The Naked Don't Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground

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DAVIES: So you made it clear to the smuggler that you didn't want to go there, and the smuggler that you connected with said, no, you're not going there. But as you say in the book, you put yourself in the hands of criminals. What actually happened then when you paid the smuggler and went down to the shoreline of Turkey to try and get to Greece?

DAVIES: One of the remarkable things about this book is that there's - it's a very detailed account of a pretty remarkable experience. And I know in my own reporting experiences, when you're out at something where there's a lot of action, like a demonstration, or when you're on the road, it's hard to take good notes, hard to preserve them. You had to keep your identity as a journalist secret. How did you keep records and notes of what you were experiencing? DAVIES: And you had a lot of conversations with other refugees because everybody was trying to accomplish this same thing. Did you know people who tried that and they succeed? AIKINS: Well, he sent us to the exact place that we had asked not to go to. He lied through his teeth to us, which is unfortunately a very common experience dealing with these people.AIKINS: Yeah, Jim and I lived on a street that had formerly been guarded by the police, and now there was Taliban outside our house. And, you know, we kind of got to know them, and they didn't give us any trouble. But it was a little bit sketchy, and the city changed. You know, it was a ghost town as soon as sunset came around.

AIKINS: Yeah, I didn't really sleep for two weeks, but there was so much adrenaline going that we were able to work every day. I normally write for magazines, long-form stories, a bit slower paced, but now I was kind of lent to the newspaper for a while. So that was a much faster pace, and there was a lot of attention coming from television and radio. And we were learning to navigate the new Taliban power structure while, at the same time, you know, trying to get to these areas around the airport where there was this massive suicide bombing or this drone strike. So it was completely tumultuous and a blur, but you felt like you were doing a job that was important, that you knew you had a responsibility to document what was happening because we were one of the few people on the ground. So you just had to do it. Matthieu Aikins is that rarest of combinations – an intrepid journalist who writes beautifully. The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is a compellingly original piece of work, an unforgettable narrative about one of the great human epics of our day.’ AIKINS: I thought maybe we'd all go in the water, and if we did, people are going to die. You know, I'm a strong swimmer. I've grown up on the ocean. Many of the people there, they had never seen the ocean before; this is Omar's first time in a boat. So I just knew that things were going to get really bad if we capsized. DAVIES: You know, when you were on the smugglers' roads, one of the things you said was, like, if you were known to be a Westerner, there was a risk of being kidnapped and being held for ransom. Did you have that fear in this period, when the Afghan government had collapsed and the Taliban were taking over?AIKINS: The mood had definitely changed. And it's difficult. You have some sympathy for especially the Greek islanders who are being made responsible for this crisis that has, you know, to do with an entire continent, and their islands are being turned into open-air prisons, basically, for migrants. But it was quite an ugly scene on the ground. DAVIES: Yeah. What were the opportunities? What were the options there for spiriting your way onto the ferry boat? DAVIES: He said, this is not what we paid for. And he saw a weapon and said, you're going now. So that's - you got into this little boat. AIKINS: No. A lot of times they're counterfeit, and they'll actually absorb water. And after an hour or so, they will take you down. You know, a lot of people drowned making that crossing.

AIKINS: Well, it was already clear by then that things were not going well, that the foreigners would eventually leave and that the Afghan government was, you know, becoming more and more dysfunctional and corrupt. The Taliban were on the march in the countryside. The Taliban briefly captured a provincial capital at the end of 2015. So there's that, and there's also the fact that Omar - you know, since he was a kid, he had dreamed of emigrating to the West. He used to watch a Canadian television show on - when he was a kid in Iran. And he had actually applied for a visa to emigrate here. He should have been eligible under this Special Immigrant Visa program for former Afghan and Iraqi employees of the U.S. government, but he was rejected because he didn't have all the paperwork. So after that happened, he decided to take the smugglers' road to Europe. DAVIES: And when you say prison, we're not talking about a regular prison for criminals on the island. We're talking about a - what was a refugee camp that, in effect, functioned as a detention facility, right?

The Naked Don’t Fear The Water

The most affecting book I have read about the iniquity of the refugee crisis since Exit West. The reporting is totally immersive, without ever losing its clarity, and gives a heartbreaking insight into the lives of normal people taking terrible risks to save themselves.’ AIKINS: They had their cellphones out and were showing me pictures of the children they said had died in the strike. They showed me the business card and documents belonging to Zemari Ahmadi, who was the one targeted in the strike and saying, you know, he worked for an American NGO, you know, he's an aid worker. They had the documents right there.

AIKINS: It was the largest, most notorious, most violent prison that had just burned to the ground a week before in a riot. So it sounded terrible, and everyone warned us not to go there. Fitzcarraldo Editions has acquired Matthieu Aikins’ debut The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground, about Aikins’ journey undercover on the migrant trail from Kabul to Europe in 2016. Fitzcarraldo Editions will publish in February 2022, simultaneously with Harper in the US. Published 15 February 2022 | Winner of the 2022 Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia DAVIES: Right. And we've heard a lot about Afghan refugees in recent months. This was, you know, five years before the American withdrawal - 2016. Why did he want to leave? DAVIES: It was interesting that - you wrote a 20,000-word piece that was on the cover of The New York Times magazine in December about the withdrawal of American forces and its aftermath. It's a really gripping tale of both kind of what happens among Afghan governmental elites as well as people on the street. I'm just wondering, you know, you spent a long time looking at this. What's your take on the American withdrawal? You know, it's gotten such criticism and you must know countless Afghans whose lives were turned upside down or, in some cases, lost in the course of all this. Should the Americans have stayed longer? Should they have had another surge to stay and fight the Taliban?DAVIES: So this Norwegian vessel encounters you. You do make it to Lesbos. You were arrested, as you expected to be; people will get arrested and apply for asylum and hope to continue their journey. And so you end up in this camp called Moria. Tell us what the conditions were like, what the experience was. No, sir,’ I’d say, scrambling around the belt with my passport before the cop could snatch the bottles. ‘Look at my name, I’m not even Muslim—sorry.’ The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is a work of great empathy and humanity: a must-read for anyone looking to understand our increasingly fractured age.’