A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(53)

Doaa reached for Malak and settled her on her chest, resting the baby’s cheek on the Quran that still lay next to Doaa’s heart. At her touch Malak relaxed and stopped crying, and Doaa immediately took comfort in having the child’s body next to hers.

Malak’s grandfather touched Malak’s face. “My little angel, what did you do to deserve this? Poor thing. Good-bye, little one, forgive me, I am going to die.” He then swam off. Doaa and Bassem focused their attention on the small child. The young life seemed to rally Bassem for a little while as he stroked Malak’s soft, cold cheeks. Moments later, Malak’s grandfather returned, checking on her, and, seeing she was in good care, said good-bye again. The next time they looked in his direction, they saw him floating facedown in the sea just ten meters away.

Malak was shivering. Her lips were blue and cracked. Doaa dipped her finger in the sea and gently wet them. She thought that her own spit would be better to use, so the child wouldn’t lick the salt, but Doaa had no moisture to gather from her mouth. She had heard somewhere that rubbing a person’s veins along the wrists keeps the person warm, so she tried that and began to sing songs that her mother had sung to her as a baby.

Bassem also was getting lulled to sleep by Doaa’s singing, and she knew that she had to keep him awake or he might just slip away from her. Doaa clapped her hands at the sides of his head to rouse him.

“I’m scared, Bassem,” she told him, leaning close to his ear, “please don’t leave me alone here in the middle of the sea! Hang on just a little longer and we will be in Europe together.”

Doaa noticed his face was turning from yellow to blue.

He started to speak: “Allah, give Doaa my spirit so that she may live.”

“Don’t say that, Bassem,” Doaa pleaded. “We will be together with God.” But she knew he was completely exhausted and was slipping away from her. Doaa began to cry, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to save him. She knew the only power left in her was her knowledge of the word of God.

“Bassem, before you die, you must swear by the Quran to be sure you die a Muslim, and that your faith goes with you,” she said urgently. “Repeat after me: ‘I swear that there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet.’”

“‘I swear that there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet,’” Bassem repeated, then closed his eyes. Doaa slapped his face to keep him awake, but he started to mutter deliriously, “Mom, the silver is for you.”

He was hallucinating. To keep him engaged, Doaa decided to play along. “Okay, Bassem, when you are better, we will go and get the silver. You just stay with me and hang on. Don’t leave me alone.”

Doaa realized Bassem was losing consciousness, and that he had been trying to say good-bye to her. She understood that she had to give him one last gift, and through her tears, she managed to utter a promise: “I chose the same road you chose. I forgive you in this life, and in the hereafter we will be together as well.” Doaa gripped Bassem’s fingers with her right hand while her left arm braced Malak.

After some time, she felt his hands slip from her grasp and she watched him go limp and slide into the water. He began floating away from her, so Doaa desperately tried extending her arm to pull him back toward her, but he was beyond her reach. She couldn’t get out of the inflatable ring without losing hold of Malak. “Bassem,” she cried, “for God’s sake, don’t go! Answer me! I can’t live without you.” She cried out for him over and over, sobbing.

A man swam over and checked Bassem’s pulse. “I’m sorry, but he’s dead,” he told her apathetically.

Doaa understood that, to this man, Bassem’s death was just one of many; at least two dozen people had died since the sun had come up that day. But to Doaa, it was the end of everything. She had lost the most precious person in her life and she wanted to die with him. She imagined letting herself slip through the inflatable ring and into the sea with Bassem. But then she felt Malak’s tiny arms around her neck and realized that she alone was responsible for this child. Doaa knew that she had to try to keep her alive.

Bassem floated facedown in the sea, then slowly began to sink beneath it. The last Doaa saw of him was his thick black hair rising up as the dark water engulfed his head. Then he was gone. She screamed just once as she witnessed this, allowing herself a moment of anguish. A man near Doaa tried comforting her. She recognized him from the boat. The man told Doaa about himself as the sun began to set on another day. He was from Damascus, he said, treading water next to her, and all he wanted was to give his son an education and a future without bombs. He started crying as he told her how he had watched, powerless, as his small son got sucked into the boat’s propeller, which cut off his head. His wife had also drowned before him. “You saw it too—you saw my wife and my son die!” he screamed. Was it his child I witnessed being cut up in the blades? Doaa wondered.

“Don’t cry,” Doaa told the man, “you will be joined together in heaven.”

“You are blessed,” the man replied, “you don’t deserve this.”

Soon, more people began to move toward Doaa for comfort and prayers, but also to ask her to help them vomit up the salt water they had swallowed. Word had gone around that swallowing seawater would quicken death. They must have seen her as she helped Bassem throw up earlier that morning, and one by one, they came over to her and she used her free hand to help them vomit, washing her fingers in the sea after each turn. Though they spit up only water, the smell turned her own stomach, but their visible relief and their words of gratitude comforted her.