In the summer of 2015, Ahmad Dandoush, now 23, crammed himself, along with his brother and two dozen others, into a rubber boat designed for eight people. They set off from Turkey, heading across the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean for Greece.
The Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis who were packed into the tiny boat were fleeing violence and upheaval in their homelands. Each had paid $1,000 to smugglers, hoping to reach Europe and its promise of a new life. Dandoush, who grew up in the Syrian city of Latakia, was running from that nation’s civil war, which has killed close to 500,000 people and caused millions to flee for their lives.
“We all knew what happened to other refugees, that some had died,” Dandoush recalls. “We just wanted to get to Greece alive.”
In the summer of 2015, Ahmad Dandoush, now 23, squeezed himself along with his brother and two dozen others, into a rubber boat designed for eight people. They set off from Turkey, heading across the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean for Greece.
The Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis who were packed into the tiny boat were fleeing violence and upheavalin their homelands. Each had paid $1,000 to smugglers. They hoped to reach Europe and its promise of a new life.
Dandoush, who grew up in the Syrian city of Latakia, was running from that nation’s civil war. The war has killed close to 500,000 people and caused millions to flee for their lives.
“We all knew what happened to other refugees, that some had died,” Dandoush recalls. “We just wanted to get to Greece alive.”