The Boy on the Beach

by Tima Kurdi

  Abdullah contacted the smuggler and got his money back. Then he, Rehanna, and the boys boarded a bus, with plans to go back to Izmir. But Izmir was full of refugees, and some people told him to go to Bodrum instead, which offered a shorter sea crossing. A surge of refugees had also descended on Bodrum; more than two thousand people made that crossing in the month of August.

  “It’s packed here,” Abdullah said when he, Rehanna, and the boys arrived in Bodrum. “Police are everywhere. Smugglers are scared. We will have to be patient and wait.”

  Abdullah joined the throngs of refugees who went around the city bargaining with the many smugglers during the day and waiting for the smugglers’ calls at night. Abdullah, still scared to take a dinghy, told the smuggler he was hoping for a seaworthy fiberglass boat.

  “Everyone has small kids, not just you. You need to pay for your boys,” the smuggler said.

  “But my boys are young. They will sit on our laps,” Abdullah argued.

  “Okay, I will let you know.”

  As in Izmir, the majority of refugees were sleeping in parks and on the streets because the hotels in Bodrum were booked. Ghalib and Alan still had bad colds and fevers from their days in the camp. Abdullah had to get a roof over their heads. He found another cheap hotel room, and their days of watchful waiting resumed.

  “I can’t go on like this,” Abdullah texted me. “It’s too dangerous to take a flimsy raft. The shores are so rocky they could tear apart a boat like that. Me and Rehanna are scared.”

  Day after day, they watched as other people made it to Greece. They hoped for good news from the smugglers about a better boat. Slowly, their money and time were running out.

  “Wallah, we are tired of being at the hotel and waiting,” Abdullah told me. “We need to finish this. If the weather’s okay, I’m willing to consider a rubber dinghy. We are like everyone else here.”

  On August 20, Abdullah texted me. “So many police here. Waiting for the smuggler to call.” I texted back with another nagging message, saying that I’d heard reports that some refugees had drowned while wearing fake life jackets. Abdullah had to reassure me that he had purchased expensive ones in Izmir for the boys and Rehanna.

  The following morning, Abdullah texted again to say that they had travelled to the spot where the smugglers had another rubber dinghy at the ready. The waves were too big, and Abdullah refused to go. I am ashamed to admit this now, but by then, I had started to become impatient. The suspense, the anxiety, the fear, and the doubt were driving me crazy. I called Abdullah.

  “What are you waiting for? What’s wrong with you, Abdullah?” I demanded.

  “Fatima, you don’t understand. The waves were too big last night. There were fifty refugees for one flimsy dinghy. I’m not putting my babies in a situation like that.”

  “Everybody else is taking the risk. Our friends and relatives told me many refugees make it there safely,” I had the nerve to respond.

  “Sister, stop pushing me. Do you think we’re happy here? , Wallah ta’abna. We’re sick and tired.”

  “How much do you have now?”

  “A little more than four thousand dollars.”

  “Tell them you have only four thousand and you have babies.”

  “, Ekhti biya’arfo, ma beyhemmon. Sister, they know that. They don’t care.”

  “Talk to other refugees and smugglers. You need to find your way.”

  On August 22, I called Abdullah again with a different concern. There were media reports that in Central Europe authorities refused to let the surge of refugees pass through; some were robbed and beaten. Even in Greece, the situation seemed grim.

  “I don’t think you should go to Europe. I think you should go back to Istanbul,” I said.

  “One minute you’re pushing me to go and the next you’re pushing me to stay put,” Abdullah responded. “, Ekhti khalas mafi raga’a. Sister, enough! There’s no going back.”

  Throughout that month, the clock was ticking louder in my brother’s ear. Every day, he was chipping away at their four-thousand-dollar fund. Every day, he had to face the possibility that they would have to travel on an overcrowded rubber dinghy. Every day, he was reminded that Mohammad was already in Germany, and so were at least four of our cousins, while other relatives were at that very moment attempting to traverse the northern land corridor into Germany. Hivron and her family were poised to make the crossing, and so was Shireen’s son Yasser. Of course, none of those people had two tiny kids and a frightened wife to safeguard.

  On August 23, I woke up before the dawn, as usual: no texts from Abdullah.

