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First came an electronic message. Then, a month afterwards, a baby.

Each appearance, in its own way, marked a dramatic turn in the fortunes of a sorrow-stricken Iraqi family that has spent the past 15 years darting around Europe in a state of uncertain status. Unable to obtain asylum, or to be employed legally, or to call any place home.

An Odyssey Marked by Tragedy and Optimism

The household scraped the lowest point of despair in the spring of 2024. Faced with forthcoming deportation from Belgium to Iraq, they tried to travel across the Channel in a inflatable craft. Their seven-year-old child, Sara, perished in a crushing crowding on the vessel – an event witnessed from a French beach.

A little more than a year, a life-changing message from an official French refugee agency arrived to the household at their short-term lodging. "We know our path now," says the parent, looking through the email, a slight smile appearing across his weary face.

In the hallway, in her bedroom, his oldest child, Rahaf, 14, practices writing in a neat journal, diligently learning her fourth tongue, French. "It's pretty hard. I can comprehend better than I can speak," she explains in excellent English, her third tongue after Swedish and Arabic.

Refugee Status Continuously Denied

The parents encountered each other in Belgium when they were in their twenties, having both escaped Iraq. The mother says she and her brothers and sisters had to depart because of their family's ties to a former regime. The father fled because of alleged death threats from a armed group.

Her siblings quickly relocated to Sweden, where they were all granted protection. But she stayed behind because she had encountered her partner at a family member's home, and was instantly struck by his calm, considerate manner.

"It was love," she admits with a sad expression, that stopped her from following her siblings to Sweden.

"Had I left with them, my whole existence would have been different. It might be my fate," she reflects.

Rather, a separate path unfolded. The couple applied for refugee status in Belgium, were married there and went on to have three kids – girls Rahaf and Sara, and a boy called Hussam.

The family did eventually make their journey, via Finland, to Sweden because they were denied the permission to stay in Belgium. But early last year, they were informed that they had to leave Sweden too.

European immigration officials had consistently determined that their home city of Basra, in the south of Iraq, was no longer a war zone and their requests for asylum were all rejected.

But the parents maintained that their safety would be in danger if they were deported to Iraq – a country that their kids had never visited.

"Had we believed we could actually reside safely in Iraq, we would have returned a while back," states the mother.

Convinced they might soon be compelled to return to Basra, the parent reached out to a smuggling network and paid a substantial amount of money to take the household by inflatable craft to England, where a number of their family members were by then living.

Early on April 23rd last year, a smuggling group was seen struggling against French police. Shortly later, in the early dawn light, a man was seen hoist a child onboard an inflatable boat. The child was seven year old Sara. As additional passengers crowded into the boat, she became pinned under her father's legs and suffocated in the dark, along with four other people.

"I can never forgive myself. But the sea was the sole opportunity I had," the father explained soon after the event.

A two weeks later, Sara was buried in a graveyard in a nearby city.

Life in Limbo

The household was quickly moved to a asylum seeker transit shelter in a small village. There were no shops and little transportation. Other migrants spent only a brief period at the centre before departing - often to head back to the coast to attempt another crossing. The household remained there for almost a year.

Sara's sibling, Rahaf, spoke tearfully of her longing for a "normal" existence. She had remained in contact with classmates from Sweden where she had excelled, earning awards for skating.

As the weeks began to pass, it appeared that the household had become trapped in the currents of a administrative maze, struggling to get the children into a local school, to obtain any sort of assistance or to leave the overpopulated hostel.

Burdened by sorrow, the parent struggled to leave her bed.

"I ate there. I rested there. I sat there. I just didn't have the energy to get out of that pattern," she says.

"It was the most difficult year of my existence."

The shelter's fast movement of new migrants caused the kids reeling, and the mother troubled.

"Whenever new (migrants) came, they wished to talk about the crossing, how they got there, who they traveled with. I didn't desire anybody to question me or to hear anything," she says. She likens the shelter to a detention center.

The family applied for asylum in France shortly following Sara's death.

According to EU rules, they could have been sent back to Belgium, where the father was first documented as an asylum seeker. That was not done – perhaps because the local authorities took pity on them following Sara's tragedy. But it still took a legal challenge, and many more, for the household to obtain schooling and other support in France.

"It resembles a labyrinth. They're caught by the procedures," comments a local lawyer who has been helping the family.

"It is certain they were entitled to get assistance as refugee applicants."

She explains the complex regulations, the struggles to book appointments and the challenges facing those unable to communicate in French.

"Those numerous laws and barriers are created, in a sense, to prevent people to arrive [as if] to say, 'you're not wanted here'," she states.

But in the spring of 2025, the family were finally relocated to their own two room apartment in a social housing unit.

A Fresh Beginning

Rahaf promptly created what she called "a shrine" to her sibling Sara, with photographs and keepsakes, including her timepiece, meticulously arranged on a bookcase.

"I feel I can breathe now," the parent says during a meeting, her palm on her throat.

At that time the parents still hoped about reaching Britain, where they have other relatives. But not by small boat.

"Never," the mother says, resolutely.

Then, on a summer day in the end of July, a much anticipated email from the French authorities was received in the parent's account.

It stated that he and his kids had been awarded temporary refugee status and authorization to remain in France for the next four years. The mother has been told she will get the same news shortly. Following that, they will all be eligible to apply for permanent residency, paving the path towards French citizenship.

'Finally I can Help my {