wenty-seven-year-old Rafee Abarra, a shy and humble pharmacist from Homs, would hate being labeled a guardian angel. Instead, this Syrian refugee would insist he’s just a normal
guy whose story isn’t particularly noteworthy -- but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
For many refugees, Rafee is perhaps the only person on Earth looking out for them when they climb into dangerous rubber dinghies bound for Greece.
It’s here, in this calm, leafy German city that was bombed into oblivion during World War II, where he watches -- quiet and unassuming -- over a people in exodus. (Rafee requested the name of this town be kept out of the story for his own security because he’s receiving death threats from smugglers who profit from refugees’ dangerous journeys.)
Late into the night and early morning, Rafee can often be found wide awake, using his cell phone to monitor the GPS coordinates of a rubber raft that is either sinking or stranded. The passengers have called Rafee for help, and he, in turn, calls the coast guard to report their position so that rescue boats can find them.
Rafee has dialed up the coast guard so many times that they know him by name.
Whenever possible, he stays on the phone and WhatsApp with the refugees until they reach the shore. And even before people board the dinghies, Rafee monitors Facebook groups devoted to helping refugees make it to Europe, dishing out life-saving information and a firm warning: Wear a life jacket.
He didn’t ask for this role, and he does it for free. But for Rafee, who himself nearly drowned earlier this year in a rundown fishing boat with 154 others, it’s a calling. If it wasn’t for the Greek coast guard, he says, they likely all would have died.
The day he made it to Germany was the same day he made the first call that saved someone’s life. While checking Facebook, he noticed a frantic plea posted on a group where refugees share information about the journey to Europe. Their boat was sinking, the post read, and they needed assistance.
Rafee says a friend then taught him how to give coordinates to the coast guard, which rescued the sinking boat 10 minutes later.
The Guardian Angel
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Rafee, a Syrian pharmacist who tracks refugees as they make the dangerous sea voyage to Greece, shows the wave conditions that day on his cell phone on Aug. 26, 2015. He alerts the coast guard of the coordinates of dinghies filled with refugees who need help.
“There were people drowning, and now they have their lives back,” he says.
Sitting inside a hole-in-the-wall Lebanese restaurant, where he takes comfort in the Levantine Arabic spoken around him, he pulls out one of his two cell phones and begins to scroll through dozens of saved contacts -- all people who have called him from onboard dinghies, desperate.
He begins to play one saved voice clip and his body goes limp. His stoic exterior crumbles.
“The waves are so high!” shouts a petrified Syrian man on the other end of the line. A woman screams in the background. “Don’t be afraid!” the man tells her, as if trying to reassure himself.
“Are you sailing now?” Rafee asks with the level-headed tone of an emergency dispatcher. “Put faith in God. … Send me your location on WhatsApp.”
When Rafee puts his phone down, he just shakes his head in silence.
“I feel like I’m burning inside,” Rafee says quietly. “It’s an ugly feeling when parents call you and say, ‘For God’s sake, save us.’”
“I’m just one person! Who am I? How am I supposed to save you? They’re not prepared enough but they think they’ll make it anyway.”
After every phone call, Rafee says, it’s difficult to fall asleep. The mental exhaustion of his role as rescuer is wearing on him. There is no escape. But if he stopped answering his phone, people would likely die. And there are few who would fill his shoes.
“Why do Syrians have to go through all of this?” he asks with a desperation that fills the room. “Why is the whole world now used to seeing Syrians drowning? Syrians dead. Syrians burning. Syrians broken. Why? For what? Is it just because we’re Syrian?”
For a moment, Rafee is too overwhelmed to utter a word. But then, he pinpoints what gives him hope.
“The thing that makes me really happy is when I open my Facebook and find that same person who called me from a dinghy and they’re in the country they want to be in — and they’re happy,” he explains. “They call me and say, ’Thank you.’”
Rafee works with three other volunteers, two in Turkey and one in Qatar, who monitor social media and phone lines around the clock. His goal, he says, is to track every single dinghy that leaves the Turkish coast so that nobody has to face death like he did.
In recent weeks, Rafee’s outreach movement -- a modern underground railroad -- has exploded into hundreds of different channels of caring and support. People in Germany are opening their homes to strangers in need of a place to live. On the side of the road in Hungary, volunteers are handing out food and water. Concerned citizens post maps for refugees on social media showing where minefields may be in Croatia -- the newest country refugees and migrants are trying to pass through since Germany, Austria and Hungary sealed their borders.
And still, there is no end in sight to this desperate mass movement, even after the EU passed a deal on Sept. 22 to jointly take on some 120,000 refugees, despite four member states voting against the mandatory quota.
Much of the recent activism -- making up for devastating lapses in state response -- was jumpstarted by the shocking death of Alan Kurdi. The 3-year-old refugee from Kobani drowned along with his brother Galib, his mother Rehan, and other Syrians who hoped to make it to the Greek island of Kos.
After the tragedy, a Syrian man who says he was on the same boat as Alan and his family messaged Rafee. “Enough people have died,” he said. “Thank you for helping.”
The photograph of the lifeless little body washed up on the Turkish shore quickly went viral, prompting people around the world to ask: “How can we help?”
Rafee says the most profound reaction he encountered was from a young Syrian. “The boy tells me, ‘I need the Greek and Turkish coast guard numbers,’” Rafee recalls. “And I was like, ‘Why? Are you going to travel?’”
“He says, ‘I’m in Syria. I want you to teach me how to give coordinates.’”
Still confused, Rafee pushed back.
The boy responded: “Because I’m seeing the children of my country drown and I want to help.”
“I was so glad,” Rafee says, laughing. “People want to step up. It was just me, and now, everyone is helping each other.”
A grin spreads across his face, as if a sense of warmth has washed over him. And then, his phone buzzes -- another person needs help.
Aris Messins / AFP / Getty Images