A Syrian refugee's leap of faith

A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea 

The Journey of Doaa Al Zamel

Melissa Fleming

Hachette

285 pages; Rs 499

In 2015, the BBC brought out an interactive documentary film about the countless refugees who escaped Syria and made their way to Europe by sea. Titled Syrian Journey, it began with a seemingly innocuous question: What piece of technology would one carry while fleeing? It was an immersive project, meant to push the boundaries of empathy and make the fear felt by the men, women and children huddling together in tiny boats, with no certainty of reaching safer shores or, for that matter, seeing the light of the day.

Melissa Fleming’s A Hope More Powerful than the Sea is a close literary counterpart of a 3D documentary. Chronicling the life of Doaa Al Zamel, a Syrian woman who fled her country to escape the violence, Ms Fleming’s book seeks to bring back the plight of refugees in Europe to public memory, and keep it firmly there. The story of the Al Zamel family could well be the story of Alan, the toddler who became the disquieting face of the refugee crisis after his body was found on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey. Doaa, crying out to her husband when their boat capsized, could be any one of the women who lost their families to the treacherous waters.

Written in uncomplicated prose that is refreshingly personal, Ms Fleming, who is also the chief spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, takes the reader on a journey that begins in Syria’s Daraa and ends in Sweden. Each word along the route is chosen carefully, allowing the Syrian landscape and culture to fully develop in the reader’s mind, going beyond the images of war, massacre and destruction that are lamentably associated with the country today. Doaa, born in 1995 Syria could be any child born to a conservative, large Muslim family with limited means. Her parents bicker about what any young couple would fight over — family, money, space, the future of their children. 

While there is a liberal sprinkling of the signs of political unrest in the early chapters, Ms Fleming’s focus on the Al Zamels’ everyday stories make Doaa and her family endearing. There is nothing warm or romantic, of course, about Hafez al-Assad’s Syria and the immensely curtailed existence for Syrians under his oppressive regime.

The profound irony, though, lies in how starkly different the lives of Syrians would soon be from citizens of any other country in the world. While Basher al-Assad comes in as a hope for change, Syrians would soon realise that the promises of a better regime were empty. The Islamic State and the violence it brought with it was only a brutal and more glaring proof of the political regime’s failure to serve its people.

The personal is so intricately woven with the political that the unrest in the region — in all of West Asia, in fact — becomes all the more palpable. Even for someone who knows enough about the geopolitical nitty-gritties of the region, be it the Arab Spring or the American involvement in West Asia, Doaa’s life brings alive the various contours and colours of a politically unstable country in all its enormity. A chapter on Doaa and her husband Bassem’s engagement captures the split universe of a refugee’s life beautifully. Much before the wretched trip across the sea, the Al Zamels had moved out of Syria to Egypt, looking for better work and, of course, safety. While there is ample nostalgia about Syria in the poetry Bassem read to Doaa and the sense of a home, there is also the heartbreaking clarity with which Doaa refuses to ever go back to the country.

It is when unrest follows them to Egypt that Bassem and Doaa decide to make the journey across the sea to migrate to Europe. It is no surprise that the most moving chapter is the one that describes this journey and how Doaa survives it. Their boat capsized by “pirates”, Doaa floated in the water for four days without food or warmth. The only thing keeping her alive was the two little girls who lost their parents in the same boat. 

While Doaa eventually finds a safe haven in Sweden, there are countless refugees today who languish on the streets of swish European cities. Ms Fleming’s book, unlike the blissfully blind Bollywood films still obssessed with European locations, is a reminder to keep refugees on top of policy-making priorities, no small challenge when such a crudely xenophobic politician as Viktor Orban sweeps the Hungarian polls. Entering a European country is one thing; languishing on the pavement outside a McDonald’s on Champs-Élysées in Paris is quite another. Doaa’s story will, hopefully, make public memory a little less fickle.