Tonight, the stars are very bright. The coast guard’s light is a white dot on the horizon. It might be rescue. It might be return. I don’t know which is scarier.
The father of three behind us starts to pray. The teenager from Idlib is laughing—hysterically, I think—because the moon is very bright and we are all going to die in a raft meant for ten people that holds forty-seven.
For three years, I was UNHCR Reg. No. 782-09-114. I was a "transit" case. A "vulnerable male." A statistic in a spreadsheet that a caseworker in Geneva closes at 5:00 PM to go home for dinner.
Remember that I, Ali Ismail, age sixteen, once had a favorite cup (chipped blue ceramic). I was afraid of spiders. I hated boiled okra. I wanted to be an architect, not because I liked buildings, but because I liked the space between buildings—the shadows where children play. refugee the diary of ali ismail
I realized something strange:
The engine dies. The sea is black and greedy.
First, you lose the sound of church bells (or the call to prayer, depending on your street). Then you lose the specific smell of your mother’s stove—lentils and cumin. Then you lose the ability to walk down a street without looking up at the rooftops. Tonight, the stars are very bright
Then he used his expensive Italian shoes as a bail bucket. He scooped the Aegean Sea out of our coffin, one sole-full at a time.
I have to close the notebook now. The water is getting higher. Tarek is handing me his left shoe.
But tonight, I am a cartographer.
War exported me. Bombs exported my neighbor, the baker. Fear exported the girl who sat in front of me in chemistry class (she could name all the elements, but she couldn't name a single safe country).
We don’t run away from death. We scoop it out with our finest possessions.