by Tima Kurdi
Of course, Abdullah and Rehanna still had hesitations about the plan. Aside from the many dangers of the crossing and journey to Germany, they didn’t want to leave the region. They didn’t want to give up their belief that the war would end soon and allow them to return to Kobani. Rehanna’s baba Shikho was already terribly homesick for his eldest daughter and his grandsons. He was worried sick about the crossing, and the idea of their going so far away made his heart even heavier.
“It’s just a temporary, emergency measure,” Rehanna tried to reassure him. “The moment it’s safe, we’ll come back home.”
With their decision made, we had one difficulty—how to get the money to Abdullah. As illegal refugees, he and Rehanna still weren’t allowed to have a bank account. To get such a large amount of cash to them through friends was a big challenge. I imagined that it might take a few months of planning. But then I found that three different family friends were going to Turkey, so I asked them to each take a chunk of the money to Abdullah. With their help, I would be able to get all the money to Abdullah in just a few weeks. At the time, it seemed like a great stroke of luck.
Chapter 9
Rijl qiddam w rijl wara
One Foot Forward and One Backward
On July 7, Rehanna had a sharp pain in her stomach. Abdullah rushed her to the hospital. After they’d waited for hours, a nurse handed her a pill, ordered her to take it, and sent the couple home. Two days later, in the middle of the night, the pain grew worse. Rehanna started to bleed profusely. Again, Abdullah rushed her to the hospital. There she was told that she’d had a miscarriage. The doctor arranged a D & C operation—dilatation and curettage—but there weren’t any anaesthetics, so Rehanna was conscious throughout the incredibly painful procedure. One of the nurses was Kurdish, and she tried to comfort Rehanna in their mother tongue. Rehanna lost a great deal of blood, and Abdullah was shocked and saddened at how weak she became and how yellow her face was after her operation.
“Tima, I so wanted to have a baby girl named Radiya, after our mother,” Abdullah told me on the phone.
“, Naseeb. It was destiny. Inshallah, you will have a baby girl in the future,” I said, trying to comfort him. “Take care of Rehanna. Please buy her rich food to make up her energy.”
The experience steeled his resolve. Abdullah knew that he and his family had to go to Europe if they were going to secure a safe, healthy future. Rehanna was weak and anemic, but she insisted she could still make the trip. Abdullah went to the butcher and bought her iron-rich sheep livers, cans of sardines, and a large bag of dates for their journey.
July 18 was the beginning of Eid al-Fitr. Abdullah and Rehanna didn’t have enough money for the typical sumptuous meal to break the Ramadan fast, but they did stick with the Muslim tradition of buying new outfits for the boys, albeit ones from the weekend flea market: jean shorts and a T-shirt for Ghalib, and for Alan, a one-piece that looked like a tuxedo shirt and pants, with a black bow tie sewn into the collar and faux suspenders. The outfit for Ghalib would be useful for their impending voyage; the one-piece for Alan was too cute to resist, and it cost only one lira at the flea market.
“Habib albi. Love of my heart, you look like a little man,” said Abdullah, after he’d finished dressing Alan.
“How about me, Baba?” Ghalib asked.
“, Inta hayati kilha. You are my whole life.”
It was a hot, sunny day, so they decided to take their stroller and walk to the Eminönü district and stroll around the Bosphorus waterfront, where passenger ferries criss-cross between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul.
“Can we take a boat ride?” Ghalib asked.
“Why not? It’s Eid. It’ll be fun for the boys,” said Rehanna. The ferries cost one or two lira per person. The kids loved that short boat ride. Alan waved at everyone he saw. He was waving when Rehanna took a photo of Abdullah with his two boys.
Later, Abdullah would say to me, “It was like he was saying goodbye to the world.”
“Is this what the boat to Europa will be like?” Ghalib wondered.
“Our boat will be a smaller version,” said Abdullah, exchanging a glance with Rehanna.
