day, strong offshore winds, whitecaps as far as the eye could see, the boat swaying at dock, making passage of the gangplank hazardous.
When Mattias had arrived at the dock, he believed that he had come to the wrong place. The boat he was to travel on—the Medusa—already appeared to be full. Every square inch of the deck was packed with men and women standing cheek by jowl. And yet, two hundred more waited to board. It made no difference. The handlers continued to hurry the passengers aboard, forcing them into a cavernous hold belowdecks. It was into this dark hell that Mattias descended for the three-day voyage.
He had barely set foot inside when the stench overcame him. Everywhere men and women were vomiting, already nauseated by the boat’s violent pitching and rolling. Though it was blustery on deck, no wind penetrated the fiberglass hull. The temperature inside was 90 degrees and rising. There was no water to drink other than the liter bottle he had brought with him. And no food, except for the packet of nuts and dates he had stuffed into his small travel bag. The single toilet was broken, overflowing with waste. Still more passengers came aboard.
Mattias, born Ibrahim Moussa, had arrived in Sirte a day earlier, after a month’s journey from the city of Nemharat in the Atlas Mountains, 1,200 miles to the south. He was twenty-one years old, a son of a sheepherder, tall and lean, hungry for life’s rewards but without the education, the barest minimum of wealth to be anything more than what his father had been, and his father’s father. Disease had ravaged the flock. Summers were hotter; winters colder. Two years before, he had traveled to Nemharat for work. At first, he’d found a job in a leather-tanning factory. The work was grueling, twelve hours a day, six days a week, a thirty-minute break for lunch, usually tea and bread, his monthly salary two hundred dollars, eight dollars a day. Of this, half he sent to his family. He lived in a boarding house. Men slept in six-hour shifts, then made way for the next, fifty in a room, one toilet, an outdoor shower that often did not work.
One day he was fired. No reason given. He remained in Nemharat for a year, doing odd jobs to survive. Selling tea on the street, digging graves, cleaning the abattoir. Even for these jobs, competition was fierce. He lived on a dollar a day, often going without food.
And then he met a man from his hometown who promised he knew a way to change his life for the better. He would send Mattias to Europe, where he could get a job that paid him enough to send two hundred dollars to his parents each month and still have more than enough to live in his own apartment, buy new clothes, eat three meals a day, and perhaps even go to a restaurant or see a movie. One did not have to be a citizen or have a passport. It sufficed to land on their shores.
Mattias would be an asylum seeker. On arrival, he would be placed in an immigration facility—this the man described like a fairy-tale castle: clean beds, hot showers, a cafeteria, even women—and after two weeks, he would be released and allowed to find a job or, as was often the case, given one if Mattias was intelligent enough. The man could see that he was. Mattias was tall and handsome. He had straight white teeth, and did he not speak English, at least a little? A fortune awaited. All he had to do was work up the courage to leave. With luck, there were a last few spots available on a fine vessel leaving in a month’s time.
But first, money.
It was not cheap to travel. The cost was three thousand dollars. Impossible, thought Mattias, his heart aching to miss such an opportunity. Three thousand dollars was a year’s wage, two years’ even. He could never come up with such a sum. The man from his village was undaunted. Surely Mattias’s family had saved. And if they had not, the man had another proposition. He would lend Mattias a portion of the cost. Mattias would pay him back after he found employment in Europe. If not, his father could help repay him. Did his father not own five hundred sheep?
There.
Soon after, the deal was agreed upon. One thousand dollars up front, paid in cash—the family’s entire savings, every last cent. The