A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(64)

Doaa was determined to do everything she could to get her family out of Egypt. Her anger at the people who were threatening them temporarily shook her out of her grief and into action. She turned to UNHCR’s Erasmia Roumana, a caseworker Doaa had come to trust, for help. The process would be long and complex, Erasmia explained. While Doaa’s family would have a strong case, Greece had no established resettlement program with another EU country. Erasmia explained that Doaa had the option of applying for asylum in Greece. If she received it, she could settle there and have the right to travel and eventually apply for citizenship. But Doaa’s heart was set on Sweden; she and Bassem had planned to make a life together there. If she couldn’t get there with Bassem, she’d get her family there, and if she couldn’t get her family there, then she would have to go by herself. Once in Sweden, she would carry out her and Bassem’s original plan alone—to apply to the Swedish family-reunification program and bring her family to join her.

Every day Doaa struggled with despondency, but fighting for her family’s safety gave her a new resolve, and over the next few months her life began to come together. Her story had captured the imagination of Greek civil society. The mayor of Chania called on national authorities to grant her Greek citizenship for her heroism. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, but the request helped Doaa see herself in a new light—as someone who was brave and strong.

Then, on December 19, 2014, the prestigious Academy of Athens presented Doaa with their annual 3,000-euro award for her courage. Her visit to Athens and the pride she felt in accepting the award felt like a watershed moment, and she began to look to the future. She told herself that she would not stop fighting until she was reunited with her family. After that she would study to become a lawyer, so she could fight for justice. She had seen too little of it in her life.

In pain from being away from her family, she struggled to overcome the despair and grief that would at times engulf her spirit. For the first nineteen years of her life, she had always been surrounded by family. Now that she was on her own, she found it easier to be alone with her memories than to share them. She felt different from girls her age, and while she enjoyed the company of her host sisters who were kind to her, she knew they could never understand what she had been through. She couldn’t find the words to express the horror of the deaths and suffering she had witnessed or the depth of her own grief. Her sorrow threatened to overwhelm her whenever she tried to talk about it. After the evil she had seen, it was hard to trust people again. Doaa felt that she could help herself and never turned to anyone else for aid in overcoming her trauma.

At times during the ordinary rituals of everyday life, a sudden memory from her days in the water would hit her so powerfully that the pain would come back all over again. One day, as she was brushing her hair and looking in the mirror, she smelled Bassem’s cologne and swung around to see if he was standing behind her. Friends back in Egypt told her of rumors that he was alive and in a prison there. Part of her wanted to believe it was true, although almost every night her mind replayed the scene of his drowning before her eyes. She tried to think of ways she could have kept him alive. It would take her hours to return to sleep after that, and the next morning when she woke, she would hope the visions of his death had just been a dream and that he would be waiting for her outside her door.

In the summer of 2015, almost one year after she had been rescued, Doaa was still struggling with her grief, nightmares, and the fear that she would never move forward with her life. One day she watched a news story about the thousands of refugees from her country that were arriving in Greece. They had crossed the sea from Turkey and were making their way through the Balkans to Austria, Germany, and Sweden. She often thought of taking her prize money and paying another smuggler to help her travel to Sweden like the other refugees. But staff at UNHCR who were working to help resettle Doaa warned her that the journey was dangerous, especially for a young woman traveling alone. They urged her to be patient for another solution. They were working on resettling her family to Sweden, and finding a way for her to join them. When the paperwork went through, Doaa could fly to Sweden and legally restart her life alongside her family. Doaa found it almost impossible to remain patient or to trust anyone who promised to help, but if it meant that she might get her family to safety, she would try. Until then, she would heal in the cocoon of her host family.

One day that summer, after a year of struggling with grief, nightmares, and the fear that she would never move forward with her life, Doaa joined her host family on a picnic at the beach. After they finished eating, on an impulse Doaa stood up, kicked off her sandals, and walked into the shallow sea until it reached her shoulders. The water was clear and cool and still. She stood there holding her breath, then calmly let her body sink down until the water covered her head for a few moments. When she came out and returned to the shore, she turned back to look out at the horizon and thought, I am not afraid of you anymore.





Epilogue

Doaa was safe in Crete, and she was healing, but she soon began to grow restless, worrying about her future. The Greek government offered her the opportunity to apply for asylum. Yet despite the kindness of the people around her, Doaa didn’t feel like Greece was her home. Every day that she was there she had to face the sea where Bassem had drowned, and although the sight of it no longer filled her with dread, she wanted to move away from everything it reminded her of. She and Bassem had always dreamed of making it to Sweden, and she wanted to fulfill that dream. At the same time, Doaa was also terrified for her family; the threats from the smugglers were escalating, and there was nothing she could do to help. Most of all, she missed the loving arms of her mother and sitting in the lively company of her family. Her entire life she’d been surrounded by their comforting chatter. That was something no WhatsApp or Skype call could replace. She also felt responsible for the danger they were in, and though she had no idea how she would do so, she was determined to get them all out of Egypt so they could start a new life together.