Refugee The Diary Of Ali Ismail -

I have to close the notebook now. The water is getting higher. Tarek is handing me his left shoe.

Note to the reader: This entry was found sealed inside a plastic bag, wedged between the inner and outer hull of a deflated dinghy washed ashore on Lesvos. The ink is smeared, but the pencil marks are legible.

But tonight, I am a cartographer.

— Ali

The father of three behind us starts to pray. The teenager from Idlib is laughing—hysterically, I think—because the moon is very bright and we are all going to die in a raft meant for ten people that holds forty-seven. refugee the diary of ali ismail

I drew a map in the condensation on the window of the bus heading to the coast. My mother thought I was drawing a cloud. But I was drawing the olive grove behind our house in Homs. The one where my brother and I buried a tin box of marbles in 2011. The marbles were blue like the sky before the jets came.

Today, I stopped being a number.

We don’t run away from death. We scoop it out with our finest possessions.

By the time you reach the water, you are a ghost wearing running shoes. I have to close the notebook now