A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(62)

Conflicting information began to come in through friends and family. On the way to the store, Nawara heard a rumor that the boat had sunk, but that Doaa and Bassem were among two hundred survivors. Another time, neighbors told Saja that Doaa and Bassem were dead. The sisters kept these rumors to themselves, for fear of panicking their parents.

About six days after she’d last heard from Doaa, Hanaa also got wind of a rumor that the boat had sunk and there were no survivors. She began to fear the worst, but remained silent, not wanting to worry her family or admit to herself that Doaa could be dead. Then, on September 18, twelve days after Doaa and Bassem had left, a group of neighbors knocked on Hanaa and Shokri’s door, asking to come in, saying that they had some news. From the looks on their faces, Hanaa knew it was about Doaa and Bassem, but she was afraid to ask. The women moved out to the balcony and the men sat gloomily in the adjacent living room.

Just as they were about to speak, Hanaa’s phone rang. She reached for it, relieved to break the tense silence and delay the news she sensed they were about to tell her. “Who’s calling and what do you want?” she said, uncharacteristically abrupt.

“Mom, it is Ayat! Listen! Doaa is alive!” Ayat quickly told her mother about the 3:00 a.m. call that she had received and that Doaa was safe with a family in Greece.

“Thank God!” Hanaa was weak with relief.

Hanaa told Ayat that she had days ago heard that there had been a shipwreck but had kept the news to herself, not wanting others to worry. Then Hanaa asked about Bassem.

“She told me he was sleeping in a mosque, but she sounded odd,” Ayat said. “I’m not sure. She was disoriented when we spoke, but something about what she said sounded wrong.” Ayat gave Hanaa Doaa’s number in Greece so she could speak to Doaa herself.

Hanaa dialed the number as soon as she got off the phone with Ayat. A woman answered, speaking Arabic. Hanaa anxiously asked to speak to her daughter.

After a few long seconds, Doaa picked up the phone. “Mom, I’m okay. I will call you when I am feeling better.” She sounded faint and distant.

Hanaa was flooded with relief, but couldn’t believe that Doaa was going to hang up so quickly. “Where is Bassem?”

“He’s at the supermarket,” Doaa said flatly.

Hanaa could sense something was wrong in Doaa’s reply and hastiness to get off the phone. Hanaa asked to speak to Doaa’s hostess again. When the woman came back on the line, Hanaa pressed her for details. “She’s fine,” the host mother said, promising that the family would treat Doaa as their own daughter and protect her. When Hanaa asked about Bassem, the woman would only say that he was away, but gave no other details. Hanaa guessed from the woman’s strained tone that Doaa was nearby, so Hanaa asked if they could speak in private. A few moments passed, then the woman began to speak more frankly. She told Hanaa she suspected Bassem had drowned along with most of the other passengers and that Doaa was in denial. The woman said Doaa was a heroine who’d survived four days in the water and had saved a baby girl. “Doaa has a kind heart and she is safe with us. Be thankful to God she is alive.” Then the woman whispered to Hanaa, “May Bassem rest in peace,” and offered to put Doaa back on the phone.

Doaa’s voice was so faint it was hard to recognize it was her.

All Hanaa wanted to do was cry, but she knew she needed to be strong for Doaa. “Say something, my daughter, so your father and our neighbors can hear it is you.” By this time, family and friends had congregated around Hanaa after hearing that Doaa was alive. Hanaa put the phone on speaker and told her, “Everyone is here, asking about you.”

“I’m okay,” Doaa assured everyone huddled in the room, the most response she could manage.

Everyone burst out crying at the sound of her voice.

“Rest, Doaa,” Hanaa told her, promising to call again the next day.

*

Every night, nightmares rattled Doaa awake. She kept seeing Bassem slipping away from her into the sea. As these dreams came to her over and over, she wrestled with accepting them as fact. Slowly, the reality that Bassem was dead sank in, and during the day when Doaa was mainly left home alone, she was consumed by grief.

Some days she would go out on the apartment’s balcony, look up at the sky, and imagine Bassem there. “If only you were here with me today!” she’d say with her face tilted toward the clouds, hoping in vain for a response. “My happiness is broken without you.” Other days, Doaa would pretend that Bassem was still alive. In one daydream, she would imagine meeting him walking down the main shopping street in Chania, where they would embrace and resume their love story where they had left off. She still couldn’t bring herself to admit his death to her family. During one of her phone calls with her parents, Shokri asked how she was coping with Bassem’s death, and Doaa replied without thinking, “He’s not dead, Papa, he’s alive.”

Meanwhile, word was spreading through Arabic social media about the young woman who’d survived one of the worst refugee boat shipwrecks in the Mediterranean and saved a baby girl. Friends and family of missing passengers were anxiously looking for news of their loved ones, and Doaa’s story gave them hope. A friend of her host family’s published their phone number on a Facebook page for anyone looking for information about the wreck. Within minutes, hundreds of messages and calls started pouring in. “Do you know what happened to my daughter?” “Is my son alive?” “Did my mother survive?” “Here is a picture of my sister; did you see her?” “Did you see my father?” “Did you see my uncle?” “Did you see my friend?” The messages overwhelmed Doaa, but she did her best to reply to them, asking people to send photos so she could see if she recognized anyone. How could she tell them all there was no hope? That she knew of only six survivors, including herself, here in Greece, and five others who had been taken to Malta? But that was all. How could she tell them that she did recognize some people, but that it was from when she had watched them drown?