After the ferry ride, they spotted a park with a kids’ playground. “I was holding hands with both of the boys,” recalled Abdullah. “But when they saw that playground, the boys let go and started to run. Of course, Alan tripped over his little feet and fell, but just like always, he didn’t cry. I grabbed his hand, but once again, his hand slipped out of mine. He was so light and so fast, racing to the playground.”
Ghalib climbed to the top of the jungle gym, but Alan was too small to do it on his own.
“Baba!” he called out, pointing to the top of the slide. So Abdullah hoisted Alan up, and followed behind, while Rehanna waited at the bottom of the slide, her cellphone’s camera poised to capture the moment.
“Smile at the camera,” she called out to Alan. He held up both hands and looked at his mama, who snapped the picture. Then Abdullah put Alan in his lap, and they went down the slide together, Alan laughing with delight all the way down. Abdullah texted me that picture of Alan poised at the top of the slide. He looked adorable in that little suit. But he was so pale and skinny. And his expression was so different from his typical photos. Most of the time, he was laughing or at least grinning from ear to ear. In that photo, though, he’s not smiling. His big brown eyes look solemn and tentative. His hands are held up in the air, as if he’s waving goodbye.
“Why is Alan so skinny?” I asked Abdullah.
“His baby teeth are coming in—the canines on the bottom. He’s fussy and doesn’t want to eat.”
“Why don’t you give him more milk?”
Abdullah sighed. “Fatima, khallini sakit ahsan. I’d rather be quiet than say anything.”
Maybe Alan’s teething was a factor. Maybe he was tired after an action-packed day. Maybe I’m reading too much into that last photograph of my beautiful nephew alive. But when I look at that picture now, I can’t help but think that he looks scared.
From the moment they decided to make the crossing, Abdullah and Rehanna did their best to convince the boys that their exodus would be a wonderful adventure.
“Can we bring Pisikeh to Europa?” asked Ghalib as he pet the cat.
Rehanna laughed. “Where are we going to put it? We can bring only a small backpack.”
Ghalib started to cry, until Rehanna told him that the cat had already found a lovely new home she would go to. She said, “We’ll get another pisikeh in Europa.”
“What about my bouzouki and all my toys back at home?” Ghalib wondered. Even for Ghalib, a four-year-old with no concept of the future, the trip to Europa represented a temporary fix. He still hoped and dreamed of returning to his old life in Syria.
“We’ll get you a new one and new toys in Europa, and Inshallah, we might be back in Kobani before you even miss them.”
“Do they have cookies in Europa?” Ghalib asked Abdullah.
“All kinds of delicious cookies.”
“Inshallah, we’ll have more cookies in Europa, Baba!”
Alan seconded his older brother’s enthusiasm, clapping his hands and parroting the words in his baby talk language.
My friend delivered the final instalment of Abdullah’s money for the smugglers at the end of July. After Abdullah texted that he had received the money, I called him.
“I’m shopping for sleeping bags,” he said. It was a tip that he had gotten from other refugees who had to spend days or even weeks waiting to make the crossing and couldn’t find a vacant hotel room. If that happened, they would have to camp in a park, like so many others.
The day before they departed Istanbul, Abdullah gave his two sons a bath in their inflatable pool. Next Abdullah gave his sons haircuts. Ghalib protested, so Abdullah started with Alan, who sat patiently and quietly. To convince Ghalib to sit still, Abdullah made a game of it, chasing him around the room with his buzzing clippers until the boy was exhaust
ed enough to give in.
On August 5, Abdullah and his family left Istanbul. I was in touch with him every day. Now, when I recall those conversations and read those texts, I hear the voice of a nagging, paranoid older sister, at the whim of changing emotions, prodding her younger brother to be more cautious, to be less cautious, and ultimately, pushing him into the sea.
