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Others opted to stay and face the lesser of two evils, since the siege had not yet become absolute and nowhere was safe for a Palestinian refugee anyhow. The Abdul Ghani family remained in their home and prayed to God for a return to normalcy, especially for the young children of the camp. The father began devising alternative ways to reach the besieged neighborhoods in Yarmouk so that trapped students would not miss out on their schooling. He was now an administrator who oversaw science curriculums for the UNRWA-operated schools in the Damascus area, so he knew every road and building. Teaching for Marco became more exciting and meaningful, and he took risks to reach Summo School and 14
Shit River
convey knowledge to traumatized children, the clever and the daft alike. Looking at their saddened eyes, they were all his children, and he wanted to save each and every one of their vulnerable precious souls. But the death toll grew and no amount of knowledge was enough to feed the thousands of ravenous refugees nearing famine’s door or to fix a bullet hole in a neighbor’s chest. Desperate to mend whatever he could, Marco rushed to Palestine Hospital to offer his services as a handyman to keep generators operating a while longer, fixing whatever machine was broken or destroyed by neglect or shrapnel.
The day came when his intuition and street smarts raised him to a new level of learning. Now the machines he was fixing were not made of cold metal, but were made of flesh and pumping blood. It began when Marco’s neighbor on Sa’sa Street, Abdul Qader, arrived at the hospital with eight pieces of shrapnel piercing his back, and one thrusting deep into the core of one of his lungs. By then most doctors had fled Yarmouk, or were unable to reach the hospital. Only a few brave and dedicated doctors and nurses were left doing the work of a whole wing. Medical supplies were very scarce, so mostly they were amputating arms and legs rather than healing wounds. But the young Abdel Qader, the always-ready-to-help neighbor, was not meant to die, and Marco, the failed teacher who loved to fiddle with broken machines, had metamorphosed into an emergency room nurse determined to save the life of a childhood friend who knew more about European football than Syrian politics.
Abdel Qader survived, and Marco tackled other medical jobs in Palestine Hospital. First the simple ones came naturally, like assisting in amputations, giving CPR, making room in the morgue for new arrivals, and digging graves when no more space could be found in the hospital backyard. But when the medical staff shrank even more, Marco’s newfound medical 15
The Last Earth
expertise extended to administering injections and taking X-rays. Soon he needed no instructions from a doctor when searching for bullets and shrapnel in the wounded Palestinians and Syrians who poured daily into the hospital’s crowded wards and blood-splattered hallways. It became second nature for him and it gave him a sense of purpose in the midst of a war that did not have one.
Then Maysam came along. When she was dispatched by the Syrian Red Crescent Society to offer a consoling hand at Palestine Hospital, Marco was instantly smitten. He cared little for the ring on her left hand and was more taken by the tight jeans and t-shirt that she wore under her white medical gown.
The overpowering chemistry they instantly felt transcended the gore around them as they both stood defenseless in front of their unexpected emotions. To him, her beauty resembled whatever hope could still be found amid the piles of dead and mutilated corpses in the walled-in graveyard. She too was on a quest to find a savior to rescue her from her domestic persecution. Marco embodied a hero with his darkened skin, palpable physical stamina, and bloodstained gown. As he helped the wounded, fixed batteries and transported the dead, she consoled bereaved families, and sought urgent arrangements with government shelters to accommodate the growing number of orphans in the area. Her loveless marriage gave her a sense of widowhood and so she cried alongside many widows, a status stamped on many hapless women as they arrived at the hospital, hopeful yet frantically looking for their husbands, only to leave with the life sucked out of them, pulverized and bruised.
Maysam Saeed was born on November 10, 1984. Her friskiness blinded people to her gossiping which knew no bounds, and her jealous nature led her to view any woman as a potential nemesis and every man as a sex-driven fiend.
