Inspiration
How swimming took this Syrian refugee into the safety of another country and into the Rio Olympics 2016?
Little did teenager Yusra Mardini know that learning swimming as a child in Syria would one day save her life and change her life too. The 18-year-old Syrian refugee found an identity due to swimming in her adopted country of Germany and is going to be a part of the Refugee Olympic Athletes
Dreams are wonderful things which we see with our eyes closed. However, in order to dream you have to face the frightening darkness, silence and loneliness of the night. If teenager Yusra Mardini, a Syrian refugee is living a dream in her adopted country of Germany, it is only because she has gone through trial by darkness and depression, in her case trial by sea water.
Her life in Syria was that of any normal teenager, the middle of 3 daughters, she lived at home with her parents, attended a gymnastics club and loved swimming – she could potentially become a great swimmer. Her story didn’t have any element that would pique international curiosity.
That was until Syria's civil war came along, the conflict, the bombs, the suffering, the death.
As years rolled on, the cheerfulness of the teenage years waned with Syria tearing apart. The family was forced to move as their house came under fire. What truly tortured her was that she could see the water in the swimming pool where she trained but couldn’t go in as the roof had caved in due to bombs.
Mardini, the daughter of a swimming coach had 2 choices: exist in her homeland without hope, or escape for the freedom to dream. "Maybe I'm going to die on the way," she explains. "But I'm almost dead in my country. I can't do anything."
A journey into the unknown
Almost a year ago and four and a half years into the civil war, Mardini and her eldest sister left Syria with their father’s two cousins and other refugees on is 12 August, 2015.
After bidding a tearful farewell to their tearful parents and younger sister, the group of refugees follow the path taken by over 4 million fellow refugees.
"Of course I was scared for my life and my sister's life," says Mardini. "I was also scared that I would make it, for example, and something would happen to my sister, or that something would happen to one of us and what it would do to my mum."
Fear grips them afresh as they approach southern Turkey's high peaks and deep valleys. The group ends up spending 4 nights in a jungle, infested with gunmen. Without food and water, they are at the mercy of armed smugglers, one of whom, after disputes and threats, agreed to take them across the Mediterranean in a flimsy dinghy to Greece – but only for a considerable amount of cash.
Swimming for her life
It is in this lap of the journey that the sisters are severely tested, so is the group as a whole. 30 minutes into their journey to the island of Lesbos the engine of the dinghy gave up as it was hauling 20 passengers instead of the 6-7 it was designed for.
The dinghy needed to be lightened immediately or it was feared that it would capsize. Hurriedly possessions were thrown overboard as water crept in the boat.
As it didn’t help much, the next option was sought to offload passengers who could swim. Only a few could swim so Sarah jumped in first followed by Yusra, much against the wishes of her elder sister.
What happened next inspires awe and yet somehow a feeling of sympathy towards the broken condition of humanity. For the next three and a half hours the 2 sisters and another young woman dragged the broken-down boat towards the shore, clinging to the rope dangling from the side.
Waves crashing into them, salt water burning their eyes, every stroke made their muscle cry out. Swimming will one day transform their lives, but now it must save them.
"I thought it would be a real shame if I drowned in the sea because I am a swimmer," says Mardini, who learned to swim when she was 3.
However, completing the herculean task was not that easy as 30 minutes out from land the girls succumbed to exhaustion. From this day on, Mardini will hate the open water.
"Everyone was just grey on the way," she remembers. "It was like my life was passing through my eyes. We put the rope around our hands because even I couldn't swim in the sea with waves like that.
Me and my sister were holding on to the boat with one and doing the breaststroke with the other hand and one leg. The last half an hour I couldn't manage anymore, so I got back into the boat. It was so cold. I look at the sea now and I just feel faint."
When she stepped on dry land, she fell to the ground and prayed.
After the salty sea, it was the sea of doubting humans and a 1,000-mile trek.
Surviving the sea was the toughest part of the journey but it definitely was not the end of hardships. Though far from the shelling – Mardini felt unwelcome by everyone on this new continent.
Recalling her first experience Mardini says, "When we got to Greece we saw a restaurant. We wanted to buy food but they said no, they thought we were going to steal from them. We said we had money, that they had to let us drink."
"Eventually they let us buy water, and then some girl saw us, she gave me shoes and the little kid trousers," she says.
"A lot of people think refugees had no home, that they had nothing at all. Sometimes when I have my iPhone they are like, 'you know iPhone, oh my God' – but I'm like, 'of course'. They think we live in some desert. No, we had everything like you."
The refugees, who had by now developed informal relationships and had begun caring for each other like family, continued their 1,000-mile trek together to their destination of choice: Germany.
The trek took them from Greece through Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria – on foot, by train and bus – before arriving in Munich and then onwards to Berlin. The group had survived the 25-day journey from Syria to Berlin.
25 days after giving up on the life she had known, there was hope again. "I just know that my trip was over, and that I'm at peace with it," she says.
Throwing phones into a fridge
Like every other refugee, Mardini's first home in Germany was a temporary refugee camp, but far from other existential questions her first question in this unfamiliar city was concerning finding the nearest swimming pool. An Egyptian translator connected the sisters with Wasserfreunde Spandau 04, one of Berlin's oldest swimming clubs.
"They saw our technique, saw it was good, they accepted us," she says.
Unsurprisingly, the swimming coaches were impressed, particularly by Yusra, who was once a competitive swimmer supported by the Syrian Olympic Committee.
After only 4 weeks of training, Mardini's coach, Sven Spannerkrebs, began planning a team for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 – but his plans were disrupted as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced a team of refugees at this summer's Games in Rio to send "a message of hope for all the refugees in our world".
In Berlin, Mardini was making good progress, but little did the teenager realise that the world would empathise with her story.
Such was the traffic of phone calls, so constant the questions and interview requests – from journalists in Japan, the United States, all around Europe – Mardini’s coach, Spannerkrebs ended up throwing his phone into a fridge on that March day when the IOC named Mardini on its shortlist of 43 refugees.
The attention, Mardini says, has been tough – but she does not fear expectation or pressure. "I want to be an inspiration for everyone," she says. "It's not that I have to help, but that deep in my heart I want to help refugees."
The top gear
Just 2 months before the Rio Olympics are about to begin, there is an email in Mardini’s inbox from IOC. With a wildly racing mind throwing up scenarios a dozen a second, she clicks to read if it is the bugle of a chance to shine or a whimper of a broken dream.
Upon reading she cries out of exhilaration. She is in the final team that will compete at the Olympics.
"I was so happy," says Mardini, who makes it clear that it is in Tokyo in four years' time that she will have a realistic chance of winning an Olympic medal. "It's a dream come true, the Olympics is everything, it's a life chance."
Benefiting from Germany's elite sports school system, which has made it possible for her to train twice daily in an Olympic-standard pool near her school (on a typical day she will wake at 6am and return home at 8pm), the accomplished teenage swimmer has produced personal best after personal best.
The appeal of the pool is easy to grasp. It is a place where the girl who one day dreams of being a pilot can forget about the civil war and the friends she has left behind. She sheds her past as she enters the pool, gliding through water; she charts a path to a bright future.
"It's a different life in the water," she says. "You throw all of your problems out. It's a different world to me."
Asked whether swimming is her life, Mardini replies: "It's more than that. It's my passion, it's my life, you can't explain. It's the most important thing in my life. It's in my heart and I want to achieve something in it."
Braveheart, Yusra Mardini will compete for the Refugee Olympic Athletes team in the women's 200m freestyle heats on August 8.