A Hope More Powerful than the Sea
-
- € 3,99
-
- € 3,99
Beschrijving uitgever
Soon to be a major film, produced by Steven Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.
This is the story of Doaa, an ordinary girl from a village in Syria, who in 2015 became one of five hundred people crammed on to a fishing boat setting sail for Europe. The boat was deliberately capsized, and of those five hundred people, eleven survived; they were rescued four days after the boat sank. Doaa was one of them - her fiancé Bassem, with whom she had fled, was not; he drowned in front of her.
Melissa Fleming, the Chief Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, heard about Doaa and the death of 489 of her fellow refugees on the day she was pulled out of the water. She decided to fly to Crete to meet this extraordinary girl, who had rescued a toddler when she was nearly dead herself. They struck an instant bond, and Melissa saw in Doaa the story of the war in Syria embodied by one young woman. She has decided to tell Doaa's story - the dangers she fled, and the journey she risked to escape the conflagration in her homeland. Doaa is the face of the millions of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters and sons who risk everything as they try to escape war, violence and death.
Doaa's story will revolutionize how we see the thousands of people who die every year in search of a home. It will squarely face one of the greatest moral questions of our age: will we let more people die in boats and trucks, or will we find a way to help them?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This poignant tale of survival and loss gives immediacy to the plight of Syrian refugees. In a spare, unobtrusive style, Fleming, head of communications for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, profiles Doaa Al Zamel, who as a teenager fled her homeland of Syria. Fleming's skillful writing brings new vividness to Al Zamel's dramatic story, already well known from media accounts. The book provides a quick sketch of Syria's complex civil war, which erupted in 2011, making it critical for Al Zamel's family to escape to Egypt. There, she married another displaced Syrian, and in 2014 they sold their remaining valuables to pay smugglers to take them across the Mediterranean. "It is better to have a quick death in the sea than a slow death in Egypt," she reasoned. Conditions on the decrepit ship became deadly when they were rammed by another boat. Floating on a plastic inflatable ring, Al Zamel survived the ordeal and saved the life of a small child, but suffered the heartbreak of seeing her husband die. This book amply demonstrates why she has since become a symbol of hope for other refugees. Fleming should be congratulated for bringing Al Zamel's inspiring and illuminating story to the page.
