The Wrong End of the Telescope

by Rabih Alameddine

Rubber dinghies were more common than wooden boats, which was worse because they were easier targets for the commandos, dreadful men in black uniforms and masks who attacked the refugees in the waters. The commandos drove their boats toward the refugees, used long knives attached to poles to rip open the dinghies, and roared away. Sometimes they shot at the refugees. Greeks believed they were from the Turkish government, Turks thought they were Germans, but Emma said they were rogues among the Hellenic Coast Guard, members of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party.

Lebanon became home to the largest number of Syrian refugees and to the largest refugee population per capita in the world. In a country of four million, there were more than a million refugees, though the actual number was closer to a million and a half.

I remember listening to you on the radio saying there was nothing you could do to ameliorate the situation, that you felt helpless and pointless, but that you thought doing nothing would have been a crime.

They were lucky, as was Sumaiya’s family. They arrived in Lesbos while Europe was in a quandary as to what to do with them or, more accurately, while European nations were trying to figure how to stop the refugees from entering without appearing monstrous for doing so. The November 2015 Paris attacks increased the influence of the anti-immigrant factions in Europe, but those forces had yet to mature into their full fascistic power. During a brief window, Syrians, particularly families with children, were allowed to trickle into Western European countries. Processing was difficult when we were on the island but would become next to impossible not too long after. Within a month after we left, the European Union began to smother refugees in more and more bureaucracy, the empire’s most effective weapon. We were there a few weeks before Europe all but closed the borders. I understand that these days families wait for months to get a red stamp and then wait for many more months to get a blue stamp, more for yellow or green, if they’re lucky and aren’t sent back because they turned out to be color-blind. You and I were lucky. We were in Moria before it morphed into a callous prison camp, before the riots and arson, before the refugees had to be forcibly returned to Turkey, returned to whatever home the authorities deemed was theirs. With the dumb tenacity of moths the refugees kept coming, and from behind the cold pane of Moria, they longed for the unattainable warmth. Lesbos was...

Three days after the Turks took back control of Smyrna, a devastating fire erupted and destroyed at least half the city—the Christian and Armenian neighborhoods but not the Muslim or Jewish ones. Depending on who was writing the history or who was telling the tale, anywhere between ten thousand and a hundred thousand Greeks perished. But that was not what upset you, was it? Most of the Armenians and Greeks who survived ended up suffering a bit more than death by fire. Many of the women were raped. Most of the refugees were sent into the interior of the country, where they died an even harsher death. Thousands of deaths, some historians claimed as many as one hundred thousand. Definitely upsetting, but that was not what made your blood percolate in its veins. When the fire started, Nikolaos’s grandmother and her sister ran to the port along with thousands of Greek refugees. They crammed the waterfront. Many ended up jumping into the water to escape the flames even though they could not swim. Allied ships docked at the harbor refused to pick them up. The allies were supposed to be neutral. They could not get involved. No, even that was not what made you as angry as Achilles. To alleviate the discomfort of the sailors who had to listen to the cries for help from drowning refugees, the British ships played loud music on their speakers. Refugees wailed while listening to popular tunes of the time. Nikolaos told me you kept asking him in your bad French if his grandmother recall...

as poor as these refugees were, they were not the most destitute of Syria’s population. The Turkish mafia charged a thousand dollars per passenger, a bit less for children, and you might be able to haggle a discount if you were willing to leave at odd hours or during reckless storms. Those were exorbitant fees. Where was the money coming from? Where was the money going?

You knew, I knew, everyone from the Middle East knew. Hell, every immigrant knew. Our country was redefining the enemy and it was us. But first let’s bomb them over there. Shock and awe, baby. Let all of us who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom blindly destroy their countries, shatter their political systems, economies, infrastructures, and create millions of refugees for generations to come. Bush called that civilization’s fight. Even grief recedes with time and grace. But not before we damage the world for eternity.

Everything she had ever worked for was erased overnight by the war: the home she had decorated, the plants she had loved and watered, the clients she had nurtured. There must be a name somewhere for what’s not there, Miriam told you on her second interview. A few years had passed since you last spoke to her. She grieved for what she’d lost when she first arrived, her family, her apartment, her job. But one day she woke and the grief was gone. Poof! She had lost too much, she had a hole in her heart, and grief had rushed in like a high tide to fill it. In time, her grief withdrew. She now had nothing except for the hole.

As Francine says, “Insanity is the insistence on meaning.”