Children’s screams that haunt survivor’s dreams

The screams of children and women drowning in a shipwreck off Malta have dictated Hamad Alroosan’s nightmares for a year. Talking about the migrants’ tragedy, which killed more than 50 people in October 11, 2013, imbues the 10-year-old with sadness. Instead, the Syrian/Palestinian boy drew his teacher a picture of what he described as the “scariest moment”. The drawing shows a green helicopter hovering over the sea and, below it, some stick men and women are raising their skinny arms for help. Five figures are seen floating in the water. “My parents didn’t tell me we were leaving Syria – they just packed and we left. There was no time to explain. It all happened really fast,” Hamad tells The Sunday Times of Malta. Sitting next to his parents in their St Paul’s Bay apartment, Hamad speaks of the tragedy just before the family relocates to Germany. “The scariest moment was when we were on the boat that had just left Libya. If I get to be a 100 years old, I will never forget it,” Hamad says, a year from the rescue that a captain of the Maltese army vessel described as one of the toughest in his career. “When the boat started sinking I just heard children and women screaming. I...