When *Omar Myar's homeland descended into horror, he swam across the unforgiving Aegean Sea to seek refuge. Feature writer Alexander Marks Mcleod tells a story of family, fear and freedom.
The-last-mile-was-the-hardest.
The seven miles prior had been manageable, but the last mile in Omar Myar's swim for freedom felt impossible.
About half a mile out, with the raw mountains of Samos in the distance, a gréat, gréу wave violently sucked Omar in and broke across his head like a sack of gravel, launching him along the seabed.
The surf dragged at his legs and hauled him down whilst rock formations concealed below the surface sliced open his elbows and knees, and as he struggled, an intense burning sensation bloomed in the middle of his chest, spreading downwards and inwards. The pain was intolerable.
He looked to his left. Nothing. He looked to his right. No-one. Nobody could hear him scream or curse or cry. As the shore loomed close, the current grew stronger and churned him around with ease until he no longer knew up from down.
Omar, a 32-year-old public speaker from Syria, was staring death in the face. But he was not scared of dying - he was petrified of living.
This is Omar's story. It’s not an uncommon tale in Syria, but most people do not make it to the other side of the Aegean Sea. Most people do not make it through the last mile.
“My story begins in Damascus, Syria,” says Omar. “This is where I was born. I have so many beautiful memories of Damascus. It was such a beautiful city. My beautiful city. Before the fighting started, I had no reason to leave my country”.
But, in March 2011, a merciless civil war ravaged Omar's homeland. Overnight his beautiful city turned into a dilapidated morgue. The dull thud and booms of artillery and missiles crippling Damascus in tandem with the overhead screams of fighter jets kept Omar up every night. Syria had imploded.
“They shot anything that moved. I remember them laying hundreds of bodies out near where I lived in neatly separated intervals. Their faces were unrecognisable because of the damage. The widowed wives didn’t know which body to take home,” he says.
“I lost everything in the blink of an eye. I lost friends beside me. They were right next to me, and in a second I lost them,” says Omar, firmly wringing his hands together.
“You aren’t given a choice, really. The government makes us join the army. They make us slaughter our own people. It is either kill or be killed.”
It would take a year of endless onslaught and massacre before Omar finally committed to leaving his family and seeking refuge. But he couldn’t afford the smuggler's fee to take him by boat.
“So, I decided to swim. Which is a really f—king stupid idea,” he says.
With Omar, brutal honesty is always part of the package.
His confidence is palpable. Almost infectious. But when meeting Omar for the first time, his most distinguishing factor is his eyes, clear-blue and alert. Yet, they also reflect a vague detachment - they speak of hard days and even harder nights. They tell his story.
“I had to plan my journey on the way. I travelled to Lebanon and decided that I’d go to Guzelcamli, Turkey. This would leave me an eight-kilometre swim to Samos, Greece,” says Omar.
“Once I arrived in Lebanon, I trained in the sea for several months and refined my route more carefully. I was confident. It sounded easy. But I was so wrong.”
Omar picked the date for his swim. December 2, 2012. He journeyed to the coast of Guzelcamli, prepared with all the necessary gear: a swimming cap, a nose clip and goggles. He also secured a few essential items around his waist with clingfilm – a phone, a computer chip for his memories and some ginger for a boost of energy.
“I got to the coast at around 4pm. It was a small cliff with about a 10-metre drop. It was far scarier than I imagined. I kept telling myself you have no choice, you cannot turn back. But I had a mental block and couldn’t do it,” says Omar.
There was another reason why Omar didn’t want to make the jump. He could tell the tide was coming in. He could tell because of the bodies washing back. The bodies of men, women and children who also had no choice and could not turn back and who had tried and struggled and failed to escape a life they did not choose for themselves. A coast of corpses. Lifeless.
“I wanted to wait for the tide to change. I didn’t have the strength to do it then,” he says.
“But that is when I was spotted by the Turkish police. I knew that they would catch me and take me back to Syria. Take me back to the war.”
Omar was left with a life-changing ultimatum. He could accept defeat or make a leap of faith. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, thought about his beloved friends and family, and stepped off the edge with no sea below him for 10 metres. Gravity did the rest.
“There was no way back from then on. I left myself on the edge. I could imagine myself up there, but with my soul in the water,” he says.
