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The cold water was like a slap in Mahmoud’s face. Before he could think, he gasped, sucking in a mouthful of the dark Mediterranean Sea. He tumbled backward, head down in the murky water, his arms and feet thrashing, trying to right himself. Something else—someone else—fell on top of him, pushing him deeper down into the water. He choked. Coughed. Swallowed more water. Bodies tumbled into the water above him, beside him, below him. His knee struck something hard and sharp—a rock—and he felt a cold flash of pain that quickly disappeared into blind, senseless terror.
He was drowning. The rubber dinghy had burst against the rocks, and he was drowning.
Mahmoud kicked. Paddled. Flailed. His face came out of the water and he gulped down air, and then a wave washed over him again and he went down. He kicked his way back to the surface and fought to keep his head above water.
“Mom! Dad!” Mahmoud cried. His yells were mixed with the screams and cries of the other passengers who had made it back to the surface. All around Mahmoud, survivors thrashed and gasped, swamped by the choppy waves. There was nothing left of the dinghy. The engine had dragged the rest of it down.
Mahmoud saw something bobbing along the water, glowing. A cell phone! It was still sealed tight in its plastic bag, the air in the bag keeping it afloat. Mahmoud swam for it, ducking a wave and pawing the bag into his arms.
The glowing phone screen said 2:32 a.m.
“Help—help!” Mahmoud’s mother sobbed, her voice recognizable in the chaos. Mahmoud spun, oriented himself, and frog-kicked his way through the waves toward the shape he thought was his mother. He picked her pink headscarf out of the swirling pandemonium, and saw that she was fighting to lift something up out of the water.
Hana.
Mahmoud swam to his mother. Hana was crying—she was alive!—but it was all Mahmoud’s mother could do to keep the baby and her own face above the relentless waves. One or the other of them was going to drown.
Mahmoud put his arms around his mother and tried to kick her and Hana both to the surface, but half the time he felt like he was dragging them down with him.
“Fatima! Mahmoud!” he heard his father cry. Mahmoud turned to see his father with Waleed in his arms. “The life preservers are useless!” he roared, his head appearing and disappearing behind the waves. “They’re fakes!”
Fake?! Mahmoud was furious, but his anger quickly faded. Every ounce of his energy was focused on kicking, swimming. If he stopped, he and his mother and sister would drown.
There were other people around them, yelling, searching, fighting to stay afloat, but as far as Mahmoud was concerned his world was four meters round. Where did they go from here? How did they get out of the sea and onto dry land? They were lost in the stormy Mediterranean Sea in the middle of the night. Their dinghy was sunk, and though it had run into rocks, there wasn’t any land in sight.
They were going to die here. All of them.
Mahmoud breathed in seawater through his nose and hacked it up. He fought to breathe, the waves lapping over him, and rain and spray still lashing his face. But his baby sister’s cries refocused him. He could not lose her. He couldn’t lose any of them.
They came together in the water, Mahmoud and his mother and father, all of them helping Hana and Waleed and each other stay afloat. Other families and groups did the same, but eventually the little groups drifted apart from each other, none of them knowing which way they were supposed to go. All they could do was stay on top of the next wave, the next wave, the next wave.
“Kick off your shoes,” Mahmoud’s father told them. “Anything to lighten you.”
Time passed. The rain stopped. The waxing moon even peeked out from behind a cloud. But just as quickly it was dark again, and the cold wind and the salty spray and the swelling sea still tormented them. Mahmoud’s legs were numb with cold and exhaustion. They felt like two lead weights he struggled to lift and churn to stay afloat. His mother had been quietly sobbing for what seemed like forever. Her arms no longer held Hana above the water, but just on top of it, like she was pushing along a tiny barge. Mahmoud’s father did the same with Waleed, trying to save his strength. Hana had gone as quiet as Waleed, and Mahmoud wondered if they were
still alive. He couldn’t ask. Wouldn’t. If he didn’t ask he couldn’t know for sure, and as long as he didn’t know for sure, there was a chance they were still alive.
Mahmoud slipped beneath the waves once more, longer this time. It was getting so hard to come up again, to keep himself afloat. He rose again, pushing air out his nose, but he was tired. So very, very tired. He wished for a respite from swimming, just a moment to sit without working his arms and legs. To close his eyes and go to sleep …
Water was sloshing in and out of Mahmoud’s ears, but he thought he heard a drone just above the howl of the wind. In Syria that sound would have sent him ducking for cover, but now it made his eyes widen, his legs kick just a little harder, a little higher. There—coming at them out of the darkness—another dinghy full of people!
Mahmoud and his mother and father waved their arms and cried out for help. At last, the people on board saw them, but as the dinghy came closer it didn’t slow down.
They weren’t going to stop!
The front of the dinghy chopped past Mahmoud, and he lunged for one of the handholds on the side. He caught it and grabbed his mother before the dinghy pulled him away. He swung Mom to the side of the dinghy and she grabbed hold, the wake from it almost swamping Hana.
Behind them, Mahmoud’s father also reached for the dinghy but missed. It churned along, bouncing in the chop, and Mahmoud’s father and brother disappeared into the darkness.
“Dad—Dad!” Mahmoud cried, still holding on to the dinghy.
“Let go!” a woman in the dinghy yelled down at him. “You’re dragging on us!”
“Let us in! Please!” Mahmoud begged. It was all his mother could do to hang on to the dinghy and to Hana.
“We can’t! There’s no room!” a man inside the dinghy yelled. “Please,” Mahmoud begged. “We’re drowning.”
“I’ll call the Coast Guard for you!” a man said. “I have their number on my phone!”
Another man reached down and tried to pry Mahmoud’s hand from the dinghy. “You’re tipping us!”
“Please!” Mahmoud cried. He sobbed with the effort of fighting off the man’s fingers and hanging onto the dinghy. “Please, take us with you!”
“No! No room!”
“At least take my sister!” Mahmoud begged. “She’s a baby. She won’t take up any room!”
That caused much yelling and discussion on the boat. A man tried to pry Mahmoud loose again, but he hung on. “Please … ” Mahmoud begged.
A woman appeared at the side of the boat, her arms reaching down to Mahmoud’s mother. Reaching for the baby.
Mahmoud’s mother lifted the little ball of wet blankets up to the woman. “Her name is Hana,” she said, struggling to be heard above the roar of the engine and the splash of the waves.
Someone finally pried Mahmoud’s fingers off the side, and he slipped into the water and tumbled in the dinghy’s wake. When he came up, he saw his mother had let go of the dinghy too. She was crying great howling tears and tearing at her clothes. Mahmoud swam over to her and wrestled her hands into stillness, and she put her head on Mahmoud’s shoulder and sobbed.
Mahmoud’s sister was gone, and so were his father and brother.
