Inspired by the promise of this new friendship I bought Khaled Hosseini's book, Sea Prayer. It is hard to believe that it was three years this month that the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach safety, was splashed in all its raw horror across our newspapers. He would have been six now, the age of my eldest grandchild. Little Alan's limp body, his too short life and his cruel death accosted our hearts and briefly challenged us all to do something about Syria. At least to pray.
Alan Kurdi
Hosseini did more than that. He penned this beautiful tribute to a child he would never meet and the city of Homs which is not his own. The voice is that of a father speaking to his son about the country of his birth, the beauty of the landscape and the bustle of the Old City: the souk, mosque, church and Old Town Square. He records the sounds of his grandmother's clanking pot, the bleating of goats and the smell of fried kibbeh. He is trying to fix memories in the mind of a child who may never return for they are about to embark on that most dangerous of journeys, the flight to freedom.
The book's poetry floats on pages awash with beautiful illustrations. Dan Williams' water colours capture the essence of Syria in greens, golds and warm ochres. A mother and child walk through a field 'blown through with wild flowers' where poppies spill down the page in prophetic poignancy. The political changes from protest through siege to war are chronicled in colour, or lack of it. Blues and greens bleach to inky hues and then to black, white and smoky grey as the city burns.
A bomb crater becomes a swimming pool and still the children play. The rubble is their schoolroom and they learn that dark blood is better than bright.
One double page needs no words at all. A huddled mass of humanity trudges wearily from bottom left to top right - sepia toned men, women, children and the elderly broken and beaten by despair. Those who bear witness to many deaths are as dead on the inside as those who die.
Now the father waits with his child. Hell and the devil are behind them and they face the cold waters of the deep blue sea. 'Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen,' says the father, repeating the age-old lie of parents who hope against hope that the world will be kind. The father prays that the sea will know and care how precious is the cargo as they embark on their last voyage. They are at its mercy. The colours are stormy black and fomenting ocean green. Inshallah.
In another beautiful book dabbling in the water theme, Mary Oliver writes about teaching children:
'Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent beautiful blossoms.' (Upstream)
It is too late, sadly, for little Alan Kurdi and the thousands of other innocent children who have perished since 2015, but we who remain can and must work and pray for peaceful places where our little ones can flourish.
