An imaginary letter from a Syrian father to his sleeping child the night before they flee on a sea crossing to Europe is at the heart of the new work called "Sea Prayer" by writer and UNHCR ambassador Khaled Hosseini to commemorate the second anniversary of the death of Aylan Kurdi.
Kurdi was the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned on September 2, 2015 in the journey from Syria to Greece, and whose small body was found washed up on a Turkish beach and in a photographic image that shocked the world. In the work, the father recites a monologue, a prayer, on the night before leaving by sea for a new life, a safer life. "My dear Marwan, in the long summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfather's farmhouse, outside of Homs. (...) I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan," the father tells his son in "Sea Prayer".
UK daily The Guardian has created a 360-degree virtual reality video of the monologue, in collaboration with UNHCR and artist Liz Edwards.In it, the tale takes shape and colour in order to encourage reflection on the dramatic reality of Syrian refugees. A letter on the plight of refugees "I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of fried Kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square. But that life, that time, seems like a sham now, even to me, like some long dissolved rumor," the monologue reads.
"First came the protests. Then the siege. The skies spitting bombs. Starvation. Burials". Hosseini wrote the text taking inspiration from the dramatic images of Alan Kurdi's overturned body on the beach. "The way I thought about it, when I saw the photo, was all the unseen work that goes into the raising of a child," Hosseini told The Guardian. "All the private worries, the private anxieties".UNHCR said that since September 2, 2015, at least 8,500 refugees and migrants have died or gone missing in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
A prayer to give hope
"All I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how vast, how indifferent. How powerless I am to protect you from it. All I can do is pray. Pray God steers the vessel true, when the shores slip out of eyeshot and we are a flyspeck in the heaving waters, keeling and titling, easily swallowed. Because you, you are precious cargo, Marwan, the most precious there ever was. I pray the sea knows this," the monologue reads, like a prayer and an appeal to not lose hope. "If I don't have faith or confidence that by doing the work that we do we make a difference, then I would live in a really cynical world that I don't find to be a productive way of living," said Hosseini. "There, the game is really over. At least this way there's a hope that somebody will connect with these stories".
(link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKBNEEY-c3s) The picture is a screenshot of the video Sea Prayer