Sea Prayer Read online

  Sea Prayer

  Khaled Hosseini

  My dear Marwan,

  in the long summers of childhood,

  when I was a boy the age you are now,

  your uncles and I

  spread our mattress on the roof

  of your grandfather’s farmhouse

  outside of Homs.

  We woke in the mornings

  to the stirring of olive trees in the breeze,

  to the bleating of your grandmother’s goat,

  the clanking of her cooking pots,

  the air cool and the sun

  a pale rim of persimmon to the east.

  We took you there when you were a toddler.

  I have a sharply etched memory

  of your mother from that trip,

  showing you a herd of cows grazing in a field

  blown through with wild flowers.

  I wish you hadn’t been so young.

  You wouldn’t have forgotten the farmhouse,

  the soot of its stone walls,

  the creek where your uncles and I built

  a thousand boyhood dams.

  I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan.

  In its bustling Old City,

  a mosque for us Muslims,

  a church for our Christian neighbours,

  and a grand souk for us all

  to haggle over gold pendants and

  fresh produce and bridal dresses.

  I wish you remembered

  the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh

  and the evening walks we took

  with your mother

  around Clock Tower Square.

  But that life, that time,

  seems like a dream now,

  even to me,

  like some long-dissolved rumour.

  First came the protests.

  Then the siege.

  The skies spitting bombs.

  Starvation.

  Burials.

  These are the things you know.

  You know a bomb crater

  can be made into a swimming hole.

  You have learned

  dark blood is better news

  than bright.

  You have learned that mothers and

  sisters and classmates can be found

  in narrow gaps between concrete,

  bricks and exposed beams,

  little patches of sunlit skin

  shining in the dark.

  Your mother is here tonight, Marwan,

  with us, on this cold and moonlit beach,

  among the crying babies and

  the women worrying

  in tongues we don’t speak.

  Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and

  Eritreans and Syrians.

  All of us impatient for sunrise,

  all of us in dread of it.

  All of us in search of home.

  I have heard it said we are the uninvited.

  We are the unwelcome.

  We should take our misfortune elsewhere.

  But I hear your mother’s voice,

  over the tide,

  and she whispers in my ear,

  ‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling.

  Even half of what you have.

  If only they saw.

  They would say kinder things, surely.’

  I look at your profile

  in the glow of this three-quarter moon,

  my boy, your eyelashes like calligraphy,

  closed in guileless sleep.

  I said to you,

  ‘Hold my hand.

  Nothing bad will happen.’

  These are only words.

  A father’s tricks.

  It slays your father,

  your faith in him.

  Because all I can think tonight is

  how deep the sea,

  and how vast, how indifferent.

  How powerless I am to protect you from it.

  All I can do is pray.

  Pray God steers the vessel true,

  when the shores slip out of eyeshot

  and we are a flyspeck

  in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting,

  easily swallowed.

  Because you,

  you are precious cargo, Marwan,

  the most precious there ever was.

  I pray the sea knows this.

  Inshallah.

  How I pray the sea knows this.

  Sea Prayer was inspired by the story

  of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old

  Syrian refugee who drowned in the

  Mediterranean Sea trying to reach

  safety in Europe in September 2015.

  In the year after Alan’s death 4,176

  others died or went missing attempting

  similar journeys.

  This book is dedicated to the thousands

  of refugees who have perished at sea

  fleeing war and persecution.

  BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK

  This electronic edition published in 2018 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are

  trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Text first published online by the Guardian, 2017

  This edition first published by Bloomsbury in Great Britain, 2018

  Text © Sea Prayer by The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, 2018

  Illustrations © Dan Williams, 2018

  Recording ℗ Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Read by Khalid Abdalla

  Khaled Hosseini and Dan Williams have asserted their right under the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author and

  illustrator, respectively, of this work

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make

  available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means

  (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical,

  photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written

  permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in

  relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil

  claims for damages.

  The author and publisher specifically disclaim, as far as the law allows,

  any responsibility from any liability, loss or risk (personal or otherwise)

  which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and

  applications of any of the contents of this book

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-0271-8; eBook: 978-1-5266-0270-1

  Designer: Sandra Zellmer

  Illustrator: Dan Williams

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  Khaled Hosseini, Sea Prayer

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