by Tima Kurdi
Among the countries around the world, Sweden and Germany deserve the greatest thanks, because they began to resettle Syrian refugees long before that tragic night. German chancellor Angela Merkel received my deepest thanks for reacting to the tragedy by throwing open the country’s borders to every single asylum-seeking refugee. Her government pledged to take in up to 500,000 people each year. Austria also agreed to open its doors, and Merkel called on other countries to do the same, or at least provide safe passage to the countries that were accepting refugees. Her message was meant for the Central European countries standing in the way of the refugees trying to reach Northern Europe. Hungary had become a particularly dangerous bottleneck after its government refused to allow refugees into the country; a huge razor-wire fence had been built to stop the northward flow of refugees.
My nephew Yasser was one of the many refugees trapped inside Hungary at that very moment, facing his own horrors as he tried to reach Germany. He was in a makeshift prison—a large, fenced-in pen in the middle of a forest—with many other refugees. Occasionally the guards threw water and sandwiches over the fence. But the sandwiches contained a mystery meat that the refugees suspected contained pork. At first, they would eat the bread and toss the meat back. But the meat attracted feral dogs that would bark and snarl on the other side of the fence, terrorizing the refugees even more.
Yasser and a number of other refugees were eventually herded onto a bus without being told where they would be taken. Hours later, when he and the others were ordered off the bus, he found himself walking through a gate into Austria. An Austrian couple beckoned to Yasser and a family on the bus, speaking to them through gestures—eating, showering, laying a head on a pillow. It appeared they were offering them a place to eat and shower and sleep. It was like a fairy tale. The couple fed them and gave them soft towels and fragrant soap for their hot showers. Yasser called his mom, Shireen, to let her know he had arrived in Austria, safe and comparatively sound.
“But I need to get to Germany,” Yasser said to his mom. “They’ve been so kind and I don’t want to be rude, but I can’t stay here.”
“Do they speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Then call your Auntie Fatima,” Shireen advised. “She’ll explain everything to them.”
Yasser called me and recounted his incredible story. I asked him if I could talk to the couple. He passed the phone to the wife. I thanked her for taking such good care of my nephew. I explained that he wanted to get to Germany, and then I told them about our family’s tragedy.
“You’re the aunt of the boy on the beach? The Canadian woman?” she exclaimed. “Your story is all over the news.”
She said that Yasser was welcome to stay with them for as long as he liked. I explained that he wanted to be reunited with his uncle Mohammad, who was still in a camp in Germany. The next morning, the couple took Yasser to the train station and bought him a ticket for Germany. I saw some of that footage of those refugees pouring into Austria and Germany. I cried so many bittersweet tears as I looked at the photos and videos. Abdullah saw it all too.
“Are you watching the news?” he asked me during one of our calls. “Look what that picture of Alan did. All the borders are starting to open across Europe. He saved their lives, Alhamdulillah. Thank God. , Akheeran aldounia sihyat. Finally the world has woken up.”
I found myself looking for the faces of Rehanna, Ghalib, and Alan among those weary refugees arriving in Germany. It made no sense to do such a thing. But death makes no sense, especially the death of innocent children. When you are in the depths of grief, it seems utterly absurd that people are alive one day, and then the next, they are gone.
Every minute of every hour of those terrible first weeks—everything I saw, everything I experienced—provided an entirely new set of what-ifs and if-onlys. If only the Canadian government’s policies had been less restrictive. If only the family had made that sea crossing successfully, that photograph of Alan would never have happened. It would not be there to provide a call to the world. Greece would probably have given Abdullah’s family safe passage, as it had been doing for the past months for many refugees. But Abdullah and his family would still have had to traverse those inhospitable and perilous Central European countries.
Perhaps Abdullah’s family would have been trapped at one border or another, with thousands of other refugees, penned in like animals inside a high fence, surrounded by an armoury of men with weapons at the ready. They may have been sent back to Turkey. But they would have been alive.
“You will drive yourself crazy if you keep doing that,” said Rocco in response to one of my never-ending what-if rants. “You can’t turn back the clock. Just eat something and get some sleep,” he begged, sticking another plate of food in front of my face. Sleep was impossible. I could not silence or even slow my racing mind.
In Canada, the tragedy continued to stir up partisan arguments among the various political parties in the lead-up to the national election. As a result, everyone was pointing the finger at Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government. Within a few weeks, with the election looming, he would be forced to temporarily waive the UN referral requirements for privately sponsored Syrian refugees. It was good news, but it was still too little, too late.
Around the world, the photograph of my nephew had galvanized the public to press their politicians. Human rights organizations and citizens held vigils and memorials for Alan and the refugees, both living and dead, and many charity groups experienced a surge in donations. Words will never be enough to express my gratitude to all the people who took action and made many personal sacrifices to help those in need.