There were no shades of grey for Maysam. Everyone at 16
Shit River
Palestine Hospital knew of her cruel husband and the endless hell that her life had become. Her vulnerability enticed Marco in his uninterrupted quest for love, and he was drawn to this most beautiful and appealing of all the ladies among the staff. Maysam was not just another notch in his belt, but for him being with her was quite a proud achievement since she was married, and a mother of three children—Saeb, Ahlam, and Wala. But their encounter did not end after that sinful February 4, or after their repeated further bouts of aberrant intimacy. The war around them was a reminder of the inanity of life and the abruptness of death, so the pleasure of the flesh was proof that they were still breathing. Maysam, justified her repeated actions as a way of asserting herself, as if she were saying. “Here I am world—living, fighting and loving as I please.” For Marco, being together was like being rescued from Yarmouk, from the siege, from the war, and from the hopelessness of refugee existence.
Neither Marco nor Maysam sought love for emotional fulfillment, or a sexual affair to satisfy some unrestrained desire.
They both sought an escape from the tragedy they were living in, a respite from the horrors forced upon them. Little did they know that one day they would create their own tragedy, and that these short-lived moments of bliss would become a distant memory. They made love in the evenings when the darkness could hide them. On the really tough days when unfathom-able numbers of dead and wounded arrived, they made love over and over again or stole kisses to remind themselves that they too were human, and that “there is on this earth what makes life worth living,” as Marco’s favorite Palestinian poet once wrote of women, war, and a lost homeland.
But even Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was eventually not enough to remind the refugees of the life worth living and fighting for. Regardless of who would win in Syria, Palestinian refugees had nothing to reap but countless tears and 17
The Last Earth
continued exile. As if this were not enough, Marco would never have left Yarmouk if a discontented militia leader had not accused him of theft. Sure, Marco had taken the liberty of salvaging and repairing a few broken batteries from a bombed out military barracks, but it was only to keep the hospital generators running longer. One of the nine men who paraded Marco through the center of Yarmouk, declaring him a “thief ” and threatening to execute him publicly, had been a patient in Marco’s surgery ward seeking urgent care. It was Marco who extracted the bullet from his left thigh a few months earlier. “Khaled Abdul Ghani al-Lubani is a thief and all thieves deserve to have their hands cut off,” declared the militia leader from the Free Syrian Army.
More humiliated than terrified by the public spectacle and feeling ultimately betrayed, Marco decided right there and then to escape Yarmouk. He escaped with his hand intact, but he was gutted by the futility of the entire fight and the depravity of those behind it. The decision he thought he could never make was cemented by the grisly sight of a sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl who was forced to “confess” her crime.
After the bullet ripped through the palm of her right hand, she made her tearful “confession” of allegedly spying for the regime and was instantly executed with multiple shots to her face by a satisfied commando. The street verdict claimed she had placed GPS coordinators into areas where the Free Syrian Army operated, yet the street talkers paid no heed that the government had no “smart bombs,” only barrels of explosives that shattered every corner of Yarmouk many times over with no precision or technological savvy. Logic and facts did not matter when the goal was intimidation.
A quick visit to his house in Sa’sa and a fervent hug from his father was all that Marco needed to commence the journey he would face with Maysam by his side. One thousand Am
erican dollars, most of the cash they had kept in their family home, 18
Shit River
was stuffed into his pockets, while Maysam took nothing but the reasons for her escape from Yarmouk: primarily her love for Marco, but also an accusation by the regime of treason for helping treat members of the Free Syrian Army and consoling their families. Most of her Red Crescent peers had already fled, and it was now her turn to follow. Within a few weeks, soon after they finalized their paperwork and prepared for the journey ahead, she had divorced her husband and married Marco, the savior refugee, who had spent most of his life confined to a single street that now stood in ruins.
Free to imagine the world in any way he desired, Marco needed to reach the other side of the sea, even if he swam and walked a thousand miles. He did, in fact, walk that and a great deal more.
