No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark!

A year ago I read this book titled ‘Refugee‘ by Alan Gratz. It was a compilation of the stories of three children. A story of Joseph a jew at the time of Nazi Germany, a story of Mahmoud in Syria in the year 2015, and the story of Isabel, a Cuban from the year 1994. You must feel what was common between all of them? The trait which they all shared was that they were refugees! People who were so tortured that they finally decided to leave their motherland, where their forefathers and their forefather’s forefathers used to live. A decision not small but one with great consequences. “Refugees didn’t just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they’d put enough time and distance between them and their misery to wake to a better day,” said Nadia Hashimi

Warsan Shire Source- britishliteratuecouncil.com

When I read that novel, I came to know about the sufferings of these  refugees, they lose their family, their money, and at times even their  lives. It is heartbreaking to learn about their sufferings. I couldn’t stop my tears, I learned about some of the many many misdeeds of us  human beings. “No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land,” said the Famous British writer Warsan Shire. This statement which looks so simple shatters the whole point of humanity in a second!

Source- actfordev.org

Today is World Refugee Day. First marked in 2001, World Refugee Day is held every year on 20 June. Tens of thousands of people around the world take time to recognize and applaud the contribution of forcibly displaced people throughout the world. A very important day in the calendar. Because as the Tennessee Office for Refugees stated- “To be called a refugee is the opposite of an insult; it is a badge of strength, courage, and victory.”

According to the data provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in the year 2020, 22,246 refugees arrived at several different countries through the sea, these include refugees and migrants arriving by sea to Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, and Malta. Around 3,536 refugees reached their treasured destination through the land, these include refugees and migrants arriving by land to Greece and Spain. An estimate of 248 refugees were reported dead or missing! In the last 6 years, a big total of 19,388 refugees have been reported dead or missing! 

Doaa  Syrian refugee living in Greece

Doaa is a 19-year-old aspiring student who was forced by the war to live a grinding existence with her family in exile. She somehow reached Egypt. One day, a motorcycle gang tried to kidnap her on the street. The war in Syria that drove her family away was in its fourth year. And the people who once welcomed them in Egypt had become weary of them. It was August 2014, and more than 2,000 migrants and refugees had already died crossing the Mediterranean that year. She didn’t know how to swim, but for the second time in her life, she felt she had no choice but to flee.

So her fiance Bassem paid his life savings to smugglers, $2,500 each, to get them onto an old fishing boat. It was so packed with people that Doaa’s knees were bent to her chest.

After two days at sea, she started to get worried, and on the third day, she told Bassem: “We will never reach the shore. We will all sink. ”On day four, another boat approached the vessel. It was rusty and when the passengers were ordered to get on, they refused. The smugglers left angrily and then returned to ram a hole in the side of the hull. “Let the fish eat your flesh,” they shouted, and then they laughed. Within minutes, the boat capsized and sank, with 300 people trapped below deck.

“The sea went black,” said Doaa. “I heard people screaming, and water crashing. I felt like I was going to drown.” She watched the propeller cut a child to pieces. Miraculously, Bassem found a water ring. He held Doaa’s hand and trod water. There were corpses everywhere. The 100 survivors came together in small groups and prayed for rescue.

But as day turned to night and to day again, many lost hope. 

Doaa watched as men took off their life vests and drowned. Sensing his end was near, a Palestinian approached with his nine-month-old granddaughter, Malek. “Please take the baby,” he said. “I am very tired.” Then he gave up and let the sea take his life.

Soon after, Bassem had also reached his limit. His last words were, “I am sorry my love. Please forgive me.” He drowned before her eyes. Later that day, a mother struggled with Doaa with Masa, an 18-month-old girl. “Save her,” she said, “I will not survive.”

Doaa, the 19-year-old who could not swim, who had just watched her fiancé drown, was now in charge of saving two fledgling lives. They were crying, agitated, hungry, and thirsty. So she told them stories and played with them. Another day passed, and then another. On the fourth day in the sea, Doaa saw a merchant boat. For two hours she shouted. They spotted her with searchlights in the dark and extended a rope – astonished to find a young woman clutching two babies. Finally, she was saved, Malek couldn’t make it but Masa still lives. Now Doaa lives in Greece trying to make a new life for herself, trying to forget her old scars.

Source- news.un.org

I say learn from refugees, they go through so much trauma and pain in life, but they still continue to live, in a hope that one day the sun will rise which will bring the brightness of happiness in their lives! “Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, with the same hopes and ambitions as us—except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a global refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale,” said Khaled Hosseini

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