But fraudulent charities also sprang up on the Internet, using the image of my nephew to satisfy their own greed. I saw one of these fraudsters on a Facebook post. The link went to a UK-based site that had collected $170,000 in just two days. It featured a family photo of Alan and Ghalib that I had posted, and the website was made to look as if it had been created by my family. But my family didn’t have a charity. My family had nothing to do with that website. I sent a text message to the man listed as the host of the website, asking to know where that money was going to be spent. I also told him that he needed to change his website and the picture of my nephews so that it didn’t appear as if it had been created by my family. If he didn’t, I said, he would have to take the website down. His response was the typical schoolyard bully’s reply: “Make me.” And then I was blocked from his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Just as sickening was that detractors of my family were also quick to react. Among them were US politician Michele Bachmann and an Australian politician named Cory Bernardi, both of whom twisted my words from my first press conference to suit their own warped views. They cited my mention of Abdullah’s need for dental treatment, saying that Abdullah had risked his family’s life just to get dental care in Europe. Other critics claimed that our family was trying to profit from the tragedy. Did these people have no sympathy and compassion to spare for my family and millions of refugees? Did they have any idea what it’s like not to have a piece of bread to feed their families?
After reading one post that called my brother a selfish man who would “Kill his own family,” I called my baba in tears.
“Habibti, sweetheart, it doesn’t matter what those strangers think,” he said. “Abdullah was an incredible father. He gave those kids a lifetime of love. Those people don’t understand. , Ma hada beyktof ward iza bizra’ shouk. Nobody gets flowers by planting thorns.”
ISIS was also quick to use the photograph of Alan to support its beastly ideology, saying that my family deserved their fate because they had tried to escape the Middle East for Europe.
Abdullah didn’t know that hate and misinformation were spreading across the world. And even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered to him. He was in a much darker place than even the loudest haters could have imagined. The fact that Abdullah was once again back in the war zone made
me even crazier with worry. Kobani was still a dangerous place, but to Abdullah, it didn’t matter anymore that he was surrounded by the threat of war. People were attempting to rebuild their homes and their lives, but Abdullah had no family and no life left to rebuild.
Nechirvan Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), had reached out to Abdullah, inviting him to stay in Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, an autonomous region in northeastern Iraq. I tried to convince Abdullah to accept the offer and go to Kurdistan, at least for a few weeks, until he needed to be back in Kobani for the memorial, which happened forty days after death. I could not get out of my mind the picture of Abdullah sleeping beside his family’s graves. But Abdullah wanted to stay. Maybe he felt at home among so many ghosts. Maybe a ghost family was better than no family at all.
The constant watching and waiting from afar made me feel beyond useless. It was as if I were permanently strapped into a roller coaster that forced me up, down, and upside down, but always returned me to the exact same place, where I’d start all over again. I was desperate to see Abdullah in the flesh. I was desperate to be with my whole family.
That opportunity came when a citizens action group called Avaaz contacted me, asking me to fly to Brussels to speak at a September 14 meeting of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. They wanted me to deliver the politicians a petition signed by 1.2 million people calling for the EU to take action on the Syrian refugee crisis. I was incapable of travelling on my own. I could not even feed myself. So Rocco told Avaaz that I would go, but only if they would sponsor my son, Alan, to accompany me. He also told them that I was unwilling to express a partisan political view about the war in Syria: I was there to speak for the refugees, not for a political viewpoint, so I would not take sides. They agreed and also helped pay for my flights to see my family in Germany and Turkey. We even had a tentative plan to bring Abdullah from Kobani to Istanbul so that we could be together. The plan mobilized me. With only a few days to prepare for my journey, I scrambled to get ready. We were due to leave for Brussels on September 11, and then we’d be in Germany a few days later. Alan and I gathered things to bring to Germany for Mohammad and Yasser, and also to the rest of my family in Turkey.
Things moved quickly from the moment I stepped on European soil. Just one day after arriving, I was shuttled to media interviews and a private meeting with the foreign minister of Luxembourg and the president of the Council of the European Union. On the third day, I had to speak at the UN meeting. If I had not been so exhausted and gutted, I probably would have been shaking in my shoes thinking about what I might possibly say to all those powerful, important politicians, including António Guterres, then the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Federica Mogherini, the vice-president of the UN’s European Commission. Maybe I was still in shock, but I felt no stage fright. I simply stood before these strangers in their suits and spoke from my heart, repeating the message that had now become a mantra: please open your hearts and doors to refugees, or at least give them safe passage to prevent them from drowning; please sit down at the table with all the world leaders and share your ideas on finding a peaceful way to stop the Syrian war, and until then, open your borders.
That whole experience is a blur. After the meeting, I was placed in a receiving line and each diplomat filed past and shook my hand. I began to understand my brother’s confusion and astonishment at being thrust in the spotlight, at suddenly being treated with respect and compassion, at finally seeing the world wake up to the refugee crisis and take it seriously.
Some of the politicians had tears in their eyes, hugged me to their chests, and took pictures with me, a hairdresser. Many of the diplomats promised to do more for the refugees, pledging that my family’s tragedy would be the last. They handed me their business cards, saying that I should not hesitate to contact them if I needed anything. I thanked them all and repeated my message.
A few months later, I contacted some of these influencers to ask how I could be of further service in support of refugees. Some responded; most did not. It seemed they had gone back to sleep. I wish I could go back in time, knowing what I know now, so that I could deliver my message more powerfully.