* * *
The first attempt to cross the sea was with Abu Dandi. There was something about his intimidating looks that seemed shady and not to be trusted. In his fifties, he was heavy, with a large, protruding belly, and short white hair. He was addicted to overcooked black tea, and spent most of his time at the Syrian Club playing backgammon, oozing the crude confidence of an unatoned gambler. His blank stare would follow the dice as they rolled onto the table, but he was always aware of who was in his presence. Having spent most of his life taking chances when the stakes were high, he remained oblivious to outcomes; 1,300 euros per person was the fee to deliver them safely to Greece. Marco agreed.
Other Palestinian refugees, accompanying them, also pledged their faith in finding a new life via this no-guarantees trip. One was Zakariya Zuriki, an in-your-face thirtysome-thing who took pride in being “rude” and didn’t hesitate to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. A Che Gue-19
The Last Earth
vara-type beret gave him the authoritative image he wanted in spite of his short and thin stature that was exacerbated by his long, soft hair. He had a strong voice that surged from his gut. Its depth was alluring and gave him a persona of coolness that, according to him, drove women mad. Zakariya hailed from the Palestinian Deraa refugee camp and he knew many songs about Palestine, though he almost never spoke of his family or their whereabouts. Never a coward, he was a good man to have on a rickety dinghy. He had joined the Syrian uprising at its onset and was one of the very first to carry a rifle, driven not by political ambitions for Syria, but because he just could not bear the sight of Deraa fighting and dying alone. He insisted that no one who was a bystander could “call himself a man,” and many friends who died in that war were
“like brothers,” he added, taking a deep breath and shifting the conversation to another topic whenever their memories invited unwanted tears. “Men don’t cry,” he believed, but when they cannot overcome their grief, they should sing about death and women.
Isam Awad was another Palestinian refugee who claimed to have worked as an officer in a Syrian mukhabarat prison.
In this no-man’s land, human rights laws were meaningless writings on flimsy pieces of paper on some bureaucrat’s desk.
Intelligence, whether true or not, was gathered by torture.
Women were raped and humiliated, and men’s genitals were electrocuted while large sticks were pushed up their anuses.
But he was one of the first to defect and join the opposition, or so he claimed. Be it a café or Marco’s shabby flat in Ucyol, Isam’s eyes shifted from side to side, surveying his immediate surroundings and because they seemed too close together in his bony face below dark protruding eyebrows, this added to his air of being in a constant state of suspicion. When in the company of women, his confidence immediately vanished and he would shrink into a silent wallflower, incapable of conver-20
Shit River
sation. Even when he tried to be social in a male-centric chat, it was impossible to listen to him for too long without being distracted; being boring was a trait he had mastered. Although a chunk of his left leg had been shaved off by a bullet, it did not stop him from literally limping his way out of Syria, walking four kilometers at a time, stopping for the occasional quick rest or to drain the trapped blood in his nasty festering wound. He often spoke of his past valor, little of which could be verified.
Only his stubborn unhealing wound was a testament to some tragic and mysterious past. His wife and daughter also fled Syria in a small dinghy; she left him as soon as she made it to Europe. For Isam, making it to Greece would be the first step towards seeing his baby girl.
There was also Mohammed al-Bahri, the guy who seemed to be the most “normal” of the group, but he shared very little or perhaps was not asked to share much. He had a photographic memory and wore a childlike wool hat. Marco avoided contact with him on the advice of the former mukhabarat officer with the shifty eyes. And that was fine by him, as Marco did not want to know what Mohammed’s past entailed. What each of them used to be did not have any weight in the here and now: saint, devil, teacher, or torturer, all that counted was who paid the fee to get on the boat.
At merely twenty years of age, Abdulrahman Abu Alia was the youngest in the group. He believed that life was one long battle. A cigarette rarely left his pursed lips and dizziness overcame him if he did not smoke for more than an hour at a time. There was more to him than a cloud of billowing smoke that followed him wherever he moved. He had once been a promising volleyball champion and his sturdy athletic build was noticeable beside the small frames of Zakariya and Isam.