The cold stole Omar's breath instantly. He panicked. He knew he had to swim through two seas. One made of water, and one made of man. Omar kept his eyes firmly shut until he could feel no more bodies, blowing and backpedalling through the dark and choppy water.
He turned his back to the cliff and started to make his way west to Samos. The waves were fierce at first but calmed as afternoon eased into evening.
“I had lost all concept of time. It felt like I was swimming into my death,” he says.
It didn’t take long until Omar started to experience an acute sense of loneliness and isolation. He felt helpless and overwhelmed and undignified. The water moved beneath him slow and dark. Silence. Nothing.
The intense solitude was getting the best of Omar. He began to cry.
“I was shaking and screaming uncontrollably. My muscles were burning so badly. I thought to myself, I can’t stop. If I stop, I will sink. So, I kept moving forward, through the pain,” he says.
“The fear gave me the power to push on. I started to get into a rhythm. I was moving at a good pace, thinking positively.”
He studied his surroundings. So quiet. Ahead he could make out the baked terracotta terrain of Samos. Omar was now onto the last mile.
“It was complete hell. I could see Samos, it was right there in front of me, but the more I swam and the more I struggled, the harder it got. I would swim frantically for ages, look up, and be six lengths back from where I started.”
Omar tried to brace himself for the 5ft high waves, but he couldn’t predict them, they slapped each other mid-air, joining forces to create swells that raised Omar to a brief peak, before, with the sensation of a falling elevator, brutally dropping him.
The current mocked Omar. It relaxed its grip so he could get a tiny gasp of air before another wave broke over him, constantly leaving him on the edge of suffocation.
“I was almost ready to die. My broken life flashed before my eyes. I was sinking in my memories,” he says.
“But those memories fuelled me. I found strength within. Something woke me up and told me you are much stronger than that, you must go forward, you have to reach your dream, and show the world you are a free human, who can live in this world.”
With that last burst of energy, and after eight hours of swimming, Omar made it. He climbed the granite rock formation on the east coast of Samos – rock that had been smoothed and sculpted by the harsh weather and sea he had just faced.
His cuts and bruises no longer felt so painful as he scrambled to the top of the rocks.
“I stood on the highest point and faced the sea I had just conquered,” he says. “I opened my arms like I was flying because I could feel I had reached my dream. Not reaching Europe - that wasn’t my dream. My dream was to have a choice.
“Now, nobody could make decisions for me again, nobody could force me to join their army, nobody could make me kill people or steal my dreams or take my life away. It's called freedom.”
But as the adrenaline started to deplete, Omar's eight hours of battle began to show. He would have to walk another 12 hours before he reached the town centre of Samos. The Greek citizens helped him, giving Omar warm clothes, cheering him on and providing medicine to numb the pain. It didn’t help.
“The authorities put me in a closed camp where I had to stay until I got a decision from the government. I waited four days until a big ship came which took me and the other refugees to Athens,” he says.
“But from Athens, there was still a long way until safety. I flew to Macedonia, Serbia, Kuwait, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Denmark, until finally, to Sweden.”
Omar did this in six days.
By the time he reached Sweden, he was unrecognisable. His hair was matted upwards like a shrub. His cheeks were sunken; his eyes were lost.
“I spent 10 days in the hospital without moving. My whole system shut down and the doctors had no idea how I was still alive,” says Omar.
“They sent me to a refugee camp in Sweden and the camp offered me a job as a translator from Arabic to English.
“From there I started to work as a speaker – spreading my story. I found I could make a difference by educating people.
“I love what I do now. I am so, so happy.”
Omar's best friend, Noah Persson, a 36-year-old teacher from Sweden, says he doesn’t like asking Omar about his life in Syria.
“Whenever I bring up Damascus, you can see the heartbreak in his eyes. We have an unspoken rule about not talking about it. He has to discuss it a lot for work, so I guess he doesn’t always need to remember,” says Noah.
“He loves Sweden. I am happy he can call it home.”
It has now been 10 years since Omar jumped off that cliff edge in Guzelcamli. He has irregular contact with his family, most of them are either dead or unreachable. He still has trouble sleeping. He doesn’t think that will ever change.
When he closes his eyes, he can’t help but go back to his once-beautiful city. He can’t help but return to the Aegean Sea, and the corpses that it carried. He can’t help but return to the last mile.
The last mile was the hardest.
*To protect the interviewee, his name had been changed for this article.
Comments