Teema Kurdi battles to bring Syrian family back in Canada

With tears in her eyes, she tossed a bouquet of yellow flowers into the water.

Tima Kurdi said that her brother buried his children and his wife in Syria and has not left their graveside.

Twelve Syrian migrants drowned on Wednesday when two boats sank in Turkish waters as they were heading towards the Greek island of Kos, in the latest tragedy to hit migrants in the Aegean.

When she called her brother, the boys’ father, she remembered saying, “I’m sorry”.

“I will have to pay the price for this the rest of my life”, the devastated father told mourners, after carrying his sons’ bodies himself to be buried in Kobane’s Martyrs’ Cemetery, where around 100 people attended the ceremony.

“He said: ‘Aunty, can you buy me a bicycle?,'” said Kurdi, sobbing.

Family, friends and strangers on Saturday packed a small Vancouver theatre filled with white balloons, roses and photos for a memorial service. That said, we can rightfully take pride in the fact that despite our limited resources we have the privilege of hosting the largest number of refugees for the last so many years.

Nilufer told the Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey’s English language newspaper: “I was on duty and also photographed a group of Pakistani migrants in an attempt to cross into Greece“.

“I want from Arab governments, not European countries, to see my children, and because of them to help people”, he said in footage posted online by a local radio station.

About the picture of him holding the child that went viral, the gendarme commander said that it never crossed his mind that this photo of him would make world headlines for days. “He tried to save the second one, Alan (the Anglicised nickname given to Aylan). He always laughed. He doesn’t know how to cry”.

She says Abdullah embarked on the risky journey with his family after a bid by another brother to seek refugees status in Canada failed.

When he was finally freed, he moved his family to the town near the Turkish border, where they lived in two rooms in the house owned by his wife’s parents for about 18 months.

“I am the one who should be at blame”, she said.

The situation and what the family has been through is “nothing new“, said Tima’s son and Alan’s namesake, Alan Kerim.

“We saw the picture of the baby, [but] we have no other chance”, said 36-year old Abdulmenem Alsatouf, a father of three who once ran a supermarket in the Syrian city of Idlib. An application for her eldest brother, Mohammad, was rejected because it was incomplete.