Gemma Hoskins (right), is a retired elementary school teacher who attended Keough from 1966-1970. She leads the amateur detective group investigating Cesnik’s murder. Abbie Schaub (left) is a retired registered nurse who attended Keough from 1966-1970. She is working with Hoskins to investigate the murder. (Photos: Abbie Schaub and Gemma Hoskins)
he three brothers step off the bus, squinting into the bright morning sun. After nine hours on the road, they’re now in the Turkish port city of Izmir, renowned for its sea breezes
and sandy beaches. But refugees and migrants come not for the sunbathing, but for smugglers.
Already weary, the trio sets off toward Basmane Square. There, anxious travelers make final preparations for their journey across the Aegean Sea by seeking out those who can get them into Greece, paying middlemen to secure smuggling fees until they make it across the waterway, buying life jackets and stocking up on as much European currency, food and water as they can carry.
“Welcome, our Arab brothers,” reads a sign at a bustling money-exchange shop, offering an Arabic translator to help customers change their cash into euros and dollars for the costly trip ahead. One street over, thirsty refugees, trying to save every penny they can, drink out of a utility hose left out on the sidewalk.
A huge metal globe looms over this square. It’s an ironic symbol for the flow of Middle Easterners and South Asians passing through, considering it’s often impossible for them to travel internationally using legal or safe means. Hundreds of people – doctors, laborers, lawyers, farmers and artists, mostly Syrian – sit cross-legged on the hot cement. Some look like backpackers with expensive packs and selfie sticks. Others carry meager belongings in plastic garbage bags, with only the clothes on their back. All seek the same goal: asylum in Europe.
“At the end [of the day], we don’t have any country,” Eyad says, determined to make it to Germany, with its relatively lax asylum laws and strong economy. “We have nothing to go back to.”
Once Eyad gets his brothers safely to Germany, where they’ll seek asylum for themselves and other relatives, he plans to join good friends settled in Belgium and pursue his dream of becoming a cartoonist. His art – his main means of coping with the chaos and displacement – touches on topics ranging from the war ripping apart Syria, to women’s rights.
“There’s no going back,” Eyad says.
The rich and poor alike here are equipped only with what food, medicine and keepsakes they can carry, hiding money, identification papers and passports in shirts, pants and socks. They fear, with reason, that they’ll lose their few belongings to the sea -- or, just as likely, to thieves, gangs, greedy smugglers or dishonest police.
Passports – nearly impossible to renew these days for Syrians – and identification papers are especially well-protected, sometimes stashed in deflated balloons, a low-tech waterproofing system sold for as little as 1 Turkish lira, or $0.33. Even if these tenacious travelers lose everything else, at least they’ll have proof they are who they say they are.
A vendor sells balloons, plastic bags and duct tape on the side of the road in bustling Izmir on Aug. 7. Refugees and migrants use the travel essentials to keep their valuables – like passports, cell phones and money– dry when they take inflatable dinghies and rickety fishing boats to Greece.
After weeks of anxious waiting, on Aug. 6, 2015 Hamza hugs his sobbing wife, Battoul, as his father and young son look on. He's about to leave the family's Istanbul apartment for Izmir. From Izmir, he plans to take an inflatable dinghy to one of the Greek islands and on to Western Europe.
Photos Courtesy of Sophia Wallace
Student take part in Quiet Time twice a day at BUGS,
for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon.
A
Opener, Getty Images/iStockphoto/Shutterstock.
We’re going to expand
the brain’s neocortex and
become more godlike.
But Kurzweil believes that being connected to computers will make us more human, more unique and even godlike.
“Evolution creates structures and patterns that over time are more complicated, more knowledgable, more creative, more capable of expressing higher sentiments, like being loving,” he said. “It’s moving in the direction of qualities that God is described as having without limit.”
“So as we evolve, we become closer to God. Evolution is a spiritual process. There is beauty and love and creativity and intelligence in the world – it all comes from the neocortex. So we’re going to expand the brain’s neocortex and become more godlike.”
By Kathleen Miles
Photo by Jeff Eason for Huffington Magazine
he bus to Izmir leaves in 20 minutes, but Sarwat won't let go of her three sons. She clings to them, tenderly whispering the last-minute advice of a mother who may never see her children again.
The rest of the family sits somberly in the living room, cracking the occasional joke to break the tension.
