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When asked if they heard reports that some Kurdi family members had hoped to go to Canada, the group starts shouting. They’ve heard, alright. A few say that they don’t like Canada anymore, not after what happened to the family. Others say that they always did like Canada, and expected that it would take more refugees in. What does it say about Canada, Australia and other European nations, they wonder, that they won’t accept mothers and children left to die in the waters nearby.

Less than 10 steps away, Imam Fatih Simsek has an answer. It’s a “shame for Canada,” he says, but more than that, he says, it’s “a shame of humanity.”

“If everybody helped, other countries, these people would not live on the street,” he says. But the imam thinks he knows why the help isn’t coming.

“The people who are not hungry cannot understand the people who are hungry.”

Imam Simsek used to be hungry himself. The son of a farmer in Eastern Turkey, he grew up with “no city, no money, nothing,” he says. He lets refugees use the toilets after prayers, even though he thinks he’s not supposed to, and lets their children sit on rugs that he bought for them under a tarp that he slung for them, even though locals sometimes call the police to complain about all the people milling about his mosque.

Yet even though many refugees are angry with Western nations, some of those in Bodrum still want to live there. But the mosque isn’t providing enough. Nor is Turkey.

Abdulmenemem Alsatouf approaches, holding out a message he’d typed earlier on his phone: “Sir, can we provide the travel request from Turkey to Canada through the Canadian embassy.”