Migrant boat crisis: the story of the Greek hero on the beach

[Surya Gayatri]

One compelling image has come to represent all the Greek people who treated desperate migrants like fellow human beings



Antonis Deligiorgis saving Wegasi Nebiat: ‘I was having trouble lifting her out of the sea, then instinctively, I put her over my shoulder.’ Photograph: Argiris Mantikos/AP


It was an image that came to symbolise desperation and valour: the desperation of those who will take on the sea – and the men who ferry human cargo across it – to flee the ills that cannot keep them in their own countries. And the valour of those on Europe’s southern shores who rush to save them when tragedy strikes.

Last week on the island of Rhodes, war, repression, dictatorship in distant Eritrea were far from the mind of army sergeant Antonis Deligiorgis. The world inhabited by Wegasi Nebiat, a 24-year-old Eritrean in the cabin of a yacht sailing towards the isle, was still far away.

'The boat disintegrated in a matter of minutes. It was as if it was made of paper'
Antonis Deligiorgis

At 8am on Monday there was nothing that indicated the two would meet. Stationed in Rhodes, the burly soldier accompanied his wife, Theodora, on the school run. “Then we thought we’d grab a coffee,” he told the Observer in an exclusive interview recounting what would soon ensue. “We stopped by a cafe on the seafront.”

Deligiorgis had his back to the sea when the vessel carrying Nebiat struck the jagged rocks fishermen on Rhodes grow up learning to avoid. Within seconds the rickety boat packed with Syrians and Eritreans was listing. The odyssey that had originated six hours earlier at the Turkish port of Marmaris – where thousands of Europe-bound migrants are now said to be amassed – was about to end in the strong currents off Zefyros Beach.

For Nebiat, whose journey to Europe began in early March – her parents paid $10,000 for a voyage that would see her walk, bus and fly her way to “freedom” – the reef was her first contact with the continent she had prayed to reach. Soon she was in the water clinging to a rubber buoy.


'I’ve never seen anything like it, the terror that can haunt a human’s eyes.'
Babis Manias, fisherman

________________________
This restores some of my faith in humanity.

[chowder66]

1. Seems she was pregnant and has named her child after her rescuer

An Eritrean migrant who was saved when the boat that was illegally transferring her and almost 200 more illegal migrants to Greece sank just off the coast of Rhodes, gave birth to a health boy on Thursday at Rhodes hospital, just 3 days after the incident. She decided to name her newborn child Antonis, after her Greek rescuer. - See more at: http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/04/26/migrant-to-name-her-child-after-her-greek-rescuer/#sthash.F61KKQ4a.dpuf

: )

[freshwest]

2. K&R

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. k&r