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In search of a safe place

In 2014, their family escaped from the conflict in Damascus. “We wandered around Syria, looking for a safe place, but there was not a safe place anywhere,” he says. “So I decided it was time to try to get to Europe."

In Damascus, Mahmoud was working as a carpenter. He made little money, but his family always lived with dignity.

"When you're poor you cannot even choose how to escape, you can only escape by spending as little as possible,” he says. “And we were five people."

His wife’s others lived for a while in Benghazi, in eastern Libya. They had the names of people who could help Mahmoud and his family get a place on a boat to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

“They [the smugglers] promised they could organize a boat, give us the life jackets and get us safely in Europe,” he says.

Mahmoud wanted to be able to tell his three children: You can study, I promise you that I will help you realize your dreams.

Journey across the sea

Fouzieh is Mahmoud’s wife. She is 39 years old, but she moves with slow and awkward movements, as if her body aches with grief. Her face wears the look of someone much older, someone who has seen too much.

The pain that their family has endured for two years has now become a taboo. It is nearly impossible to talk about it, let alone overcome.

"When we arrived in Libya I hoped with all my might that it was the last leg of our journey before arriving in Italy," Fouzieh recalls.

But they were forced to wait. Their traffickers held them captive for 15 days in a concrete house near the sea.

"They told us that we had to wait for good weather, but the weather was good and our room continued to fill up with people,” she says.

“As the days passed, it became clear to us that they were not waiting for good weather but rather to gather as many people as possible, so that they could earn more money."

During the time they were held captive, the smugglers ought them little food and little water – only a bit of cheese and ead, often rotten, handed to them through the iron bars of the few windows in the building.

Fouzieh remembers the uneathable air, the fights over food with other migrants. “I did not have any food so that my three children could eat. They constantly asked me: ‘Why are we here?’”

Then one night the smugglers came to pick them up in groups of 20, maybe 30 people, she says.

The smuggler then used his satellite phone to call his accomplices, who were back on shore.

When they returned to the ship, they loaded only the smuggler on board to safety, leaving hundreds of people stranded in the sea, fighting to survive against the waves.

Fouzeih struggles to recount those moments. She swallows, looks down, as she nervously handles her phone, looking down at the photos of her son – the son she lost.

After the smuggler left, she realized that the ship had taken on a large volume of water, and was now tilting to the side.

"I fell into the water, clutching my youngest son, Balal, and I did not know what to do. Before we left shore, the smugglers never told us what we should do in the event of a disaster or if something should happen to the ship,” she says.

“I do not remember anything. I did not think anything. I just prayed to survive.”

Fouzieh emaced Balal tightly all night long. A whole night in the water struggling between life and death.

“Throughout the night, Balal would sometimes fall asleep and I slapped him on his face to wake up. His dead weight made it almost impossible for me to hold onto him,” she says. “[He] asked me, ‘When can we have some rest?’ and I said, ‘soon’, but I knew I was lying.”

While she was in the water, Fouzieh looked for someone or something to hold on to. "One time I saw a round shaped object. I clung onto it, but then I realized that it was a head of a corpse.”

After hours and hours in the sea and a desperate plea for help to a passing boat, which did not stop to pick up the living or the dead, Fouzieh was finally rescued by the Libyan coast guard. She and Balal were ought to shore.

She immediately began to search for the rest of her family. After a few hours she discovered her husband and her daughter, Sham, had survived thanks to his strong emace. But their son Talal was still missing.

The last thing Fouzieh remembers is the hospital, where she was taken after she fainted.

Three consecutive days of IV drips, fear and the one question she kept asking: “Where is my child?”

"’Later Fouzieh’, the doctors say, ‘tomorrow Fouzieh, do not worry Fouzieh’, but no one would tell me anything for three days,” she says.

“Then my worst fear became a reality. The doctor showed me a photograph of my son Talal. My son is dead."