  “Where are you? What’s going on?” my text demanded.

  “On the street. The waves were too big last night. I just saw Yasser. He’ll tell you the waves were too big. It’s too windy here.”

  I’m ashamed to admit my response. “Everyone is going except for you, why are you scared?”

  “I can’t explain it. When you’re in the water, it’s so different than it is from afar. It’s like a horror movie.”

  On the night of August 23, the water and the wind had made peace with each other, or at least that’s how it appeared from Bodrum. Abdullah waited all night for the smugglers’ call, until the sun rose once again over a tranquil sea and another day of watchful waiting began.

  On August 25, I woke up before the sun to find that Abdullah had sent me a video of the waves and the wind from a few nights before, asking, “Would you get into that sea? Do you understand?” That video chilled me to the bone. It gave me some appreciation of the refugees’ terrifying situation. When I think about it now, I feel like an idiot for pushing. On Google Maps, Bodrum looks like the ideal place to cross from. But the point at Akyarlar juts out from the coastline, and because of that, it’s often windy there. The winds can be so bad that they have a famous name among mariners: the Meltemi winds. They peak in the summer until mid-September. Conditions before a Meltemi are often ideal: skies are blue and the wind is typically lighter, making it seem like a perfect time for a boat ride. But the winds can rear up suddenly, particularly around Bodrum and Kos, reaching gale-force speeds of more than thirty knots, generating steep waves of three to six metres.

  The Meltemi winds didn’t cause all the drownings that were happening across the Mediterranean, but they certainly helped provide the perfect storm. If I had done more research in advance, I don’t know if I would have sponsored Abdullah’s crossing. Or maybe I would have sent more money to pay for a seaworthy boat—two more what-ifs that I will never be able to change.

  By the time Abdullah texted the next day to say, “We’re going tonight,” I had become skeptical that a crossing would happen. Maybe he was too. Since that first night of sleeping in the park in Izmir, the family had been staying in one hotel room after the other, checking out each day in the hopes that they would cross that night, only to be returned to the shore to search for a new hotel room in two cities overwhelmed with refugees looking for cheap hotel rooms. That day, Abdullah had finally found a decent, affordable room, and he decided that they wouldn’t check out before they made each and every crossing attempt. Instead, he paid the hotel owner the day’s fee, so that if the overnight crossing attempt was unsuccessful, the family could immediately return to their room.

  That afternoon of August 26, before they left to make the crossing, Abdullah bought some supplies: a few bottles of water for the voyage and some hard cookies to soothe Alan’s teething and Ghalib’s cookie cravings. At midnight, they left the hotel, carrying the sleeping boys in their arms. They walked for about five minutes to the rendezvous point and piled into a passenger van with at least a dozen refugees, a mix of single adults and families with kids. The smuggler warned everyone to be silent when they got to the beach.

  “If any of your babies cry, we’ll get caught.”

  The van drove for at least a half-hour. They arrived at the cove, and when they got to the shore, there were more than forty refugees waiting—all designated for a rubber ding
hy with a capacity of no more than twenty. The wind was strong and the dinghy was a weak match for the waves. It groaned under the weight of the refugees as they clambered on. Abdullah and Rehanna stood on the shore. They didn’t know whether to get in that dinghy or turn back. Soon they were the only refugees left on the shore.

  “, Rijl qiddam w rijl wara. One foot forward and one backward,” thought Abdullah.

  “You need to leave right now! Get on the boat,” hissed the smuggler.

  “There are too many people here. You didn’t say there would be so many of us. It’s too dangerous,” Abdullah countered.

  “Yallah, yallah. Come on, hurry! We have to go!” the other refugees called out. “Either we live together or we die together. We all suffer the same.”

  Rehanna grabbed Abdullah’s hand and squeezed, saying, “Inshallah, we’ll make it.”

  Abdullah paid the smuggler, and they waded into the shallows, carrying the boys. Abdullah got in the dinghy first and Rehanna lifted the boys up to him one by one. Once on board, they squeezed into a spot in the middle among the other parents with kids. Abdullah had Ghalib in his lap and Rehanna had Alan; they hugged the kids to their chests, with their arms around them like seat belts.

