A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea

So close to their destination, the mood on the boat lightens. Bassem holds Doaa’s hand and assures her that they’re “going to make it” (94). Happy, she allows herself to sleep. Doaa awakens, however, to angry shouts in an Egyptian dialect. She looks out and sees an unknown boat heading toward them. Aboard, she sees men with furious expressions. They shout, telling the passengers that they “should’ve stayed to die in [their] own country” (94). The new boat squares up to the smugglers’ vessel, ready to ram it and kill everyone onboard. As the passengers panic, the boats collide and people fall overboard. The boat begins to capsize. Doaa prays for help. She clings to Bassem. The men on the attacking boat laugh at the sinking refugees. They ram the boats together again. Doaa and Bassem fall overboard. As people fall into the water, the attackers laugh and then speed away. The refugees’ boat sinks, many people still trapped below deck.

In the water, Doaa remembers the time she nearly drowned. She gasps for air when she can, hearing screams all around her. Doaa sees part of the see turning red and realizes that the boat’s propeller is slicing people apart. Bodies float everywhere. A child slips into the spinning blades. Doaa and Bassem find one another in the chaos. He calls for her to swim to him, away from the propeller. Doaa is scared but the sound of his voice gives her courage. She feels hands below the surface clawing at her for help. She can do nothing for them. The last remnants of the boat sink away, leaving the floating refugees surrounded by the debris and the corpses of their loved ones. Bassem swims toward her with an inflatable ring—“the kind toddlers use in baby pools” (97)—and tells her to hold on.

The survivors begin to cluster together, sharing what water they have. People cry in agony, searching for husbands, wives, and children. Darkness begins to fall. The sea turns cold, black, and choppy. Children’s cries grow weaker and the survivors chant verses from the Quran to give one another strength. Approximately 100 people had survived, but the cold, the exhaustion, and the despair begin to whittle away at the number. Those who have lost everything allow the sea to swallow them up. Bassem apologizes repeatedly to Doaa as he loses his strength after 12 hours floating in the sea. “We made this choice together” (98), she assures him. By the time the sun rises, half of the survivors are dead. Those still alive cling to the bloated corpses for support. When Bassem wakes from what little sleep he can muster, his voice seems despondent. Doaa worries that he has already given up. Doaa, too, feels her spirit flagging.

The survivors gather around the couple, some of them delirious. Bassem, noticing the crowd, loudly declares his love for Doaa. He asks for forgiveness before he dies. Doaa tells him that there is nothing to forgive. An old man approaches them, exhausted, and asks them to care for his tiny baby granddaughter, Malak. Doaa takes the crying baby, who begins to nestle silently against her chest. The old man swims away to die. The presence of the little girl seems to rejuvenate Bassem. But it is short-lived. Soon, his face begins to turn blue. They pray together until Bassem’s body goes limp and he slides out of Doaa’s grip. Bassem dies. To Doaa, it is “the end of everything” (100). The only thing stopping her from joining Bassem is the baby in her arms.

The survivors gather together again, offering support and helping one another vomit the seawater that would quicken their deaths. By the second day, only 25 survivors remain. Doaa watches people she knew from the boat die; a woman gives her another baby, the one she cradled while onboard. Doaa takes the baby, named Masa, without hesitation. As people die around her, Doaa clutches the inflatable ring and tries to keep hold of the two babies. The survivors eat what they can. Men urinate in plastic bottles, desperate for anything to drink. People hallucinate. Exhausted, Doaa dare not sleep in case the babies slip away. On the third day, a person asks her to help a three-year-old boy. But Doaa has little energy or space. She does what she can but the boy dies. Doaa cries; in only a few hours, she had come to love the boy and she mourns his death as if he were her own son. She is more determined than ever to save the two babies. By the fourth day, however, the babies barely move. As she begins to fade in and out of consciousness, Doaa sees a white speck above. A plane. With the last remaining survivors, Doaa uses a plastic bottle and the sunlight to try and signal for help. The plane disappears. The other survivors see a ship and try and swim toward it; one man dies and the current brings his body back to Doaa, where it crashes repeatedly against her. As darkness falls, Doaa sees the lights of another ship. She knows she has to try and reach it. 