The inseparable brothers Muaz and Muntasir Abu Shilla joined the small band in the first leg of the journey. They had been through tough times together and were positive about 21
The Last Earth
turning another page in the new chapter about to unfold. But in their naiveté they didn’t really understand the danger of the voyage ahead. Back in Syria, they had lost their Syrian identifications, and instead acquired Palestinian travel documents that were given to them by the Palestinian Embassy in Damascus, along with 1,200 American dollars, when the brothers staged an angry protest blocking the entrance to the embassy for days with a few dozen Palestinian refugees with no IDs.
Marco couldn’t understand why Abu Dandi charged him 1,300 euros, about twice as much as each of the other passengers was asked to pay. But asking questions and stirring up problems would not have been wise, even though Marco’s funds were drying up quickly after a similar amount was exacted from him for Maysam’s share of the journey. Frantic calls to his wealthy aunt in the Emirates was the daily routine.
Her promises to send extra money when her professor husband was paid at the end of the month gave Marco little confidence.
An hour after their journey began, the dinghy’s small engine came to a complete halt, most likely due to the covering of algae and rust so thick that it looked as if it were part of the engine’s structure. Without any warning, in one single, heavy choke, it expired. As alarm suffused Marco from head to toe, he knew going back was not an option. Adding to the acute drama, Maysam’s fears and anxieties were culminat-ing into mumbles about the menacing sea, the motherless children she left behind, and a future that was hanging by a thread. No longer was mere dizziness and nausea her nonstop torment, but stomach-churning heaves and violent gags of seasick companions could be heard in the background. “No, we are not fucking going back, you son of a bitch,” was Marco’s immediate reaction when Abu Dandi resolved that they should paddle back to the Turkish shore. Ignoring Abu Dandi’s aimless gaze, Marco took on the oars of leadership and confidently urged his comrades to row forward towards 22
Shit River
Greece, falsely claiming that he could see the lights of Lesbos.
Fatigued and sickened by Maysam’s retching, afraid to go back, yet unable to move forward, demoralized by Marco’s weeping and eventual defeat, the men gave up after pushing every muscle and every bone in their physically exhausted, hungry, cold, weak, and shaking bodies. Surrendering to destiny, they watched as the boat drifted in one direction, only to be tossed back a
nd forth.
Left without options, Abu Dandi conceded and called the Turkish coast guard. When they beamed their lights onto the tired faces of the passengers, the human distress didn’t faze them and they coolly hauled them to an Izmir prison as if the midnight excursion was mere routine in a mindless job. There the Abu Shilla brothers discovered that their Palestinian documents were a cross to bear when they were kept in jail for twenty-five days. To avoid the same fate, Marco ashamedly denied his identity, claiming to be Syrian. When they were freed two days later, he and Maysam were transported by a prison vehicle to the center of the town. They made a pact to try once again.
They had met the captain of the second boat, Abu Salma, while in prison. Captured freshly after his own failed expedition, Abu Salma promised them safe passage or their money back, guaranteed. Fortunately, their previous payment was not cashed by the miserable smuggler with the protruding belly. To maximize the use of their money, the refugees invented an insurance system with the help of a trusted Gazan man. They would individually deposit the money with the Gazan man, who would only deliver it to the smugglers in Turkey when the refugees arrived safely at their Greek destination. Trusted by all parties for his famed honesty, the Gazan man would charge a small fee, and the refugees would retain the hope that they could try as many times as was required to 23
The Last Earth
escape. His was a rare virtuous element in the devil’s den of human contraband.
Abu Salma asked for a thousand American dollars per person, with the ninth travelling for free. To fill the quota now that the Abu Shilla brothers were in a Turkish jail, a Somali woman and an Iraqi man were brought on board. They all agreed to the price.