  “Ya haram, that dinghy was so packed,” Abdullah told me, “we could barely breathe. But we were desperate. No one on the outside can understand what it was like for us. They’d wonder, ‘Why would they put their kids in danger like that?’ When I looked the other refugees in the eye, everyone had the same grim look of determination. All their eyes could see was Europa; it was like they were looking at heaven. Everyone was praying, ‘Inshallah, the coast guard will be blind to us. Inshallah, we’ll survive and get to Greece.’ ”

  The boat sped toward the open water. With every inch they crossed, the waves grew higher and higher, the wind stronger, stirring the sea up into a rabid froth. The sparkling lights of Kos seemed even more remote.

  “Each wave would take the front of the dinghy up, up, up, until we thought that it would flip over,” Abdullah told me later. “But then it would crest the wave and plunge downward, so that the back of the boat would shoot up into the sky.”

  The centre of the dinghy, where the families were sitting, started to fill with water. Ghalib was scared and crying, as was Rehanna. Abdullah was scared too, but amazingly, Alan was quiet. Everyone started to bail the water out from the middle of the dinghy with their hands.

  “How stupid are we to do this to our kids, to ourselves?” Abdullah asked Rehanna. “How did we end up in this nightmare? All these refugees escaped the war and now we’re in this flimsy boat?”

  “I know, but we can’t go back,” Rehanna said.

  It went on like that for what seemed like an hour. But when you’re panicking, time plays tricks on you. It might have been ten minutes or so. Then the seas got worse.

  “The waves were getting higher,” Abdullah said. “The farther into the sea we went, the more dangerous it got. Our hearts were beating so fast and we thought, ‘There’s no way we’ll live through this.’ Everyone was praying for the coast guard to be blind to our boat, but Rehanna and I were praying to God that they would see it and save us, because otherwise we would not survive those waves. Then, Alhamdulillah, suddenly a boat appeared, flashing a searchlight across the water. The spotlight landed on our dinghy and that boat sped toward us. We were so relieved.

  “But the men on board the approaching boat were yelling angrily at us. They threw a big rope, and it whacked the dinghy driver hard in the head. They had what looked like a big spear, but maybe it was a hook, to pull the boat closer. Whatever it was, they were poking the boat with it. Everyone on the boat was hysterical, yelling, ‘, Minshan Allah! For God’s sake, don’t rip our boat! , Haram ’alaikom. We have little kids!’ Some people wanted to grab hold of the rope so they could be towed back to land, but others wanted to get away so they could continue with the crossing. Many people jumped up at once, tipping the boat. A few people fell into the sea, but luckily, the refugees pulled those people back into the dinghy. The whole time, those waves were crashing against us. It was chaos. The refugees finally grabbed hold of the rope and we were towed back to Turkey.”

  When they reached the dock, the authorities simply waved a finger at the refugees, saying, “Don’t try that again.” Then they were sent on their way.

  Abdullah and Rehanna carried their exhausted boys back to the hotel, where they laid out their clothes to dry and slept until the afternoon. The next day, Abdullah went for a walk with Ghalib, and then he returned to the smuggler to get his money back. After their ordeal, Abdullah and Rehanna needed a few days to recover and think about what they would do next.

  Their hotel had one great luxury: a pool where the boys could have some fun and where Abdullah might be able to make them more comfortable in the water. Alan loved paddling around in that pool. But Ghalib had never liked the water, and the attempted crossing had petrified him even more. Maybe the chlorine also stung his rash, which had become angrier during the days in that Izmir camp.

  Abdullah and Rehanna decided to try the sea crossing again. Now I had a new concern on my mind. I was worried that if Abdullah lost his cellphone during the crossing, he wouldn’t be able to call us and let us know he was okay. I called Rehanna and asked her to write down all our phone numbers on a slip of paper and put that piece of paper in something plastic and watertight, just in case. I could hear the boys in the background, playing; Alan, as usual, was laughing.

  My final text from Abdullah came on August 31. It was seven p.m. for me, and in Turkey it was the morning of September 1. The text read, “God willing, we’re leaving tonight.”

  That morning, Abdullah met with the smuggler again.

