A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(43)
The truck started up again and the guards drove them to the Birimbal detention center in the swampy, rural town of Matubus on the outskirts of Alexandria. Doaa and Bassem were separated there, and Doaa had to wait in a line with the other women to have her mug shot taken and to sign a document confessing that she had attempted to leave Egypt illegally. An officer from the national security department asked her questions about the smugglers. What were their names? What did they look like? How much did you pay? Where did you leave from? She answered as best she could, replying that one was called Abu Mohammed.
“Seems to me they are all called Abu Mohammed,” the officer joked. Another officer looked at her in concern and said kindly, “Don’t go with those smugglers. They’re no good.” She was told that she and Bassem were sentenced to ten days in prison for trying to leave the country illegally and was taken to a room that was already packed with women and children. Men were kept separately in another location. There was no running water and the toilet didn’t flush. The stench and the flies made Doaa feel nauseated and she couldn’t eat. Each inmate received a small mat to sleep on but no blanket, and there was nowhere to shower. Doaa had no change of clothes and no way to keep clean, which added to her misery.
As the days wore on, the children developed scabies and their mothers found it hard to stop their children’s crying. Female officials from UNHCR visited to interview and check on the prisoners, advocating on their behalf and delivering food, toiletries, blankets, and medical supplies. Doaa was allowed to make one call to her family, and she was able to talk to her mother just long enough to calm her parents’ fears and to tell them that she would be released in a few days.
A sympathetic medical officer from Doctors Without Borders visited and examined Doaa, urging her to eat and warning her to take care of her health. During his rounds in the men’s section, he also examined Bassem. He warned Bassem that he, too, was in poor health, pointing to his jutting cheekbones as a sign that his nutrition and food intake were low. But the doctor also noticed that Bassem’s spirits were high and asked him about his situation. Bassem told the doctor he was heading to Europe to start a new life with his fiancée, Doaa, who was in the women’s section of the prison. He described his plans to go with her to Sweden to open his own barbershop and get married. When he discovered that the doctor had examined Doaa, he probed him about her condition. As soon as the checkup was finished, Bassem rose and approached one of the guards, pleading with him for a visit with his fiancée. The burly policeman refused, but Bassem was persistent. “Just for a few minutes, please!” he begged. Soon the rest of the men chimed in to support him: “Can’t you see he’s in love?” The guard capitulated and let Bassem visit Doaa for a few minutes. This ritual repeated itself every day until their release, one day short of their ten-day sentence. The young couple became favorites of both the guards and the other prisoners.
When their sentence was up, Bassem, Doaa, and eight other Syrians were driven to Alexandria, where they filled out forms to renew their residency permits and paid a fine. On their bus ride back to Gamasa, Bassem called one of the smugglers. “Why did you report us?” he demanded. The man denied any involvement and asked if they wanted to try again to get to Europe. He still had their money, he reminded them. Bassem said he would call him back and hung up.
Doaa’s family was waiting for her and Bassem when they reached the apartment building. For the first time in ten days, Doaa and Bassem had a shower. Hanaa prepared Doaa’s favorite dish, stewed molokhia leaves with coriander seeds, garlic, and onion served with steamed rice. Neighbors came to hear about their ordeal and warned them that they shouldn’t try to leave again. The authorities were cracking down, they said, and they might not get off as easy a second time.
But now, in August 2014, the Syrian refugee population in Egypt was growing restless. The war had spread to the far reaches of their country, and their hopes of returning to Syria were growing dim. Extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda, and new terrorist organizations such as the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State, had filled in the gaps where the moderate opposition, who were now outgunned, had failed to take control. There were no longer two sides in the battle for Syria, but a range of players vying for territory and power. Most of those who had risen up in protest back in March 2011 had lost their lives or fled the country. By the fourth year of the war, few of those fighting the regime represented the values of the original resistance movement. Increasingly, opposition groups were battling each other. The more moderate militias such as the Free Syrian Army were fighting not just the government, but the radical extremists of ISIS as well. And on the government’s side, foreign fighters from Iran and from Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist militant group and political party based in Lebanon, boosted their capacity while starting an international proxy war that would bring in Russia on the government’s side, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey on the other. Eventually the United States, France, and the UK would join in the fight against both Assad and ISIS as well. Well-meaning UN-brokered attempts at peace talks would collapse, and pledged cease-fires would continually unravel.
Cities such as Daraa were emptied of their original residents, who left behind their destroyed homes to seek relative safety in other parts of the country, across borders, or increasingly across the Mediterranean Sea. Many of Bassem’s friends who had made it to Europe continued to encourage him to do the same. The journey would be difficult for a few days on the sea, but after that things would be fine, they assured him. His friends had crossed the Mediterranean and made it to Germany, Sweden, and Holland, and now they were studying or working there. They told him over Facebook chat that they could learn the language in six months, and once they did that, they could easily find work.