The year 2015 marked the peak of Europe’s refugee crisis.
Over a million people suddenly arrived on the continent’s shores, trying to flee conflicts in home countries like Syria and Afghanistan — though, they came from all over the world for varied reasons.
The vast majority who took to the sea headed from Turkey to Greek islands in the Aegean on decrepit boats operated by human smugglers.
In October of 2015, about 130,000 people landed on the Greek island of Lesbos where award-winning journalist Jeanne Carstensen covered the crisis for The World.
In her new book, “A Greek Tragedy: One Day, a Deadly Shipwreck, and the Human Cost of the Refugee Crisis,” Carstensen details a deadly shipwreck she witnessed through accounts from survivors and rescuers alike.
jet ski
Spanish lifeguards from Proactiva Open Arms launch a rescue jet ski in Sykaminia, Lebos on October 28, 2015.Jeanne Carstensen
The following is one such account, excerpted from Carstensen’s book — the story of a girl named Rezwana, who ended up in the water that day.
During the shipwreck, Rezwana lost all her personal possessions, except for these golden bands, her mother’s wedding rings. Rezwana holds her mother’s wedding rings in her outstretched palm in Athens in 2021. Jeanne Carstensen
When she was a little girl growing up in Kabul in the early 2000s, Rezwana Sekandari liked to stand in front of the mirror, talking out loud and imagining she was a television announcer. Her inspiration came from her father, Naseer, who worked as a video journalist for 1TV, one of the largest independent television networks in Afghanistan. When she was nine, he arranged for her to work as a voice actor at 1TV, which broadcast Turkish-, Arabic- and English-language shows that needed to be dubbed into Farsi. Rezwana loved sitting behind a big microphone, in a studio in the same building where her father worked, speaking the parts of children from far- away countries. In a small way, she felt she was helping to educate her fellow Afghans about the world.
As she grew up, Rezwana became increasingly aware of the risks her father faced at work. Once, while she was at 1TV dubbing a show, an explosion rattled the building. Suicide bombings occurred regularly in Kabul, especially near the Green Zone where the station was located. It wasn’t damaged, but Rezwana was scared knowing that her father would have to report on the incident.
In the fall of 2015, the Taliban issued a press release explicitly naming 1TV as a military target. “There will be no immunity from our attacks, either for personnel or for the buildings themselves.” Naseer and Fatima told Rezwana that it had become too dangerous for the family to stay in Afghanistan. “We’re going to Sweden.”
“But, Father, it’s dark there six months out of the year,” Rezwana complained. “Can’t we go to another country?”
Cover of Jeanne Carstensen’s book
But it had been decided. They had relatives in Stockholm; they would join them there.
Rezwana’s parents went many times to a smuggler in Kabul to make the arrangements. The smuggler told them they were going on “a big ship with two decks” and that the trip from Turkey to Greece would only take half an hour.
“But what if we get there and it’s one of those small rubber boats?” Fatima asked her husband.
“It won’t be like that. I paid a lot, $3,000 dollars each.”
“But if they have weapons? What will we do then?”
Her parents went back and forth like this a lot, her father the more optimistic, her mother the more pragmatic. But they were united as always.
In early October, it was time for the family to leave. As the big sister, Rezwana helped her parents with the younger children: her athletic sister Negen, 11; her boisterous brother Hadeth, four; and her beloved baby sister Fariha, barely 1 year old. Rezwana could only take one small bag with a few clothes and personal items, including the journal flecked with glitter and her mother’s wedding rings, her most prized possessions.
The smugglers yelled at them all night. “Lie down. Run. Lie down.” They were somewhere in the woods between Iran and Turkey — Rezwana didn’t know where. The whole family wore puffy jackets that they’d brought with them from Kabul, but they were still freezing. As was her habit, she wanted to know the time, but her mother had made her take off her watch back in Tehran, “because you’ll ask us how long to here and how long to there and we don’t know, even your father.”
Rezwana was so exhausted she kept falling down.
They had to cross a lake. Everyone got wet. Even Fatima, who did not tire easily and was trying to help her children keep moving, struggled to keep going. She kept saying, “I’m fine,” but at some point even she lay down in the dirt in her wet jeans and jacket.
After they finally managed to sneak across the border into Turkey, Naseer took a photo of the family to text to the main smuggler in Kabul to confirm they had crossed the border. The local smugglers who had facilitated that leg of the journey would now get their cut.