Abu Salma loved hashish. Not only did he smoke cannabis like Abu Alia smoked cigarettes, he also adopted the character of Bob Marley by wearing the same multi-colored hat, long braided hair, and speaking in a Jamaican accent with a bizarre Egyptian Arabic twist. He often carried his three-year-old daughter on his shoulders, and whenever he wanted to assure others of his honesty, he swore on her name and pointed at her as she held on tightly to scruffy patches of his facial hair.
Shit River
convey knowledge to traumatized children, the clever and the daft alike. Looking at their saddened eyes, they were all his children, and he wanted to save each and every one of their vulnerable precious souls. But the death toll grew and no amount of knowledge was enough to feed the thousands of ravenous refugees nearing famine’s door or to fix a bullet hole in a neighbor’s chest. Desperate to mend whatever he could, Marco rushed to Palestine Hospital to offer his services as a handyman to keep generators operating a while longer, fixing whatever machine was broken or destroyed by neglect or shrapnel.
The day came when his intuition and street smarts raised him to a new level of learning. Now the machines he was fixing were not made of cold metal, but were made of flesh and pumping blood. It began when Marco’s neighbor on Sa’sa Street, Abdul Qader, arrived at the hospital with eight pieces of shrapnel piercing his back, and one thrusting deep into the core of one of his lungs. By then most doctors had fled Yarmouk, or were unable to reach the hospital. Only a few brave and dedicated doctors and nurses were left doing the work of a whole wing. Medical supplies were very scarce, so mostly they were amputating arms and legs rather than healing wounds. But the young Abdel Qader, the always-ready-to-help neighbor, was not meant to die, and Marco, the failed teacher who loved to fiddle with broken machines, had metamorphosed into an emergency room nurse determined to save the life of a childhood friend who knew more about European football than Syrian politics.
Abdel Qader survived, and Marco tackled other medical jobs in Palestine Hospital. First the simple ones came naturally, like assisting in amputations, giving CPR, making room in the morgue for new arrivals, and digging graves when no more space could be found in the hospital backyard. But when the medical staff shrank even more, Marco’s newfound medical 15
The Last Earth
expertise extended to administering injections and taking X-rays. Soon he needed no instructions from a doctor when searching for bullets and shrapnel in the wounded Palestinians and Syrians who poured daily into the hospital’s crowded wards and blood-splattered hallways. It became second nature for him and it gave him a sense of purpose in the midst of a war that did not have one.
Then Maysam came along. When she was dispatched by the Syrian Red Crescent Society to offer a consoling hand at Palestine Hospital, Marco was instantly smitten. He cared little for the ring on her left hand and was more taken by the tight jeans and t-shirt that she wore under her white medical gown.
The overpowering chemistry they instantly felt transcended the gore around them as they both stood defenseless in front of their unexpected emotions. To him, her beauty resembled whatever hope could still be found amid the piles of dead and mutilated corpses in the walled-in graveyard. She too was on a quest to find a savior to rescue her from her domestic persecution. Marco embodied a hero with his darkened skin, palpable physical stamina, and bloodstained gown. As he helped the wounded, fixed batteries and transported the dead, she consoled bereaved families, and sought urgent arrangements with government shelters to accommodate the growing number of orphans in the area. Her loveless marriage gave her a sense of widowhood and so she cried alongside many widows, a status stamped on many hapless women as they arrived at the hospital, hopeful yet frantically looking for their husbands, only to leave with the life sucked out of them, pulverized and bruised.
Maysam Saeed was born on November 10, 1984. Her friskiness blinded people to her gossiping which knew no bounds, and her jealous nature led her to view any woman as a potential nemesis and every man as a sex-driven fiend.
There were no shades of grey for Maysam. Everyone at 16
Shit River
Palestine Hospital knew of her cruel husband and the endless hell that her life had become. Her vulnerability enticed Marco in his uninterrupted quest for love, and he was drawn to this most beautiful and appealing of all the ladies among the staff. Maysam was not just another notch in his belt, but for him being with her was quite a proud achievement since she was married, and a mother of three children—Saeb, Ahlam, and Wala. But their encounter did not end after that sinful February 4, or after their repeated further bouts of aberrant intimacy. The war around them was a reminder of the inanity of life and the abruptness of death, so the pleasure of the flesh was proof that they were still breathing. Maysam, justified her repeated actions as a way of asserting herself, as if she were saying. “Here I am world—living, fighting and loving as I please.” For Marco, being together was like being rescued from Yarmouk, from the siege, from the war, and from the hopelessness of refugee existence.
