The Phoenix

The politics and war and misery that had spread through the Middle East had hit the Salims late. But when it came it was like a tsunami, destroying everything in its path, annihilating what had gone before and casting a deep, dark cloud over what might be to come.

When the first boats began to sail from Sabratha, heading across the Mediterranean either to Italy or to Greece, it no more crossed Mood’s mind that he and his girls would one day seek passage on them than that they would fly to the moon. But the medieval horrors of IS – the waves of evil fanatics swarming through Libya from Syria and Iraq like a black plague – swiftly changed his mind. Before long Mood, like so many of his neighbors, had sold everything he owned in order to buy himself and his girls a guaranteed spot on a boat bound for Lesbos.

The man who sold it to him was a fellow Libyan, but pale skinned and a few years younger than Mood. He wore an imported suit and an expensive watch and aftershave, all three insulting luxuries in a city where people had nothing, where scores of old people and children were dying of starvation. ‘You’re making the right choice, brother,’ he told Mood, grinning as he took his money.

‘It’s not a choice,’ Mood replied. ‘And you are not my brother.’

But the deal was done.

Everybody told him the same thing: conditions on the worst boats were subhuman – tiny, decrepit fishing vessels, overloaded with more than three hundred people. No life jackets. Collapsing decks. Some of the most pitiless people-smugglers had taken to offering ‘bad weather’ discounts to families so poor they had no choice but to set sail during winter storms, sometimes in open rubber dinghies, or offering ‘free rides’ to children under three, as if this were a holiday cruise. Mood had taken pains to get a place on a better boat than that, a mid-sized fishing boat, wooden but in good repair, that would carry no more than forty migrants. Even so, the journey would be both arduous and dangerous. But at least this suffering, this danger, involved some action on Mood’s part. It was something he was doing, to rescue his girls. As opposed to waiting passively in Libya to be bombed or shelled or starved or tortured to death by the latest band of unhinged madmen. Europe – Greece – offered at least the chance of life. Of a future. Of hope.

The week before they left, they befriended another family staying in the same safe house outside Sabratha. The father had been killed, but the mother Zafeera and her three children, twin boys Parzheen’s age and an infant girl, were paid passengers on the same boat as the Salims. Mood remembered Zafeera as an oasis of calm in the desert of fear and uncertainty that was all of their lives back then, as they waited for word that they could board. ‘Sleep prepared,’ the smugglers had told them. ‘We may knock for you at three a.m. You must come at once or we sail without you.’

‘Trust in Allah,’ Zafeera would tell Mood and Hoda, her round face radiant with goodness and faith, as another night passed and no knock came. If the boat didn’t leave soon they might all be burned in their beds.

‘He blesses the innocent,’ Zafeera assured them. ‘He will protect us and our children.’

He didn’t.

It was pitch black the night they climbed aboard, the darkness so thick you could barely see your hand in front of your face. Even so, Mood counted at least eighty souls on their ‘no-more-than-forty’ berth, and the rotten wood beneath his feet sagged ominously with each heavy step he took.

‘This isn’t what we paid for!’ another man complained loudly to one of the smugglers, who instantly pulled out a machete and held it to the man’s throat, pressing down dangerously close to the jugular as he pinned him to the wall.

‘Be quiet!’ he hissed. ‘No more noise. Any more noise and we cut you. All of you!’ He spun around to snarl at the terrified masses crouched in the dark. Hoda and the girls clung to one another. With sadness but no shame, Mood manhandled an old man out of his way in order to seize four life jackets from the stack of no more than thirty in the boat’s hollow center. Then he returned to his family and fitted everybody’s vests before spreading his outstretched arms over the three of them, like an oak tree. It was as much protection as he could offer in that moment. Seconds later, the rotting vessel surged out to sea.

