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At the rescue operation of Medecins Sans Frontiers, or MSF) in the Central Mediterranean, I watched as a Syrian boy named Ali rushed to grab hold of his father’s hand as he boarded the Geo Barents rescue ship. Moustafa, Ali’s father, was paralyzed. I immediately thought how difficult it would be for him to stop after a few hours sitting in the same boat in a crowded boat.
But Ali helped her to her feet and held her tight. When I reached out to them to help them and put on a warm blanket over their shoulders, I saw the words written in Arabic script on Ali’s right hand.
“I was terrified that I would not be able to cope, so I wrote in my wife’s name and touched her hand on Ali’s arm. He is in Syria. If anything happened to me on that boat, I would have believed that someone would take care of my son and let him know, ”explained Moustafa. He told me that he had left Libya the previous day, in a wooden boat that he had just been rescued.
“I saw all the people coming to the boat [in Libya], I realized that there were more people. I panicked and wanted to get out of the boat. I pleaded with the smuggler to let us go, ”said Moustafa, glancing at Geo Barents Court to see if all three of his children were safe on board. “Later, the man I had hired to get on the boat shouted at me and threatened to shoot me and my sons. We had no choice but to stay. ”
Moustafa and his three sons were among the 99 survivors rescued by MSF on Geo Barents on November 16, during a difficult search and rescue operation of less than 30 nautical miles (55.5km) off the Libyan coast.
The survivors reported leaving the town of Zuwara, about 60 miles[100 km]from Tripoli on the Libyan coast, on the evening of November 15, in a wooden canoe. After several miles at sea, the weather got worse, the waves became more and more dangerous, and the engine stopped working.
“In the boat were women and children who were terrified and weeping. Many people were crying, screaming, and running around in the boat because they were afraid. I have no choice but to pray to God for the survival of my children, ”Moustafa said as he wrapped his arms around his youngest son, Ali.
When the Geo Barents arrived in a wooden canoe in the early hours of the morning, the MSF team found the bodies of 10 people under the ship, who were thought to have been trapped by oil spills. The survivors told us that they had spent more than 13 hours on the bottom of the ship. Some of the people on board were not aware of what was happening to their friends and relatives on board, while others had to spend hours sitting near the bodies of fellow passengers.
Most of the people who were rescued that day survived several accidents throughout their journey, and their experiences on the ship were recent. Regardless of the reasons why they left home, there were always the same issues in their stories: the experience of violence, poverty, and heartbreaking fear for the lives of their loved ones.
“I no longer want my life, but I just want the well-being of my children. I want them to be safe and well educated,” Moustafa said as he sat down in pain.
Moustafa had internal braces on his right leg that left him paralyzed. He also said he had been in pain since 2011, when his leg was badly injured in Syria and doctors had to fix a fixator. “[Armed men] came to me in my shop. He slammed the door and repeatedly hit me with his rifle buttocks and anything else he could find, ”said Moustafa, pointing to a long wound that still appeared on his head.
“I fainted, and she thought I was dead. Hours later, I woke up in the middle of an empty street, behind some abandoned buildings, with a broken leg and blood all over me. ”
Moustafa hails from Bab Bila, a region south of Damascus that was besieged for four years during the Syrian conflict, which began in 2011. When the city was ousted in 2015, he decided to flee the war with his three children. At the time, Ali was one year old. Their journey was long and arduous: the couple lived for about a month in Sudan and then moved to Egypt, where their lives were difficult.
In September 2021, without a job and a valid passport, Moustafa made the difficult decision to travel to Libya and try to cross the Mediterranean Sea. She hoped to give her children the opportunity to go to school. The couple crossed the border from Egypt to Libya, via Benghazi and Tripoli on their way to Zuwara, where they boarded a boat.
It is strange to me that a child like Ali, wonderfully kind and calm, spent his whole life on the run. And it is hard to imagine that a dedicated father would have been left with no choice but to ride with his children on a dangerous boat trip for the sake of their education. This is a shameful incident that is taking place on the European border, where careless and careless immigration laws force people like Moustafa and his family to risk their lives.
An estimated 1,305 people, including 37 children, have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Mediterranean in 2021. An estimated 18,582 people have died or gone missing in the same process since 2014.
Ever since Europe washed its hands of rescue operations in the Mediterranean, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been trying to hide their identities, while the Libyan movement continues and many people are risking their lives to cross the sea. The catastrophic loss of human life in the Mediterranean Sea is not a series of catastrophic events, but the result of political decisions made by European leaders in the name of protecting borders rather than protecting people.
The names of the refugees mentioned in this article have been changed to protect themselves.
Since launching the search and rescue operations in 2015, MSF has deployed medical teams on eight rescue vessels, sometimes using the vessels in collaboration with other agencies. Worldwide, MSF search and rescue teams have assisted more than 82,000 people. The Geo Barents is a modern MSF search and rescue ship that became operational in May 2021. A total of 1,345 people were rescued by an MSF team located at Geo Barents between May and November 2021.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Al Jazeera.
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