Neither Marco nor Maysam sought love for emotional fulfillment, or a sexual affair to satisfy some unrestrained desire.
They both sought an escape from the tragedy they were living in, a respite from the horrors forced upon them. Little did they know that one day they would create their own tragedy, and that these short-lived moments of bliss would become a distant memory. They made love in the evenings when the darkness could hide them. On the really tough days when unfathom-able numbers of dead and wounded arrived, they made love over and over again or stole kisses to remind themselves that they too were human, and that “there is on this earth what makes life worth living,” as Marco’s favorite Palestinian poet once wrote of women, war, and a lost homeland.
But even Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was eventually not enough to remind the refugees of the life worth living and fighting for. Regardless of who would win in Syria, Palestinian refugees had nothing to reap but countless tears and 17
The Last Earth
continued exile. As if this were not enough, Marco would never have left Yarmouk if a discontented militia leader had not accused him of theft. Sure, Marco had taken the liberty of salvaging and repairing a few broken batteries from a bombed out military barracks, but it was only to keep the hospital generators running longer. One of the nine men who paraded Marco through the center of Yarmouk, declaring him a “thief ” and threatening to execute him publicly, had been a patient in Marco’s surgery ward seeking urgent care. It was Marco who extracted the bullet from his left thigh a few months earlier. “Khaled Abdul Ghani al-Lubani is a thief and all thieves deserve to have their hands cut off,” declared the militia leader from the Free Syrian Army.
More humiliated than terrified by the public spectacle and feeling ultimately betrayed, Marco decided right there and then to escape Yarmouk. He escaped with his hand intact, but he was gutted by the futility of the entire fight and the depravity of those behind it. The decision he thought he could never make was cemented by the grisly sight of a sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl who was forced to “confess” her crime.
After the bullet ripped through the palm of her right hand, she made her tearful “confession” of allegedly spying for the regime and was instantly executed with multiple shots to her face by a satisfied commando. The street verdict claimed she had placed GPS coordinators into areas where the Free Syrian Army operated, yet the street talkers paid no heed that the government had no “smart bombs,” only barrels of explosives that shattered every corner of Yarmouk many times over with no precision or technological savvy. Logic and facts did not matter when the goal was intimidation.
A quick visit to his house in Sa’sa and a fervent hug from his father was all that Marco needed to commence the journey he would face with Maysam by his side. One thousand Am
erican dollars, most of the cash they had kept in their family home, 18
Shit River
was stuffed into his pockets, while Maysam took nothing but the reasons for her escape from Yarmouk: primarily her love for Marco, but also an accusation by the regime of treason for helping treat members of the Free Syrian Army and consoling their families. Most of her Red Crescent peers had already fled, and it was now her turn to follow. Within a few weeks, soon after they finalized their paperwork and prepared for the journey ahead, she had divorced her husband and married Marco, the savior refugee, who had spent most of his life confined to a single street that now stood in ruins.
Free to imagine the world in any way he desired, Marco needed to reach the other side of the sea, even if he swam and walked a thousand miles. He did, in fact, walk that and a great deal more.
* * *
The first attempt to cross the sea was with Abu Dandi. There was something about his intimidating looks that seemed shady and not to be trusted. In his fifties, he was heavy, with a large, protruding belly, and short white hair. He was addicted to overcooked black tea, and spent most of his time at the Syrian Club playing backgammon, oozing the crude confidence of an unatoned gambler. His blank stare would follow the dice as they rolled onto the table, but he was always aware of who was in his presence. Having spent most of his life taking chances when the stakes were high, he remained oblivious to outcomes; 1,300 euros per person was the fee to deliver them safely to Greece. Marco agreed.
