I have spent a long time staring at the little boy in the papers and on international TV, face-down in a red T-shirt with black shoes like an art piece in a huge gallery. An art piece so iconic, so haunting it might be the piece that everyone wants! The little boy, as we all now know, is one of two little boys who perished in the Mediteranean Sea with their mother and was washed ashore by the fearless waves in a manner so spectacular, so attention-grabbing. His presence, his very essence returning to earth from the depths of the sea in an image that is as unforgettable as it is mind-boggling. His nicely cut hair is soaked in the watery sands, his red shirt, a bizarre alert to the rest of us.
Cute in its finality, picturesque in its incredulity, heart-wrenching in its message, tragic in its imagery, the most amazing picture of death I have seen in a long time!
When they took off, nothing prepared his distraught father that his son’s death will become the catalyst that will move Europe to finally take decisive steps to deal with the migrant crisis. It has become clear to onlookers that the journey is always unpredictable, often treacherous and mostly tragic. But he took the risk for a better life for his family, in a desperate bid to reach Canada where his sister had filed an asylum status for them which had been rejected. Fearing for his family’s safety in Syria and running away from a seemingly unending war, he took off.
Before we turn our searchlight on war-torn zones of the world, let’s turn our searchlight on the bereaved father of the world’s most recent iconic image, the father who unwittingly delivered the pictures that finally led to some action, some rhetoric, some pronouncements from the world. Little did he know, when he started the journey, that his wife and children will be sacrificed.
As a birth mother of my children and adoptive mother of several others, I find myself unable to sit still when a child is away in any place considered a flashpoint, I find myself prayerful over my children 24 hours a day. I find that my heart escapes into my mouth if there has been a challenging fall, a scream from a child in the kitchen, a near accident, domestic or otherwise, or if I am aware of an emotionally traumatised child. And this is the case for most mothers, most parents who have been made custodians of their children by the universe, by God, by their very position as parents.
I have studied the father of the boy, the lone survivor of a family’s tragic journey; the man who left with his heart and family and lost both in the angry seas; the sea that takes, and takes, heavy with bodies, stained with the blood of many significant others. I have looked into his eyes and seen the emptiness that has taken him over, the pain of a man who cannot even grieve as the world’s media have turned him into content, an unfortunate sound bite as they scramble for the best story. He looks at all of us and understands the emptiness of the world in a most profound way. Here is what he told CNN recently:
“I don’t want anything else from this world. Everything I was dreaming of is gone. I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die… I will sit by my wife and children and read them Quran until I die, God willing.”
Words that dig deep into our souls.
Then he returns to staring at us all. His eyes judging us, guilty each and everyone.
From Syria where a doctor whose role is to bring succour to the sick, Assad, president of Syria, has taken pain to new levels, to Europe whose immigration laws tighten the noose on migrants with the laws changing daily like the weather, the United States and other western nations who pull strings in many countries leading to leadership tussles and strife that have often resulted in wars, and ISIS whose viciousness has taken man`s bestiality to newer depths – Abdullah Kurdi looks at us all.
The deceit by the traffickers who took €5,000 from him for the journey and boarded them on boats that were primed not to arrive safely at their destination! He paid for his family`s death, ransom money for the sacrifice of his wife and sons. And then that picture that ignited us all, that disturbed us to action. But the picture of two-year-old Aylan Kurdi which tugged at hearts worldwide is really just the picture of a little boy who called his father “Daddy”. With that picture, and that journey, humanity betrayed Abdullah Kurdi on all fronts.
And while we go about our businesses after now, the boy’s touch, his cute face, his smile and all other little things will haunt his father forever. Abdullah will never hear the voice of Aylan, his brother Galip, and their mother Rehen again.
Eugenia Abu
