10-year-old shipwreck survivor Nalina saved by Syrian migrant

A long, silent hug filled with emotion was shared in a hospital in southern Italy on June 19 between a 10-year-old Iraqi girl and her 22-year-old Syrian “savior” Ismail, far from the prying eyes of anyone other than the loving ones of doctors, nurses, and mediators.

The girl, named Nalina, survived the June 17 wreck of a sailboat on which she had been travelling with her family in the open seas some 120 miles off the coast of Italy’s Calabria region.

The young Syrian man, who had also been travelling on the boat, saw the little girl struggling to stay afloat and helped her to grab onto the half-submerged wreckage until rescuers arrived. The two met again on June 19 at a hospital in the Calabrian town of Locri, where both have been hospitalized.

Also read: Italy: Three more bodies recovered, around 60 still missing from migrant shipwreck

Girl said she had been saved by a young male migrant

The little girl had said after being hospitalized that she had fallen into the water and that had been saved by a “young male migrant”: Ismail.

The young girl — with the help of a foreign interpreter who works with medical staff and who speaks Arabic, Kurdish, and Persian — said that she had seen her “two smaller siblings, a little boy and a little girl, end up in the sea and disappear among the waves.”

Nalina also said that she had seen her young parents looking “very, very unwell after the shipwreck” but then that, after darkness fell during the night, she became unable to “see them any more or know what happened to them.”

In addition to Nalina and Ismail, a Kurdish woman of around 20 years old is also hospitalized in Locri in the orthopaedic division. Ismail is instead in the pneumatology ward and Nalina in the paediatrics one.

The boat, other survivors say, weighed anchor on the evening of June 11 from the Turkish tourist port city of Bodrum with over 70 Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Syrians onboard.

The shipwreck occurred after just over three days of sailing in the Ionian Sea, about 75-80 miles from the Greek coast and 120 from the Italian one. Ismail and Wafa said that “due to the excessive weight caused by so many people onboard and very rough seas with gigantic waves, after about three days of sailing the boat began to take on copious amounts of water.”

At the mercy of the sea and with an engine that stopped working, and then probably exploded, the boat was knocked about by the waves causing the “fall and then disappearance at sea of a large number of migrants”, many of whom women, youths, and children. At least 26 of the approximately 60 people still missing who had been on the boat were children.

Also read: Calabria shipwreck survivor Nalina in hospital, asks for parents

Arrival of uncles, to whom Nalina is likely to be entrusted

On June 20, Nalina had the chance to embrace her maternal aunt and her husband, who came to Roccella Ionica from Sweden and then the Locri hospital to see her niece, with whom she then spent some time.

The aunt, named Rosa, and her husband Dama travelled by car and were among the first family members of the victims to arrive in Calabria. The two were hosted in rooms in the local parish made available by Locri bishop Francesco Oliva.

Cultural mediators and volunteers from the Red Cross, the Civil Protection, and Doctors Without Borders say that all the family members of the little girl that had been travelling with her are on the list of those still missing at sea: her mother, father, and the two younger siblings of Nalina.

None of the corpses already recovered and taken to the Locri hospital morgue are family members of Nalina, as confirmed by the little girl’s relatives.

Nalina’s health is improving, according to paediatrics ward chief Antonio Musolino. Once she is released from the hospital and bureaucratic procedures are completed — the Iraqi ambassador to Italy has already arrived in Locri — the little girl will most likely be entrusted to her young relatives.

“They were so happy, despite knowing the risks they were running by travelling via sea, to have found a place on the boat and thus be able to arrive in Italy altogether and thus begin a new and better life in Europe,” Dama said, in tears.

He added that he had “never imagined that such a tragedy could occur. I feel like I am in hell at the moment.”

Also read: Families of lost migrants: Waiting for answers that may never come