Rezwana was furious at her father. The last thing she wanted was a photo of this horrific experience. All she wanted to do was forget everything they had just been through. But she kept her rage to herself. She focused on what her father always told her when she was upset or afraid. “Rezwana, after the darkness there’s light. After the night, morning comes. Have patience.”
The bus let Rezwana’s family off at a grassy knoll in some hills back from the sea where many dozens of people were standing around or sitting in groups on top of their backpacks. As they found a place to rest, Rezwana heard people speaking what she thought was Arabic and Kurdish. There were other Afghans there, too.
Rezwana’s mother, Fatima, ran into a distant relative from Kabul, the aunt of Fatima’s brother’s wife. She was with her two teenagers. They were also going on the big ship. Rezwana had never met any of them before. The two families sat together for a while. The woman gave a blanket to Rezwana’s baby sister and shared some water.
It was a sunny afternoon. Rezwana wore her puffy jacket unzipped. But she couldn’t relax.
“Look at that family,” Fatima said, tilting her head in the direction of a group of Afghans playing cards and laughing. “Why aren’t we like that?”
Rezwana knew what her mother meant. Her family was all uneasy.
At one point, Naseer gave his daughter a little geography lesson. “That mountain is in Turkey, where we are now,” he said. Then he pointed across the water to another mountain. “That’s Mytlilene, in Greece. That’s where we’re going.”
The smugglers yelled at them to get moving and everyone gathered their things and started walking down a dirt road toward the sea. Along the way, some men yelled at them to go faster. Rezwana saw some of them were carrying guns.
Stepping onto the boat at the dock, Rezwana felt the wood sag under her weight and the weight of all the people already crowded onto the deck. She knew her father had paid a lot of money to a smuggler in Kabul to go on a first-class boat with two decks. But she could see this boat was broken. She was afraid the wood would crumble apart if she poked it too hard. The smuggler loading people tried to force them to sit down right where they were, in the middle of the deck, but Rezwana’s mother refused. The small galley area underneath the spiral staircase leading to the upper deck looked safer and she pushed the family toward it. The space was empty, just big enough for the six of them to squeeze in. On the counter, Fatima found a few cucumbers.
“Don’t touch those,” Naseer said. “We shouldn’t . . .”
Cucumbers doused in lemon was one of Rezwana’s favorite dishes. She hadn’t eaten for many hours and was very hungry.
“Just eat,” Fatima said, ignoring her husband as she broke up the cucumbers and gave a few chunks to Rezwana and her little sister and brother. The baby, almost a year old, was still too young. They weren’t that fresh, but Rezwana gobbled them down.
None of them wore life jackets; like many Afghans, they had been advised by their smugglers that they weren’t necessary for such a short trip.
When the boat pulled out of the harbor in Turkey, the sea was flat. Rezwana began counting down the seconds and minutes until they would reach the other side, the sound as steady in her brain as if it were the watch she gave up back in Tehran.
Crouched inside the galley under the spiral staircase with her family, Rezwana counted the minutes until they would reach the other side. The smugglers had told them half an hour to reach Lesbos. She didn’t have her watch, but she marked time by her pounding heart. She calculated they’d been sailing for 10 minutes. Everything seemed to be going well. Her parents and three younger brothers and sisters were all together inside this little white room and soon they would be in Greece. Twelve minutes. Only 18 to go.
Then water began lapping over the side, filling the galley with several inches. Rezwana’s mother was standing by the entrance and had a better view than Rezwana and could see the entire boat was taking on water. “Naseer, we should go upstairs,” she said to her husband.
Rezwana’s father held the baby while her mother grasped Rezwana’s 4-year-old brother by the hand. Rezwana and her 11-year-old sister followed her parents to the base of the spiral staircase just outside of the galley. When she was about to climb up the first stair, Rezwana heard a cracking noise.
All the people around Rezwana were crying and praying. The boat was breaking apart.
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Rezwana prayed. Suddenly her mother was in the water, her little brother. She saw pools of blood in the waves.
“Hold on to that wood, Rezwana,” her father yelled.
They were all in the water now. Waves carried them up and down. Rezwana had managed to hang her arms over two pieces of the wreckage; nails stuck out of the plywood and poked into her hands and underarms. She could see her father struggling with her baby sister on his shoulders.
“Whatever you do, don’t let go, Rezwana,” her father told her as a wave washed over them.
Excerpted from A Greek Tragedy by Jeanne Carstensen. Copyright © 2025 by Jeanne Carstensen. Reprinted by permission of One Signal Publishers/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.