A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(37)
Meanwhile, Shokri was struggling to make ends meet with only a few loyal customers, and Bassem could see how badly he was doing, so he offered to partner with him in his salon, and Shokri gratefully accepted. By then Bassem had quite a number of young patrons, and this helped to revive Shokri’s business. While the extra income helped the family out some, Bassem knew that he wanted more for himself and his future bride. Even with both of them working long hours, they had no hope of a life of anything other than grinding poverty. They couldn’t start a family under these conditions, and Bassem was losing more hope every day that they would ever return to Syria. It felt as if they were wasting their lives in Egypt among a population who didn’t seem to want them there. He couldn’t be with Doaa as much as he wanted since he worked so much, and he worried that one day he would not be there to protect her when she needed him. Bassem knew that something had to change.
SEVEN
Deal with the Devil
On a balmy June afternoon in 2014, nine months after Doaa and Bassem’s engagement, the Al Zamel family was finishing up lunch. Doaa was still living at home with her family since she and Bassem could only move in together after they had a formal wedding.
After helping to clear the plates, Bassem suggested that they all go for a walk before he and Shokri returned to work at the barbershop. The young couple walked ahead of the rest of the family, holding hands and chatting. When they reached the Corniche, Bassem turned to Doaa, his voice lower than usual. He spoke deliberately, as if he had rehearsed what he was going to say. “I have something important to discuss with you. I want us to go to Europe. We have no future here. We’re stuck, and we can’t go back to Syria.” He looked down into her astonished face and began speaking more quickly. “Everyone is going. A friend of mine went to Germany and has applied to bring his family there. It’s much better there, Doaa. You could go to school and I can open a barbershop. We can have a home together and start a family.” He watched her face hopefully, searching for some sign of agreement. “What do you think? We just need to get the money to go.”
All Doaa could think of was the vast sea that stood between Egypt and Europe, and of water closing in over her head and filling her lungs. She still hadn’t learned to swim, and just the thought of crossing that expanse of water made her panic. She knew that refugees had no legal way to get to Europe. They wouldn’t be able to get the documents they needed to sail on another big ferry, like the one they had taken to Egypt. If they applied for a visa, it would be rejected, and to ask for asylum in Europe, you had to arrive there physically, and Doaa knew that the only way to get there was considered illegal by Egyptian authorities and unsafe by everyone. “Do you mean by a smuggler’s boat?” she asked. “Don’t even think about it. I won’t do it.” She knew those boats were small, decrepit, and overcrowded and had heard stories of boats sinking and refugees drowning. She couldn’t believe that Bassem would want to risk it. How could she cross the sea in one of those when she couldn’t even set foot in water?
“But,” Bassem stammered, “you will only be in the water up to your knees, then you’ll be safe on the boat. We’ll be rescued once we get close to Italy, then we can make our way to Sweden!” Bassem explained how distress signals are sent out as soon as refugee boats reach Italian waters, and that the Italian coast guard sends ships out to bring everyone safely ashore.
“Absolutely not.” Doaa shivered. “My answer is no, Bassem.”
But he continued to bring up the subject every chance he got, trying to find a way to convince her. Doaa couldn’t understand why he kept insisting when he knew how scared she was of water. Every time they went to the beach together with her family, he saw her keep far from the shore, watching everyone else splash around in the waves. Bassem was a good swimmer, for a reason. He’d told Doaa that back in Daraa when he was about thirteen, he visited a lake with two of his friends. None of them knew how to swim, but they waded in anyway, playfully splashing one another. Then one of his friends moved into deeper water and began gasping for air and flailing his arms. Bassem and his other friend thought their friend was joking, but when they finally reached him, his face was submerged and his body was still. He had drowned. After that day, Bassem had vowed that he would teach himself to swim. “I promised myself that I would never stand by helplessly again while someone I care about drowns,” he had told Doaa.
He also told her another story. A few years later he was at a lake with some friends sitting on the rocky shore. By that time, he was a confident swimmer. In the distance, he witnessed a rowboat capsize and a teenage girl fall into the water, obviously in distress. He ran toward the boat and jumped in the water. When he reached the girl, he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her to the shore, possibly saving her life.
However, these stories didn’t reassure Doaa. Every time she imagined being submerged in water with no shore in sight, she thought she would be sick. “Bassem, I don’t want gold or expensive furniture and a life abroad in Europe,” she told him one night when he was trying, yet again, to convince her. They were alone on the balcony of Doaa’s apartment watching the sky darken while the rest of the family was inside listening to the radio. She couldn’t imagine a life without them nearby. “I want to stay close to our family. What if we went to Saudi Arabia instead? You used to work there.” In Saudi Arabia, they could have a new start and still be close enough to her family, and she wouldn’t have to get in a boat to get there.