In the summer of 2015, almost one year after she had been rescued, Doaa was still struggling with her grief, nightmares, and the fear that she would never move forward with her life. One day she watched a news story about the thousands of refugees from her country that were arriving in Greece. They had crossed the sea from Turkey and were making their way through the Balkans to Austria, Germany, and Sweden. She often thought of taking her prize money and paying another smuggler to help her travel to Sweden like the other refugees. But staff at UNHCR who were working to help resettle Doaa warned her that the journey was dangerous, especially for a young woman traveling alone. They urged her to be patient for another solution. They were working on resettling her family to Sweden, and finding a way for her to join them. When the paperwork went through, Doaa could fly to Sweden and legally restart her life alongside her family. Doaa found it almost impossible to remain patient or to trust anyone who promised to help, but if it meant that she might get her family to safety, she would try. Until then, she would heal in the cocoon of her host family.
One day that summer, after a year of struggling with grief, nightmares, and the fear that she would never move forward with her life, Doaa joined her host family on a picnic at the beach. After they finished eating, on an impulse Doaa stood up, kicked off her sandals, and walked into the shallow sea until it reached her shoulders. The water was clear and cool and still. She stood there holding her breath, then calmly let her body sink down until the water covered her head for a few moments. When she came out and returned to the shore, she turned back to look out at the horizon and thought, I am not afraid of you anymore.
Epilogue
Doaa was safe in Crete, and she was healing, but she soon began to grow restless, worrying about her future. The Greek government offered her the opportunity to apply for asylum. Yet despite the kindness of the people around her, Doaa didn’t feel like Greece was her home. Every day that she was there she had to face the sea where Bassem had drowned, and although the sight of it no longer filled her with dread, she wanted to move away from everything it reminded her of. She and Bassem had always dreamed of making it to Sweden, and she wanted to fulfill that dream. At the same time, Doaa was also terrified for her family; the threats from the smugglers were escalating, and there was nothing she could do to help. Most of all, she missed the loving arms of her mother and sitting in the lively company of her family. Her entire life she’d been surrounded by their comforting chatter. That was something no WhatsApp or Skype call could replace. She also felt responsible for the danger they were in, and though she had no idea how she would do so, she was determined to get them all out of Egypt so they could start a new life together.
I met Doaa for the first time in January 2015 and spent several hours in her host family’s living room, drinking tea and interviewing her about her ordeal. I was struck by her determination to tell her story, and I soon realized she was entrusting me with it for two reasons—to help her and her family resettle in another country and to warn other refugees who were tempted to make the same dangerous journey. It soon became clear to me that she felt the responsibility that elder sons in Arab cultures would usually bear, that of having to take care of their families. Doaa felt that only she could change her family’s destiny. By that point, she had clearly lost trust in governments to help her and faith that the culprits who had sunk the boat would be found and brought to justice. “We Syrians have no one to support us except God,” she told me. “Maybe there is an interest in us, but only in words. I’m exhausted. I can’t go back to my parents; my family cannot come here. I have heard so many promises, but I want to see action.”
I was determined to bring her story to the world stage, but also to help her restart her life in Sweden. Her heroism had been widely recognized by the Greek press, and she had been given the annual award by the prestigious Academy of Athens a few months after being rescued. But I felt strongly that her story deserved the attention of a global audience, and I was sure it would capture their imagination.
My colleagues launched a formal process for her resettlement, unusual at that time for Greece, another EU country. But Doaa was treated as a special case—a traumatized young woman with a family at risk—and so they appealed for special consideration. There was a system in place for resettlement from countries like Egypt that hosted refugees, and given the family’s precarious situation, they met UNHCR’s “vulnerability” criteria. Doaa and her family’s applications were linked together, and a request was made that they be resettled to the same place.