Rehanna, Ghalib, and Alan Kurdi all drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on September 2, 2015.

Since
the tragedy, I have asked, “Why them? Why us?” thousands of times, as many times as refugees have
drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. At other moments, I have lashed out far and wide, in every
direction. I have cried out to the governments that have denied a safe harbour to so many refugees, or
failed to provide a slip of paper that legitimizes their right to the most basic necessities. I have asked
the military forces, the rebel fighters, and the ISIS terrorists that have turned our homelands in
Damascus and Kobani into rivers of blood, “Why? What are you fighting for? Oil? Political
ideologies? Religion? Power? Revenge?” I have called out to the global authorities, in the Middle
East, Western Europe, America, and Canada, “We are not animals. We are human beings, just like
you. Why did you close your hearts and minds to forging a peaceful end to this war?” Still other
times, I have shouted at the smugglers and human traffickers, the faceless boogeymen who have
profited from misery: “Why is money more important to you than human life?”
I have often envisioned the island of Kos, the stable rocks of the cradle of Western
Civilization that my brothers and sisters could see from the shores of Bodrum. Such a short journey,
four kilometres. Why couldn’t that island have been just a little closer? I have asked the sea and the
wind, “Why did you take our loved ones from us?” I have called out to the media, “Why did you
ignore the plight of the refugees for so long? Until it was too late to save my nephews and sister-in-
law? And why did some of you attack Abdullah’s reputation, after he’d lost everything else?” Often,
I have cried to God, “Why?” Sometimes he didn’t answer. Sometimes he responded with a question
of his own. Sometimes I knew how to answer it. Other times, I was speechless.
I have reserved the most vicious condemnations for myself. I may appear to be an average
middle-aged woman going about my business, shopping for groceries, cooking a meal for my family,
resting my head on a pillow at the end of the day. My body is there, going through the motions, but
my mind is somewhere else. In a brightly lit interrogation room, staring myself down across the
table, demanding, “Why did you send Abdullah that money for the smugglers? Why didn’t you send
him more money, so that he could take a safer, seaworthy boat? Why didn’t you go to Bodrum and
rent a motorboat, like so many tourists and holiday-makers, and take your family across the sea?
Why didn’t you start trying to get your family to Canada on the very first day that the war in Syria
started? Why were you so foolish and naive? So selfish?” I’m still lost at sea, drifting. Sometimes I
float. Other times I sink like a stone and drown.
At some point before the tragedy, my family began living on borrowed time. When did it
start? How long ago? When ISIS began to put a chokehold on my ancestral homeland? Years before,
when Rehanna was pregnant with Ghalib and the first rumblings of protest against the Syrian
government began? Decades earlier, after I emigrated to Canada as a young woman? Before I was
born?
When you wake up from a nightmare, you reach out to your loved ones, seeking solace,
warmth, and safety. Among my family, we often discussed our waking nightmare, and those
conversations steered us back in time, to memories from the past, our family’s past, our people’s
past. About what life was like before. Perhaps we were attempting to find a place where we could
truly belong, whether it was a place we’d already lived or somewhere else. A man-made disaster
forced us to abandon our homeland, but there was at least some comfort in knowing that we carried
our history deep within us.
When I began to write this book in August 2016, a month shy of the anniversary of the
tragedy, Abdullah was in the intensive care unit of a Turkish hospital, clinging to life. In his hospital
bed, he often slipped into delirium, calling for his wife and his boys—“I need to get them clothes,
water, and food”—as if he were still preparing them for the journey. The doctors told me he needed
heart surgery and that there was an eighty per cent chance that he would die. When my father heard
the news, he said, “I would gladly give my son my heart.” Then my father too had to be rushed to the
hospital in Damascus. My father didn’t want to worry me, so I didn’t know what was wrong with
him exactly, but I believed the true cause of his illness was heartbreak.
Even in my deepest moments of despair, I recognized that we were the lucky ones: we, the
living. We had lost too many loved ones and nothing would bring them back, but we were alive. We
had our memories and our cognizance. We had many wonderful children and grandchildren with
whom we could share our history. It was our honour and our duty to pass those memories to the next
generation, to put words on paper and share them, not just with our relatives but also with the world.
By writing this book, I was attempting to document the story of Abdullah’s family—to give it a
permanence that wouldn’t otherwise exist.
“Millions of refugees are in the same desperate situation as us,” Abdullah said to me every
time I pushed him for more information. But his story bears witness to the experiences of millions of
refugees and the many victims of war and genocide around the world. When you saw the photograph
of that little boy, my dear nephew Alan, dead on a faraway shore, you became a part of our family.
You shared our horror, our heartache, our shock, and our outrage. You wanted to save him, but you
knew it was too late. In your grief, you reached out, and by doing so, you grabbed hold of my hand
and pulled me to you. You joined my family’s chorus of grief. You helped save me from
drowning.
I hope that my words help bring all of us one step closer to each other. I hope that my story,
tragic as it is, also plants the seed of hope in your hearts and minds. I hope it inspires you to join me
in speaking up for all the people who have no voice. And for all the children who were taken from us
before they could speak.
In Syria and other Arab countries, we call elders “auntie” and “uncle”—strangers, friends,
and family alike. If you are older than me, you are my aunties and uncles, and if you are younger
than me, I am your auntie. Now our histories and our destinies are entwined. Now we are all one
family.