Review by Colin Credle
In From Turkey to Greece, Syrian refugee Hakim continues his fraught journey from Turkey to Greece with his infant son Hadi as told to French writer and illustrator Fabien Toulmé. Hakim began Book 1 sitting comfortably in his apartment in Aix-en-Provence, France, but the stress, emotion and challenges of his trip are quite palpable.
While in Turkey, Hakim’s wife achieves asylum in France. Unfortunately, since they married in Turkey, they don’t possess a legal marriage certificate from Syria and cannot obtain one in Turkey as refugees. This means Hakim and their son Hadi have no legal affiliation with Najmeh and are unable to accompany her to France, so decide to separate. As more Syrian refugees show up in Turkey, the prospects for making a living are dimming for them. The Kafka-esque bureaucracy rears its hydra head of obstacles as Hakim is faced with waiting optimistically for a good outcome, or to act however rashly to keep moving forward. He cannot work while Hadi is in his care all day and the money is running out. Turks are also protesting Syrian refugees and even go so far as to vandalise the car he drives as a taxi driver to earn income.
Toulmé captures the emotions with his straight-line artistic style, his dialogue and by endearing, and humanising Hakim. Hakim is generous, kind, educated and yet still finds himself a refugee with horrible choices. The most gripping section deals with his decision to pay a smuggler to get himself and Hadi to Greece across the Mediterranean in the infamous inflatable boats. What follows is a fascinating bird’s eye view on the process of locating, paying a smuggler, getting to the boat and surviving the ordeal. It is filled with twists and turns and unexpected moments of trust as well as corruption. At several junctures we are screaming in our heads for Hakim not to be so trusting, but somehow this is the way it is done. Once again, this fraught quest is peppered with gestures of transcendent and unexpected generosity. No surprise, they make it Greece, but this book of course is about the journey not the result.
In Book 1, Toulmé explains that 5.5 million Syrians chose to flee into exile from the war. In 2015, approximately 3,500 migrants drowned trying to make it to Europe, most of them Syrians. Toulmé recalls hearing a short blurb on TV News about one boat capsizing and 400 migrants drowning – a cold, abstract number that invited Toulmé to dig deeper. This led him to Hakim, where we now hear what such a journey entails. By the time Hakim makes it to Izmir and has made the decision to climb into the questionable boat with his infant son, we are hooked, invested and fascinated. Even when he makes it to Greece, we experience the relief, but we also know he still needs to make it to France to join his wife Najmeh. We are primed to see what will happen next in Book 3, wondering how did he and Hadi make it to France?
