonder when, or even if, she’d ever see her eldest daughter again.

  For the next few weeks, Hivron and her family traversed Syria, staying overnight in towns and villages with relatives and friends. They arrived in Turkey not long after Rehanna and the boys. Luckily, an apartment in Abdullah’s building had become available, just above Abdullah’s place. Both families were in a foreign world, but at least they had each other.

  Baby Alan was three months old by then. “I’m holding Alan right now,” Hivron said, when I called soon after their arrival. “He’s sleeping like an angel. Mashallah. You need to see this boy in person. He will light up your life. And when he wakes up, he smiles and laughs. As soon as he’s done breastfeeding, he falls right back to sleep. Lucky Rehanna—I wish my kids had been like that. But if they had, I’d want more babies, so maybe it’s a good thing they weren’t,” she joked.

  Ghalib’s life was more difficult. He had a skin condition that had become painful and itchy. Abdullah took him to the doctor, who prescribed an ointment, but it was expensive—five lira for a small tube that lasted only one or two applications and didn’t help much. Sometimes, the pharmacist would take pity on Abdullah and his family, giving him a free batch, but they couldn’t
count on that. The company of Ghalib’s three cousins was a welcome distraction, and Hivron’s only son, Abdulrahman, was a patient, loving babysitter for his younger sisters and the boys.

  Money was tight for all my refugee siblings. Paying the rent was their chief concern and their biggest stress. I tried my best to help them with that. In 2013, I started working full-time again, taking a job at a franchise hair salon. I would send my paycheques to my siblings, and Rocco would help too, providing the lion’s share of the money I sent to them. As long as my siblings could keep a roof over their heads, they could get by with a limited diet of stew and rice. Hivron also showed Rehanna how to make cheap, filling baby food for Alan by mixing milk with cornstarch and sugar.

  “Do you have diapers?” I asked Rehanna one day.

  “The disposable ones are too expensive. I use cloth diapers and cover them with plastic wrap.” She never complained. Abdullah was the same. Once I was talking to him and he started calling out, “I see the paupers found us a treasure.” He was talking to Hivron’s kids, who had found a discarded couch on the street and had dragged it home.

  At that time, Abdullah was working in a women’s clothing sweatshop. But even with the money I sent to my family and his salary, there was never enough to cover everything. After three months in the new apartment, Abdullah couldn’t pay the rent on time. The landlord immediately evicted the entire family. Hivron’s tiny apartment could barely contain her family of six, and she would have risked eviction too if she had also taken in Abdullah’s family. Rehanna and the boys had no choice but to return to Kobani for the winter. They were going against a surge of Syrians seeking refuge in other countries. Media and aid organizations reported that Syrian refugees were so desperate to escape the war that they were attempting to seek asylum in Europe via smugglers’ boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Greece and Italy, and some were drowning during the dangerous journey. Abdullah and Rehanna didn’t want to consider that option; they still planned to find a new apartment in Istanbul so that the family could reunite once again. Every day was a struggle, but they refused to give up hope.