Tima Kurdi is back from two weeks helping Syrian refugees and her mind isn’t on the every day stresses and joys of her suburban life as a Coquitlam mother and wife.
Still, Kurdi is pleased that her book, The Boy on the Beach, has been shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer prize.
Created with the goal of kick-starting the careers of new Canadian authors, Kurdi has been nominated along with five other writers in the non-fiction category for the prize that carries with it $10,000 in prize money.
Recently back from Erbil, in Kurdistan, Kurdi is grateful for the recognition for her memoir about the circumstances leading up to the drowning death of her nephew Alan Kurdi, a photograph of which was shared around the world.
However, her heart is back in Kurdistan where Syrian refugee children are needing books for school and their parents need jobs to support the family.
“It’s nice, I was happy to hear this. It’s not about my book winning, honestly, it’s about the story,” Kurdi told The Tri-City News this week. “This story, it’s not just about my family, it’s about thousands of other families. I want the world to continue to recognize what’s happening on the other side of the world to other families since my nephew Alan died in 2015.”
On her trip in support of the Kurdi Foundation, Kurdi met with dozens of families who still have hope but need the basic essentials, food, housing, clothing, education, after fleeing their homes during the Syrian civil war.
She’s frustrated with what appears to be the lack of interest in what’s happening to refugees now that the headlines about what happened to her family have disappeared from the media agenda.
“People have no idea of what’s going on in the other side of the world, I can’t describe how their life is, people need to go and see with their own eyes and live with it and live with the family story,” Kurdi said.
Still the families in Erbil haven’t let their circumstances deprive them of hope, and this is the theme Kurdi is most comfortable discussing. Describing a friendship with a little girl who gave her a gift of “magic lipstick” (It’s green but turns red when held), Kurdi promised she would return to help more Syrian refugee children.
“They are innocent, they are our future, we need to invest and we need to talk to them about what they want.”
