Cast Away by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson sample

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson

Cast Away Stories of Survival from Europe’s Refugee Crisis

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Published by Portobello Books in 2016 Portobello Books 12 Addison Avenue London W11 4QR Copyright © Charlotte McDonald-Gibson 2016 Map copyright © Vera Brice and Leslie Robinson 2016 The right of Charlotte McDonald-Gibson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 987654321 ISBN 978 1 84627 615 6 eISBN 978 1 84627 616 3 Typeset by Avon DataSet Limited, Bidford on Avon, B50 4JH Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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For Nathaniel and Danny

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The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.

Article 2, the Treaty of the European Union

All this killing, all this blood, I can’t believe it.There is no war like the war in Syria. The people can’t stay in Syria in this war. They try to come to Europe, and look at what Europe is doing.

They let them pay smugglers €5,000, €6,000, €10,000 and go by the sea and die.And after, when they arrive, they say ‘welcome’.

Why? Why don’t you try and bring these people here safely? If you arrive, they say ‘welcome’; if you die in the sea, they say ‘never mind’. Why? Hanan al-Hasan, Syrian refugee

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Contents List of country codes

xi

Map xii–xiii List of people

xv

Introduction 1 2011 1 A Dictator’s Revenge

9

2 Into the Storm

25

3 Welcome to Europe

37 2012

4 Married to the Military

51

5 Sleeping on the Roofs of Police Stations

63

6 Three Friends

78 2013

7 A Family Betrayal

91

8 An Indefinable Suffering

104

9 Never Again

116

10 Fortress Europe

132

11 Our Sea

144

12 Europe Turns Ugly

154

13 Escaping 13V105

167

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2014 14 Hunted

179

15 All Alone

188

16 A Very Long Transit

199

17 A Lifeline Cut Off

215 2015

18 Ghosts on the Horizon

229

19 At the Crossroads of Europe

247

20 Dark Thoughts

261

21 A Moral Emergency

268

22 Lockdown

280

Epilogue: No Direction Home

295

Author’s Note on the Text

307

Glossary 309 Sources 312 Acknowledgements 334

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List of Country Codes AG Algeria AL Albania AU Austria BE Belgium BK Bosnia and Herzegovina BO Belarus BU Bulgaria DA Denmark EG Egypt EI Ireland EN Estonia EZ Czech Republic FI Finland FR France GG Georgia GM Germany GR Greece HR Croatia HU Hungary IC Iceland IS Israel IT Italy JO Jordan LE Lebanon LG Latvia LH Lithuania

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LO Slovakia LS Liechtenstein LU Luxembourg LY Libya MD Moldova MK Macedonia MO Morocco MT Malta NL Netherlands NO Norway PL Poland PO Portugal RO Romania RI Serbia RS Russia SI Slovenia SP Spain SW Sweden SY Syria SZ Switzerland TS Tunisia TU Turkey UK United Kingdom UP Ukraine WE West Bank

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KEY LOCATIONS ON THE MIGRANT ROUTE

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Featuring

Majid Hussain: born in 1993 in Jos, Nigeria, to a wealthy family. A football-loving teen, Majid was brought up by his father after the death of his mother. He was forced to seek sanctuary in Libya when sectarian violence erupted in his home state.

Nart Bajoi: a lawyer and systems engineer, born in Syria in 1981 to a father who worked as a civil servant in Bashar al-Assad’s government.

His brothers followed in their father’s footsteps, but when the Arab Spring brought pro-democracy protests to Syria, Nart joined the underground opposition.

Mohammed Kazkji: born in 1992 into a large family with a cobbling business in Damascus. Mohammed studied hard and dreamed of becoming the best electrician in the world, but then the civil war broke out and he was called to serve in Assad’s army.

– Nidar: Mohammed’s uncle, who left Syria in the 1980s and set himself up with a car repair business in Misrata, Libya. He is father to three children: a baby boy also called Mohammed, and two young daughters, Siham and Maram.

– Omar: Mohammed’s friend, a Syrian plasterer in his early twenties forced to leave his home to avoid military conscription.

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xvi Cast Away – Yahea: Another friend of Mohammed of a similar age and from the same neighbourhood, a confectioner who dreams of introducing Syria’s sweets to Europe.

Sina Habte: an Eritrean born to a doctor father and a civil engineer mother in 1988. Sina excelled at school and became a chemical engineer.

– Dani: Sina’s husband, born in 1973, a civil engineer and university lecturer.

Hanan al-Hasan: born in 1964 to two Palestinian refugees in the northern Syrian town of Al-Hasakah. Her father was the first Palestinian to become a judge in Syria, and Hanan devoted herself to building a safe and prosperous life for her four children in Damascus.