The voyage reminded Mood of an old joke his father-in-law used to tell about seasickness. How on the first night it’s so bad that you’re scared you might die. ‘And on the second night it’s so bad, you’re scared you might not!’ Poor little Ava vomited for hours on end, until her exhausted body could take no more and she collapsed into sleep in her mother’s sodden arms. Parzheen fared only slightly better, and had to be forced to swallow some of the bread and dates Hoda had brought to keep them going till they reached land. Mood was also sick, more from the dreadful smell of other people’s vomit than the rocking boat itself, although a storm six hours into the crossing had left everybody clinging to the sides and praying, convinced they were going to capsize or simply be smashed to smithereens by the next colossal wave.

But they weren’t. And after twelve more relatively calm hours, everyone’s frayed nerves began to ease. If they didn’t veer wildly off course, they could expect to make landfall by midnight at the latest, either on Lesbos as planned or on one of the other islands, if the coast-guard patrol boats were out in too overwhelming a force.

Mood remembered looking at Hoda as the girls both slept; he smiled at her – neither of them had the energy left for conversation. But his beautiful wife had smiled back and squeezed his hand, and hope and gratitude had flowed between them. After that, more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life, Mood finally fell asleep.

When he woke, he was in the water. Later, on the rescue boat, a British girl with red hair and glasses told him that they’d been struck by another migrant vessel from the side and that both boats had sunk within minutes. But in the moment he knew nothing except darkness and icy cold, his body plunging deep under the waves and then, as if he were tied to a bungee rope, shooting back to the surface, his life jacket propelling him upwards and into the air like a flying fish.

He remembered so little now. Snatches. Screaming the children’s names, and Hoda’s. Straining his ears to try and distinguish their voices from the blood-curdling cries of anguish and terror all around him, like a ewe searching for her lost lambs in a vast field of bleating despair. He remembered blackness. Disorientation. Panic. His own heartbeat, loudly and mockingly proclaiming his survival when all he cared about was theirs.

And then suddenly he saw her. A momentary flash of light and there she was: Parzheen, floating, flailing, her skinny arms reaching out for purchase, for anything that might save her.

‘Parzheen!’ Could she hear him? ‘Parzheen, it’s Papa. I’m coming!’

The light was gone but he swam blindly towards her. There was nothing now but his daughter and the water between them. With each stroke he stretched out his arms, his fingertips reaching, clawing, seeking her tiny body somewhere in the vast ocean. And then suddenly, like a miracle, she was there. In his arms. Clinging. Breathing. ‘Papa!’

‘It’s OK, Parzheen. It’s OK, baby. I’ve got you.’

The world came back then, what little he could see and hear of it, in a wild rush to his senses. Another flash of light – where was it coming from? – and a dinghy. Rubber, afloat, half empty. With his daughter on his shoulders he swam towards it like a man possessed. A wild hope stirred in his breast that perhaps Hoda and Ava might be there? His life jacket and Parzheen’s had saved their lives. There was no reason to believe that his wife and baby hadn’t made it too.

He reached the dinghy. With one giant, slippery hand he grabbed onto the side and hauled himself up. He recognized one of the men on board as one of the smugglers.

‘My daughter,’ Mood wheezed. ‘Take her. Take the child.’

The man seemed to hesitate. But then he crawled forwards, stretching out his arms to lift Parzheen off her father’s shoulders.

She screamed.

It was the scream of a small child more frightened of letting go of her father in that dark water than of the two of them drowning together. It was a scream of love, the most beautiful scream in the world, and it was the last sound Mood heard before the wave slammed into both of them and his world ended forever.

Sarah Wade leaned over the giant Libyan man, stroking his hand as he slowly regained consciousness. Sarah had been working on the Constance, a rescue boat working 24/7 off the Greek coast, for almost five months now, but you never got used to it. The daily drownings, so many of the victims children, washed up like dolls with their eyes rolled back in their heads. The survivors’ howls of grief. The traffickers’ utter lack of remorse. And the Greek locals’ indifference to the epic human tragedy unfolding all around them.

Sarah’s boss, Pascale Dutroit, told her that that was unfair. ‘It’s human nature, when death becomes commonplace, to learn to live with it. No one can spend years of their lives sobbing and tearing out their hair – and even if they could, what good would it do?’