Other Palestinian refugees, accompanying them, also pledged their faith in finding a new life via this no-guarantees trip. One was Zakariya Zuriki, an in-your-face thirtysome-thing who took pride in being “rude” and didn’t hesitate to speak his mind regardless of the consequences. A Che Gue-19
The Last Earth
vara-type beret gave him the authoritative image he wanted in spite of his short and thin stature that was exacerbated by his long, soft hair. He had a strong voice that surged from his gut. Its depth was alluring and gave him a persona of coolness that, according to him, drove women mad. Zakariya hailed from the Palestinian Deraa refugee camp and he knew many songs about Palestine, though he almost never spoke of his family or their whereabouts. Never a coward, he was a good man to have on a rickety dinghy. He had joined the Syrian uprising at its onset and was one of the very first to carry a rifle, driven not by political ambitions for Syria, but because he just could not bear the sight of Deraa fighting and dying alone. He insisted that no one who was a bystander could “call himself a man,” and many friends who died in that war were
“like brothers,” he added, taking a deep breath and shifting the conversation to another topic whenever their memories invited unwanted tears. “Men don’t cry,” he believed, but when they cannot overcome their grief, they should sing about death and women.
Isam Awad was another Palestinian refugee who claimed to have worked as an officer in a Syrian mukhabarat prison.
In this no-man’s land, human rights laws were meaningless writings on flimsy pieces of paper on some bureaucrat’s desk.
Intelligence, whether true or not, was gathered by torture.
Women were raped and humiliated, and men’s genitals were electrocuted while large sticks were pushed up their anuses.
But he was one of the first to defect and join the opposition, or so he claimed. Be it a café or Marco’s shabby flat in Ucyol, Isam’s eyes shifted from side to side, surveying his immediate surroundings and because they seemed too close together in his bony face below dark protruding eyebrows, this added to his air of being in a constant state of suspicion. When in the company of women, his confidence immediately vanished and he would shrink into a silent wallflower, incapable of conver-20
Shit River
sation. Even when he tried to be social in a male-centric chat, it was impossible to listen to him for too long without being distracted; being boring was a trait he had mastered. Although a chunk of his left leg had been shaved off by a bullet, it did not stop him from literally limping his way out of Syria, walking four kilometers at a time, stopping for the occasional quick rest or to drain the trapped blood in his nasty festering wound. He often spoke of his past valor, little of which could be verified.
Only his stubborn unhealing wound was a testament to some tragic and mysterious past. His wife and daughter also fled Syria in a small dinghy; she left him as soon as she made it to Europe. For Isam, making it to Greece would be the first step towards seeing his baby girl.
There was also Mohammed al-Bahri, the guy who seemed to be the most “normal” of the group, but he shared very little or perhaps was not asked to share much. He had a photographic memory and wore a childlike wool hat. Marco avoided contact with him on the advice of the former mukhabarat officer with the shifty eyes. And that was fine by him, as Marco did not want to know what Mohammed’s past entailed. What each of them used to be did not have any weight in the here and now: saint, devil, teacher, or torturer, all that counted was who paid the fee to get on the boat.
At merely twenty years of age, Abdulrahman Abu Alia was the youngest in the group. He believed that life was one long battle. A cigarette rarely left his pursed lips and dizziness overcame him if he did not smoke for more than an hour at a time. There was more to him than a cloud of billowing smoke that followed him wherever he moved. He had once been a promising volleyball champion and his sturdy athletic build was noticeable beside the small frames of Zakariya and Isam.
