Last August 27th the decomposed bodies of 71 migrants were discovered in an abandoned lorry on the side of an Austrian motorway. The vehicle and its cargo had set off from the Hungarian capital of Budapest the previous day before passersby noticed putrid liquid seeping from the back door.
A week later the image of a three-year-old boy washed up on the shores of a Turkish resort flashed across the world. The lifeless body of Alan Kurdi instantly became the symbol of Europe’s refugee crisis. Despite the colossal numbers – more than 700,000 people had reached Europe in the first nine months of 2015 – it took personal stories such as these to propel the migration crisis to the top of the international news agenda.
Europe is witnessing the biggest mass movement of people since the second World War. More than a million people are expected to make the journey this year. Two new books by journalists attempt to get behind the numbers and to explore the human stories behind Europe’s refugee crisis. They are the most important books you will read this year. Through expert telling of the stories of those who have made the perilous journeys to Europe, the books are an indictment of the European Union’s response to the refugee crisis and a shocking wake-up call to Europeans who have ignored the human tragedy.
The opening pages of Charlotte McDonald-Gibson's Cast Away: Stories of Survival from Europe's Refugee Crisis present the list of characters who will feature in the book – a dramatis personae that charts the crisis through their stories of desperation and survival.
There is Mohammed, a trainee electrician from Syria who leaves for Europe after he is called to serve in the army of Bashsar al-Assad. Sina, a chemical engineer, flees Eritrea’s dictatorial regime for Europe while heavily pregnant. She crosses three continents before giving birth after being pulled ashore from a sinking migrant boat. Majid, a middle-class Nigerian boy whose father is butchered in front of his eyes, escapes north to Libya, where he is finally forced onto a rickety migrant boat to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
Also woven through the narrative are the stories of Nart, an idealistic Syrian lawyer, and Hanan, a Syrian mother of four, who watches helplessly as her peaceful life disintegrates in Damascus.
Harrowing stories
McDonald-Gibson’s gripping storytelling has a cinematic quality as she inhabits the minds of these individuals. At times it’s easy to forget that these are the experiences of real people, not fictional characters, as the reader becomes immersed in harrowing stories of danger, deception and disillusionment.
But McDonald-Gibson, a former deputy foreign editor of the London Independent, also balances individual stories with a wider historical sweep. Cast Away offers insights into the extraordinary political and historical contexts of the migrants' home countries.
As we trace the path of Majid we learn about the violent chaos in parts of Nigeria, and Gadafy’s brutal expulsion of non-Libyans to Europe in the aftermath of the Nato bombing campaign in 2011.
Sina’s story reveals the political climate of Eritrea, where people frequently disappear and complete adherence to the political regime is demanded.
Syria’s gradual slide into civil war is also described in vivid detail. McDonald-Gibson captures the textures and colours of Damascus as the Arab Spring morphs into civil war. In a sentence she shows how the power cuts in Damascus that heralded the beginning of the war allow a space for clandestine protest, as the sound of anti-Assad slogans wafts through the evening air. Demonstrating how the lives of individuals intersect with history is one of the main achievements of her book.
The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis, by Patrick Kingsley, is an equally compelling account of the refugee crisis, based on the author's reporting for the Guardian since his appointment as the paper's first migration correspondent.
Kingsley shadows the trajectory of one Syrian refugee, Hashem al-Souki, as he traces his journey from Syria through Egypt and on to Europe, where he finally arrives in Sweden.
But the book is much more than the story of one Syrian migrant. Based on his travels in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Kingsley provides a fascinating insight into the crisis.
He tells the story by plotting his route along key points on the migrant journey. These range from the unforgiving landscape of the Sahara via Libya’s northern coast, swarming with people smugglers, to the central railway station in Milan, where thousands of migrants gather to board trains.
In contrast to Cast Away, from which the author's own voice is absent, Kingsley's first-person account is to the forefront, and his experience reporting from the front lines of the crisis gives an unrivalled perspective. Among the strongest chapters is his analysis of the smuggling industry, based on interviews with smugglers in Libya, Egypt and Turkey. His first-hand account of walking the migrant route through the western Balkans alongside thousands of migrants is riveting.
The book is brought alive by interviews and chance meetings between Kingsley and migrants, smugglers and a smattering of westerners eager to help their fellow humans.
One of the most powerful anecdotes is a description of a 16-hour car journey from Hungary with Hans Breuer, an Austrian Jew, who helps Syrians to reach his country. As they near the end of the journey one of his passengers wakes up screaming in her sleep, before realising that she is in safe company. “My own mother, she did not sleep easily,” Breuer tells Kingsley. “She was tortured by the Gestapo, and she screamed every night.”
Rare moments of redemption
Though glimpses of individual humanity surface in both books, moments of redemption are rare. Instead the overriding sense is of the ruthlessness of human beings – smugglers, corrupt border guards, informers – who are motivated by greed, helplessness and fear.
Both books are damning in their criticism of the EU’s hapless response, which has left the union’s founding values of solidarity in disarray. Kingsley argues that one response is some form of mass resettlement project, because the refugee crisis is not going to go away.
Still, the most important achievement of both works is not to suggest political answers but to give a voice to the millions of people who have risked their lives to come to Europe.
At one point Kingsley talks to a Syrian living in Egypt who is trying to cross the Mediterranean after his first attempt failed. Why does he risk the journey?
“Why do we keep going by sea?” he replies. “Because we trust God’s mercy more than the mercy of people here.”
The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis, by Patrick Kingsley (Guardian Faber, £14.99)
Suzanne Lynch is European Correspondent
