He nodded. “Keep your passport with you at all times, and hide it in your clothes.” Then he moved on and repeated the same question and command to the next row.
After what seemed like an hour, the minibus came to a halt and they were ordered to get off. The group was immediately herded into the back of a large truck meant for transporting sand. While it was dark outside, it was pitch-black in the container once the smugglers closed the back hatch, sealing them in. Everyone was crammed together with no room to move, no windows, and no air circulation. The children were strangely quiet, and Doaa noticed that one woman was visibly pregnant. “These thugs are inhuman,” Doaa whispered under her breath. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Doaa and Bassem could tell from the noise of honking horns, music, and voices that the truck was traveling through populated areas, but after a while the only sound was of the wheels bumping up against potholes and stones. Doaa held Bassem’s hand as she peered through the darkness at her fellow refugees, wondering what circumstances had driven each of them to embark on this dangerous journey. After an hour, the truck halted abruptly, and the back hatch opened. Doaa gratefully gulped the fresh air. She was stiff from sitting squeezed up against the other people, and her legs shook as she jumped down from the truck and discovered that they had arrived at a barren coast. Other refugees had arrived before them, clustered in groups of families or friends, sitting in the sand and waiting silently in the dark.
Including the forty other passengers from Doaa and Bassem’s truck, they estimated that about two hundred people were gathered on the beach, now at the mercy of their ten criminal travel agents. The smugglers were all barefoot and dressed in black with their pant legs rolled up to their knees. They told the refugees to remain completely silent and explained that they were doing everything they could to evade the police and the coast guard, but by many accounts, they were also paying off officials to turn a blind eye to the smuggling. Doaa checked her watch. It was 11:00 p.m.
The wait in silence was excruciating. It was cold and she wished that she had worn a sweater under her thin jacket.
After two hours, the smugglers divided the refugees on the beach into three smaller groups without explanation. One hundred people were in the first group, with the second and third groups having fifty each. Doaa and Bassem were in the first group. As soon as it was formed, they heard a smuggler shout, “Run!” Bassem picked up their bag and together they set off in the black night toward the sound of the breaking waves. It was cloudy and thus dark and difficult to see. Doaa couldn’t even see her hands as they swung in front of her as she took her steps. After a few minutes, a voice ordered them to stop running, keep quiet, then to start again. They could hear the sound of waves crashing and the heavy breathing of their fellow travelers, but they had no sense of orientation except from the smugglers who led them. Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but no boat was in sight.
Instead, as they were making their way to the shore, they stumbled into a group of uniformed coastguardsmen asleep on the beach. At the sight of them, the entire group turned on their heels and ran in the opposite direction. Doaa and Bassem were running at the head of the crowd when they heard the sound of bullets and shouts of “You kilaab [dogs]! Stop!” Running faster, they shouted to the other refugees, warning them, “It’s a trap! Run!”
Bassem took Doaa’s hand as they sprinted. Their black bag was strapped to his back, weighing him down. Doaa tried to get him to abandon it, telling him that nothing in it was worth getting shot over. “No,” he insisted, “it has all our memories inside.” Then suddenly he tripped and fell. The coastguardsmen were gaining ground behind them. Doaa pulled him up and they kept running. The group that ran with them was getting smaller. The families with children and the elderly had surrendered, unable to outpace the guards. A girl Doaa’s age was running alongside Doaa and Bassem. She had lost track of her family and wanted to stop, but Doaa took her hand, telling her, “Stay with us. We’ll help you.”
When they finally reached the main road, Doaa checked her watch again. It was 3:00 a.m.—they had been running for almost two hours. No houses were along this stretch of road, only empty desert, and soon other Syrians from their group who had escaped joined them. One was speaking in a loud voice into his phone to one of the smugglers, demanding that they come and pick them up. After the call ended, a barrage of questions ensued. Where were they? Did the smugglers set the trap intentionally, knowing that the coastguardsmen would be there? “There are always arrests,” one man said knowingly. “It allows the coast guard to show they’re doing their job. They get their cut from the smugglers for allowing part of the group to make it to the boat.”