"We're numb," says Nasser, the father, in the final moments with his boys, ages 16, 24 and 28. "We've moved from place to place. We've surrendered."
This family of five hurried out of Damascus three years ago after the military called up two of their sons, Hamza and Eyad, to fight. They watched as Bashar Assad's regime cracked down on peaceful protests, squelching dissent in its tracks.
They sought safetly and security in Lebenon, and later in Turkey, and have lived for less then a year in Instanbul. Here they have few opportunities to continue their educations, and no legal means to work.
But there's hope on the horizon for their sons in Western Europe. Hundreds of thousands have gone before them on the expensive journey of over a thousand miles across land and sea. They are desperate – there's a bloodbath in Syria behind them, and on the road ahead some have drowned, many others have been locked up in prisons or detained indefinitely in refugee camps, and others were simply never heard from again.
Yet many have made it to Europe, posting smiling selfies on Facebook of drained but joyous arrivals in Vienna, Munich, Stockholm. This family seeks that euphoria, too.
Eyad, 28, a jovial graphic designer, hopes to go back to school and become a cartoonist. Tall and loyal Hamza, 24, seeks work to support his wife and 4-month-old child. And shy Mwfaa, the baby of the trio, wants to finish high school.
"Go be a man," Nasser proudly says to Mwfaa, voice shaking. The teenager looks unsure as he throws on a backpack and grabs his straw cowboy hat, merely shrugging when asked if he's nervous. Sarwat gives him a squeeze, whimpering as she hands over the role of protector to her two older sons.
Hamza embraces his sobbing wife, Battoul, and gives his sleepy-eyed little boy one last kiss. They hope to be reunited soon in Europe, but they know asylum applications and family reunification could take over a year, if they happen at all.
As the three brothers walk out the door, the younger two lag behind. But Eyad, in a Marvin the Martian T-shirt, plunges ahead.
The Goodbye
Istanbul
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"You take your feelings and just go," he says, refusing to look back at his family as they stand in the doorway, waving goodbye and wiping away tears. "If you're not strong from the beginning you can't make it."
With all three brothers finally out the door, cowboy hats in hand, they sprint to catch the metro to the bus station. They make it just in time, climbing into the overnight bus with only a few minutes to spare.
As the engine starts, Eyad takes out his cellphone. This is his lifeline to loved ones back home, smugglers along the way and guidance from social media groups set up by refugees who have already made the journey to Western Europe.
"Hello my friends all around Turkey," Eyad posts on Facebook. "From Istanbul to Gaziantep to Antakya and Mersin – I will see you soon in the lands of the 'foreigners.' The journey has begun."
THERE'S NO GOING BACK
Izmir, Turkey
Meanwhile, shops lining the main streets here in Izmir sell the ultimate essential: life jackets.
In the basement of one store disguised as a clothing retailer, people sort through piles of flotation vests, inner tubes and arm floaties. A little girl points to a flimsy plastic inner tube decorated with cartoons and begs her mother to buy it. The parent opts for protective practicality – a bright orange jacket, sturdy enough to withstand several hours floating in the sea, and visible from far away in case the boat capsizes.
The shop provides a range of options, from infant-sized jackets all the way up to extra-large sizes. Eyad asks for a large, but they’re sold out. He returns the next day to purchase one that fits him, and not one of the slipshod versions with careless stitching.
The brothers crack jokes, trying momentarily to forget all that they’re leaving behind. Yet Hamza’s phone keeps dinging – questions from his wife Battoul on their whereabouts and videos of his baby, back in Istanbul, cooing in his crib.
Affordable hotels and hostels are nearly all booked, forcing many people to sleep hugging their belongings on the street. But the brothers have lucked out. "Let's go back to our suite," Hamza deadpans, referring to cramped, shabby hostel room the brothers will share for the night. "I'm going to take a bath in the jacuzzi."
A mother sorts through life jackets for her young daughters in the basement of an Izmir clothing store on Aug. 7, 2015. One of the little girls begs her mother to buy a flimsy plastic inner tube decorated with cartoons, but she refuses, opting for a sturdy jacket suitable for the dangerous sea journey to Greece.
Into The Sea
Ayvacik, Turkey
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fter a sweltering night of restless sleep in Izmir, and an anxious morning waiting for the smuggler’s final call, Eyad, Hamza and Mwfaa clamber into the back of a cramped cattle
truck just before midnight with 90 other men, women and children. The Syrian smuggler leads the way in his own car.
