Author relives tragedy that angered the world
The Boy on the Beach: My Family’s Escape from Syria and Our Hope for a New Home Tima Kurdi Simon & Schuster In September of 2015, when the body of two-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Turkey, his heartbreaking photo went viral, galvanizing support for Syrian refugees.
Following the tragedy, we learned that his grieving aunt, Tima Kurdi, lived in Coquitlam. She stepped into the spotlight to tell her nephew’s story.
Now, in The Boy on the Beach: My Family’s Escape from Syria and Our Hope for a New Home, she tells the story of her extended family, who have been traumatized by the conflict and displaced all over the globe.
The book — dedicated jointly to Alan’s father and Tima’s own dad — opens with an idyllic childhood in Damascus. There, in the City of Jasmine, flowers perfume the air, the community is so safe thirsty children can ask strangers for water, and family is the focus of life. The Kurdi clan is large, close and happy, enjoying endless feasts, dance parties and little ones.
We meet a cast of endearing characters here: Baba, a patriarch of great generosity; Mama, a matriarch known for her liberal views and stuffed grape leaves; son Abdullah, who is slow to leave home until he meets the upbeat, optimistic Rehanna; the couple’s toddler Alan, who captivates all he meets; his older brother Ghalib, who loves to play the bouzouki, a Middle Eastern lute. Plus, of course, Tima, a hairdresser who cuts her hair like Princess Diana and dreams of the West, where she immigrates in her 20s after an arranged marriage to a Vancouver man.
By the time civil war takes over, the reader is deeply invested in the family and their well-being.
And so, it is with great suspense, and great hope, that we follow their progress — even knowing, as we do, the ultimate outcome. We take joy in Abdullah’s devotion to his family, his kisses and cookies for his young sons, his tenderness to his wife. And we feel pain at their increasingly harrowing struggle to find safety, housing, work and medical care, and their final desperate journey with smugglers across the Aegean Sea, bound for Greece.
Throughout, Tima, with the help of a writer, proves an impassioned narrator, sharing sorrow, anxiety and guilt without reservation, and humanizing the refugee crisis time and time again.
The Boy on the Beach is at once the story of the Kurdi family, and of humanity as a whole. It’s the story of what happens when we forget that we’re all connected. But it’s also a testament to kindness, and love, and what we all stand to gain from embracing that.