June• 2019 | 29PHOTO: GREGORY BEALS
Early in her work, Angeles realised
the b iggest danger for refugees was
the boat trip between Turkey and
Greece. She would hear from fami-
lies before they embarked but then
their communication would die. She
feared they had drowned. How could
she help these refugees stay safe as
they crossed?
That’s how she met Mohamed
Hajira, then 45. A captain with 25
years’ experience in Syria’s mer-
chant marines, he answered one of
her Facebook posts about a rubber
boat sinking in September 2015. He
was a refugee who’d fled Syria as the
war broke out and was now living in
a refugee centre in Kalmar, Sweden.
The pair got chatting. Excited, Ange-
les wrote back: “My brother, if you’rea sailor, we can help them. We will
be their eyes, their motor, their life-
line.” Initially, he laughed. “How?”
he asked. They talked for hours and
within weeks, they had a plan.
They began advising migrants how
to cross safely, including ways of
checking the boat and seeing when it
was overcrowded. They taught them
to travel with water, life jackets, two
phone batteries and their docu-
ments under their clothes. The Cap-
tain meanwhile sent weather reports
every day at six-hourly intervals. If
winds were strong, Red Alert pleaded
with migrants not to cross. They had
some successes. “One New Year’s Eve
we achieved zero crossings because
in all of our WhatsApp group chats
we warned, ‘There’s a strong storm,By day, Angeles works as the administrator at the school she founded