Shaheen Sheikh Ali knew something bad had happened when she saw frenetic activity in a family WhatsApp group.
Four male relatives, all under the age of 30, are believed to have been on board the fishing boat that sank in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, 80km off the Greek coast.
“We look forward to any good news,” he told the BBC. But everyone fears the worst.
The 31-year-old lives in Germany but is Syrian, from the Kurdish-majority city of Kobane. He knows 12 people who he suspects were on the ship.
The shipwreck is one of the worst migration tragedies in recent years, with almost 80 deaths and at least 100 rescued.
But your balance could be much worse. The UN Refugee Agency estimates that there are still some 500 missing migrants, including a large number of children and women.
SIt is believed that up to 750 people may have been on the boat, including 100 children..
“We hadn’t heard from them for days and we didn’t even know if they were on the boat,” Ali said, adding that the group’s last contact with relatives in Syria was almost a week ago.
Since June 14, he and his family have received conflicting news about whether the group is dead or alive.
“In incidents like this, you can’t know for sure if someone is alive or dead. One word can destroy the morale of the whole family,” Ali said.
For Pakistani-born British journalist Raja Faryad Khan, it’s good news: his 22-year-old nephew, Adnan Bashir, is one of the few survivors.
But her relief is tinged with sadness, as up to 16 people from his village in Pakistani-administered Kashmir may have been on the boat.
Khan traveled from Britain to the Greek port city of Kalamata to meet his nephew, but was only allowed a few moments with him by a security guard.
“(My nephew) said that the boat began to shake and flipped on its side, and then it just sank into the seaKhan said.
The Libyan link
Back in Germany, Ali lives in the throes of uncertainty as she describes the journey her relatives took.
They were smuggled from Syria to Lebanon before being flown to Libya, where they stayed for 40 days waiting for a chance to cross the Mediterranean Sea and reach Italy.
According to Ali, the group paid at least $5,000 per head to the smugglersbut this did not save them from harsh treatment by traffickers.
“The smugglers picked them up at the airport and dumped them wherever they could,” he recounted.
Ali said his relatives were taken to a “cement block” with no furniture and had to sleep on blankets spread on the hard floor.
The last time she spoke to anyone from the group was in early June, when some of her relatives hinted that a crossing might be imminent.
“They told me they would leave soon because it was hot and the sea was calm enough,” Ali recalled.
His relatives shared photos that set off alarm bells. “I saw expressions of sadness in her eyes, but it could also have been fatigue.”
What makes his pain deeper is that he himself risked his life to escape the war in Syria in 2016.
But at that time it was much easier for people to get to Europeas more migration routes were available, he noted.
Ali crossed the border into Turkey before embarking on a much shorter boat trip to Greece.
“I took a boat to get to Greece, but it was a 4 km trip,” he said.
“When we left, we could see the lights of some of the Greek islands.”
The distance from Libya to Italy is at least 725 km. Another difference noted by Ali is that all the passengers on his boat had life jackets.
The Greek coast guard noted that none of the people aboard the sunken fishing boat were wearing them.
Despite the differences, Ali can easily put herself in the shoes of her relatives, imagining what they “must have been thinking” before they got on the fishing boat.
“You don’t know what will happen. You are worried that someone might die, that someone might fall off the boat,” she said. “No matter how hard I try, I can’t describe how I feel about this tragedy.”
The 31-year-old is outraged by the role played by people smugglers, whom he accuses of “treating people like a piece of meat”.
“I guess those smugglers don’t even count how many people they’re putting on a boat. They don’t care about the consequences.”
Ali called for more understanding and solidarity.
“People need safer routes. No one will ever stop the migrationneither the European countries nor anyone”, he assured.
“My relatives only dreamed of coming to Europe to work and help their families.”
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See original article on BBC