That night, the passengers shivered in the cold, their thin layers of clothes soaked from waves that had splashed over the deck. Doaa stirred as she felt Um Khalil’s baby boy’s small fingers touching her face and pulling on her necklace. Instead of being annoyed that her sleep was disrupted, she found that his touch calmed her.
When the sun rose on their third day, their things slowly dried off, but it became swelteringly hot. Doaa’s clothes stuck to her, and the plastic-wrapped documents and phone underneath them felt as if they were melting into her skin. Late that afternoon another boat approached. “Move,” the smugglers said, ordering them to switch boats yet again. The passengers complained but did as they were told. They had to switch boats if they wanted to move on to the next leg of the journey. To Doaa’s surprise only about 150 passengers disembarked along with Bassem and her, while the other passengers remained on the last boat. One of the smugglers explained that the waves were too high for so many people so they had to split up, and Doaa and Bassem felt resigned to follow the directions of the smugglers. Bassem reasoned optimistically that they might reach Italy faster with a smaller number of passengers on board. Doaa looked around her, confused yet hopeful, and noticed that the two little girls Masa and Sandra, along with their parents, had boarded this boat as well. This was the fourth boat they had been on since they had started their journey and she hoped it would be the last.
On Tuesday morning, September 9, four days into their journey, Doaa and Bassem spotted another fishing boat in the distance, and as they moved closer, they realized that it was the same one they had been on the previous day. Again, without any explanation, the boats came together, and the smugglers ordered the refugees to switch boats yet again. On this windy day, the water was choppy. The smugglers tossed ropes to their collaborators on the bigger vessel. The boats crashed together, and Doaa was reminded of the crack of an explosion back in Daraa and the terror she had felt when she heard the sound.
A line of people formed to move back to the original boat. Children were crying as they were tossed like bags of potatoes into the arms of the burly men on the next boat. When it was Doaa’s turn, she slipped after they dropped her on the deck of the new boat, falling and sliding to the other side, bruising her elbows. Bassem helped her up. Then they watched in horror as Walid got his hand stuck between the two boats as he was leaping between them. The waves slammed the sides of the boats together and Walid screamed. When he finally pulled himself onto the deck, his fingers were severed from his hand and blood was gushing in all directions. Passengers rushed to wrap his hand in gauze to stop the bleeding, but his fingers were gone. He sat on the deck, sobbing in pain. Doaa stared in distress, too shocked to move.
The smugglers remained unfazed and continued to bark orders and push the remaining passengers on board. One man tripped and fell face forward into an iron pole, splitting his head open. Doaa’s stomach turned as she watched a woman who knew him calmly pull out a needle and thread from her bag and sew the gash shut.
When the passengers were settled and the boat started its engines again, a member of the crew circled the deck with a large bag full of stale pita bread. When he handed a few pieces to Bassem, he looked at Doaa and told her, “You need this to stay strong.” Doaa shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m not hungry,” she replied flatly. Bassem was furious with her as he took her share of the bread anyway. It was their third day at sea and she had only eaten once, just a few mouthfuls from a can of tuna someone had given her. Walid was nearby, in visible pain, clutching his hand. “I feel like I am going to die, it hurts so much,” he told Doaa, shaking. She knelt next to him and read him a few verses from the Quran in the hopes that it would provide him some comfort.
The crew on this boat was kinder than that on the first boat. Shoukri Al-Assoulli, a Palestinian passenger from Gaza who was on the boat with his wife and two small children, Ritaj and Yaman, learned from chatting with the captain that he was not a smuggler, but was also on his way to Europe in hope of refuge. The captain told Shoukri that he had been in prison for years, and that when he got out, he needed to find a way to support his family. So he and some of his friends made a deal with the smugglers to man the boat in exchange for free passage to Europe, where they wanted to look for work. He begged Shoukri and the others not to turn him and the crew in once they got to Europe. They were just like them, he explained, people who couldn’t get by in Egypt and were seeking a better life.