Emergency, we spent ten days on board the Life Support on a mission in the Mediterranean on the border with Europe

ON BOARD THE LIFE SUPPORT – When he saw that dinghy coming at speed towards them, Nisar grabbed his cousin’s arm tightly and told him to pray. “We were afraid it was the Libyan coast guard. I closed my eyes and waited for the worst.” Only when he heard the words, rescue! rescue! We are Italian! shouted by the rescuer, did that black hole in his stomach dissolve. “I opened my eyes and prayed again.” Nisar is 25 years old and is not yet thinking about the future but only about the moment when he will call his mother in Pakistan to tell her that he has finally made it. He is on board the Life Support, the ship of Emergency

Le 1678 rescued people. The dock of the port of Livorno, from the bridge, at midday has already slipped behind us. Domenico Pugliese, sailed with merchant ships and had never thought of becoming the captain of a ship like this. Behind his chair a sheet of paper says: “1678 rescued people”, people saved in two years. “I do it because among the political and ideological barriers, I only care about what is in between: the sea and the people”, thus he became the captain with the most missions under his belt, 14 out of 21.

Courage and endurance aboard the Life Support. On the Life Support51 meters designed for the North Sea and adapted for rescue in the South, there are 27 of them, including rescuers of the rhibs, the life rafts, doctors and nurses, cultural mediators, head of mission and captain, logistics, sailors, volunteers. It is a world made of courage and resistance. “Every time I think: this mission is the last. Every time I go back on board”. Flavio Catalano could enjoy his retirement and family in Genoa, but instead he is the head of the bridge and has always been here. “Nothing repays you like the thanks of a life saved from the sea”. Anabel Montes Mier, 37, head of mission, has also never stopped being on these ships in nine years. Not even when it was difficult to stay “I still have the hope, perhaps the utopia, that things will improve”.

The tests continue before the rescue. On the radar the route points to the Libyan and Maltese international search and rescue waters. We will reach them in three days that will serve the crew to try and retry each phase of the rescue, from the rescue at sea on the rhibs, to the reception and management of the spaces dedicated to the guests. It is like the preparation for an Olympic competition, because at sea there are no mistakes allowed. “Sar team, sar team. Ready for rescue” is the communication for everyone via radio. A few minutes and the rhibs are already in the water. Three times in less than 24 hours the announcement will be repeated on the radio: 178 people saved in just one day, the time in which the Life Support remained in the SAR (Search and Rescue) zone.

That journey begins in the dark, crushed on top of each other. For everyone, the journey began in the dark, from the Libyan coast on fiberglass boats a few meters long. Crushed by the weight of other bodies and by fear, men, women and children wandered like this for hours. No one had a life jacket because the price of the trip, which varies from nationality to nationality, does not include any certainty. Those who could, bought an inner tube for 20 dollars. Cris Fusco is one of the rescuers on the rhibs and his hand is the first proof of salvation for the shipwrecked. He says that when you grab a child it is different because you notice their weight compared to that of an adult, “They are light and defenseless, that’s why sometimes I realized I had squeezed them with force, maybe too much”.

In the night in the middle of the sea the sound of a laugh. While the rhib speeds over the water there, somewhere in the midnight darkness, there is also the sound of laughter. It is Mohammed, who is Syrian and at four years old is traveling with his uncle. When he is passed from hand to hand until he reaches the bottom of the dinghy, he is still laughing. In the Mediterranean that we do not see, this also happens, that a terrified adult man invents a story about an adventurous journey for a child. To try to exorcise all that black sea. In 2011, when the wind of the Arab Spring was blowing strongly also in Damascus, Ahmed was 10 years old. His father had also joined the days of anger to demand the end of the regime of Bahshar al Assad. At home, he remembers above all the sound of a new word: future. Then everything collapses and his father is killed too. The infernal circle of bombed houses, of precarious shelters, of food that cannot be found had begun.

23 years of life and 13 spent in the midst of war. “That’s when I started cutting myself, so I wouldn’t feel all that pain.” Today Ahmed is 23 years old and in the 13 years he spent in war, the white scars on his arms are a wound only slightly more visible than other deeper ones. “My mother couldn’t help but let me go, she understood that I was already dying there.” In Libya, for two months they kept him in a house with 40 other people, without ever being able to leave. Waiting for a fiberglass boat. Now he dreams of university in Holland. “I know I’ll have to earn everything but I’m ready.” For Ahmed, the word future seems close again, like when he was ten years old in Damascus.

One bathroom for 15 families. According to Openpolis, of the 25 thousand people who have arrived by sea since the beginning of the year, most come from Syria (3,700), Tunisia (3,200) but above all from Bangladesh, 5 thousand arrivals. They are pushed by floods and floods that swallow up villages and lives. In 2050, it is estimated that 20 million will leave. Arif also rebuilt his house along the Surma River three times before moving with his family to Dhaka, 14 million inhabitants. “I worked all day but it was so hard that we ended up renting a shack. One bathroom for 15 families, very little electricity. Everyone there had lost everything because of the water. I thought of my children and left”.

The Southeast Asian route to Europe. On the large map hanging in the area that welcomes the shipwrecked, Arif points to Dubai, the starting point of the route from Southeast Asia to Europe, where you can fly without a visa. From here, he explains, the traffickers organize the other part of the journey: North Africa, the desert and Libya. “I have been to Zuara prison twice, once for each time I tried to cross the sea and they took me back.” Of all the memories he would like to erase, only one continues to torment him, those phone calls made by the jailers to his parents. “While they were beating me and I was screaming, they called them to get more money. So they went into debt for me. I just want to pay them back.”

Since October 3, 2013, 30,000 people have died in the Mediterranean. Since that October 3, 2013 in Lampedusa, 30 thousand people have died in the central Mediterranean: 6 per day, which cannot take into account the ghost shipwrecks. Ten years later we had to register another tragedy, Cutro, which it is confirmed could have been avoided, and still no solution. New agreements and old memoranda have not in fact limited the trafficking of human beings. The externalization of border control has, if anything, allowed Libya to legalize its detention centers, while the derogation of liability for payment has become a promissory note that exploits the flow of migrants to obtain more money, more means and more power.

Libyans intervene in Maltese waters to block rescue efforts. Even in Maltese international waters, for example, the Libyan Coast Guard is increasingly intervening more and more frequently and more violently to prevent rescue operations at sea. This also happened to Life Support fortunately without direct interference, but the concern remains “Because this means being pushed back to an unsafe country and therefore a violation of international law”, explains Anabel Montes Mier, head of mission.

When you have to choose between saving people or breaking the law. In the Mediterranean emptied of witnesses, the NGOs remain and when they are not stopped in courtrooms or ports, they must choose between saving lives or breaking the law. According to the Piantedosi decree, the port assigned immediately after the first rescue, usually days of sailing, must be reached without stopping and that is without being able to carry out multiple rescues which, even when they are a few miles away, remain prohibited if not authorized. Life Support It took three days to reach Civitavecchia. The entire time the radio on the bridge kept repeating: Mayday, Mayday.