Fleeing Syria: A Desperate Migration

The top story at today's Los Angeles Times:

The gray rubber dinghy that carries Huda Malak, pregnant with her first child, sags to sea level as it approaches Lesbos. The overloaded raft has been taking on water since it launched from a crag off the Turkish shore, about six miles away.

The 18 Syrians on board desperately try to bail water from the sinking craft. Weight, they need to shed weight. They start jettisoning backpacks that hold most everything they still own. A trip that should have taken 45 minutes has lasted double that, and they are still a mile from the Greek island.

Suddenly, Malak’s husband, Tarek Sheikh, stands up.

“I’m doing this to save you, our child, and everyone on board,” Sheikh tells her.

Then he jumps overboard.

His weight makes the difference, and the raft chugs toward land as Malak looks back to where her husband disappeared into the Aegean.

Finally, the boat makes one last thrust and scutters onto a pebble beach.

“Thank God, we are alive!” shouts Firas Gharghoori, a thick, compact man in shorts and a straw fedora, kneeling on the polished stones in a prayer of gratitude.

The new arrivals begin to wander away from the shore, but Malak remains. She crouches with knees bent, face cradled in her hands, her eyes focused on the sea. Fellow migrants approach to offer support to the 23-year-old schoolteacher, their elation at having made it to Europe tempered. She waves them off.

Without warning, Sheikh’s younger brother, Mohammed, takes off his shirt and plunges into the surf in a bid to rescue Sheikh — soon followed by a grizzled Greek restaurateur who has wandered to the scene. The Greek later swims back, his leg bloodied from the rocks. He gamely tries to maneuver a white paddle boat to sea as a makeshift rescue craft. It doesn’t get very far.

A Greek coast guard vessel appears offshore, but far from where Sheikh disappeared. Gharghoori frantically signals at the cutter to move to the left. A coast guard officer in aviator sunglasses, who is in radio contact with the cutter, arrives in a pickup. In broken English, he tries to calm everyone. A few minutes later, he approaches Malak and gives the thumbs-up sign.

Her husband, the hero of the gray rubber boat, is safe. His brother has been rescued too.

This year, more than 2,500 refugees and migrants have died trying to reach Europe in an armada of flimsy rubber dinghies and rickety fishing boats.

Tens of thousands of others are willing to take the risk. But they make it...

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