THE COLD REMINDS ME OF LAST DECEMBER, WHEN I came back from the hospital dripping with snow and sleet. Layla was on the couch, wearing all her clothes. I had huddled up beside my hallucination and fallen asleep, thinking I was warming myself, but the cold just continued to coat my bones, forcing itself inside.
But despite its familiarity, this cold doesn’t lull me to sleep. Instead, it sends shock wave after shock wave through my body. I sink under the sea, opening my eyes to the dark blue-black that stretches on for miles.
Fear grapples with me. My heart seizes, my trachea constricts, and my extremities are so cold they burn. Before I can scream, my life jacket shoots me out of the water.
“Mama,” I cry without thinking. “Mama, save me!”
I kick my legs in the water, the fear dissolving into hysteria. It chokes out of me in broken sobs when I remember there are sharks in the Mediterranean.
“Mama,” I chant, holding on to that one word and letting it expand and wash over me. “Mama. Mama. Please, please save me. Please. I can’t do this anymore!”
At this moment, I’m half crazed, kicking my legs to keep sharks at bay —as if it would be of any help against their razor teeth and soulless eyes.
Every thought disappears. I’m forgetting my name and who I was with.
Who I’m supposed to be with. All I can think of is how I’m going to be dragged down.
“Salama!” A voice cuts through the hysteria and I clumsily try to turn around, hot tears streaming down my cheeks. The cold sears right to my ribs. It hurts to breathe.
Blurry figures become sharp and I see a bobbing person with terrified
eyes. Yusuf. And just behind him is Lama.
My heart resets. Yes. I can’t lose myself. My family is here. Yusuf.
Lama. And Kenan.
Kenan.
Where is he?
“Lama! Yusuf!” The pressure of the water must have wrenched my hand out of Kenan’s. All around, people are swimming, looking for their loved ones, and familiar screams rise on the frigid wind. My bag is still trapped
under my life jacket. “Where’s Kenan?”
“I don’t know,” Lama sobs.
“Kenan! Where are you?” I shriek. God, please let him live. He’s had enough.
I swivel helplessly, my eyes jumping from one body to the next, but I only see strangers.
“We need to get away from the boat,” I say. I look back and it’s starting to sink. They nod and with effort try to swim after me. We keep looking, calling out for Kenan. I splash around, my life jacket making it impossible to easily move. I strain, searching the boat with my eyes, but there’s no one.
“There!” Lama screams, pointing at a floating figure. Both his arms are spread out like he’s trying to embrace the sea, and his head droops to the side. I make my way to him and brush his hair out of his face to make sure it’s him.
“Oh, thank God,” I exclaim, hugging him close. “He’s here. It’s him!”
Awkwardly, I try to check his pulse. It’s weaker than I’d like. The shock of the water must have thrown him unconscious, and he can’t stay like that for long. His face is ice cold.
“Is he okay?” Yusuf asks, and I lift Kenan’s head. His neck muscles are completely slack.
“He’s unconscious,” I say, and I hear the boat finally going below, but I can’t care about that right now. “Kenan. Wake up!”
After minutes of slapping his face and praying to God, his eyes flutter open, and he mumbles something incoherent.
“Hey,” I say gently, grasping his cheeks and then grabbing one hand to see that his fingers have taken on a blue hue.
“Hey,” he whispers.
“We’re in the water. The boat just went down, and you were
unconscious. You can’t fall asleep. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he says foggily and grimaces from the cold.
“All right, everyone,” I call out, looping my hand under Kenan’s life jacket. “We need to head to where the others are and see if the captain made
contact with the Italian coast guard.”
“I’m cold,” Lama sniffs.
“That’s the other thing. I need you all to keep moving. Keep the blood flowing. Or else you’ll fall asleep, and that’s not good.”
They mumble a yes, and we swim slowly toward the cluster of floating survivors. One man is splashing desperately and screaming for his young son. We paddle beside bodies, either corpses or unconscious, I don’t know, and I can’t stop to find out.
“… contact and told them, but I don’t know when they’re coming,” the captain is shouting to the frenzied crowd. “We’re far from shore. They’ll take a while to reach us. Hours at least.”
The small flame of hope in everyone’s eyes flickers like a dying candle.
No one cares about a bunch of Syrian refugees stranded in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. We aren’t the first or the last people to do this. So what if a hundred or so meet their deaths? It’ll make a nice headline to spur a small protest or donation campaign before we’re forgotten again like foam on the sea. No one will remember our names. No one will know our story.
“K-Kenan,” I falter. “D-d-don’t s-sleep!”
He nods his head, but it’s taking every ounce of energy he has to stay awake. I pull him close and try to encourage him to kick his legs. The life jacket is the only thing keeping him up, and it’s barely doing so. The clouds curdle even more until it feels like we’re surrounded by sea and sky. Not a single ray reaches us.
“Lama. Yusuf. Keep on moving,” I stutter an order. “Help will come.”
“I’m tired,” Lama whines, half-heartedly shimmying in the water. Yusuf kicks his legs and arms for a minute before surrendering.
