Chapter 24: My Name Is Darya - My Name Is Samim

Aegean Sea, spring 2021

Men in the dinghy stood up, waving at the boats, and women shouted for help. We rocked from side to side, waited and prayed, prayed and waited, but nothing happened. The boats just watched us from a distance as if we were in a ghost ship.

“Why won’t they help us?” the mother cried, hugging her daughter, who shook with a groggy cough.

“Because if they rescue us, we become their problem. They would rather watch us drown than help us,” said a man beside her, and panic surged through the dinghy.

Terror twisted my gut. Would they really let us drown?

“We will be fine. Someone will help us, you’ll see,” Darya said, splitting her last biscuit in two and passing it to the quivering children. “We are going home, and no one will stop us.” Her voice thrummed with determination, as if she really was friends with sea gods.

As hours passed, we watched the yolky sun slip into the sea and pull all the light with it. Then our only hope – the two boats in the distance – disappeared, too, and we faced another cold night.

“What’s your name?” Darya asked the kids in front of us.

“Abas,” said the boy with blisters.

“Sharbat,” whispered his older sister. Her milky-white face turned blue with every cough.

“Nice to meet you, Abas and Sharbat. You already know I’m Darya. I’m going to Germany, and I will be a veterinarian one day,” she said with pride.

How does she do that? I thought to myself. How does she never lose hope?

“Do you hear that, world?” Darya yelled into the blackness. “I’m not afraid of your darkness! My name is Darya, and I will be a vet one day!”

A few people in the dinghy chuckled.

Darya turned to Zayn and gave him a nod.

Zayn beamed. “My name is Zayn, and I will be a professional footballer!”

I laughed. “My name is Samim, and I will be a chess champion!”

“My name is Abas, and I will be a police officer!” the little boy yelled, and his mum shook with sobs, kissing his little head.

“Who are you going to be, Sharbat?” Darya asked, warming the girl’s little hands inside her palms.

The girl shrugged. Her big, tired eyes were half shut with exhaustion.

“She’s getting worse,” her mother sniffled.

“Well, you can be anything you’d like to be,” Darya said. “Like a doctor! Or a teacher! Or a president!”

The girl giggled, and we saw a spark of life in her eyes for the first time.

* * *

A few bleak hours later, a loud voice through a megaphone jolted us awake.

“Stay calm!”

Powerful beams of torchlight blinded us. They were coming from a big boat floating in the gloomy distance.

“We are going to rescue you, but you must stay calm!” the voice from the rescue ship kept repeating.

Panic surged through the dinghy. Many didn’t understand the English commands, and our flimsy vessel rocked as people stood and cried out.

“No! No! Do not get up! Stay seated!” the man with the megaphone kept shouting, gesturing ‘down’ with his arm.

“Stay seated! He says not to get up! Don’t rock the boat! Stay seated!” Darya, Zayn and I kept screaming, but no one heard us in the chaos.

The ship released a yellow life raft with a lone rescuer on board, and it motored towards us. As it neared, the panic got worse. People lunged towards the rescuer, and the dinghy swayed so hard the oily water gushed inside it.

“Stop it! Stop moving! Stay seated!” the rescuers yelled, but no one listened.

The next moment, we tumbled overboard.

A gulp of salty, bitter liquid burned my throat as I plunged into the sea. When I managed to get my head above water again, I saw everything in flashes: the moon, the rescue boat, people screaming and grabbing each other. My eyes scorched and blurred from the leaking petrol. I shut them and clenched my teeth. That’s when someone grabbed me and pulled me under again.

The noise disappeared, and all I could hear was my heart. It pounded in my chest like a fist.

Please, God, help us.

God must have heard my prayers, because someone’s hands clutched my life jacket and pulled me onto the rescue raft.

“Thank you. Thank you,” I said, coughing. A sudden spasm struck my gut, and the remains of the oily seawater splattered onto the floor.