The Maltese coast guard have released a distress call to report that a refugee boat has sunk. By law, all ships in the area must aid anyone found at sea in danger and/or lost. In the year of Doaa’s shipwreck, commercial vessels had helped save as many as 40,000 people. The chemical tanker CPO Japan responds but, on arriving at the co-ordinates, finds only corpses in the water. Just as they are about to give up, someone hears a woman shouting. They search for the source and, after two hours, they find Doaa and the babies. She hands the babies to the crew but seems reluctant to board the boat; she hopes to return to Bassem and join him in death. But one of the crew grabs hold of her leg and drags her from the water. Doaa is too tired to resist. She receives a blanket and water. Back onboard the CPO Japan, no one speaks Doaa’s language, but she recognizes the kindness in their eyes. She changes clothes, sorting through her meagre possessions: her and Bassem’s passports, a small amount of money, her phone, and a copy of the Quran. The nearest hospital is four hours away. The crew do what they can to keep Doaa and the babies alive; they offer food and an oxygen mask. She falls asleep and suffers from nightmares.

Finally, a helicopter transports Doaa to a hospital. On the helicopter, she recognizes other survivors. They tell her that baby Malak has died, though Masa is onboard the helicopter. Doaa succumbs to grief. As they fly to the hospital, the doctor must give Masa CPR. The baby survives. They land in Crete and then head to the hospital. Doaa wakes up in a hospital bed. Immediately, she is questioned by a policeman. Doaa tells him what she can. Doaa’s body is so weak that she needs a wheelchair. When she looks in the mirror, “she almost didn’t recognize her own face” (113). Masa goes to another hospital, her condition critical. Soon, the baby’s fight to stay alive becomes national news in Greece. She begins to recover but may have suffered brain damage from the dehydration. Many, many people in Greece offer to adopt the miracle baby survivor. They praise Doaa as a hero for saving Masa.

An Egyptian family living in Greece offer to take Doaa in and she accepts. Eventually, she calls her sister. But she cannot bring herself to say what has happened to Bassem. Eventually, however, she knows that she must tell them the truth. In the time since Bassem and Doaa left, Doaa’s family has been very worried. They have heard many (often conflicting) rumors and do not know what to believe. When Doaa tells Hanaa that Bassem is at the supermarket, Hanaa knows that something is wrong. Soon, people begin inundating Doaa with desperate messages asking for news about relatives who might have been aboard her boat. She also receives aggressive and insulting messages. One message, however, is from Masa’s aunt, and Doaa responds with delight. Eventually, the family reunites. The event is “a turning point for Doaa” (118), allowing her heart to heal.

One day, Doaa receives a panicked phone call from her mother; Doaa’s story has caused Doaa’s smugglers to threatened her family. They demand that Doaa stop talking to the authorities. But the criminals continue to threaten and harass Doaa’s family. Due to the family’s situation and the imminent threat, Doaa’s family is eligible for a UN resettlement program. Doaa and her family begin the long and complicated process of applying for asylum in Sweden. Doaa receives a €3,000 award for courage by a Greek organization and she becomes even more determined to reunite her family. One day, more than a year after her rescue, Doaa visits the beach with her host family for a picnic. She wanders out into the sea and, when she walks back onto the beach, she turns back to the water and tells it that she is no longer afraid. 

Though Greece treats Doaa well, it never feels like home to her. She and Bassem had always dreamed of Sweden. She also misses her family. Melissa Fleming meets Doaa in January 2015 and interviews her about her ordeal. Melissa is determined to share Doaa’s story with the world. Doaa and her family finally receive acceptance into the Swedish government’s resettlement program. By this time, Melissa and Doaa have begun working on a book together to tell her story. In January 2016, the family flies to Stockholm and travels to Östersund, their new home. At last, surrounded by snow, Doaa and her family reunite. Doaa, like many Syrian refugees, has no home to return to. By the time of the book’s publication, the civil war has not concluded; 250,000 have died, more than a million more suffered injuries and 5 million have fled the country, while 6.5 million are internally displaced. Many Syrian refugees have abandoned the hope of returning home. The world’s reaction to the crisis has been slow, delayed, muddled, and often shortsighted. Doaa, still furious at the ordeal she witnessed firsthand, has sworn to become a lawyer and help refugees.