National Post (National Edition)
‘There are so many Alans, so many...’
SYRIAN BOY’S DEATH HAUNTS FAMILY
Tima pushed her brother to make a decision — take a boat, or return to Istanbul.
Abdullah Kurdi had been holed up with his family in a Turkish port city, waiting for the right moment to take one of the boats smuggling Syrian refugees to Europe. He had money, $5,000 his sister had sent from Canada. But every day he found another reason not to go.
He was terrified of putting the children, Alan, 2, and Ghalib, 4, in one of the flimsy dinghies smugglers used. His wife Rehanna was afraid of the water. How would they know if the life jackets they purchased were real or fake?
Then the texts stopped coming.
“All my messages were sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea,” Tima Kurdi writes in her new memoir, The Boy on the Beach: My Family’s Escape from Syria and Our Hope for a New Home.
Alan, Ghalib and Rehanna drowned on Sept. 2, 2015, when their boat capsized just five minutes off the coast of Turkey.
Tima had learned the horrible news just a few hours before her husband came into the room with his iPad. “I don’t know if you should see this,” he said, before she grabbed it from him.
There was the photo: her small nephew, Alan, lying dead on a beach in Turkey, foam and waves lapping at his face. He was wearing the red shirt and blue shorts that she had carefully selected as a gift for him on a trip to Istanbul the year before.
It’s 2½ years later, and Tima is sitting in her living room in Coquitlam, B.C., but she stops speaking for a moment as she talks about the picture, bows her head and presses her hands to her temples as if to counteract some deep pressure.
“It begins, it begins,” she says, under her breath.
She takes a moment to compose herself.
That photo, of course, went viral and the family’s personal tragedy almost instantly became a political issue — entwined with global outrage over the fate of Syrian refugees.
Since then, Tima, a former hairdresser, has become a vocal advocate for refugees, speaking to international news media and heads of state.
And the photo of the boy on the beach did spark change. Two days later, Germany opened its borders to thousands of refugees. In Canada, where an election was pending, Justin Trudeau committed to taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees.
Still, in her book, and in conversation, Tima uses the word “nobody” to describe herself. “I’m still lost at sea,” she writes. “Sometimes I float. Other times I sink like a stone and drown.”
Since the tragedy, Tima awakens every night at 4 a.m. with the feeling that someone is choking her. In those dark, lonely hours, she says she talks to God, to her mother, who died years ago, and to little Alan.
None of their lives were supposed to turn out this way. Tima’s book documents her idyllic childhood high in the jasmine-scented hills of Damascus.
But Tima, who came to Canada in 1992, also vividly details the suffering her family endured after they fled war in Syria for Turkey — which she saw first-hand when she travelled to see them in 2014.
In Turkey, refugee children could not go to school. Her young nephews worked in sweatshops.
Little Ghalib suffered from a skin condition. The family lived in one unheated room with a hole in the floor as a toilet. This was limbo. This was hell.
Compelled to do more, Tima worked with friends to sponsor both her brother Mohammed and Abdullah but Canada turned them down.
Seeing no other option, Mohammed attempted, and survived, the perilous crossing to Greece.
After the death of Abdullah’s family, the prime minister of Kurdistan invited Abdullah to Erbil, where he now lives. The Canadian government agreed to reopen Mohammed’s asylum application, and the family of seven arrived in B.C. in December of 2016.
But the family has not had a storybook ending. Mohammed’s children quickly adapted and are thriving, but it’s harder for the parents. Tima opened the hair salon she had always dreamt of, but it went out of business in March of 2017. “A lot of people came in — for selfies,” she explains.
Both Tima and Abdullah have found solace working to help refugee children through their foundation, but it’s been difficult to draw donations. “There are so many Alans, so many people who need help, so many places to give,” says Tima.
As a final indignity, because they do not own the rights to the picture of Alan, the boy on the beach, Tima had to pay a news agency to use it in her book.
She won’t give up, though, she says.
“When I walk in that dark tunnel, with fear, with sadness, I struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end. I can turn around and maybe take another road. I’m going to keep walking until I find that light.”
WHEN I WALK IN THAT DARK TUNNEL, WITH FEAR, WITH SADNESS, I STRUGGLE TO SEE THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S THE END ... I’M GOING TO KEEP WALKING UNTIL I FIND THAT LIGHT. — TIMA KURDI, AUTHOR OF THE BOY ON THE BEACH