“Samim!” Zayn grabbed my shoulders as I panted on my knees. “Where is Darya?”

I looked around. “I don’t know.”

Zayn jumped to his feet and spun around, a cry ripping from his throat. “Darya! Darya!”

“Stay seated!” the rescuer barked at him.

Zayn grabbed his arm. “My friend Darya is out there! You’ve got to look for her! Please!”

I don’t think the man spoke Dari, but he still understood Zayn.

“I’m doing all I can. Stay seated!” He shoved Zayn back, his face flushed with anger.

But Zayn didn’t listen. He sprang back to his feet, snatched the torch from the man’s hand and dived into the sea.

My heart jumped. “Zayn!”

Zayn was an excellent swimmer. But everyone in the water was panicking and grabbing on to one another, so he had to push people away to stay afloat.

He shone his torch left and right, shouting, “Darya!”

Then he froze, staring at someone, tossed the torch away and swam to a small figure clinging to another. Sharbat’s grip on Darya tightened as Zayn reached them, towing them both towards the raft. The rescuer hauled them aboard one by one.

The lifeboat was now packed. He turned on the engine and steered towards the ship. Those left behind cried and cursed after us, and the rescuer watched them with bulging eyes. “I’ll be back! I’ll be back!” he shouted, and then muttered under his breath, “I’ll be back, I promise.”

Sharbat’s mother grabbed her daughter, weeping into her wet hair. Abas was shaking by her side.

Zayn and I kneeled over Darya, who lay motionless, white and peaceful. She looked as if she was asleep, dreaming of somewhere warm, bright and happy.

Zayn shook her shoulders gently, trying to wake her. “Please wake up. You’re friends with sea gods, remember?” His wet hair clung to his face, his eyes wide with fear. “And your dog, Jam, he is waiting for you, you must wake up.”

Droplets of sea trickled down her short boyish hair and the sides of her eyes, like tears.

Her sparkling eyes that held a ray of the sun, a drop of the ocean and a spot of the sky… She has to open them. Please, God, let her open them.

A stab in my chest made me whimper, and I wrapped my arms around my body.

“We’re going home, remember? You promised! Please, wake up,” Zayn kept pleading.

The rescuer checked Darya’s pulse and dropped his head.

Zayn stared at him, his eyes begging. “Her name is Darya. She is going to become a veterinarian.”

The rescuer wiped his eyes and turned away.

Zayn clenched his fists and howled into the darkness. “Her name was Darya, and she was going to become a veterinarian!”

The rescuer shuddered, and I gripped Zayn in a hug. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed.

She can’t be gone. She can’t! Please, God, let us wake up from this nightmare.

In the heavy silence, Sharbat’s little voice spoke with sudden strength. “I know what I want to be when I grow up,” she said.

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

She wiped her wet face and gazed up at her mum. “When I grow up, I want to be like Darya. I’ll hold people’s hands, share my biscuits, and I won’t be afraid of the dark.”

Sharbat’s mother cupped her mouth, her sobs muffled by her hand.

Zayn shivered in my arms, and I hugged him tighter.

The full moon continued to shine. The stars were blinking above us, and in a few hours, tomorrow’s sun would rise again. The rescuer would return to his family, and another white ship would take carefree tourists along the Bosporus. Noisy children would sip their fizzy drinks, laugh, chatter and dream. But she would be gone. A girl in boy’s clothes who dreamt of becoming a vet. She held people’s hands, shared her biscuits and wasn’t afraid of the dark. Her name was Darya, and she deserved to live more than anyone I’ve ever known. But just like us, she was nobody’s child, and this world is a beast to nobody’s children.

* * *

A pang in my chest makes my eyes shut in pain. I grab a glass of water from the table and chug it down, tears sneaking into my gulps.

Miss Nadia turns to me, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “Thank you, Samim. I think we will stop for today.”

I slam the empty glass onto the table and charge out of the room.