The truck jostles along the coastline for five hours, headed toward dinghies hidden on the beach near the town of Ayvacik. The passengers are crammed so close they cannot sit down or breathe freely in the sealed-off truck. Eyad and Hamza stand the whole way, but young Mwfaa, limp from lack of sleep, slumps over to doze on Hamza’s legs. Others heed a survival tip given by those who made the trip before: Stand in the corner of the truck so you’re not crushed.
There are other dangers, too. Just one day later, an overloaded bus carrying Syrian refugees on this smuggling route crashes into a roadside wall, killing 11. But today, passengers arrive safely at dawn to the boat push-off point.
“We arrived after our souls escaped us,” Hamza later says of the traumatic journey.
The boat ride costs the equivalent of $1,200 each. But one passenger, a volunteer or someone chosen by the smuggler, pays no fee. Armed with only a two-minute steering lesson, the “captain” will shepherd a boat full of people – often including his own family members – through treacherous waters.
One such refugee, about to steer a dinghy full of friends and strangers, admits his fears hours before crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Lesvos. “My God, how am I supposed to drive 40 to 45 people?” asks Shadi, a 25-year-old Syrian barber from Damascus seeking asylum in Germany. “This is really hard, God. The responsibility of their lives is in my hands.”
“I'm going to put my faith in God and I'm going to head out,” he continues. “Nothing will happen unless it is written by God."
The three brothers will put their lives in the hands of someone just like Shadi when they cinch on neon orange life jackets and stash their belongings in plastic bags. Eyad’s clothing, money, Syrian passport, cell phone, cell phone charger and a bottle of water all go in. Their family spent months scraping together enough cash for this trip.
Once he’s in the flimsy rubber dinghy with 42 other refugees, Eyad sends his location by WhatsApp to friends on land, just in case the boat starts to sink, or infamous black-clad “commandos” attack the group with bats and whips.
A half hour in, the cheap motor stalls. It starts, then stops, over and over again. The frantic passengers phone the smuggler, who is back on land, but he yells at them to keep going. There are 200 other refugees waiting for their turn to cross. If the dinghy turns back and the coast guard spots them, they risk botching the whole operation by giving away the push-off point.
Armed Turks hired by the smuggler patrol the coastline just to make sure the refugees do as they’re told. The brothers worry the smuggler’s thugs may drown them if they willingly turn back. So the dinghy keeps sputtering toward Lesvos, despite the faulty motor.
They don’t make it very far. The Turkish coast guard spots the dinghy, veers toward them, and demands that the dinghy captain turn the boat around. The passengers panic, yelling at the captain to drive as fast as he can. But it’s no use.
Coast guard officers spray a water cannon threateningly close to the dinghy, attempting to scare them back to shore.
“Let us cross!” a refugee howls.
“We have children!” says another. “Oh my God, help us!”
Parents thrust their offspring into the air in view of the coast guard. But to no avail.
The captain loops back to land, as instructed, only to make another attempt after the coast guard leaves. But the dinghy motor totally stalls, and the coast guard circles back, this time forcing the passengers onto the coast guard boat.
Defeated, Eyad sends a selfie from the coast guard ship deck, smirking at his misfortune. “We've been here since the morning under the sun,” he texts. “We're tired, we're really tired."
It’s the end of the road for Hamza and Mwfaa, who head back with Eyad to Istanbul. The family decides it just isn’t worth the risk for Hamza, a new husband and father, or Mwfaa, still just a youth.
Eyad, however, refuses to give up. Several weeks later, he makes it to France alone, exhausted and ecstatic.
The next day, he sends a cell phone photo. The Eiffel Tower, standing tall over the Seine. With it, a message: “Welcome to Paris.”
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Exhausted men rest on the deck of a Turkish coast guard boat on Aug. 9, 2015 during an hours-long detention. The coast guard caught them, along with Eyad and his brothers, while trying to take a dinghy at dawn to the Greek island of Lesvos, later forcing them back to Izmir. Photograph taken by Eyad on his cell phone.
Ozan Kose / AFP/ Getty Images) & (Sean Gallup / Getty Image
Cem Oksuz/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Turkish Coast Guard Command/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images