The Boy on the Beach

by Tima Kurdi

  “Cookies!” Ghalib would shout. “Can you bring me cookies tonight?”

  “I will bring you a treat.”

  Back in Vancouver, I continued my quest to get the government to approve my private sponsorship of Mohammad’s family. Rocco and I also wanted to help out with Anna’s sponsorship of Abdullah’s family once we had his application ready. And we were also paying for our own son Alan’s education: a business degree at a local college.

  My son had worked part-time since the age of sixteen, and he always paid for all his own personal things, so taking care of his education was the least we could do. But my family’s predicament weighed heavily on his mind, and he didn’t want to be a burden. He wanted to finish school as quickly as possible, so he took courses during the summer, on top of working part-time at an accounting firm. In another world, we would have liked to buy him a car or saved for a down payment to help him buy a home and get a good start on his adult life. But now we were living in a different world. And my compassionate son was more than willing to do without to benefit his extended family.

  By February, Mohammad had become desperate to make a move to get his family out of Turkey. Ghouson had recovered from her miscarriage and was pregnant again. Mohammad had lost faith that my attempt to bring his family to Vancouver would ever succeed. Germany and Sweden were the two European countries that had thrown open their doors to the Syrian refugees. Those countries combined had already provided resettlement to approximately 140,000 refugees. Through the large grapevine of Syrian refugees living in Istanbul, my siblings heard that once a refugee reached Germany, the government would help their families to join them. But first you had to get there. EU countries followed a rule called the Dublin Regulation, which stated that if a refugee arrived in a foreign country from another host country that already gave refugees protection status (as was the case in Turkey), the government of the host country was obligated to either claim responsibility for that refugee or send them back to that “first country of asylum.” That’s one reason many EU members in Central Europe refused to open their doors to refugees: it meant taking responsibility for them.

  Greece was the one exception to the rule. In 2011, the Greek government suspended the Dublin Regulation after they had problems managing asylum-seekers on a long-term basis. Most refugees simply wanted to get safe passage to Northern Europe via Greece, and so when Greece suspended the policy, refugees saw it as an opportunity to reach temporary asylum. My family heard that Greek authorities could still make life difficult for refugees who crossed its borders from Turkey. Most refugees made the journey via the Mediterranean, but some tried the land border. If refugees went by land, they had to cross the Evros River, a daunting natural border that had taken many lives, either by drowning or hypothermia. But my brothers had learned to swim in the Mighty Euphrates. So, in February 2015, Abdullah, Mohammad, and his son Shergo decided to attempt the river crossing.

  They found a local who knew the road and would show them the way. They packed one small knapsack with a change of clothes, some money, and Abdullah’s cellphone. Mohammad kissed his pregnant wife and his children goodbye, and the men travelled west by bus, a journey of approximately 250 kilometres. The Turkish border towns were patrolled by guards with searchlights, so they had to sneak through muddy agricultural fields to get to the river.

  I found out only by accident that they were attempting that journey when I happened to call Abdullah in mid-crossing.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Fatima, I can’t talk.”

  “Why are you whispering? I can barely hear you.”

  “We’re in a field. Hiding from the police. I have to go. I’ll call you when we get across the river.”

  I called Ghouson in a panic, and she told me about their secret plan. “We’re sick and tired of this life of poverty,” she said. “We don’t have enough food. The kids can’t go to school. We can’t get to Canada, so the only choice now is Europe.” Their hope was that once Mohammad, Abdullah, and Shergo got to Germany, the government would help their families join them.

  Abdullah, Mohammad, and Shergo evaded detection and got to the banks of the Evros. Needless to say, it was a long day, waiting to hear back from them. All that stood between them and Greece was the raging river. They stepped into the water. It was ice-cold. Abdullah’s legs immediately went numb.

  “, Wallah albi kan ma’a awladi w marti. My heart is with my wife and kids,” he thought. “What will happen to Rehanna and the boys without me? I can’t do that to them. I can’t leave them all alone.” He decided to turn back.

