A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(50)
“You dogs!” they shouted. “Sons of bitches! Stop the boat! Where do you think you are going? You should’ve stayed to die in your own country.”
When the boat was only meters away, one of the smugglers on Doaa’s boat shouted at the men, “What the hell are you doing!?”
“Sending these filthy dogs to the bottom of the sea,” one of them yelled in reply. Suddenly they began hurling planks of wood at the passengers on the refugee boat, their eyes wild with hatred. The boat sped up and veered away for a moment, but then turned back toward Doaa’s ship. She stared in horror as the boat sped toward them on a collision course at the spot where she and Bassem stood, clutching the side of the boat. Doaa froze with fear.
“Doaa, Doaa, put on your life vest!” Bassem’s frantic voice screamed, shaking her from her paralysis. “They are going to kill us!” All around them, passengers panicked, scrambling for life jackets, as desperate prayers were interrupted by terrified shouts and children crying. The boat approaching them accelerated. Doaa had just reached for her vest when the boat rammed into the side of the ship with a shriek of metal and shattering wood just below where she and Bassem were standing. The impact was so sharp and sudden that it felt like a missile strike. Doaa stumbled forward, almost falling over the railing, but Bassem’s arms shot out and grabbed her. As she was pulled back to safety, she saw that other people weren’t so lucky and did fall over, landing on the hard deck and other passengers below. A scream sounded in Doaa’s ear, but she couldn’t tell where it had come from. Her own throat was too tight to let out a single sound. In the commotion, Doaa had dropped her life vest and couldn’t find it. She scrambled around looking for it, then Bassem pulled her toward him. She realized that the boat was beginning to turn on its side. Oh, God, Doaa thought. Not the water. Not drowning. Let me die now and not go into the sea. She had one hand on the railing to keep her balance, and the other clutched Bassem’s hand.
“Listen to me, Doaa,” Bassem said. “Keep hold of my hand. Don’t let go and we will make it. I promise I won’t let you drown.”
Doaa could hear the men on the attacking boat laughing as they hurled more pieces of wood at Doaa’s boat. Those laughs were some of the most horrifying sounds she had ever heard. She couldn’t believe they were enjoying themselves during their cruelty of trying to sink a boat carrying little children. All around her were screams of terror and people shouting desperate prayers.
The attacking boat finally reversed and pulled away from the ship, and for a moment Doaa hoped that the onslaught was over, that the men had merely wanted to frighten them. But seconds later, they sped toward them again, and Doaa understood that they had no mercy and had every intention of killing every man, woman, and child on board. This time, when they rammed the side of Doaa’s boat, the rickety vessel took a sudden, violent nosedive into the sea.
Bassem’s hand was yanked away from hers as he fought to regain his balance. Doaa lost sight of him in the mass of people tumbling forward. She was pressed up against the side of the boat, kept upright by the mass of people pushed up against her.
As people began to fall into the water, the men on the attacking boat jeered, calling out that each and every one of them should drown. “Let the fish eat your flesh!” they yelled as they sped away. The cold-blooded taunt echoed in Doaa’s ears.
Half of the refugees’ boat was already underwater and sinking fast. Doaa thought of the hundreds of people trapped in the hull. They’re doomed, she thought as she held on to the edge of the sinking vessel, and so are we.
She held as tightly as she could to the side of the boat, but as it plunged downward, her fingers slipped open and she slid into the sea, immediately sinking below the surface. Doaa found herself under the plastic rice sacks that the passengers had tied together for shade on the boat. She frantically moved her arms, attempting to reach the surface, only to see that she was trapped along with dozens of other people underneath the sacks. Fighting off panic, Doaa shut her eyes, then opened them again to see the people near her struggling to free themselves from under the heavy plastic. There was no air to breathe and no path to the surface. She remembered the time her cousin had thrown her into the lake and she had breathed in heavy, choking water. This time there was no family to pull her out, nothing but cold salt water and the pressure growing in her chest and behind her eyes as she struggled to catch her breath and choked down more water. Then she saw a glimmer of sunlight and noticed a tear in the plastic. She stretched her hands into the opening, feeling as if they were moving in slow motion, and pulled herself through the small hole and above water. She gasped for air at the surface. Doaa realized that the rice sacks were still attached to the boat, and if she crawled over them, she could reach the stern—the only part that was still floating—and grab on to the edge of the boat. She made her way along the sacks, and when she reached the boat’s edge, she grabbed it so tightly that she couldn’t feel her hands. She caught her breath in huge gulps, then turned to look below her. The people under the plastic had stopped moving.
She heard screaming all around her, muffled only by the sound of the boat’s motor. She turned her head toward the sea and saw scattered groups of people, calling out the names of their loved ones and crying for God’s help. People desperately grabbed on to anything that floated—luggage, water canisters, even other people, pulling them down with them. Doaa noticed that the sea around her was colored red and realized that people were being sucked into the boat’s propeller and dismembered by its blades. Body parts floated all around her. It was worse than anything she’d ever seen during the war in Daraa. She watched in horror as one moment a child was crying and struggling to hold on to the boat, then the next he lost his grip and slipped into the blades, his small body cut to pieces. There was nothing but blood and screams. She forced herself to turn away and instead shift her focus over the deck. She saw a lifeless man trapped in the metal scaffold used for fishing nets, a rope wrapped around his neck, his arms and legs cut off, his face covered in blood.