‘The Swimmers’: the sisters who made an epic escape from Syria and had opposite fates

And it was in water that Yusra Mardini competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics, becoming the voice of refugees. Meanwhile, her sister Sarah was helping other immigrants and now faces Greek justice, facing up to 20 years in prison.

Yusra and Sarah’s story inspired the film The Swimmers, from Netflix. Directed by the Egyptian Sally El Hosaini, the film shows the Lebanese actress sisters Nathalie and Manal Issa recreating the experiences lived by the Syrian sisters.

It was in 2015 that a bomb shook the sisters’ lives.

“We were training in the morning and, when we finished, we were waiting for mum outside when ‘boom!'”, Sarah told journalist Magdalena Sodomkova for a documentary presented by the BBC. “A bomb went off inside, there was glass everywhere.”

“We were terrified,” she says. “We lost several friends and even a swimming coach died.”

The Arab Spring – a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that swept across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s – had reached Syria a few years earlier.

The beautiful name of the insurrection defined a series of violent clashes that made the journey to the pool where the sisters swam a dangerous journey.

Half of Syria’s population has fled the country. Yusra and Sarah wanted to make the same move, but their parents weren’t even willing to discuss the possibility – until that day.

Once they heard that a 15-year-old friend had arrived safely in Europe, the girls packed their bags.

At the time, Yusra and Sarah Mardini were 17 and 20 years old, respectively. Their dream was to reach Germany, but they weren’t the only ones.

That year, the number of refugees and migrants on their way to Europe reached such high levels that a crisis broke out, provoking intense political debates.

To give you an idea, at the beginning of December 2015, more than 911,000 refugees and migrants had arrived on the European coast. Over 75% of them were fleeing conflict and persecution in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, the home of the Mardini sisters.

And there was the most painful number: at least 3,550 lives were lost during the journey, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The main route was no longer the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy. The most lethal crossing would then be from Turkey to Greek islands such as Lesbos. And this was the path followed by Yusra and Sarah Mardini.

The sisters’ first attempt to cross the Aegean Sea from the Turkish city of Smyrna to Greece was thwarted by the police, who pulled them out of the water.

Hiding in the woods with other refugees, they waited four more days for the people who had their fate in their hands to return.

“Traffickers are like kings,” explains Yusra. “They show up and say, ‘It’s time’.”

The crossing did not seem so difficult. With the vessel indicated, the migrants needed to sail for an hour and a half without being discovered.

But the traffickers arrived giving orders and put 17 men, three women and a child in an inflatable boat with capacity for seven people and an engine with questionable functioning. Without listening to arguments, they launched the boat with the migrants into the water.

“Fifteen minutes later, the engine stopped working,” says Yusra. And, to top it off, the boat began to fill with water.

“A friend of my father’s, while trying to remove the water from the boat, told us to be strong, to help each other, not to panic”, she recalls. “Everyone started praying, fearing for their lives. Many couldn’t swim.”

Distressed, they threw whatever belongings they could into the water. But the boat continued to sink. Someone would have to jump overboard.

That’s when, suddenly, “my sister jumped.” Yusra was terrified, as was Sarah, “but I started pushing the boat,” she says.

And despite her big sister’s ban, Yusra also jumped into the water.

“Sarah was on the other side of the boat, yelling at me to get back on, but I said no,” recalls Yusra. “‘I want to stay here. I want to help.'”

The situation in the Aegean Sea was desperate. “Two hours later, we were still in the same position, our bodies and minds shattered,” according to Yusra.

The boat continued to fill with water. The engine would sometimes start, then stop again, jerking the girls abruptly. Her arms were covered in bruises.

“We all thought: ‘why did I take this trip, why did I leave my country, my parents, my whole family? Is it really worth it?'”, recalls Yusra Mardini. Several men also threw themselves into the water, even one who “couldn’t even swim. He was clinging to the rope.”

The sun was setting and it was cold. On the horizon, Yusra could see the island of Lesbos, which seemed unreachable.

“We were moving, but we weren’t arriving,” she said. “It really was like dying slowly.”

