The following is from Helen Benedict’s The Good Deed. Benedict is a British-American writer whose most recent work is about war and refugees. Her war novels received citations as best book of the year from the Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly, while her nonfiction won the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the PEN Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, and inspired a lawsuit against the Pentagon and the Oscar-nominated film, The Invisible War.
Darkness had already closed in by the time we reached the coast of Turkey, the moon a mere wisp in a sky clotted with clouds, and because it was too dangerous to light up a torch or a telephone, we could see little beyond the sand and stones beneath our feet. A rough-looking man appeared out of the night, almost invisible in black clothes, and hustled us into a cove crowded with people. I could just make out the shape of a gray, inflatable dinghy on the water about seven meters long; too small for even the fifteen passengers we’d been promised, let alone the dozens waiting on the shore. I glanced at Leila, my skin tightening.
Shadowy figures moved about distributing orange life jackets to those who paid. Leila managed to buy one for each of the children but the jackets ran out before she, Farah or I could buy our own. None of us knew how to swim.
“Look how fat I am, Mama!” Dunia said with a giggle as Farah buckled the jacket around her chest.
The man in black walked over to us while we were strapping the boys into their own jackets. “No bring so many people ’less you pay,” he said to Leila in pidgin Arabic. I couldn’t see him well but I could see that he was large and muscular.
Dunia edged closer to Farah and gripped her leg.