Tima Kurdi sent $5,000 to her brother Abdullah so he could go to Europe.DARRYL DYCK
The text message landed on Tima Kurdi's phone late Tuesday afternoon in British Columbia.
"We are leaving now," wrote her brother, Abdullah Kurdi.
It was three or four in the morning in Turkey, where Mr. Kurdi, his wife and their two young boys were about to board a dinghy to attempt the crossing to the Greek island of Kos.
Ms. Kurdi notified her father in Syria: "Abdullah is leaving now. Pray for him, for safety."
The journey was only supposed to take 30 minutes. When Ms. Kurdi had still not heard from her brother after a couple of hours, she called him. His phone was off.
Early Wednesday morning, Ms. Kurdi awoke to find "a hundred" missed phone calls from family members in Syria and Turkey. "Right away, I knew there was something wrong," she said through tears at her Coquitlam, B.C., home on Thursday.
The water had been still when the Kurdis set off, but the boat – which Mr. Kurdi had paid smugglers thousands of dollars to transport his family in – was hit by unforgiving waves soon after. It quickly capsized.
Mr. Kurdi's wife, Rehanna, and two young sons, Ghalib and Alan, died. An image of three-year-old Alan's lifeless body, washed up on a Turkish beach, has sparked outrage around the world, becoming a symbol of the migrant crisis.
Ms. Kurdi had tried to bring her siblings, and their families, to Canada. Earlier in the year, she filed an application for another brother, Mohammed, but the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada said it was incomplete.
With assistance from New Westminster-Coquitlam MP Fin Donnelly, Ms. Kurdi wrote a letter to Immigration Minister Chris Alexander, asking for help.
In the letter, dated March 17, she wrote that it was impossible for her brother to secure a Turkish exit visa or re-enter Syria to obtain certain documentation. She said she and her husband were willing and able to support Mohammed and his family, and that "their situation has become desperate."
Mr. Donnelly said they followed up with the minister's office, which initially asked for supplemental information.
"Hearing that they wanted more information seemed positive, but then we didn't hear anything for weeks," Mr. Donnelly said. "Then weeks turned into months."
Ms. Kurdi's plan was to sponsor one sibling's family at a time, but when Mohammed's application was rejected in June, Abdullah felt no choice but to pursue the more desperate course of action. Ms. Kurdi recounted a heart-wrenching conversation with her brother, in which he told of the struggle to keep his young boys above water.
"He said he tried all his power to put them up [above] the water, to breathe," she said.
"They screamed, 'Daddy, please don't die.' Then when he looked in his left arm, the older boy, Ghalib – he's already dead. So he let him go, and he said, 'I will try to save the second one, Alan.' He looked at him, there was blood coming from his eyes. So he closed his eyes. And he let him go."
Ms. Kurdi said she sent her brother $5,000 three weeks ago, an amount initially intended to help with costly dental work. They later decided the money would be better spent on getting Mr. Kurdi to Europe.
"He was supposed to go by himself only, because it's expensive for the whole family," Ms. Kurdi said. "The smugglers, they want $1,000, $2,000 per person."
But Mr. Kurdi later called his sister back, worried that his wife would not be able to support the family without him.
"'How about if we go, all of us? " he asked her.
"If you know you can do it, go ahead and do it,'" Ms. Kurdi replied.
Ms. Kurdi said her brother wants his tragedy to serve as a wake-up call.
"He said to me, 'My message to the whole world: Please help those people crossing that water. Don't let them take that journey any more. I don't want people to die any more."
Mr. Kurdi added that he doesn't need anything else but to go back to Kobani and bury his family.
Tima Kurdi wrote Immigration Minister Chris Alexander in March of this year pleading for help bringing her brother, Mohammad Kurdi, to Canada. Ms. Kurdi is the aunt of Alan Kurdi, the young boy whose death on a Turkish beach has shocked the world