– Talal Al-Hamzah: Hanan’s husband, born in 1963, a small business owner originally from the northern Syrian city of Homs.

– Rim Hamzah: Hanan and Talal’s eldest daughter, born in 1990.

– Izzat: Rim’s fiancé.

– Bisan Hamzah: Hanan and Talal’s second daughter, born in 1992.

– Ismail Hamzah: Hanan and Talal’s first son, born in 1996.

– Riad Hamzah: Hanan and Talal’s youngest child, a son born in 2000.

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Introduction An Impossible Choice Istanbul, Turkey 19 April 2015 A new life was on its way. Sina could feel it. Her hand moved over the curve of her belly, from the flatness to the swell and down again, a wave at the very centre of her being, a life wriggling and kicking in his own sea inside her.

Delina. Our Delina. Sina and her husband Dani had already chosen his name. She loved the meaning. Wanted. This is what we want. Sina had not always been so sure. Living with her parents in Eritrea, bonded to the military, earning around $30 a month, and watching friends and relatives disappear into the country’s vast underground prison system, she could hardly imagine bringing another soul into such a world. Then suddenly she was pregnant and all that mattered was getting this tiny speck of life to a place where he would never know the shadow of a dictatorship, and where his parents could see him grow up free.

Her quest was almost over. In four months Sina had taken their unborn son over five countries and two continents. She had made it to Istanbul, and the safe life they sought was just a few miles away over the short stretch of sea separating Turkey from the European Union (EU). But for the past month, Sina had been alone. A smuggler had betrayed them, and Dani was

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2 Cast Away stuck in Uganda. Now she was fearful. Nothing felt safe any more and she didn’t know what to do.

It was Sunday, 19 April 2015. Early that morning the crew of a Portuguese merchant ship in the Mediterranean had watched in horror as an old fishing vessel rammed their hull, and 800 men, women and children sank to the bottom of the sea. Sina knew that many boats had capsized, and that many refugees had drowned trying to reach the shores of the European Union. And now a smuggler was urging her to board a boat leaving that evening for Greece carrying another consignment of Syrians and Eritreans.

Two days earlier, Sina had been in a private hospital looking at her baby on an ultrasound scan.The doctor told her that her son was ready to come into the world, and handed Sina the numbers for the hospital along with a piece of paper with a few Turkish words scrawled across it.

‘Help me. I am pregnant and am going to deliver my baby,’ it read.

She was now four days past her due date.What use would that scrap of paper be in the middle of the Mediterranean? Sina knew that women had given birth in the dark hulls of smuggling vessels, surrounded by bodies in the grip of fear and panic, inhaling hot air saturated with the smell of human waste, diesel fumes and rotting fish. Their babies were born, only to be lost to the sea moments later, and Sina could not bear such a fate for her child.

But the smuggler was becoming agitated, his voice rising as he spoke.

‘Sina, I am telling you, you have to go,’ he told her. ‘If you stay here it will not be good for you. It only takes one hour to reach Greece and then you can go directly to the hospital and deliver there.’

Sina was confused. Who could tell her what was best for her baby? She needed Dani more than ever, but he was nearly 3,000 miles away, just a scratchy voice at the end of a cheap Viber phone

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Introduction 3 call. She was all alone. She didn’t know who to trust or what she should do.

On the edges of the European Union – on the coasts of Turkey and Libya and behind the 235 kilometres of steel fences and razor wire barricading in a continent – mothers, fathers, sons and daughters were faced with similar impossible choices. A Syrian mother-of-four who spent her life trying to shield her children from harm looked down at a tiny inflatable boat and wondered if she had the strength to stand up to the smugglers and demand another vessel; a father thrown into the sea had to decide whether to try to hold on to one child or let him go to save another; a young Syrian entrusted with the lives of his uncle’s family had to choose whether it was safer to take them with him across the Mediterranean or leave them behind in a country consumed by war.

The hundreds of thousands of people gathering at Europe’s gates had put off this moment for as long as they could. Abandoning a home you had spent your life building or a country where you were planning a future was not a decision anyone wanted to make. So at first people had stayed, hoping the war would end, the suicide bombings would stop, the dictatorship would fall, or the West would come to their aid and defeat the Islamic State or oust President Bashar al-Assad. When people were finally forced from their homes in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea or any of the other nations in the grip of war, many had stayed in neighbouring countries, keen to remain in a familiar culture and language, keeping that hope of return alive for a little longer.

It was only when there was nothing else left – when there was no income, education, shelter, food or safety – that people put themselves and their families in a boat and took that last gamble.