That first night, they reached Izmir. The port city was overrun with Syrian refugees attempting to make the crossing. At that time, the most popular departure spot was Çeşme, a coastal town on a peninsula, about an hour’s drive from Izmir. From Çeşme, the Greek island of Chios was only fifteen kilometres away. But Çeşme is a windy spot—it’s the kite-surfing capital of Turkey—and the weather patterns on the eastern Mediterranean are famously unpredictable there. The family went to a park where throngs of Syrian refugees congregated and camped out. Their sheer numbers made it easy for the smugglers to find their clients. Abdullah’s family rolled out their sleeping bags and collected information about their various options for exiting Turkey.
Some refugees were trying to go in shipping containers, via sea or land, but there were many stories circulating about people who had suffocated or starved to death in those containers. The majority of people placed their bets on a boat crossing to Greece from either Izmir or Bodrum to the south. But most of the refugees couldn’t afford to pay smugglers for seats on big, sturdy boats, which could cost thousands of dollars per person. They had no choice but to resort to cheap, flimsy rubber dinghies, or a fishing boat, which still cost as much as $2,500 per person. Many refugees spoke of their horrific attempted crossings on dinghies.
“I have little kids. Isn’t that too dangerous?” Abdullah asked the other refugees.
“We all have little kids. But we have no other choice.” Everybody was in the same boat, no matter which host country they had come from: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya. Everyone was poor and starving, their kids couldn’t go to school or to the doctor. Europa was their last hope.
At that park, Abdullah started talking to smugglers. He wanted a fiberglass boat. But after a couple of days of searching and spending money on food and a hotel room, Abdullah realized their money might not last.
“We can’t afford to wait around, hoping that the smugglers will find us a fiberglass boat that we can afford,” Abdullah said to Rehanna.
“Maybe we should consider a rubber dinghy, like everyone else,” said Rehanna. “Especially if the water is calm. If the boat is too crowded and the waves are too big, we won’t go.”
The next day, the family shopped for life jackets.
“Ya haram. It would break your heart to see so many Syrians begging on the streets, sleeping on the streets and in the parks, like paupers. There are thousands of them here,” Abdullah told me. The boys had colds, so he decided to keep their room at an inexpensive hotel.
On the morning of August 6, Abdullah texted, “It’s raining hard. The smuggler said that’s bad luck. He said one hundred per cent, we’ll go tomorrow.”
I called Abdullah to ask if they’d purchased their life jackets. Rehanna answered.
“Poor Alan. Even when I fasten the belt, I can pull the life jacket right off him,” she said. We discussed tying a rope around his waist. But then the top of the life jacket might be like a cone, trapping water inside, making matters worse. I wanted to give Rehanna some comfort, so I told her that as long as she had a life jacket, she would be able to stay above water and help keep the boys afloat.
“But I don’t know how to swim. I’m terrified of water. I’m like a cow.”
The fact that Rehanna couldn’t swim weighed heavily on Abdullah from the start. It was stressful enough that he had two young sons. But he also had to worry about Rehanna. The weather in Izmir was hot and muggy; sometimes the wind was gusty, up to eighty kilometres, and the skies were ominous, with sporadic thunderstorms. Every night for a week, they tried to leave with the smugglers. Every night, they were sent back.
August 13: “Went at 2 a.m. Police caught us and took us to their station. But they were good to us. Another family with us. They let us go this morning. Trying again tonight.”
That night, there was more rain and another thunderstorm. The weather was humid, and the skies were angry. On the fourteenth and the fifteenth, I called and texted Abdullah many times. He didn’t respond.
For five long days, we didn’t hear from him. We were all frantic, calling and texting, waiting for any response, thinking the worst, praying for the best. Rocco and I were in Toronto visiting my in-laws. It was the longest five days of our lives. One of those nights, I had a strange dream about my mother. I dreamed that I was back home in Sham. I heard Mama yelling frantically from the living room. I rushed in to find her sitting at a computer, weeping. It was so strange to see her using a computer: when she was alive, my family didn’t have a computer.
“They’re talking about Abdullah on the Internet!” she yelled. “Millions of people are sending messages—so many that I think the computer is going to blow up.” There was lots of crying and sadness in the messages she read, which made her worry, but she didn’t know why.