The inseparable brothers Muaz and Muntasir Abu Shilla joined the small band in the first leg of the journey. They had been through tough times together and were positive about 21
The Last Earth
turning another page in the new chapter about to unfold. But in their naiveté they didn’t really understand the danger of the voyage ahead. Back in Syria, they had lost their Syrian identifications, and instead acquired Palestinian travel documents that were given to them by the Palestinian Embassy in Damascus, along with 1,200 American dollars, when the brothers staged an angry protest blocking the entrance to the embassy for days with a few dozen Palestinian refugees with no IDs.
Marco couldn’t understand why Abu Dandi charged him 1,300 euros, about twice as much as each of the other passengers was asked to pay. But asking questions and stirring up problems would not have been wise, even though Marco’s funds were drying up quickly after a similar amount was exacted from him for Maysam’s share of the journey. Frantic calls to his wealthy aunt in the Emirates was the daily routine.
Her promises to send extra money when her professor husband was paid at the end of the month gave Marco little confidence.
An hour after their journey began, the dinghy’s small engine came to a complete halt, most likely due to the covering of algae and rust so thick that it looked as if it were part of the engine’s structure. Without any warning, in one single, heavy choke, it expired. As alarm suffused Marco from head to toe, he knew going back was not an option. Adding to the acute drama, Maysam’s fears and anxieties were culminat-ing into mumbles about the menacing sea, the motherless children she left behind, and a future that was hanging by a thread. No longer was mere dizziness and nausea her nonstop torment, but stomach-churning heaves and violent gags of seasick companions could be heard in the background. “No, we are not fucking going back, you son of a bitch,” was Marco’s immediate reaction when Abu Dandi resolved that they should paddle back to the Turkish shore. Ignoring Abu Dandi’s aimless gaze, Marco took on the oars of leadership and confidently urged his comrades to row forward towards 22
Shit River
Greece, falsely claiming that he could see the lights of Lesbos.
Fatigued and sickened by Maysam’s retching, afraid to go back, yet unable to move forward, demoralized by Marco’s weeping and eventual defeat, the men gave up after pushing every muscle and every bone in their physically exhausted, hungry, cold, weak, and shaking bodies. Surrendering to destiny, they watched as the boat drifted in one direction, only to be tossed back a
nd forth.
Left without options, Abu Dandi conceded and called the Turkish coast guard. When they beamed their lights onto the tired faces of the passengers, the human distress didn’t faze them and they coolly hauled them to an Izmir prison as if the midnight excursion was mere routine in a mindless job. There the Abu Shilla brothers discovered that their Palestinian documents were a cross to bear when they were kept in jail for twenty-five days. To avoid the same fate, Marco ashamedly denied his identity, claiming to be Syrian. When they were freed two days later, he and Maysam were transported by a prison vehicle to the center of the town. They made a pact to try once again.
They had met the captain of the second boat, Abu Salma, while in prison. Captured freshly after his own failed expedition, Abu Salma promised them safe passage or their money back, guaranteed. Fortunately, their previous payment was not cashed by the miserable smuggler with the protruding belly. To maximize the use of their money, the refugees invented an insurance system with the help of a trusted Gazan man. They would individually deposit the money with the Gazan man, who would only deliver it to the smugglers in Turkey when the refugees arrived safely at their Greek destination. Trusted by all parties for his famed honesty, the Gazan man would charge a small fee, and the refugees would retain the hope that they could try as many times as was required to 23
The Last Earth
escape. His was a rare virtuous element in the devil’s den of human contraband.
Abu Salma asked for a thousand American dollars per person, with the ninth travelling for free. To fill the quota now that the Abu Shilla brothers were in a Turkish jail, a Somali woman and an Iraqi man were brought on board. They all agreed to the price.
Abu Salma loved hashish. Not only did he smoke cannabis like Abu Alia smoked cigarettes, he also adopted the character of Bob Marley by wearing the same multi-colored hat, long braided hair, and speaking in a Jamaican accent with a bizarre Egyptian Arabic twist. He often carried his three-year-old daughter on his shoulders, and whenever he wanted to assure others of his honesty, he swore on her name and pointed at her as she held on tightly to scruffy patches of his facial hair.
The Last Earth