by Tima Kurdi
Time or a chronology of events was entirely missing from my monologue. As thoughts popped into my head, I repeated them. I said that I had been to Turkey the previous year and I had seen for myself the hardships of Syrian refugees. I mentioned something about my desire to get Abdullah treatment for his teeth, mumbling that this was “another story.” I confessed that I should have done more to support my family. I regretted not buying my nephews more toys. I recalled a conversation with Ghalib before they left Istanbul. He had asked me for a bicycle, and I had promised my nephew I would send him money for that.
When I stopped talking, a reporter asked if I blamed the Canadian government for their deaths. I said I blamed the whole world for turning its back on the Syrian people. I said I was there to deliver my brother’s plea to the public, to find any way to prevent more tragic deaths, and to stop the war in Syria.
When it was over, I literally stumbled up the stairs leading to my front door.
Over the next forty-eight hours, my family, like everyone else, had to rely on Internet reports for more information. And with the public clamouring for more background, more specific details, many news outlets carried different, confusing, sometimes contradictory reports. The world wanted to know everything about the little boy on the beach before they even knew his name.
On September 3, the world learned the correct name of the boy on the beach and the names of his loved ones. I had provided the correct spelling of both boys’ names during my press conference. Some reports skewed my words, saying that I claimed that I had applied for asylum for Abdullah’s family, even though I repeated twice that I had sent the government only an application for Mohammad’s family.
Another thing that haunts me to this day is that during the press conference, I myself miscommunicated something Abdullah had told me during our many conversations. When he told me that Rehanna looked bloated, like a balloon, I assumed that he was referring to the way she looked right after she drowned. But that’s the way she looked much later, when he identified her body at the hospital. When I spoke to the media, I was still grieving, so my mind couldn’t hold on to much, and what little I could remember was filtered through grief. I tried to correct the facts later, but people had latched on to the misinformation from my own mouth.
I was shocked that even in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, a segment of the population was looking hard for information that might discredit my brother, and they latched on to my words, using them to spread hate and racism. In the West, we call those people trolls. Whatever name you give them, they cast a long, ugly shadow upon an already grim time for me and my family.
With the media and the public hungry for information, I tried to sort through everything that was reported. Luckily, I had Alan and Rocco to monitor the news and social media. I received many emails and messages from people all over the world who wanted to help my family, but I did not have the strength to communicate with anyone. The daily onslaught of gossip did not penetrate my bubble of grief and my desperate longing to be with my family. The Arabic media and the Arabic public placed a lot of significance on the way Alan’s body was lying on that shore, with his shoes in the foreground. People in the Middle East think that it’s a bad sign to see the soles of someone’s shoes, and therefore many people believed that his pose conveyed the message that Alan was upset, casting shame on a callous and hostile world.
This detail mattered to Abdullah most of all. He had kissed those shoes many times before leaving the hotel that night. Now that he had lost his wife and sons, he was also losing himself. Slowly, I began to filter out the noise and piece together the media’s version of what happened. During the early morning hours of September 2, Alan’s body washed ashore on Golden Beach in Akyarlar, Turkey. Rehanna and Ghalib were discovered a little later on the nearby rocky shores, about a hundred metres away from Alan’s body. The photographer had also taken photos and videos of Ghalib, lying on his back, his T-shirt pulled up to reveal his belly and chest. He looked like he was sleeping too.
A bartender who worked at a restaurant on Golden Beach claimed that he arrived at work at six thirty a.m. and saw two bodies floating in the water: one was Alan and the other a little girl wearing pink jeans. He told reporters that he dashed into the water to pull them onto the sand; when it appeared they were dead, he said he closed their eyes and called an ambulance. There was no mention that he tried to take Alan’s pulse or perform CPR.
And yet, why was Alan’s body still at the edge of the shore when the Turkish photographer appeared? Perhaps the bartender meant to comfort our family. But we weren’t comforted, only more bewildered and stunned. How could a tiny boy’s body be left at the edge of the shore?
