Article content

The boat would wait for him. It had to wait for him.

Amjad had dived into the Aegean waves only because the dinghy was sinking, and he and 14 other Syrian guys wanted to lighten the load. If they just got in the water, grasped the rope along the side and held on tight, they could save the women and children on board. It never occurred to Amjad that he was a child himself. So over the edge he went, into the water.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Migrant boy swam 16 hours to shore after smuggling boat left him to drown in the Aegean Back to video

But Amjad dove too deep and drifted too far, and missed the rope along the side. The 16-year-old from Ariha, Syria, thought the boat would wait.

“Wait!” Amjad screamed. “Wait!”

It didn’t wait. When the boat’s engine roared, its 60 passengers and hangers-on screamed. Not everyone in the boat would have left him behind in the early hours of August 29, and one guy who noticed Amjad bobbing in the water tossed an inflatable donut his way.

Earlier that night, after a Turkish smuggler had dropped the refugees at a Bodrum beach, a Syrian doctor declared himself captain of the dinghy. Amjad had laughed at the doctor when he couldn’t start the dinghy’s engine. A few minutes later, he caught his breath when the doctor scraped the motor along the rocks. And an hour after that, at 3 a.m., he flailed in the waves when he heard the doctor call out, “We’re all going to die, so let’s let one of us die!”