A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(38)
“You wouldn’t like it,” he countered. “It’s too conservative. You would have to wear a burka. You’d be covered in black from head to toe with only a mesh slit in the material to look through. You won’t even be able to go out unless you’re with me.” Exasperated, he said, “Half of my friends have gone to Europe! I get messages from them on Facebook from Sweden and Germany all the time. They have good jobs and they’re going to school. They say we’d be welcome there—not like here.” Bassem waited for Doaa to ponder this information, then added, “The other messages I get all the time are from friends back in Syria telling me who has died. Have you forgotten what it was like to see people die every day?”
“Have you forgotten all the horror stories about those boats?” Doaa shot back. “And the stories about refugees like us drowning?” Angered, she stood up quickly and went inside to be with her family, leaving Bassem alone on the balcony. She turned her back on him so that he couldn’t see the tears of sadness and frustration spilling down her cheeks.
This went on for two months. Bassem brought it up every chance he had, trying different ways to convince her. “Doaa, you look tired! You’re not thriving here! In Europe, your health would improve.” Doaa’s health was, indeed, worsening every week. Anytime Bassem saw her waver, he reminded her of Europe. “In Europe, you can study. We can open a salon together and you will earn money and finally be able to afford new clothes. You can even have a nice house there. We’ll be respected instead of despised and our kids can have a nice life.” He showed her pictures that he’d received of his friends smiling in front of historical monuments and blooming parks. One friend was pictured in Amsterdam, standing on a bridge over a canal with the pretty cityscape in the background. Seeing these photos, Doaa couldn’t help but listen and dream. Europe seemed like a place of order and hope, a fantasyland of possibility.
The life the photos depicted was so different from the poverty, struggle, and danger she had come to accept as normal. Egypt had nothing for her and her family other than hostility and grueling work at low wages that could never quite provide what the family needed. They barely had enough for food and rent, and anytime they needed anything extra, such as medicine or a pair of shoes for Hamudi when he outgrew his, they had to borrow money that they couldn’t repay or sell one of their few remaining treasures. Doaa had no way to finish high school in Egypt, and she had all but given up on her dream of going to university. Like thousands of other Syrian refugees, she felt stuck in a life of limbo in a country where its own citizens were facing a sinking economy, high inflation, and rising food prices. In Egypt, Syrian refugees were tolerated, but with few possibilities to find real work and fully integrate into society.
Doaa began to wonder what it might be like to walk out the door without the fear of being abducted, and for her siblings to go to school without the fear of being harassed, beaten up, or worse. She remembered what it was like when her mother wasn’t always sick and her father wasn’t always exhausted, and when Hamudi was a cheerful little boy with a chance at a normal childhood. None of that was possible now in Egypt.
And in Syria, things were only getting worse. Hundreds of people died in a chemical weapons attack in Damascus that the Assad government was accused by the international community of carrying out. Extremist jihadists now came under the umbrella of rebel groups and they began fighting each other, weakening what moderate FSA opposition there was. In particular, a rising and violent organization called the Islamic State was gaining territory and imposing its fundamentalist doctrine and severe interpretation of sharia, Islamic law, on Syria. At least one-third of the population was now uprooted, with 3 million of them struggling as refugees in the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt.
Doaa slowly began to consider the possibility of leaving. However, Bassem began wavering in his decision to move on. He loved Doaa too much to force her to do something that terrified her and began to have second thoughts. He decided that he should go to Europe on his own and then, once he was settled, send for Doaa and her family. He had heard of programs in Europe that reunited refugees with family members who had stayed behind. All you had to do, his friends had told him, was get there and ask for asylum, then apply to bring your family into the country as well. They would then be issued visas and plane tickets.
“You could join me in no time,” he told Doaa when he relayed his revised plan to her. They were sitting side by side at a small table in their favorite café, sipping tea and smoking a shisha pipe while Bassem took a break from work.
Doaa, stunned, set down her cup. “I won’t let you go alone,” she said without hesitation. “I can’t be separated from you!”
“You’re just jealous,” Bassem teased her. “You think that if I go to Europe ahead of you, I’ll find a beautiful European woman to replace you.”
Doaa punched him in the shoulder. “Fine,” she shot back, “you go find one, and I’ll find an Egyptian husband.” While they joked about this, deep down Doaa was hurt that Bassem would consider going to Europe without her, and maybe she was a little afraid that he might actually find a glamorous woman in Europe that he liked better than her.
“I’m just kidding, Dodo. I would never look for anyone else. You are the only one for me. Finding someone else would be like trying to replace the moon with the stars.”