WHO DO YOU SAVE?
In October 2015, a boat carrying more than 300 people was shipwrecked several kilometres off the coast of Lesvos. Among those in the water was Amel al-Zakout, a young Syrian refugee who made the journey from Turkey that day, heading to meet her partner in Germany.
The Spanish lifeguard Gerard Canals was the first to arrive at the scene, driving a jet-ski normally used for beach rescues of holidaymakers. He and his team of three volunteers would prove indispensable to a dramatic, drawn-out rescue that would save the lives of 242 passengers.
Four years later, the two are reunited for the first time. Amel is connecting from the German city of Leipzig – where she is enrolled on a fine art degree – from her flat, where she now lives with her baby daughter and partner. Self-possessed with a warm, infectious smile, she expresses herself in careful, deliberate English.
Gerard comes in via videolink from Barcelona. A genial, high-speed talker, he communicates the same contained, pragmatic outrage that first moved him to co-found the charity Open Arms in the wake of the death of Alan Kurdi, a month before Amel set out on her journey. Since the shipwreck, the NGO has crystallized into a fully fledged search and rescue charity, of which he is Chief of Operations. In the intervening years, it has saved over 59,000 people from the Mediterranean Sea.
The conversation between them ranges over the events of
