Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini is a short novel about a son and fathers journey across the ocean in order to escape the troubles in Syria during the refugee crisis. In an interview Hosseini says that the children caught up in all of this, “have no personal connection to the beauty and the richness of their country before all the turmoil began.” Hosseini expresses this idea in his novel when he writes about how the father wishes his son could’ve seen Homs, their hometown, before everything bad started to happen. In the interview, Hosseini talks about his recent travels to Lebanon and how life there hard and rigorous. After talking to some of the refugees and experiencing the lifestyle of those in Lebanon, Hosseini said he was able to understand why a father might risk his life to cross the sea with his family. Most refugees make great journeys across open water with very little food and water in order to hopefully reach a better life somewhere else.
Sea Prayer was written to highlight the struggles refugees go through to flee their own countries. The journey these refugees take crossing the open waters is dangerous and can be lethal. There is one particular case that caught the eye of many people, including Hosseini, who was inspired to write Sea Prayer because of it. Four years after the crisis in Syria began, Alan Kurdi’s parents sent him and his brother off in an inflatable boat. Minutes after the boat left the shore it was capsized, resulting in the death of 3 year old Alan Kurdi. Alan’s mother and brother died as well but the devastating thing was that Alan was found on the shore of Bodrum, face sideways in the sand. Since the image of Alan was taken, over 8,500 people have drowned or been reported missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean.
The image above became a defining picture of the ongoing war in Styria. It also inspired Hosseini to write about the “unthinkable despair that thousands of other ordinary people face every day to abandon home.” I hope that refugee agencies start taking action in order help to prevent a tragedies, like the death of Alan Kurdi, from happening again.
Sources:
http://100photos.time.com/photos/nilufer-demir-alan-kurdi#photograph
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