“A friend of ours called the Greek and Turkish police for help. He said we were drowning. The Greek police only responded by saying ‘come back!’ in Arabic.”

It was another four hours before they finally reached the coast of Greece.

“I felt like I owned the world,” recalls Yusra. “I cried, grateful that my soul was still in my body.”

Miraculously, they were saved, but they still had a long way to go and many obstacles to overcome.

On the island of Lesbos, the sisters took a ferry to the Greek capital Athens, then a bus to North Macedonia, a train through Serbia, and finally walked to the Hungarian border.

A barbed wire fence separated them from the European Union. If they crossed the border without being arrested by the police, they could claim asylum. But they wanted to get to Germany, so they had to get past the authorities without being seen.

The sisters stayed in a corn field, where they were told that people smugglers were. And they waited until late at night, hidden and cold, until one of them arrived offering transport to the Hungarian capital, Budapest, in exchange for several hundred euros.

When they arrived in Budapest, Yusra and Sarah had to flee the place where they were taken, after they found out that they “sold refugees’ organs or, if they were attractive, forced them into prostitution”, according to Yusra Mardini.

Like so many others, they went to the Hungarian capital’s international train station, where they found a Dantesque scenario. About five thousand refugees were there, day and night, waiting to board a train. The police tried to stop them and there were riots.

Amidst the confusion, Sarah and Yusra managed to get into a wagon, but a lady denounced them and they were detained.

The sisters were confined in a refugee camp, which “was horrible”, according to Yusra. All seemed lost.

Until, once again, they managed to escape and, suddenly, luck smiled on them. Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to take in Syrian refugees and sent special buses to Budapest, which would take them to Austria and, from there, to Germany.

“When we arrived in Vienna [na Áustria]it was raining and we saw through the window the locals giving hot tea and coffee to the refugees”, recalls Yusra in the BBC documentary.

“They were waiting for us. And they were welcoming us! They gave us flowers, teddy bears, shampoo… everything you can imagine.”

“A woman named Ann kindly let us into her apartment to shower,” she says. “I washed, washed, washed and saw the water come out dark. We all showered, bought clothes and felt like new people.”

“Ann cooked us hot food, and after all that awful time, it was unbelievable to feel like human beings again, with someone saying, ‘You’re welcome, we’re sorry for your war and we’re sorry for what you’re going through.’

Despite the enormous difficulties of the crossing, Yusra Mardini never lost sight of her goal. She wanted to continue competing in swimming.

Through an interpreter at the refugee camp, the sisters met coach Sven Spannekrebs. After seeing them swim, the coach hired them and streamlined the arrangements for them to have access to accommodation and facilities at a local swimming club.

And it wasn’t just that. He also helped Yusra fulfill her most cherished dream: swimming in the Olympic Games.

In 2016, Yusra Mardini competed at the Rio Olympics. She was part of the first Olympic Games refugee team, winning one of the butterfly swim qualifiers.

In 2017, she was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador – the youngest in history, at just 19 years old.

Sarah got a scholarship to study at Bard College in Berlin, Germany, and started working as a volunteer at the NGO Emergency Response Center International, based in Lesbos, to help other refugees who risked making the same dangerous crossing that she did. with your sister.

In 2018, Sarah was arrested by Greek authorities, accused, along with two other members of the group, of committing various offenses, including trafficking, espionage and fraud. She was held in custody for over 100 days before being released on bail and returning to Berlin, where her other family members now live.

When the trial against her began, Sarah was not allowed to go to Greece to defend herself.

Human Rights Watch calls the accusation “absurd”, possibly “politically motivated”. Amnesty International describes it as “unfair” and “worthless”. And a European Parliament study called the Lesbos trial “the biggest case of criminalizing solidarity in Europe”.

But the Mardini sisters remain familiar faces among the 5.7 million Syrian nationals who have become refugees since 2011 – a fraction of the 103 million people forcibly displaced worldwide by mid-2022, according to the UNHCR.

Many of these people, like Yusra Mardini when she left Syria, are under 18.