A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(67)

I am grateful to all of those who refuse to remain indifferent. I especially want to recognize our Egyptian friends who made my family feel welcome, the captain and crew of the CPO Japan who came to my rescue, the pilots who pulled us into their helicopter, the doctors on Crete who saved our lives, and my host family on Crete, who took me in and gave me the space to heal. I also want to give a special thanks to UNHCR for arranging our resettlement and to the government of Sweden for giving us a safe and promising new home.

One day, I hope to return to Syria so I can breathe again. Even if it’s just for one day. That would be enough.





Author’s Note

I first came across Doaa’s story on the UNHCR Greece website. As head of communications for UNHCR, I am always on the lookout for distinctive accounts of survival and resilience that illustrate refugees’ predicaments while also building bridges of empathy to the public. It was March 2015, and I was set to speak at a TEDx event in Thessaloniki, Greece, in May about the refugee crisis on the Mediterranean. I knew at once that Doaa’s story would stir the Greek audience and resonate with people everywhere who were trying to understand what was driving thousands of refugees to risk their lives crossing the sea to Europe, pushing them even further away from their homeland after having already escaped the horrors of war.

I arranged a Skype call with my colleague in Athens, Erasmia Roumana, who had been assigned to handle Doaa and Masa’s cases, to see how UNHCR could help. Erasmia interviewed Doaa after her release from the hospital to assess her needs and to let her know that she had the right to claim asylum in Greece. As Erasmia told me Doaa’s story, I could tell that she was visibly shaken. Erasmia had witnessed and heard all kinds of tragic tales during her work with refugees, but no story had gripped her heart the way Doaa’s did. I traveled to Crete a few weeks later to meet Doaa myself.

My communications colleagues in Athens—Ketty Kehayioylou, Stella Nanou, and Katerina Kitidi—arranged my visit and researched and translated all the coverage in the Greek media for my preparation. These articles, as well as photos and other accounts, would later prove useful for the book, despite some inaccuracies in the news reporting that became clear after cross-checking.

My colleagues Ana White and Sybella Wilkes traveled with me to Crete, and Sybella supported me throughout the entire process of scripting the story for the TED talk. I conducted my first interview with Doaa on April 21, 2015, in the living room of her host family on Crete. Doaa spoke only Arabic, and our interpreter could only translate from Arabic to Greek, so Erasmia translated the three-hour conversation from Greek to English. It soon became clear that the reports in the media had only skimmed the surface of the nightmare and struggles that Doaa had lived through in Syria and Egypt and on the Mediterranean Sea. Doaa was welcoming and warm, but also very fragile and clearly traumatized. At one point, after she relayed the details of how Bassem had drowned, I asked her if she wanted to continue. “Ask me what you want,” she said. “This is my life. I live with it.” Her guard was up very high at that point, but it was clear she saw us as people she could potentially trust to help her. There was one thing she wanted and that was to be resettled in Sweden along with her family members who were still back in Egypt and whom she felt responsible to protect, and she knew we were the only ones who could help her.

Doaa’s host family, who took her in after her rescue and cared for her like one of their own daughters for sixteen months, was helpful in providing us access to Doaa. However, they declined to be interviewed for the book, explaining that they believed that what they did for her was “God’s will,” and therefore they did not deserve recognition for their generosity. That is why I am preserving their anonymity in this book. But I do want to recognize them here. They provided a place of healing, protection, and love for Doaa, and this was a very noble and beautiful deed.

The day after meeting Doaa, we traveled to Heraklion to visit the University Hospital where little Masa had been treated after her rescue, and met with Dr. Diana Fitrolaki, her supervising physician. She confirmed to me that Masa “was close to death” when she was first admitted. “We gave her glucose, liquid, oxygen,” she told me. “And we sang her songs, hugged her, took her into our arms, and walked around. After two days, she started to smile. She always asked to be picked up. She wanted to be held all the time. The staff were always touching and holding her. They love all the children but had never seen a case like this before.” I left the hospital that day convinced that it was not just modern medicine that had saved Masa but the love that Dr. Fitrolaki and the University Hospital staff showered over the little girl from the moment she was admitted.

After having left the hospital, Masa was being cared for at an orphanage, the Mitera foster home in Athens. During my visit there, I spent a couple of hours playing with her and speaking to the manager and staff of Mitera. It was clear to me that the bubbly toddler who had quickly picked up the Greek language was in the best place possible to overcome her trauma and the tragic drowning of her parents and sister.

Later, at UNHCR’s Athens office, I conducted a Skype interview with Mohammad Dasuqi, Masa’s uncle who was living in Sweden. His wife, two children, and Masa’s elder sister, Sidra, darted in and out of the frame as we spoke. Mohammad was awaiting the outcome of a legal procedure that would confirm his genetic relationship and ability to care for Masa so that he could bring her to Sweden to join her older sister and his family and so he could become her legal guardian.