By I remember watching my Sidi – may God rest his soul – and wondering what was going through his mind as he stared at the TV watching Al Jazeera – when it was only in Arabic at the time – with tears rolling down his life-lined cheeks.
It was just the news. Why was he crying? It wasn’t happening in America. It wasn’t happening to people he knew. It was just the TV – why was he crying?
As I sit in the back of the bus going home from work – staring at my phone – reading the news about lifeless children washing up on shores – I find the tips of my fingers soaked from trying to continuously wipe the tears from my face before anyone around me can notice that I’ve been uncontrollably crying. Too late. And I don’t really care. Because I feel like everyone on this bus should be crying with me.
His name was Aylan. And he was 3-years-old.
His father, Abdullah Kurdi, was hoping to provide his wife – Rehanna – and two sons – Galip was Aylan’s 5-year-old brother, who also drowned – with a better, safer life. One that would be free of bombs, free of starvation, free of evil, free of fear. Instead, his entire family died one by one in his arms.
Having been arrested and tortured by the Syrian police in Aleppo – he had his teeth ripped out of his mouth – Abdullah was forced to sell his store in hopes to bribe the Syrian police for his release. The bribe cost him 5,000,000 Syrian Pounds – about $25,000. Once being released, Aleppo was being attacked by aerial bombs by the Assad regime – giving Abdullah no choice but to move his family back to their original hometown of Kobani, which was later attacked by ISIS.
Abdullah eventually got his family from Kobani to Turkey, where from there he and his wife decided to make their next move to Kos, Greece after being denied Canadian citizenship in June. Abdullah purchased four unknowingly faulty life jackets from traffickers in Turkey for €4,000 – that’s $5,860 – and put his family on a rubber dinghy that met its tragic fate when high waves came crashing down on the boat. The dinghy capsized – and all 12 people were thrown into the hostile waters that were believed to be safer than the land they were trying to get as far away as possible from. The island of Kos was 4-kilometers away; a 30 minute trip at most.
Abdullah recalls his family slipping away one at a time, after holding on to the flipped boat for nearly an hour. His son, Galip, died first. Abdullah released his body into the water in order to focus on saving his wife and other son. Aylan was next to pass. Abdullah released his body into the waters, too. When he reached for Rehanna, she too had passed. Abdullah had given his family’s bodies to the water that was supposed to be their savior, while he continued to hold on to the dinghy for nearly three hours waiting for the coast guard to come.
The Kurdi family’s story is just one of millions of refugees, but happens to be the one that brought us the photo of a little boy, in a red T-shirt, appearing to be laying peacefully facedown in the sand of a Turkish beach to finally spark the world’s interest into the Syrian humanitarian crisis. How Aylan got to that beach was anything but peaceful.
There is a definitive difference between the terms “migrant” and “refugee”. The former, is a person who makes a conscious effort to leave their country seeking a better life elsewhere. The latter, is a person forced to leave their country because of the risks of staying home. People who get on a blow up boat in the middle of the night to risk their own and their children’s lives are not migrants, they are refugees.
You have to understand, no mother puts her child in a boat unless the water is safer than land.
Since 2011, there have been over 4 million refugees recorded to have fled Syria seeking safe havens around the world. 4,000,000. Four million. That is more than the population of the state of Connecticut. Imagine the entire state of Connecticut missing its people. Guess how many refugees the richest “Muslim” countries who preach Islamic code and law have taken in – zero. Of those some 4 million, only 584 have been allowed to resettle in the United States.
So as I sit here sobbing for days I get it, Sidi. I finally get it. This isn’t happening on American shores. This isn’t happening to children I know. It’s just the news, yeah?
It’s not just the news. It’s not just the TV.
We cry because we have compassion. We have empathy. We cry because even though those aren’t “our” children on the TV, they matter to us. They are our future. We cry because even though it is “just the TV” – it is real. And we don’t understand why it’s real.
We are all responsible.
This little boy, his family, all of these people – they are real. Feel for them. Cry for them. Remember them. Work towards ensuring that no one else ends up like them.
