A GREEK TRAGEDY

An up-close look at an ongoing calamity.

Syria’s civil war and America’s debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq have forced millions to flee their homes; 35% of these are children. Many refugees attempt to reach Europe. In response, Western nations have hardened their hearts, built walls, and reinforced border guards, but desperate families keep trying. Journalist Carstensen follows four subjects in her searing first book: an Afghan bank official traveling with his wife and two children, a 13-year-old Afghan girl who flees with her parents and three siblings, a school counselor, and a young female artist from Syria. Immigration opponents maintain that these are the dregs of society. In fact, poor people rarely emigrate. It’s too expensive. For example, the Afghan bank official pays smugglers $25,000 to convey his family to Europe. Simply crossing a few miles of ocean from Turkey to a Greek island costs thousands. Carstensen describes their miserable journey driven by rapacious, penny-pinching smugglers. The final leg to safety involves crossing five miles to Lesvos, a Greek island, on fragile rubber rafts or broken-down boats. In 2015 refugees began arriving—cold, wet, exhausted, often as bodies washed up on the shore. Greece’s government was hostile and remains so; U.N. and international aid groups responded slowly, but Carstensen emphasizes a minority of islanders, local fishermen, and foreign volunteers who rescued many and provided food, shelter, and medical care so well that the island was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. She focuses on Oct. 28, 2015, when smugglers crammed 300 refugees into a decrepit hulk that fell to pieces halfway across. Despite heroic rescue efforts, about 80 died, more of them children because they spent hours in cold water and are more susceptible to hypothermia. Carstensen’s four subjects survived, but not their families.

A vivid snapshot of a broken asylum system.