And then there was the matter of how the photographs of the boy on the beach came to be. According to the Turkish photographer who took those pictures, she was out on that beach at six a.m., taking photographs of a group of Pakistani refugees attempting to make the boat crossing to Greece. That’s when she came across Alan, Ghalib, and the little girl wearing pink jeans. She took many pictures of Alan, including some that feature a Turkish police officer towering over Alan’s body as he talks with another police officer. One Turkish police officer carried Alan to a rocky area, placing his body behind a big rock, perhaps to hide him from the tourists, while someone shot footage of the officer doing this. Can you imagine how my brother felt when he watched that video? To see his younger son treated like refuse?
The photographer sent those photos to her newspaper, Dogan News Agency. They published the picture of Alan that same morning, along with an article about the tragedy. The photographer also posted the picture of Alan on Twitter with the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik, which means “humanity washed ashore.”
Throughout those first few days, my son Alan witnessed the spread of the photo on social media. But we didn’t know the extent of its reach until many months later. A group of university researchers conducted a study about it. Within twelve hours, the photo had reached 20 million screens. A handful of initial tweets by refugee advocates and journalists quickly led to fifty-three thousand tweets per hour. The viral tweet also changed the entire tone of the public conversation about refugees. Until that day, people commonly used the term migrant, as if refugees fleeing war had a choice to migrate. After September 2, people started using the term refugee much more often.
But what happened on that beach early that morning? Was the bartender the first person to discover and move Alan’s body? When did the photojournalist capture the police officer removing Alan’s body from the shore? How many people touched his body? And for what purpose? And what of Rehanna’s and Ghalib’s bodies? What about the girl in the pink jeans? Didn’t they deserve some vigilance and decency too?
My family had to make do with the same pictures and videos and articles that the rest of the world was receiving. The eyes of the cameras became our eyes on Abdullah’s lost world. I watched footage of Abdullah as he exited the morgue, his face crumpled in grief, the cameras unrelenting as he turned his face to the wall and sobbed. He tried to describe what it’s like to lose your whole world to a bunch of foreign journalists speaking Turkish and English and other languages he did not know. And if his words got lost in translation, how would he know?
When I spoke with Abdullah the next day, he was in a hysterical state. At the hospital, he had been given a bag containing his family’s clothes and shoes.
“It shattered my heart to have to take that bag of clothes, knowing it’s the only thing that’s left of them,” Abdullah cried. “My hands were shaking. I couldn’t even carry it.”
“, Allah yissbrak. God give you patience,” I said. I wanted to fly there to be with Abdullah, but Ghouson called to say that some of our relatives would be with him soon. For the time being, though, it was painful to know that my brother was suffering alone. After leaving the hospital, Abdullah returned to the hotel where he, Rehanna, and the boys had spent their final night. Once there, he opened the bag and started to cry more.
He smelled their clothes, called out their names. He couldn’t breathe, and he was still in shock, thinking to himself, “Is this real? Are they gone?”
Soon after, he had to return to the hospital to sign the release forms for their bodies. The Turkish government had arranged to transport them to Kobani. Abdullah was filling out the paperwork when big, burly security officers arrived.
“We have to go to the airport right now,” one of the officers told Abdullah.
“I’m not leaving without my bag of clothes. I need to go back to the hotel to get them.”
“We’ll send someone to the hotel for the bag. It will be there when you get to the airport. Don’t worry. Let’s go.”
I spoke with Abdullah at the airport. He was distraught. The clothes were not there.
“I’m not leaving without those clothes,” he said to me. I could hear him arguing with someone, asking, “Where are the clothes? I’m not leaving until I get that bag.” But the plane was waiting, and they assured him that the bag would be sent to Kobani. When he landed in Urfa, a small city near Kobani on the Turkish border, Abdullah phoned me again.