  Mohammad and Shergo were determined to go forward. There was an inflatable inner tube stuck in the mud on the riverbank, so they claimed it and paddled for their lives to get across the river. When they reached the riverbank on the Greek side, soaked to the bone, shaking uncontrollably, they realized that their change of clothing and money were with Abdullah. “Yallah yallah, come on!” they called to Abdullah. But Abdullah wouldn’t cross the river.

  Abdullah texted me to say that he had turned back. When I called, he said, “Oh my God, ekhti, sister, that river was a beast. As soon as I put my foot in it, I thought, ‘Have you gone crazy?’ Inshallah, Mohammad and Shergo make it the rest of the way.”

  As the sky turned dark, Mohammad and Shergo left Abdullah behind and walked west, their teeth chattering. Mohammad became feverish. He was starving, so he ate some berries from a bush. Those berries may have been poisonous, or at least rotten, because he soon began to vomit uncontrollably and became delirious, collapsing to the ground. Shergo thought his father was about to die in the middle of nowhere. As soon as he saw a human being in the distance, he called out in panic. That human being happened to be a Greek police officer. The police officer appeared to take pity on Mohammad and Shergo. He drove them to a local police station. They communicated in stunted English, and the officer nodded agreeably as he listened to their plan of attempting to get to Germany. But when they reached the station, they were put in a cell with twenty or so other shivering Syrian refugees. They were not even given a blanket. The next morning, the police guards herded the refugees into vans, the whole time promising to assist with safe passage to Germany. Instead, they were taken to the Turkish border and put back in the hands of the Turkish police. They returned to the limbo of refugee life in Istanbul. They were sick and tired, but also grateful that they had escaped death.

  When I realized the risks my brothers were willing to take to get out of Turkey, I felt even more pressure to get them to Canada—fast. Once again, I bugged the UN office in Ankara. I was told that the UN might be able to issue their approval for resettlement in Canada much more quickly, but only after the Canadian government approved my family’s asylum. So I put that G-5 application and the thick pile of required paperwork into the mail and sent it off with a prayer.

  I heard nothing from the immigration office until April, when I received an email recommending I contact a sponsorship agreement holder because that path didn’t require UNHCR approval. I had known that for months. It’s why I had started with the SAH approach. It was so frustrating to finally hear from my government, only to be told to go back to square one. I wondered what it would take for someone in power to actually take action.

  The sunshine of the early summer provided little warmth. In June 2015, I got an email from the government saying my application package was missing personal financial information from Kitt, my neighbour. She was retired and had listed her pension income, as required, but hadn’t provided source documents. Kitt sent them that information right away. The very next day, the government sent another email to tell me what I already knew: since exit permits were so difficult for refugees in Turkey to attain, the Canadian government had “established a moratorium on SAHs.” As an alternative to the SAH, the email continued, the government had begun a new pilot program to help privately sponsored refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They were finally willing to allow yabanci cards in
lieu of exit visas.

  I couldn’t believe it. I was overjoyed! Everyone in my family had yabanci cards. But the next paragraph smashed that joy. It stated that Syrian nationals—and only Syrian nationals—would still need the impossible-to-get documents: a mavi kimlik or a valid passport. A yabanci card would not be an acceptable alternative. Why was the Canadian government going out of its way to discriminate against Syrian refugees—the residents of the only country on the list currently going through a crisis of epic proportions? I felt as if they were taunting me. That email was not just useless for us: it was a twist of the dagger in our hearts.

  By May 2016, the surge of Syrian refugees attempting to seek asylum in Europe had reached an even higher crisis point. Almost three hundred thousand refugees had applied for asylum in EU countries. That is when Mohammad set his sights once again on Germany, via the sea crossing to Kos. He said, “All my friends are getting to Germany via Kos. I’m going to Kos.”

