The Boy on the Beach

Syrian-Canadian author and activist Tima Kurdi’s memoir, The Boy on the Beach (2018), tells the heartbreaking story of the death of Kurdi's three-year-old nephew, Alan, whose body washed up on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea after his family attempted to escape war-torn Syria. The Washington Post described the book as an "accomplished and searing political memoir."

On September 2, 2015, Alan made headlines after Turkish journalist Nilufer Demir’s photo of Alan’s lifeless body on the beach was publicized around the world. From his birth in 2012, Alan and his family moved all over Syria and Turkey in an attempt to escape becoming victims of the bloodshed caused by the fighting in the Syria Civil War and assaults by the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL). After three years of this dangerous, tumultuous lifestyle, Alan's father, Abdullah Kurdi, arranged to illegally transport his family to safety on the Greek island of Kos. Alan's aunt and the author of the book, Tima Kurdi, lived in Vancouver, Canada with other members of Alan's extended family. Kurdi and her husband, Mohammad, applied to become refugee sponsors who would take Alan's family in should they escape the Syrian region. Unfortunately, their application was denied. Abdullah, too, applied for asylum in Canada and was rejected, though Canadian officials have since denied that this took place. Abdullah looked to other methods of obtaining legal Canadian resident status as well, but these required a payment of 27,000 Canadian dollars. On top of that, it was necessary for Turkey to declare the applicants to be official refugees, but such a distinction was nearly impossible for anyone, including Abdullah and his family, to obtain.

Faced with this grim reality, Abdullah had little choice but to transport his family through shady, unofficial channels. On September 2, Abdullah, his wife, and Alan resolved to leave on a small, inflatable boat that would take the 30-minute, 2.5-mile journey from the coastal town of Bodrum, Turkey to the Greek island, Kos. He paid men the equivalent of 5,860 dollars for their place on the small vessel, which was about five meters long and designed for no more than eight people. Nevertheless, sixteen people were placed on the raft; the lifejackets given to the travelers were fakes, according to witnesses. Within just five minutes of embarking, the raft capsized, and Alan, along with at least one other child, was thrown from the boat. Their bodies were discovered in the early morning hours on the Turkish coast.



While the photo of Alan's lifeless body increased awareness of the Syrian refugee crisis for a brief moment as it was posted and retweeted around the globe, Kurdi writes that the world quickly forgot about the plight of refugees like Alan. This is her reason for writing the book, she says, to remind people of the lives behind such heart-shattering images and to beg the world to pay attention and to convince Western countries to allow war refugees safe passage into their countries. With the election of Donald Trump, who came to prominence in part on the back of anti-refugee fear-mongering, she writes, her pleas are more desperate than ever. Kurdi resolves to accomplish this by telling her story as personally as possible.
After a series of tense messages between Kurdi and Alan's immediate family, in which she advised them not to go on the dangerous journey, the author received nothing but silence from them. Not until she sees her nephew's body in news reports does she realize what has happened.

After Alan's death, the narrative shifts to describe the author's own journey out of Syria. She describes a happy existence in Damascus before war broke out and recalls her own immigration to Canada. She discusses the shady ecosystem of smugglers who make vague promises to refugees looking to escape Syria, only to take their money, offering them only the slimmest hope of escape on poorly-fashioned watercraft with fake life preservers on board. Kurdi also goes into great detail about the survivor's guilt she feels at having escaped Syria while her nephew perished attempting to do the same, his dead body on display for the entire world to see.

The Boy on the Beach is an unforgettable memoir that reveals the extent of the suffering and tragedy faced by Syrians every day.