For decades hope of a better life had pushed people to Europe’s unwelcoming shores. Some considered taking the risk to escape poverty and find work, others fled wars and famine. But the real

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4 Cast Away challenge for the European Union – and for the values of human rights and dignity for all which it espoused – would begin in 2011. The Arab Spring was transforming a region, and European politicians were quick to hail it as a revolution against oppressive regimes. But when it came to helping the victims of this noble pursuit of democracy, their response did not match their rhetoric.

Over the course of the next five years, Syria would descend into a terrible civil war, chaos would engulf Libya, and the number of people in the world forced from their homes would match the scale of the Second World War. The people on the move hoped that Europe would remember its own history, and would have learned the lessons from the darkest days of its past.

But very quickly, the hypocrisies at the heart of the EU would be exposed by the million or so desperate souls seeking a little help from one of the richest regions in the world. Children would be tear-gassed on the soil of a union which preached human rights for all. Coils of razor wire, armed soldiers and riot police would block borders over which people, goods and capital were meant to freely flow. National leaders would refuse sanctuary on the grounds of religion on a continent which had vowed never again to persecute minorities. East and West clashed over competing values 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But the war-weary could not simply go home, so they were compelled to attempt ever more risky voyages towards a region determined to keep them out. Among the hundreds of thousands of people forced on an odyssey to Europe were Sina and Dani, desperate to save their unborn son from a life of military service in Eritrea; Majid Hussain, a privileged Nigerian boy fleeing sectarian violence; Nart Bajoi, an idealistic lawyer who risked his life trying to oust Assad; Mohammed Kazkji, a Syrian teenager who just wanted to study hard and please his parents; and Hanan al-Hasan, who watched in horror as the safe life she had built for her children in Damascus fell apart. In the space of a few years a multi-billion-dollar underground smuggling industry

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Introduction 5 stretching from sub-Saharan Africa to Scandinavia would emerge to facilitate such odysseys. It was a trade fuelled by extortion and exploitation, but its customers had no other choice when there was no legal avenue to apply for asylum in the EU. And so the illicit passage to Europe would become the most dangerous journey in the world.

Of the thousands of people who perished, less than ten per cent would be identified. Most shipwreck victims stayed at the bottom of the sea, no nation willing to pay to recover the bodies and try and find out whose son or daughter had died locked on a lower deck or slipping out of the grasp of a loved one and into the waves. Of the bodies that washed up in Europe, there was no money to search for identifying marks or test for DNA. Most would end up in unmarked graves.

The International Organization for Migration keeps a database listing every reported death on the approach to Europe since 2000. Lives are reduced to a single line, with just a hint at the chain of events which led to their deaths: ‘Woman dies in childbirth on a boat set sail from Turkey.The body was abandoned at sea’; ‘Rolled over by the truck he tried to hide under to leave Greece’; ‘Young girl and her grandfather missing after boat overturned while crossing Evros River’. The list goes on and on, and every day another short story about an anonymous victim can be added.

While politicians have felt able to lament the nameless dead, they have shown less empathy towards the nameless living seeking refuge on European soil. It is all too easy for governments and the public to turn away, to think of them as somehow a little bit less human, and leave them to their fates. But they have names and stories to tell, and they deserve to be heard.

Dani knew the dangers of the sea voyage, and tried to convince Sina to stay where she was.

‘You don’t have to move anywhere at this time,’ he said.

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6 Cast Away It was the voice Sina loved, but it seemed very distant, so faint that she couldn’t hear the cadences in tone which would let her know what he really thought, what he really wanted her to do. ‘If you don’t want to stay in the smuggler’s house, go to a hotel,’ he told her. ‘I am trying to find a passport, I will come soon.’

But he had been saying that for weeks and still he hadn’t come.

The smuggler in Kampala had vanished along with the money and the promised documents that would allow Dani to travel. He was trapped there until he could arrange for more papers and a plane ticket.

Sina was smart and tough: she was a chemical engineer, used to life in the field and the logic of the laboratory. But she was not used to making decisions about her life on her own. When she did, she could be impulsive, acting with the naivety of someone who had only ever known the harsh paternalism of a dictatorship.

She was twenty-seven years old, but ever since she had been sent to the scrub of western Eritrea a decade ago for her military indoctrination, the state had decided everything for her: where she would live, where she would work, where she could travel.

Then Dani had come into her life, promising to always be there to keep her safe and happy. He had spent hours searching the internet for advice on pregnancy and childbirth, and Sina had been glad to rely on his advice and let him take care of her. But he couldn’t help her now; she was nine months pregnant and marooned in a strange country. And the smuggler was insistent, pushing her to get on a bus to the coast.

No, she thought as her hand caressed her bump, this was a choice she would have to make alone.

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2011 Number of refugees and migrants entering the EU: 141,051 Number of deaths: 1,500

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