The Swimmers

Their story resembles a fairy tale. The sisters and competitive swimmers Yusra and Sarah Mardini are fleeing the civil war in Syria.

In 2016, they even made it to the Olympic Games. Now her story has been made into a film.

“The Swimmers” on Netflix, a film that kept my husband captivated, even though he hates reading under titles. But the under titles are necessary for about twenty minutes at the beginning, then the movie continues in English. The beginning of the movie takes place in Syria. It shows a family at a birthday party, fifteen minutes later you see the girls dancing in a club, and you see the missiles in the back bombing Damascus, the capital city of Syria.

Yusra Mardini has a dream: “One day I want to swim at the Olympics.” She trains every day. Her dad, her couch is by her side. Sadly the Syrian army can no longer be stopped. There is a scene in the movie when during a swimming competition a bomb falls through the roof.

“The missile went into the pool and it did not explode,” Mardini says later in an interview. Everyone was evacuated. And honestly, sadly, I wasn’t as scared as it looked in the movie. Because at that point, unfortunately, I was used to that type of thing.”

The Mardini’s house was destroyed in the Syrian Civil War. Yusra Mardini and her sister Sarah decided to flee Syria in August 2015. The parents make a decision that can’t be an easy one to make. Their dad takes out a loan and together with her sister Sarah, Yusra leaves her homeland for Germany.

They reached Lebanon, and then Turkey, where they arranged to be smuggled into Greece by boat with 18 other migrants, though the boat was meant to be used by no more than 6 or 7 people.

Ahead of them lies the Mediterranean Sea, which they want to cross in that overcrowded rubber dinghy. “We’re too heavy. It’s too dangerous. Who can swim? Sarah!”

The sisters jump into the cold water to make the boat lighter.

I reminded myself that we watched something that really happened. Some of the scenes tortured my soul. The unfairness of my privileged life overwhelmed me at times. Not for the first time I feel the injustice and take it personally. Why am I so fortunate?

At some point, the migrant group reaches the Greek coast, exhausted but safe. It is the key scene in the film –and in the lives of the Mardini sisters. Their story went around the world, and later on they were celebrated as heroines.

I saw in Yusra and Sarah modern, liberal Arab women who hardly ever appear on the big screen. Usually, you see Arab women in a victim story, women hiding their faces and the story is often about an honor killing or something like that. It was beneficial to see women with whom I could identify.

In 2016 I applauded and cheered like millions around the globe when for the first time a refugee team marched into the Olympic arena in Rio, Brazil. Ten athletes, originally from Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were competing alongside 11,000 fellow athletes in Brazil, sending a message of hope around the world. I remember it so well.

After watching the movie “The Swimmers” I got to know the story and the background of one of the athletes.

At the end of the movie, you see Yusra after the Olympics studying in Los Angeles. Her sister Sarah on the other hand is waiting in a high-security prison for a court date in Greece. She worked as a volunteer for an NGO* on Lesbos, and she got arrested and accused of “espionage and human trafficking”. The aim of the Greek authorities is to criminalize humanitarian aid. Sarah Mardini faces 25 years in prison.

During the movie I winced, I gasped, I felt ashamed. It’s not just us, the United States of America, who have to find a solution for ‘our’ borders but the world needs to find a solution for the 30 Million migrants who left their homes in search of a better (and safer) future. We all are so arrogant and so cold-hearted. Do we really think a barbed wire fence will keep people out who ran away from bombs, poverty, drug cartels, civil wars and so many other things we cannot even begin to imagine? This is a humanitarian crisis and we need a solution -not a bandaid.

I urge you to watch the movie.

Human resilience is remarkable.

NGO=a nonprofit organization that operates independently of any government, typically one whose purpose is to address a social or political issue.