“Fatima, I don’t know what’s happening,” he said. “There were so many people waiting, and now I’m in a police escort. I’m grateful. But where was all this help when my family was alive?” Apparently, his expired passport and lack of UN card were no longer obstacles. The authorities treated him with the dignity and humanity that he and his wife and children had been denied for so many years—dignity that millions of refugees were still being denied.
Abdullah started to cry again.
“Am I in a dream? Am I still in that water? Was it a nightmare? Am I really talking to you?” His questions made my heart burn.
“I’m seeing a procession of cars and an ambulance. Where am I? What is happening?”
“, Ayh haqiqa, Allah yerhamon, Abdullah, it’s real. God rest them in peace.”
“We’re at the bab now,” he said, meaning at the gate to Kobani. But I had to wonder if in his current state, Abdullah meant something different. I would have done anything to be there with him. We talked on the phone constantly, but mostly I had to make do once again with the media reports. The cameras followed Abdullah’s entire journey to Kobani. Later that day, I watched as the three coffins were loaded onto a plane and flown to Urfa. There, the coffins were unloaded from the plane and placed into an ambulance for another escorted procession to the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Kobani. Before the bodies were removed from the ambulance, a photographer snapped a photo of Rehanna’s anguished father, Shikho, grasping tiny Alan’s shoulders in his big hands, the white shroud I’d dreamt about pulled back, revealing Alan’s beautiful face one last time. Seeing those photos of Rehanna’s father with Alan made me weep for Rehanna’s family and for our father in Damascus. He could not possibly travel through a war zone in one day to get to Kobani in time to say his goodbyes. He would have to watch from afar, just like my family.
With the rest of the world, my family watched the media footage of the burial ceremony. I looked at those video clips and photos again and again, straining to identify my relatives in the crowds and watching my grieving brother repeat his call to the world to help other refugees, the same message he’d expressed to me since the beginning of the war. Afterward, a photographer followed Abdullah to his family’s home, where Ghalib spent the majority of his first few years, where Alan was born. Now, less than a year after Abdullah’s family had escaped ISIS’s Siege of Kobani, the photographer captured Abdullah walking alone down their street against a backdrop of rubble that had once been our neighbours’ homes. Abdullah looked as if he belonged among the destruction. He was a wreck of a man.
Abdullah and Rehanna’s house had survived ISIS’s brutal siege. Though the walls were cracked and peppered with holes from mortar shells, the house still stood. Many of our relatives, young and old, lived in that single dwelling. And now it was packed with mourners. Abdullah returned to his family’s bedroom, which still contained Ghalib and Alan’s toys. The cameraman visited the bedroom and took photos of Abdullah beside the bed, which was covered with those toys. In one photograph, Abdullah holds a bright stuffed doll, a Sesame Street character with grinning, giant red lips. The photographer captured a hint of a smile on his skinny face, as if he had travelled back in time to a happy memory. Among the toys on that bed, I spotted a pair of baby shoes that I had bought for baby Ghalib and brought to Sham from Canada on my last visit in 2011.
I spoke with Abdullah later that evening. He told me that before he had flown back to Kobani, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his wife, as well as the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, had all called to offer him not just their condolences but even Turkish citizenship.
“I’m grateful that they helped my family to be buried in their homeland, but what good is all this attention now?” Abdullah said. “It’s too late for my family.”
A few days later, an official called to say that the bag containing his wife’s and boys’ clothes was waiting at the bab. Abdullah was filled with relief. But when he called me an hour later, he was distressed and crying.
“They gave me a bag filled with children’s clothes and shoes, but they’re not Alan’s and Ghalib’s clothes. They looked similar—the same colours—but they’re new clothes and everything is so big. Some of those clothes still have tags on them. And there’s nothing of Rehanna’s. I refused to take that bag. I said, ‘Find their clothes.’ I need those clothes. It would have taken ten minutes to walk to the hotel. I should have gone then. How could they do this to me? What happened to that bag?”
Abdullah could not be consoled. Rehanna and the boys had slipped from his grasp. Now this last keepsake of them was gone too.