“I need to get Abdullah some money,” she said. She was wearing one of her favourite gold bangles, shaped like a snake. She took it off and told me to go to the jeweller and pawn it. I went to the shop, but it was packed with customers. The jeweller only had time to give the bracelet a quick look before offering somewhere between 29,000 and 31,000 lira. “Come back later, and I’ll weigh it and buy it,” he said. I went rushing home and told my mom the price. When I handed her the bracelet, the snake’s head turned into white cloth.
That’s all I can remember about that dream. While we waited for any word from Abdullah, I told my family and friends about it.
“Inshallah kheir,” said one of my friends, an Iraqi woman. “It means someone is going to have a baby boy.” I recounted the dream to my Italian mother-in-law, but she didn’t know what it meant. She said she’d light a candle for the safety of my family. What none of us realized until much later was that the white cloth in the dream looked exactly like the shroud that covers a baby in traditional Muslim burials.
In the waking world, Abdullah and his family were going through their own hardships during those five days of silence. On the night of August 13, the smuggler had called to say that he could take them on a little hard-hulled fishing boat for $4,000. The weather had cleared and the skies had gone quiet. After nightfall, the smuggler had driven them to the point at Çeşme, with six other Syrian refugees. During the hour-long ride, Ghalib and Alan were fast asleep. The smuggler told all of them to put the phone number of the local coast guard on their phones, just in case something went wrong during the crossing. Rehanna woke up Ghalib when they arrived at a rocky cove so that he could walk over it, while Abdullah carried sleeping Alan in his arms. Another smuggler was waiting in a little old fishing boat beside a rocky outcrop. The weather was warm, the sky clear, and the water calm—ideal conditions.
After they got to the beach, the smuggler revealed that the helmsman hadn’t shown up. One of the Syrian refugees volunteered to steer, and the smuggler gave the man a brief tutorial on how to start the engine and operate the boat. The vessel was large enough to accommodate the eight adults. Rehanna held Alan in her lap, and Abdullah sat Ghalib on his. The huge island of Chios loomed on the horizon, the lights twinkling in the near distance. The Syrian refugee started the motor, and the smuggler pushed the boat out to sea.
“You could have walked ten times faster than that boat,” said Abdullah. “We were worried that we’d get caught by the coast guard. But at least it was calm and smooth.”
Within about twenty minutes, with the island of Chios just in front of them, the motor started to smoke and give off a toxic burning smell. Then it burst into flames.
“I called the smuggler and told him, ‘The engine is burning!’ He said, ‘What am I going to do about it? Call the coast guard!’ One of the refugees made that call, while t
he others doused the engine with sea water. Alhamdulillah, they were able to put out the fire. But the engine was fried. We bobbed around in that boat for what seemed like an hour and a half, but maybe it was much less time. The coast guard came and towed our boat back to a dock and made us go into the police station.
“There were about three hundred refugees at that station, all from other boats, everyone soaked and shivering and all the kids wailing. The police took down all our names. They put all of us on buses and took us to Orfa,” said Abdullah, referring to the infamous Turkish refugee camp near the border with Syria, teeming with tens of thousands of refugees. That camp was close to Kobani. Rehanna was terrified that they would be returned to the region that she and the boys had fled less than a year before.
The camp at Orfa was a big, dirty warehouse suitable for storing boxes, not human beings. All the refugees were skinny and sickly, with colds and terrible coughs. The camp certainly didn’t have free Wi-Fi, and Abdullah’s phone had run out of data, so he couldn’t contact us. This refugee “camp,” like many others, was more akin to a prison: once you entered, the gates were closed and locked behind you. You were no longer allowed to move freely.
In that insect-infested camp, all that Rehanna and Abdullah could think about was how to get their boys to safety. They were granted exit only after Alan got a fever and Ghalib was bitten by some bug or insect that made his arm swollen and infected. As soon as they got out, they bought antibiotics for Ghalib and baby aspirin for Alan. Abdullah found a cafe with Wi-Fi and texted to let me know they were okay. It was August 18. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to know that they were alive.