  Kos was advantageous because it offered the closest proximity to Turkey’s shores—a mere four kilometres from Bodrum on the Turkish coast. Mohammad was willing to risk that journey, and he could no longer wait to make his move. His family had been surviving in Turkey for three years. His teenaged kids were still working at the clothing factory, with no end in sight. His younger daughter, nine-year-old Ranim, had missed out on years of education, and his young son, seven-year-old Rezan, had never even stepped foot in a classroom. And with Ghouson pregnant, they would soon have another mouth to feed, another child facing a dismal future. They couldn’t afford the smugglers’ fee for the whole family, so Mohammad departed for Bodrum to make the crossing alone. He planned to reach Germany, almost two thousand kilometres away, and then he’d bring his family to him.

  Mohammad didn’t even tell me he was going. I found out only after he arrived in Kos. From there, he still had to take ferries to reach Athens and then cross numerous inhospitable Central European borders. But he made it safely.

  That summer, more than seven million Syrians were displaced within Syria, and the number of Syrian refugees living outside their home country surpassed four million, making the Syrian crisis officially the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Half of those refugees were living in Turkey. In Istanbul, my family heard rumours from other Syrian refugees that the Turkish government might be planning to build a refugee camp on the Syrian side of the border, or that they might even send refugees back into Syria. Maybe those were paranoid rumours, but with all the fighting going on in Syria and along the border with Turkey, refugees were very scared; no safe harbour seemed within reach.

  The refugees were victims of terrorism and global geopolitics, yet they were increasingly viewed with the same suspicion and hostility as the terrorists they had barely managed to escape. In such a climate of fear and uncertainty, more of my relatives began to talk about the possibility of fleeing to Germany via the Greek islands. After all, Mohammad had made it, and while his life at a refugee shelter was very difficult, it held the promise of a legal resettlement and a better future for his family. Some of my other cousins had also made it to Germany or Sweden.

  From my remote location in Vancouver, I felt useless to my family in Syria and Turkey. To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel needed at home either. By the summer of 2015, my son, Alan, was twenty-two years old; he’d grown into a smart, handsome young man. He still lived with us, but he was studying and working so hard that sometimes he didn’t come home until after I had gone to bed. I guess I was feeling the early pangs of an empty nest. At such a time, some people get a pet dog or cat. I decided to get some fish. I purchased a large fish tank, put it in the space between my living room and my dining room, and bought twenty molly fish.

  “Ammeh. Auntie, I want to see the fish,” Ghalib said every time I video-chatted with them.

  “Move your head, ker,” Ghalib would nag Alan, calling his sibling the Kurdish word for donkey. Alan would respond as usual, by following his beloved older brother’s every command.

  I think Ghalib was a typical jealous older brother, and Alan was such a cute, happy, smiling boy that he got a lot of attention. Everywhere he went, he had this way of lighting up complete strangers. People always wanted to touch him and give him special treatment. For instance, when they went to the market to buy a kilo of rice, the vendors would beam at Alan and then say to Rehanna, “I’ll give you some extra rice for that beautiful angel.”

  Alan was much like Abdullah as a little boy. Every time I saw that child, I wanted to reach into the screen and grab him. But it was just like admiring those fish in my tank. I couldn’t hug and kiss those two boys. They might as well have been behind glass.

  Abdullah did everything to take care of his family, but one thing he often neglected was himself. Abdullah’s mouth remained a festering wound. He was still unable to chew most foods, and I couldn’t get that picture of his mouth out of my mind. I started researching his options and contacting dentists in Turkey. I sent money for him to see a dentist. When I called the dentist to follow up, he told me it would cost about $5,000 just for dentures, and $14,000 for implants, with half the fee due up front.

  Now that private sponsorships to fund my family’s asylum in Canada appeared to be impossible, we could use some of that money to help Abdullah with his teeth. I talked to Rocco about it, and we agreed to finance the implants. When I told Abdullah, he didn’t react the way I expected.

  “Are you crazy?” he said. “Do you think I’m worth fourteen thousand dollars? I’m not worth a thousand dollars right now. And if I had that money, I would use it to feed my wife and kids. I don’t care about my teeth. If I have to live this way for the rest of my life, so what? Allah karim.”

