DON GONYEA, HOST:
Each year, millions of migrants leave their countries, fleeing wars and poverty. Tens of thousands pay smugglers to get them across the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded boats from North Africa to Italy. But there's only one recorded instance of someone making this dangerous 186-mile journey on a Jet Ski. This is what Muhammad Abu Dakha (ph), a Palestinian father, along with two others from Gaza, did this summer. NPR's Ruth Sherlock tells the story.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MUHAMMAD ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Muhammad Abu Dakha shows me a video he recorded while speeding across the Mediterranean Sea.
(SOUNDBITE OF JET SKI RUNNING ON WATER)
SHERLOCK: He and two other Palestinian men sit tight together astride the Jet Ski, going full throttle towards the Italian island of Lampedusa.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Now at a refugee welcome center near the city of Osnabruck in northwest Germany, Abu Dakha says he can hardly believe what he did.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: In Gaza, Abu Dakha was a wealthy businessman with an internet company.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: He has a wife and two young boys - Sanad (ph), now 6 and Mahmoud (ph), now 4 years old - who are still in Gaza. All of this has been to try to get them out. When the war began after Hamas' attack on southern Israel two years ago, Abu Dakha says their whole world turned upside down.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Abu Dakha's two homes have been destroyed. His family, like most Gazans, has been displaced several times and has survived living in a crowded tent and struggled to find food. There was bombing and fire everywhere, Abu Dakha says.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Last April, Abu Dakha paid thousands of dollars for a rare chance to leave Gaza via the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. The plan was for his family to follow, but Israel took control of the border. So Abu Dakha decided to try to reach a country where he could claim asylum and bring them. Passport stamps show this search for safety took him halfway around the world. Abu Dakha says Arab countries, including Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, turned down his visa requests. So he went further afield to China, where he'd previously been for work but says he was briefly detained and forced to leave the country. He ended up in Malaysia and Indonesia before going to Libya.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: "The world is not open to people from Gaza," he says. All the while, his children sent him voice notes asking to be with him.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: The pressure was growing.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: A relative sent him news of an Israeli airstrike on Abu Dakha's uncle's home, killing many of his relatives. His 25-day-old niece, Ella Osama Abu Dakha (ph), was the only survivor.
Wow. I'm so sorry.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: Three levels of the house was all...
SHERLOCK: Flattened down.
And hunger was gripping Gaza. A cousin sent him a video overlain with music of Abu Dakha's children.
And the kids running with empty bowls of food.
He tells NPR's interpreter he was ready to try anything.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: The only thing he wanted to do is bring his family and keep them with him.
SHERLOCK: Abu Dakha says he paid smugglers in Libya to make the dangerous journey to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea, where thousands of migrants drown each year. But this involved waiting many weeks for an opportunity to go.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Then he had the idea of a Jet Ski. At first, he thought it was crazy.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: Could this hobby craft really make it the 186 miles across the Mediterranean? What if he got caught in a storm? What about carrying enough fuel? Abu Dakha used ChatGPT to research these questions. It just might work, he decided, and bought a Jet Ski for $5,000.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ANA QAYID LLARB")
MAZEN ASAF: (Singing in non-English language).
SHERLOCK: Abu Dakha shows videos set to music of him riding his sleek, silver and black machine, circling fast and joyously in the waves, testing its speed and agility. He attached a rubber dinghy to the back to carry fuel and food and met two other Palestinians from Gaza who decided to join him.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAVES CRASHING)
SHERLOCK: At night, at around 1 a.m. on the 17 of August, they climbed on the Jet Ski and set off into the dark water.
Three guys on the Jet Ski.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT #1: Allahu akbar.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: The first 70 kilometers, there were two-meter waves, three-meter waves, he says, until suddenly the sea quietened.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: And after that, it was smooth.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT #1: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT #2: Habibi. Habibi. Habibi.
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT #3: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED MIGRANT #2: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: They kept going until they ran out of fuel about 12 miles off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. Abu Dakha used his sat phone to call for help, and they were rescued by a border patrol boat.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: It was very emotional moment for him. He was crying and laughing at the same time.
SHERLOCK: Abu Dakha traveled on to Germany, hoping this country will allow him to bring his family from Gaza.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: In a restaurant, he scrolls through the news articles and social media videos about his journey. He's become an internet sensation.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: It took more than a year, several thousand dollars...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: ...And a Jet Ski for Palestinian...
SHERLOCK: But he finds little joy in this fame. He thinks only about his children and wife, still in Gaza. The news of a ceasefire has brought some peace, but his family is from a part of Gaza close to the border that the Israeli military still controls, and much of Gaza is destroyed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SANAD ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: His eldest son, 6-year-old Sanad, tells his dad in this voice note he hopes they can leave now. But it's not that simple. Caught in the bureaucratic procedures of seeking asylum, Abu Dakha still doesn't know if or when he'll be reunited with his family.
ABU DAKHA: (Speaking Arabic).
SHERLOCK: It's a painful wait. Abu Dakha says life without them in Germany doesn't feel like living at all.
Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Osnabruck, Germany.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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