A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(69)

At about the same time that I started working on the book in October 2015, the TED editorial team, led by Helen Walters and Emily McManus, published my talk on TED.com. The response was phenomenal. By the time I finished writing the book in August 2016, over 1.3 million people had viewed it, and it was subtitled in thirty languages by the talented volunteer TED translators. I am grateful to the TED editorial team for recognizing the power of Doaa’s tale and for providing the TED platform to raise awareness about the global refugee crisis.

I could not have written this book without Dorothy Hearst’s masterful writing support. She taught me the ins and outs of book publishing and the art of writing in long form. She also gave me confidence when my writing felt blocked or clunky, and she steered me with tips on how to improve. She provided chapter-by-chapter polishing, and her edits and additions helped bring the scenes into more vivid focus with color and emotion.

I would also like to recognize Jane Corbin, whose seminal BBC documentary on the Daara uprising helped me set the scenes that sparked the Syrian war. Other works that served as important references were Burning Country by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila al-Shami, as well as Patrick Kingsley’s The New Odyssey. I would also like to recognize the citizen journalists whose brave video reporting paid witness to the events that mainstream media, historians, and writers like myself refer to for helping to paint a picture of the war. Many thanks to Maher Samaan for checking the facts around the Syria chapters.

Bruno Giussani’s edits and insightful suggestions improved the writing and the context throughout the process. I am also grateful to Ariane Rummery, Sybella Wilkes, Edith Champagne, Christopher Reardon, Elizabeth Tan, Yvonne Richard, and Elena Dorfman for reading the manuscript and offering so many words of encouragement. Additional thanks to Elena for the stunning portraits she took of Doaa.

I am deeply grateful to Pat Mitchell, curator of TEDWomen, who linked me to the Rockefeller Center Fellowship program in Bellagio, Italy. I was awarded a one-month policy fellowship at their stunning residence on Lake Como in April 2016 that gave me the ideal environment, space, and time that I needed to write important chapters for the book. Special appreciation goes to Managing Director Pilar Palacia for her heartfelt interest in the project and for welcoming Doaa and Zahra for daily interview sessions over three days in the tranquility of the center’s facilities and grounds.

In addition to Doaa’s testimony, there were several interviews that were critical to the book. I am deeply grateful to Hanaa, Shokri, Saja, and Nawara for fielding all my questions and providing so much insight into their family life, Doaa as a person, and Doaa and Bassem’s love story. My interviews with Doaa’s sisters, Ayat in Lebanon and Asma in Jordan, gave me insight into Doaa’s personality and her struggle to accept Bassem’s death.

Thanks also goes to the doctor in Egypt from MSF who, while preferring to remain unnamed, gave such a moving account of not only Doaa’s fragile medical condition and Bassem’s poor state of health but also of their optimism and tremendous love for one another.

Special thanks also to Svante Somizlaff of Offen Group, a tanker and container ship management company in Hamburg, Germany. Doaa’s rescue ship, the CPO Japan, is one of the tankers in its fleet. Svante was immensely helpful in tracking down Doaa’s rescuers. He activated the personnel department to find the three men manning the ship that day, Captain Vladislav Akimov, Chief Mate Dmytro Zbitnyev, and Engineer Vladislavs Daleckis, transmitting their detailed written responses to my questions. These interviews corroborated the timing of the rescue and added details to the story that Doaa had been in no condition to recall, such as the decision by the captain to search for survivors even though the other merchant vessel at the scene had given up amid the poor visibility and rough seas, the point when they heard her cries, how they worked to finally reach her, the medical measures they took to care for the people they rescued, and how Malak died.

I am also grateful to the pilots John Fragkiadoukis and Antonios Kollias of the Greek Hellenic Air Force, who provided important details of their helicopter rescue of Doaa, Masa, and the other survivors in addition to providing the dramatic video they had shot as they were pulling them up to the helicopter from the ship. For them, this rescue was almost routine, but they still recall this particular incident because it involved a young woman and a baby who were so visibly on the edge of death and whose survival in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea for such a long period of time seemed miraculous.

I am sincerely grateful to Aurvasi Patel and Diane Goodman for their efforts in working with the Greek, Egyptian, and Swedish governments to get Doaa and her family resettled. Thanks to them, Doaa has renewed hope.

Big thanks to Humans of New York photographer Brandon Stanton and authors Khaled Hosseini and Neil Gaiman for their endorsements and to my colleague Coco Campbell for her strong support of the project.

Although I wrote the book in my personal capacity, the then UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, endorsed the project, believing it would serve as an important communications tool to drive empathy for refugees. I wish to underscore that most of the proceeds of this book will be donated to support refugees.

The writing process took place over a period when the refugee crisis in Europe was making daily headline news and my UNHCR workload was at an all-time high. I am so thankful to my husband, Peter, and my children, Alessi and Danny, for not just accepting that my evenings and weekends were consumed by writing the book but for cheering me along.