We meet the eyes of A. 18 years old from Egypt: they are shiny, wet by
tears. We explain to him that our team deals with both body and
invisible wounds of the mind. A. “It is just as you say”, he confirms
with emphasis, “even those of the heart are wounds like those I have
here and here and here and also here” and while saying that he shows us
scars scattered on the legs, on the nape and on the back . Injuries
suffered in Egypt following repeated assaults by a group of compatriots
and then in Libya during 7 months of detention.
We ask how he is now. “This place is better. Where I was before there
was a constant feeling of death. For many days death was the only
chance I saw before me. Then God, I don’t know how, brought me here.”
Words flow like rivers and A.’s big eyes are full of withheld tears.
“Sometimes, while the others are talking, my mind goes away and I see
the sea and those terrible moments in front of me. At night while I
sleep I feel suffocated, I’m down at the bottom of the sea and I’m about
to drown. I screamed loudly: we are dying! We are dying! A Sudanese
friend woke me up, he tried to explain to me that we were safe, that we
were in Pozzallo but I couldn’t believe it. He took me for a walk,
helped me to understand that I was no longer in the sea, I wasn’t dying,
I couldn’t believe it. ”
A. also tells us about the minutes before the rescue by the Open Arms
vessel: “If they had arrived only 15 minutes later, we would have died.
We were all in the water and we had surrendered to Death.” The stories
of the 20 days of uncertainty on the rescue ship are vivid and traumatic
in several of the testimonies we collect. “Without a bathroom, without
blankets, sleeping on the ground between water and the sky. Too hard!”
continues A. “Since I left the Open Arms ship I am no longer the same
person, my heartbeat has changed, I have pain in my back and all over my
body, images of the past do not leave me”.
Testimony by the Medu Sicily Team from the Pozzallo Hotspot (Sicily)