  I convinced Abdullah to see two other dentists, but both of them gave similar estimates for the dental work. Abdullah was resolute.

  “If you insist on giving me money, send me enough money to pay the smugglers to get me to Kos and then Germany. Ghalib needs to start school next year, and he needs to see a doctor for his skin: it’s getting too painful for him. I want to get us to Europe. It’s my best chance to help my family. Whatever happens to me in the future, we will deal with it then.”

  I talked to my siblings about that prospect. We had many concerns. What if he didn’t survive that crossing? Or the migration to Germany? And what if he got there but he couldn’t bring his family? Mohammad had tried to apply for his family’s asylum, but he was shocked to find out that it could take as much as a year’s time to secure approval. We started to discuss the prospect of sending enough money for Abdullah’s entire family to make the crossing to Europe. I called Abdullah to ask how much it would cost to take the whole family.

  “I heard the boys can go for free,” he said. That meant we’d need only about $5,000.

  I talked to Rocco about it, and we agreed: if that’s what Abdullah wanted, that’s what we would do. I called Abdullah.

  “, ’an jadd? Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Do you think Rehanna and the boys could survive without you?”

  “It would be so hard. And it’d be heartbreaking to have to be apart again. This way, we wouldn’t have to. I’ll talk to Rehanna. Call me back tomorrow.”

  The following day, I called. “Rehanna and I talked about it all night,” he said. “When you said you’d pay for the crossing, it was like we got to the top of a mountain. We’re grateful, but the things we’re seeing on the news—it’s scary. Rehanna doesn’t know how to swim. The boys are so small. But we agreed that we will live together or we’ll die together. Besides, we can’t wait any longer: Rehanna is pregnant again. She doesn’t feel well. She’s sleeping all the time.”

  “Mabrouk! Congratulations,” I said. I was happy that they had another child on the way but also worried that the journey would be too much for a pregnant Rehanna. “She needs to take vitamins and eat good food,” I reminded him.

  By then, I had come to better understand the difficulties my siblings had endured for years�
��the feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. The feeling that the war would never end. That they would never be able to return home. That the world was ignoring them. Many people would crack under that kind of heartache, stress, and indifference. My family came close to breaking but did not.

  I was consumed by the desire to get them to safety. I found no pleasure in my work except on payday, knowing the money would go to them. I had always loved to cook for my family and friends, but after my visit to Turkey, I found shopping depressing. The abundance of food on those shelves gave me panic attacks and filled me with a kind of bitterness that I’d never felt before. Even cooking had lost its lustre. Preparing and eating my favourite Syrian meals just made me feel the ghorbah more keenly, made me homesick. When I attempted to retreat to my garden trellis that had always given me a taste of Sham, it felt like such a weak substitute. Rare moments of pleasure quickly turned to guilt and shame. I did not feel grounded. My life in Canada no longer seemed to provide the best of both worlds.

  At the end of every day, I would close my eyes and dream of my homeland, Damascus. I wondered, “How did my family end up in this terrible situation?” It seemed as if deep space separated us from our past lives in Syria and that, both physically and emotionally, we had drifted so far away from home that none of us would be able to return. What if I was never able to see my brothers and sisters and our baba again? To calm my racing thoughts, I tried to conjure up the smell of the wild jasmine in Damascus. Even for my baba in war-torn Sham, the air was often heavy with the smell of smoke and pulverized stone and concrete from the bombings. Now he had to worry about the new dangers that some of his children and grandchildren were about to face.

  Mohammad had made that perilous crossing and reached Germany. My baby sister, Hivron, and her family were also plotting their flight to Germany via the Greek islands. Hivron had a teenaged son and three young daughters to consider; Maya, her youngest, was only eight years old. Hivron had also agreed to bring our sister Maha’s second eldest son, nineteen-year-old Mahmoud. Our other sister Shireen was still in Damascus, with her husband and two younger kids, but her eldest son, Yasser, had already left Damascus and was making his way to Turkey, via Lebanon, to make the crossing with a group of his teenaged friends.