The Boy on the Beach Quotes

“Some people asked Abdullah for financial aid, and he wanted to help all of them—to pay for a life-saving surgery for a child or grandparent, to get a family a house before the cold winter came. In their eyes, Abdullah was a rich and powerful man now. ey didn’t know that the food keeping him alive and the clothes on his back had been paid for by me and by the KRG. they didn’t know that the only money he had was the two Turkish coins in his pocket, which had survived that brutal night at sea and which he carried everywhere as a memorial to Ghalib. ey didn’t know that if the KRG hadn’t taken
Abdullah under its wing, he would have remained under the charge of his relatives in Kobani, who could barely feed and shelter themselves. ey didn’t know that in many ways, my brother had less than nothing. He had the power of a man who had been drowning at sea for weeks.”
― Tima Kurdi, The Boy on the Beach

“To this day, it makes me sick to think about that photograph of Alan, even though I carry it with me everywhere I go. It is burned into my mind and tattooed onto my heart. It’s impossible to describe exactly how it struck me in that first moment. Maybe it’s not even necessary to do so. It probably struck you in a similar way. It conveys two things at once. On the one hand, it’s the familiar and tender pose of a toddler sleeping, his body awkwardly contorted, yet he’s sound asleep nonetheless, his fat little cheek pressed against the mattress. But it’s not a mattress. It’s wet, cold sand. And he’s not asleep. He is dead. Everything about the setting is so very wrong. He’s at the edge of the tide line. The water is lapping against his face. You are simultaneously overtaken by panic and urgency—a need to act quickly to remove him from harm’s way before it’s too late. en you realize, it’s already too late. You cannot save him. I could not save him. All at once, that photograph conveys our greatest joys and our darkest fears. Whether you are a parent or an auntie like me, a teenager or an elder, you feel as though you have stumbled upon a terrible accident. This has happened to someone too young and vulnerable to properly care for himself. A boy who died under your watch.”
― Tima Kurdi, The Boy on the Beach

“He would put the other hand up to Allah, and say, in a loud voice, ‘Allah yerzaak ya Baba. May God give more and more.”
― Tima Kurdi, The Boy on the Beach

“. “You don’t have to be rich with money to help others,” he said, when I was growing up. “You just have to have a heart.”
― Tima Kurdi, The Boy on the Beach

“When you saw the photograph of that little boy, my dear nephew Alan, dead on a faraway shore, you became a part of our family. You shared our
horror, our heartache, our shock, and our outrage. You wanted to save him, but you knew it was too late. In your grief, you reached out, and by doing so, you grabbed hold of my hand and pulled me to you. You joined my family’s chorus of grief. You helped save me from drowning.”
― Tima Kurdi, The Boy on the Beach

“To get his dad’s attention, Alan would cup Abdullah’s face so that their eyes locked. And then he would smile, or laugh, or stick out his tongue. In those incredibly stressful days, it was as if he were saying, “Smile, Baba. Everything will be okay.”
― Tima Kurdi, The Boy on the Beach