After that first, otherworldly meeting, I was taken to the hotel and ferried from one room to the next to do more interviews. In one conversation, the reporter referred to Alan as “Aylan.”
“His name is Alan, actually,” I said.
“Yes, but the world knows him as Aylan, so we need to continue with that,” she responded.
I rarely cried as I recalled Abdullah’s account of the tragedy, I suppose because I was exhausted and disoriented from being in a foreign world, both physically and metaphorically. In that European world of palaces and church spires and monuments to European power old and new, I felt as if I were in a fairy tale—the kind that turns into a nightmare.
Later that day, Alan and I flew to Frankfurt, Germany. When we arrived, I found out that Abdullah had accepted the offer of asylum in Erbil, Kurdistan. That meant I could see him! I just had to get a plane ticket from Turkey to Erbil, to finish my trip.
Alan and I planned to meet with my brother and nephew for lunch. But the taxi driver told me that Mohammad’s shelter in Heidelberg was not too far from my hotel, and he could take us directly there. I couldn’t wait to see my brother. En route, the taxi driver discussed the flood of refugees. The taxi pulled up to a security booth adjacent to the refugee shelter, which resembled a housing project. (It was actually a former US army base, dating back to the 1940s.) I wasn’t allowed into the compound, but a security guard agreed to look for my brother. I got out of the taxi to stretch my legs and have a closer look at the shelter. On the other side of the chain-link fence was a small children’s playground. A half-dozen skinny refugee children in dirty clothes were running about and playing on a squeaky swing set. They were happy, but many of them were coughing and looked sickly, shivering in their T-shirts. Though it was still only mid-September, there was an autumn chill in the air and the sky was grey and gloomy. I started to cry. Once again, I had to wonder, “Why them? Why us? How did we get here?”
The security guy returned and said that Mohammad couldn’t leave the shelter without permission papers, so the driver took us back to the hotel. I texted my brother and Yasser with the hotel’s address, telling them to take taxis once they were able to leave and that I’d reimburse them. My nephew Yasser was living at a separate shelter for children in Heidelberg, not too far from Mohammad’s camp. Yasser was the first to arrive at the hotel. By then, the clouds had burst, and it was pouring rain outside. Yasser was soaking wet, wearing just a very light T-shirt and shaking from head to toe.
“Oh my God. Why no jacket?” I asked, hugging him long and hard.
“, Ma takli ham khalti. Don’t worry, Auntie. I’m used to it,” he said.
Alan immediately opened the suitcase and gave Yasser a jacket and clothes. Mohammad arrived in a similar state, and so we went through the same ritual. I told them both to take hot showers. Mohammad had not had a shower like that since leaving Damascus in 2012.
“Let’s go eat,” I said. I wanted so badly to put food in their bellies.
On the streets of Frankfurt, I saw many of my Syrian people, some even begging for food. “I’m hungry, I’m tired. I can’t walk anymore,” I heard a small boy crying.
“Auntie, what’s the name of your boy?” I asked his mother.
“Khalid,” she said.
“Why are you crying?” I asked Khalid. He was too shy to answer and hid behind his mom’s skirt.
“We’re staying in a refugee camp,” his mom explained. “We have to fight every morning just to get a piece of bread with jam. There’s not enough food, so I have to give my kids all the food.” I could not turn away from this boy. He could have been my nephew.
“Come with me,” I said. We went down the street to a vendor who sold Middle Eastern food. I bought them shawarmas.
“Allah ya’tiki al-siha w yikhali wl
adik. God give you health and bless your kids,” said the woman.
I told Mohammad and Yasser that I would buy them anything they wanted for lunch.
“Anything but canned tuna fish,” Mohammad said.
“I think I could eat a whole cow,” Yasser said, laughing.
We came upon a restaurant with big, fat, glistening rotisserie chickens in the windows.
“We’ve been dreaming of roasted chicken for so many months,” said Mohammad. “I could eat an entire chicken myself.”
“Oh my God, yes,” said Yasser.
I bought them chicken and kebabs, and I watched them savour every single bite of that food. My heart was happy. It was a beautiful moment.
“Why are you just sitting there, grinning at us? Eat!” said Mohammad.
“I’m too happy to eat,” I said. “Tell me what it’s like in the shelters.”
“Auntie, you don’t want to know. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but there are too many refugees packed in. Everyone is living on top of each other. But this is temporary. It will get better,” said Yasser.
“The food is terrible,” said Mohammad. “We have to line up and wait for hours, even for the simplest request.”
I knew that beneath Mohammad’s gripes, he was missing his family so much. It could take up to a year for him to bring his family to join him in Germany. In many ways, his situation was worse than in Istanbul; even with the worst job possible in Turkey, he came home each night to his family. After Mohammad had left Turkey, Ghouson had given birth to their newest child, a boy named Sherwan. But Mohammad hadn’t even met his youngest child yet in the flesh. It must have been excruciating for him to not be able to hug and kiss his baby boy and see his family.