“No,” I yell, pulling myself closer to them with Kenan’s arm encircled in mine. “Keep. Moving!”
Yusuf takes a hold of Lama’s hands and starts shaking them, sending ripples along the water.
“We’ll be fine,” I babble, focusing on my words and not the hypothermia slowly shutting down each cell. Slowly killing me. I try not to
think of the sharks. “We’ll be fine.”
Some people have already surrendered to the cold, their screaming and crying dying out, and I know without looking that the Mediterranean Sea has claimed them for his own.
“Lama, talk to me.” I lick the salt from my lips, and it burns my throat.
It burns the cut on my neck.
“I’m okay.” Her voice is barely audible.
“Yusuf?”
“Yes,” he whispers.
I grab Kenan’s shoulders and shake him, and he starts. “Kenan, don’t you dare sleep.”
“I won’t,” he says and coughs and kicks his legs for a bit. He brings his free hand behind my soaking hijab, pressing his forehead to mine.
The waves have slowly inched Lama and Yusuf away from us and we move closer again, forming a circle, holding hands.
“Good,” I encourage. “Now, k-keep kicking!”
We create little froths on the sea’s surface as the blood moves sluggishly in our veins. My clothes stick to my shivering body, my hijab slowly slips, but still, I keep kicking.
“Kenan, look at the colors,” I say, and he gazes at the horizon.
There’s nothing but gray sky and sea.
Not like the gray in Homs.
Gray like Layla’s painting with blue scraped between the streaks.
I try to see the other shades, but the gray seems lodged in my retinal artery’s cells. I tear my eyes to my family, memorizing their faces.
“Remember how in Ramadan the streets would be lit up with lanterns,” I stutter, and they all look at me. “Don’t think about the cold. Remember how warm the bread used to be. Fresh from the bakery.”
Kenan joins in. “Lama. Yusuf. Remember when we used to go to the country. To Jedo’s farmhouse and pick the apricots. How I’d climb up and toss them to you, Lama. Yusuf, remember when you found that pigeon’s
nest?”
Yusuf nods, teeth chattering.
“Each summer Layla and I would either stay at her grandparents’ country house or mine,” I whisper. “We’d swim in the pool. We’d play with the chickens. We even rode horses. Her grandfather took us to a neighbor
who raised them.”
I remember it so well. Fifteen years old and I’d just begun wearing my hijab. It fluttered in the wind as the horse galloped around the field with Layla on her own horse beside me. Our whoops of joy ringing over the horses’ hooves.
Kenan continues to encourage his siblings to move and talk, to remember the past and to hope for the future, where new memories wait for them. He turns to me and raises my hand, and water droplets slip back into the sea.
“Salama, we’ll have that knafeh.” His cheeks are wet, and I know it’s not just from the sea. His lips brush over my scarred knuckles. “If not in
Germany, then in Heaven.”
I swallow my tears, nodding.
We go back to talking, trying to focus on something that isn’t the cold.
We reminisce on our old life. Visualizing our Syria and painting a
description of one we’ll never see.
A Syria we’ll never know.
An endless bed of green covers the hills, where the Orontes carries life into the ground, growing daisies along his banks. Trees bear lemons golden as the sun, apples firm and sweet, and plums ripe and glittering like rubies.
Their branches are low, coaxing us to pluck the fruit. Birds sing the song of life, their wings fluttering against an azure-blue sky.
The countryside slowly dissolves as pavement replaces grass and the sounds of people bustling around the market drown the occasional bird’s chirps. Merchants are selling satin dresses, rich, amethyst-purple Arabian rugs, and precious crystal vases. Restaurants overflow with families and couples taking advantage of a beautiful sunny day, platters of barbecued meat and bowls of tabbouleh laid in front of them. The athan rings loud from the minarets and people gather for prayer in the spacious, intricately designed mosques that have been standing there for centuries. Children run around our ancient ruins, reading the history of their ancestors woven between the limestone. They learn about the empires that once transformed their country into the beating heart of civilization. They visit the graves of our warriors, reciting Al-Fatiha for their souls and remembering their stories. Keeping them alive in their memories. They take pride in their grandfathers and grandmothers, who laid down their lives so they could
grow up in a land where the air is sweet with freedom.
Caught in the haze of hypothermia, I dream of that Syria.
A Syria whose soul isn’t chained in iron, held captive by those who love to hurt her and her children. A Syria Hamza fought and bled for. A Syria Kenan dreams about and illustrates. A Syria Layla wanted to raise her daughter in. A Syria I would have found love and life and adventure in. A Syria where, at the end of a long life, I’d return to the ground that raised me. A Syria that’s my home.
The day passes and I lose track of time. Darkness finally settles and I have no energy left, and my lips stop moving. The cold has invaded every nerve. I don’t know if Kenan has stopped talking as well or if I’ve lost the ability to hear. It takes everything in me to remember where I am and that I need to breathe.
Somewhere in the distance, a glow of light suddenly appears. I blink, its harshness hurting my pupils. I blink again.
Am I dead?
