Doaa wished that she could shut out the sound of the shifting sea. It was like the music in horror movies, making the scenes of death before her even more terrifying, as if the drowning of the people were set to the rhythm of the waves. Each time someone died, her heart broke. How many men had she seen take their life vests off when they decided to die? She’d lost count. I don’t blame them, she thought, even if her religion did look down on suicide. Their agony was too much for them to bear. And who am I to judge someone who takes his own life? I’m just a dot in this vast sea that will soon devour me, too. If not for the strength that the two little girls on her chest gave her, she would have slipped under the waves, as well.
Doaa was exhausted but too afraid to sleep for fear that the babies might fall from her arms. She counted the corpses floating around her—seven. At least they were facedown so she didn’t have to see their faces. Their shirtless backs were bloated and blue-black, the color of whales. The stench was unbearable. Each time a wave pushed a corpse into her, she pushed it away with her feet or her hand. A man named Momen helped her move some of them away. He was one of the only remaining survivors and now stuck close to Doaa.
Momen gave her strength with his words of encouragement. “You are selfless, Doaa. I’ve been watching how you are supporting the others. You’re so brave and strong. I want to keep you safe. If we survive, I’d like to marry you.”
Somehow, here, Doaa didn’t find his words too forward or strange, just caring. It was his way of keeping going, something to perhaps look forward to if they ever made it out of the water alive. Doaa replied, “Hang in there and we will talk about it later when all this is behind us.”
On the morning of the third day, as the sun rose, a man, a woman, and a small boy came into Doaa’s sight. The adults were holding on to an inflatable ring, just like Doaa’s, which was around the boy’s waist. But suddenly, the tube burst and the boy dropped into the water, his arms flailing. Doaa saw that the woman couldn’t swim well. As soon as she no longer had the ring to cling to, she, too, sank below the surface, then came up for a last desperate gasp of air before her head fell forward and she was still.
The man was able to help the boy. He put the boy’s arms around his neck and swam toward Doaa. “Please hold him for a while,” he begged her when he reached Doaa. He was so exhausted his words were slurred. He said the boy was his nephew and that the woman who had just died was the child’s mother. Doaa hesitated: “There’s not enough room!” The boy was about three, bigger than the girls, and Masa and Malak would drown if the water ring sank. But the boy was looking at her in anguish and Doaa’s heart went out to him. “We’ll find a way,” she said as she reached for him and laid him on her outstretched legs. He was wiggling and raising his head, looking around him and pleading, “I want water. I want my uncle. I want my mommy,” over and over.
Doaa didn’t know what to do to comfort the desperate boy and she was afraid his fussing would cause their ring to burst and they would all drown, too. Doaa wanted nothing more than to keep them all safe. The boy reminded her of Hamudi, and Doaa thought of how devastated she would be to see him drown. Again and again, the boy asked for his mother. “Your mother went to get you water and food,” Doaa told him, and for a few minutes that would quiet him, but then he would complain of thirst. To soothe him, Doaa finally scooped her hand in the sea and give him salt water to drink. Over the next two hours, his uncle would swim off a short distance to keep his body moving, then swim back to check on him. He had nothing to keep him afloat. The boy began to shake and his lips turned blue; his small chest heaved up and down. His uncle, holding on to Doaa’s inflatable ring, took the boy into his arms and began to cry. “Don’t leave us,” he begged.
The boy said weakly, “Please, Uncle, you can’t die, too!” Then his body suddenly went limp over his uncle’s shoulder. The man hugged the boy to his chest, pushing away from Doaa’s float, and she watched as he and the little boy sank together before her eyes, while the body of the boy’s mother floated next to her.
“Dear God,” she heard Momen say, “everyone is dying around us. I saw my son die, and my wife. Why is this happening to us? Why did they sink us? No one is coming to save us!”
“They’ll come for us, inshallah, Momen,” Doaa told him softly. “Be strong, pray, so hope is still inside you.”
But as she uttered these words, Doaa began to sob. She’d only held the little boy for a few hours, but she felt as if he’d become part of her. “They say the pain a mother feels when she loses her son is the worst in the world. I feel like that. I loved that little boy.” She had seen so much death, but this last one made her feel as if her heart would crack into pieces. “It’s my fault he died,” she cried to Momen. “I should have been able to save him.”
“No, no!” Momen replied, “It was God’s will. You are good, you tried to save him.”