The Naked Don't Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground

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The book shines a humane spotlight on many of the people the author met along the way as well as on the role chance played in their fates, with particularly moving chapters on life within the Greek refugee camp. The narrative is scrupulous and often suspenseful. Sharp insider insights into a global dilemma.’ Journalist Aikins debuts with a powerful account of the “long and dangerous journey” many Afghans take out of their war-torn country…The result is a heart-wrenching portrait of resilience and ingenuity under the most trying of circumstances.’ AIKINS: Yeah, I didn't really sleep for two weeks, but there was so much adrenaline going that we were able to work every day. I normally write for magazines, long-form stories, a bit slower paced, but now I was kind of lent to the newspaper for a while. So that was a much faster pace, and there was a lot of attention coming from television and radio. And we were learning to navigate the new Taliban power structure while, at the same time, you know, trying to get to these areas around the airport where there was this massive suicide bombing or this drone strike. So it was completely tumultuous and a blur, but you felt like you were doing a job that was important, that you knew you had a responsibility to document what was happening because we were one of the few people on the ground. So you just had to do it. AIKINS: He's forced to get out of the van at gunpoint when he wouldn't leave, insisting that we be taken to a different island. The most affecting book I have read about the iniquity of the refugee crisis since Exit West. The reporting is totally immersive, without ever losing its clarity, and gives a heartbreaking insight into the lives of normal people taking terrible risks to save themselves.’

AIKINS: I thought maybe we'd all go in the water, and if we did, people are going to die. You know, I'm a strong swimmer. I've grown up on the ocean. Many of the people there, they had never seen the ocean before; this is Omar's first time in a boat. So I just knew that things were going to get really bad if we capsized.DAVIES: Right. And he certainly would have qualified. I mean, he had done translating for coalition forces. He'd seen combat. He - but they wanted a lot of documentation that people, when they're in action, don't think to collect. So you decided you would go together and report on this, which meant you would be traveling as an Afghan. But, of course, you are, in fact, a Westerner. You're Canadian-born. What advantages or risks did that pose to the two of you, that you were there kind of looking like an Afghan refugee, but really a Western journalist? DAVIES: Yeah, you said a million people reached Europe by sea during this movement, the largest movement of refugees across waters in history. By the time Omar decided he was going to go, he had some personal considerations that delayed him. Things had changed. How did they change?

AIKINS: Yeah, Jim and I lived on a street that had formerly been guarded by the police, and now there was Taliban outside our house. And, you know, we kind of got to know them, and they didn't give us any trouble. But it was a little bit sketchy, and the city changed. You know, it was a ghost town as soon as sunset came around. AIKINS: Well, it was already clear by then that things were not going well, that the foreigners would eventually leave and that the Afghan government was, you know, becoming more and more dysfunctional and corrupt. The Taliban were on the march in the countryside. The Taliban briefly captured a provincial capital at the end of 2015. So there's that, and there's also the fact that Omar - you know, since he was a kid, he had dreamed of emigrating to the West. He used to watch a Canadian television show on - when he was a kid in Iran. And he had actually applied for a visa to emigrate here. He should have been eligible under this Special Immigrant Visa program for former Afghan and Iraqi employees of the U.S. government, but he was rejected because he didn't have all the paperwork. So after that happened, he decided to take the smugglers' road to Europe. AIKINS: Well, it was the Taliban who were going to kidnap you beforehand a lot of times. And now that they were the government and supposedly claimed to want to protect foreign journalists and NGO workers because they wanted to portray themselves as a responsible authority, there was actually less threat of kidnapping in the beginning, at least. We were more worried about ISIS, who might want to kill a foreigner, or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was a lot of shooting around the airport. AIKINS: The mood had definitely changed. And it's difficult. You have some sympathy for especially the Greek islanders who are being made responsible for this crisis that has, you know, to do with an entire continent, and their islands are being turned into open-air prisons, basically, for migrants. But it was quite an ugly scene on the ground. AIKINS: Yeah, people were somewhat free to come and go from the camp itself but not to leave the island.In 2016, a young Afghan driver and translator named Omar makes the heart-wrenching choice to flee his war-torn country, saying goodbye to Laila, the love of his life, without knowing when they might be reunited again. He is one of millions of refugees who leave their homes that year. DAVIES: He said, this is not what we paid for. And he saw a weapon and said, you're going now. So that's - you got into this little boat. DAVIES: Right. And we've heard a lot about Afghan refugees in recent months. This was, you know, five years before the American withdrawal - 2016. Why did he want to leave?