"....As the sun was going down again, a full day later, they pulled into the Turkish harbour. A large banner carried the Canadian flag and the Turkish flag. “I am proud to be a Canadian,” a beefy passenger yelled from the top deck. Other passengers, stepping off the ferry's front ramp, were cursing the country.
Inside, volunteers from the Turkish Red Crescent society (counterpart to the Red Cross) handed everyone a bag containing a bottle of water and two packages of cookies — and a long-stemmed white carnation. There was medical assistance, and glasses of orange Tang. There was, improbably, a Mersin tourist booth, whose two attendants spoke only Turkish and German. Zeinab, the Farhats' 46-year-old mother, looked relieved to have her sons out of danger.
They were loaded onto tour buses chartered by the Canadian government and taken on an hour-long trip to the Turkish city of Adana. There, they were unloaded into a modern basketball stadium, donated by the Turkish government to aid the Canadian effort. On the lawn outside there were medical tents staffed by the Red Crescent and a food truck with free kebabs. Inside, beneath giant banners of Turkey's red-crescent flag and a full-length portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, there were toilets, showers, diapers, and 262 single mattresses, complete with pillows. And dozens of young Canadian volunteers, some of them teenagers who'd interrupted their vacations to help out...."
More:globeandmail.com : One family's epic journey out of war