  “Please, my kids will not survive in a rubber dinghy. I need a hard-backed boat. Can’t you give me a discount?”

  “Can you pay more?” asked the smuggler.

  “I only have four thousand dollars. I can’t get a penny more.”

  “Then you’ll have to settle for a rubber dinghy,” said the smuggler.

  “I’m not risking another rubber dinghy,” said Abdullah, and he walked away with a heavy heart. He returned to the hotel room and broke the news to Rehanna. They didn’t know what to do. Time was their enemy. If they stayed even one more night, they might not even have enough money for a dinghy.

  A few hours later, the smuggler called and said, “I will agree to the four thousand for a hard boat. But you have to make sure that your boys don’t make a sound. If they so much as breathe heavily, I will call it off.”

  “Don’t worry. Thank you,” Abdullah said.

  Abdullah and Rehanna once again prepared for the crossing. Rehanna had the list of our phone numbers wrapped in plastic. When Abdullah placed the list in his pocket, he found some Turkish coins. What would he need those coins for in Greece? He put them on the dresser.

  Ghalib noticed and said, “What are you doing, Baba? That’s a lot of money. I want to keep those coins.” Abdullah put the coins back in his pocket with the phone numbers.

  Rehanna and Abdullah dressed the boys for the journey. Ghalib wore blue shorts and a blue shirt. Alan wore the red T-shirt and long blue jean shorts that I had purchased for him in Turkey. Both boys lay down for a nap and were soon fast asleep.

  The sun set and the sky turned dark. It was a warm night. Ghalib woke up hungry. They were feeling stir-crazy after so many nights of doing the same thing, so they decided to get something to eat, then go to a park near the rendezvous point and wait for the smuggler’s call. Abdullah put Alan’s shoes on, securing the Velcro straps and then kissing them, over and over. “Alan was still half asleep, but he smiled,” said Abdullah recently. “ Ya rabbi, addeish biset halboot. Oh God, how many times I kissed those shoes.”

  “Stop it or you’ll wake him up,” Rehanna told Abdullah.

  Abdullah gathered Alan’s warm, sleeping body in his arms and they left the hotel.

  “I bought one Turkish bun. I gave i
t to Rehanna and told her to take half and split the other half for Alan and Ghalib.”

  Abdullah and Rehanna were anxious. They didn’t want any surprises, so Abdullah called the smuggler and demanded to see the boat in advance. The smuggler agreed. He met Abdullah near the park, and they drove for more than an hour, heading west and around the point at Akyarlar, then north along a road that hugged the shore. That area was very busy with tourists and hotels and lively restaurants and bars. They passed a few strips of beach and finally arrived at a spot near a marina.

  “We went down to the water. There was a tiny fiberglass boat and a Turkish man,” Abdullah said. “The owner, the Turkish man, was scratching something off the hull of the boat—probably the boat’s name. The boat looked okay, but it was small: big enough for six adults at most. The smuggler assured me that there were only a few more passengers. The Turkish guy and the Syrian were whispering to each other in Turkish.”

  “He’s worried about your kids,” said the Syrian smuggler. “This is a busy, sensitive area. Even a whisper will echo on the water. If your kids cry, we will get caught.”

  Abdullah promised that the boys would be quiet. Then he handed over his fee.

  “Be ready for my call,” said the smuggler, as he dropped Abdullah off near the park.

  “I paid the money. We are leaving in an hour or so,” Abdullah said to Rehanna when they met back at the park.

  “, Tawakkalna ala Allah. Trust in Allah’s plan. We need to finish this,” Rehanna said.

  Alan was still sleeping, but Ghalib was awake.

  “, Habibi, we’re going to Europa, say Inshallah,” Abdullah said. “But we’ll need to be very quiet when we get to the boat. We can’t talk at all until we get to Europa. And when we get to Europa, I’ll get you lots and lots of cookies.”

  The temperature was perfect—twenty-one degrees—the humidity was low, and the wind was light. When the sky turned dark, it was filled with stars, and the moon was only starting to wane. I imagine Rehanna pointing up to the sky and marveling at that moon and those stars with her typical optimism. But I’ve never had the heart to ask Abdullah if what I see in my mind is accurate.