PART
THREE
Chapter 11
Ma hada beyktof ward iza bizra’ shouk
Nobody Gets Flowers by Planting Thorns
During those terrible days, my son, Alan, and Rocco were working tirelessly to keep me upright, putting food in front of me, begging me to eat, to sleep, to not wither away. But it wasn’t working. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I wanted to disappear. I didn’t want to face the media requests for interviews. I had to force myself to talk to my friends, who wanted nothing more than to offer condolences and support. I just wanted to be alone with my despair.
My family and friends arranged a beautiful memorial service in Vancouver on September 5 for Rehanna, Ghalib, and Alan. More than two hundred people showed up at Harbour Centre, so many that there wasn’t enough room for all of them. My only request was for a bouquet of white flowers and many white balloons. My friends and my son gave beautiful speeches in tribute to Rehanna and the boys, as well as to all the refugees who had died because of the war. Alan capped off his tribute to his aunt and cousins with this simple, beautiful message: “We are all one, regardless of where we come from.”
Afterward, many of the mourners joined my family, each of them holding a white balloon. Together, we walked down the city streets to the waterfront. At the harbour, we released the balloons into the sky, and as I tossed the bouquet of white flowers into the water, I prayed for peace in the world. I was deeply moved by the outpouring of love and support from my family, my friends, and from complete strangers. But I was still in shock and longed to be with the rest of my family, especially Abdullah. I had made a promise to my mother that I would take care of Abdullah. It was the last promise I had pledged to her before she died. But I couldn’t even take care of myself. And there was no way that my family would let me risk my life to travel to Kobani. The only thing I could do to honour my mother’s request was to keep an eye on Abdullah from afar.
I called my cousins in Kobani to ask how he was doing. They told me that he had been sleeping beside the graves of his wife and children every night. One evening, my cousin told me that Abdullah had retreated to his family’s little house next door. The house was still covered in dust and rubble from the bombings. Earlier that night, she had heard so
bbing coming from his bedroom. She approached the doorway and saw Abdullah sitting on the bed, lit by a flickering candle, surrounded by his boys’ clothes and toys. He was calling out his family’s names, holding their clothes to his nose and crying, “Where did you go? Why did you leave me alone? , Wainkon ya roh baba? Ya alb baba?” It means “Where are you, my heart, my soul? Now that I’ve lost you, I’ve lost my heart and soul. What am I now?”
“He can’t be left alone like that, in that dusty room, surrounded by their clothes and toys, filled with reminders of everything he has lost,” my cousin said in a whisper so that Abdullah wouldn’t overhear her.
In those first days after the tragedy, Ghalib and Alan weren’t just visions in Abdullah’s imagination. The photograph of Alan remained alive in millions of minds. Many artists created their own interpretation of that photograph as a tribute—on murals, on paintings, and on statues—and to serve as permanent reminders to never forget, to never go back to sleep. Refugees and activists also embraced the picture of Alan, putting it on protest signs and on T-shirts, rallying the world to prevent more senseless deaths. Heads of state in many countries weighed in, offering sympathies and promises of help and pleas to other global leaders to do the same.
My home country of Canada was in the final month of a federal election campaign, and that picture of Alan was immediately evoked by parties running against Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Justin Trudeau, at the time the leader of the Liberal Party, pledged that if he was elected, he would take in 25,000 refugees by year’s end. He chastised Harper for not doing enough to help Syrian refugees seek safety in Canada. On the day of the tragedy, Harper was campaigning in my home province of British Columbia. The following day—the same day that I did my press conference—he held his own press conference, saying, “We are doing everything and we will do more of everything” for refugees seeking asylum. As if doing everything equates to accepting a mere 1,002 Syrian refugees. And though his immigration minister told reporters on the day after the tragedy that the numbers had suddenly increased to 2,300, Harper continued to provide only a vague pledge to take in 10,000 people from the Middle East.