They mumble ayes, 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.