A great organization that deserves more attention for their tireless efforts at helping refugees cross the Mediterranean is Migrant Offshore Aid Station – to donate to their cause – click here.
Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not. – The Lorax
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Image: Twitter
Mashallah, you have a great talent. You have put into words, that for which there are no words, only tears.
Thank you for your kind words! Inshallah one day we will no longer have to write about things like this.
it is funny how the ‘religion of peace’ has so much war in it.
looks like the kurds can’t catch a break. I see the turks are now bombing the kurds.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34206924
Its funny how USA started this war and armed Israel who creates this war and why we have this crisis now. Wanna know who is responsible its the one with the least victims. Last time I checked middle east 4 million dead could be more, USA, UK, Israel how many do you think is dead.
you are going to have to be more specific on what war you are talking about? there are lots of wars and lots of crisis. if you are talking about Syria? it is a civil war started by Syrians. the Syrians wanted to overthrow the assad regime.
“Wanna know who is responsible its the one with the least victims” – what in the world kind of theory is that? so the germans and the Japanese weren’t responsible in starting ww2 because they had more causalities than the US? strange theory to say the least.
Every war I am talking about USA has had its foot in. Why are you talking about WW2 they are not creating war now USA is as its profitable for them to do so all to get resources. They armed Israel who created the Syrian crisis. USA also armed the rebels in Syria and ISIS too so they put their own puppet in charge of Syria like they have everywhere else. You might want to research how wars USA are involved in its a lot. USA dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan killing thousands of innocent people in the process. The most causalities are in the Middles east and you need to do your research first before claiming such things. FYI the Syrians do not want to overthrow Assad USA do to get to Iran and Annoy Russia and why they armed and created ISIS for as UK refused to ground attack Syria with USA. Check out Snowden, Assange, Manning etc these are the ones that tell the truth about the USA government. WW2 was part of the claim of Israel for the Zionists. I can’t be arsed to go through the whole thing with you got the name research and find out.
I’m talking about ww2 because you said whoever has the least dead started the war. this theory is proven false by the example of ww2. or one could say that there are no dead Brazilians because of the civil war in Syria, they must have started it. this is silly.
how did Israel create the Syrian crisis?
assad has never been our puppet. nor was his father.
you want me to name American wars off the top of my head? ok.
-revolutionary-1812-more indian wars then I can remember-Mexican-civil-Spanish-1st ww-2nd ww-korea-vietnam-bay of pigs-dirty war in argentina-contras-grenada-panama-first gulf war-second-gulf war-Afghanistan
yes we dropped fat boy and little man on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, maybe not in that order.
so what does any of this have to do with islam and it’s many wars through its history?
well if the Syrians didn’t want to overthrow assad, why are so many fighting the regime?
It makes little sense to blame the religion. Most, if not all, religions claim to be a ‘religion of peace’. There are great people who preach and practice peace and are followers of [insert religion here]. There are also terrible people who preach and practice hate and are followers of [insert religion here].
It is tempting and easy to use a label on a group of people and then assign a quality to all of them, unfortunately it is never true. People are far more complex and interesting than any label can ascribe.
What in the world are you talking about? If you aren’t going to blame the religion for it motivating the religious to action, then you might as well not label them as religious.
here, read this:
http://www.khilafahbooks.com/wp-content/ebook/english/khilafah/book_of_jihad.pdf
hell you don’t even have to read the whole thing, just the first 20 pages.
I almost cried when reading this post. It is sad to know about it…
All I know is that I still feel sadness about this little boy and have had even a tough time sleeping at night. Having a 5 year old daughter and 3 year old son, I guess it hit me a little harder. I wish people would just see everyone as other people trying to make their lives better. I think about my great-grandparents that got on a boat in Sicily in 1904, left everything to make it to the US, because they wanted a better life for their family. Sicily wasn’t such a great place to live then. How do we know that little Aylan, his brother and the other children that have died would not have been great scientists, engineers, business people, etc. We should all think about who Aylan was…just a 3 year old wanting to live life