2023-09-15 16:33:08
In front of the Molti Volti (Many Faces) space, in the heart of the multi-ethnic district of Ballaro in Palermo, the whole world parades. We come to eat food with exotic flavors or work in the coworking space, and meet those who work there.
The majority of them are migrants who have landed, after a long journey, in the Sicilian capital, where their presence has always been well accepted. At least, until the coming to power of Giorgia Meloni, who multiplied measures to try to stop migratory flows by all means.
At the Palermo school
Suhag, the eldest of five siblings (a sister and three brothers), left Bangladesh at 15 with the blessing of his parents, a plane ticket in his pocket to Tehran, via Dubai, and a little money to pay the smugglers. Final objective: Europe, crossing the Middle East and the Balkans on foot.
Kemo, born in Jarreng, a small town in Gambia, south of the river of the same name, took the road at 16 to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean. Nothing kept him in his country. A mother who died when he was 3 years old, an absent father and a grandmother who works hard to feed him.
Kemo never went to school. He set foot there for the first time in Palermo to learn Italian, sent by an organization which hosted him. After four years, mission accomplished. The writing will wait: Kemo always signs his papers with a scribble.
Today, Suhag is 19 and two jobs. He is going to start training and is considering continuing his journey to the United Kingdom, “but there’s no hurry”, he said. The young man remembers his trip, during which he matured a lot. He made friends, experienced hunger and thirst, suffered, saw migrants like him die of cold (in Bosnia).
He also walked a lot, in groups, guided by smugglers who had to be paid each time. On the way to Greece with around fifty migrants, he remembers: “I couldn’t walk anymore, I was half dead. On the way, I drank water from a river and fell ill. I wasn’t the only one. So the “boss” (the smuggler, Editor’s note) preferred to let us rest for a day. Then we left. Another eight days of walking, passing through several mountains, nothing flat, he remembers, and finally Greece. » Europe, therefore, the culmination of a dream for him and his family.
Impassable borders
Greece will prove to be a real ordeal with the police constantly tracking down migrants. Then, it’s Bosnia and Croatia, so close to Italy but whose borders seem crossable. “Nine very difficult months, in the middle of winter. From Croatia, I tried with others to cross into Italy around twenty times, but the police caught us and turned us back. Between us, we called it “The game”. » And on July 20, 2021 – the date is engraved in his head – he finally manages to reach Udine. From there it goes to Palermo. “Migrants died, I was lucky! »
Kemo, for his part, is more reserved about the ordeals experienced. His route took him first to Senegal, a country which surrounds the Gambia, then to Mauritania where he earned a little money. Direction Mali, Niger, and finally Libya where the boats leave for Italy. He tries his luck for the first time, embarking with a group which is arrested by the coast guard. He ends up in prison, where he stays for three months.
Little said about what he experienced there, his gaze is shifty when pressed, and reveals “that a Libyan soldier named Hakim offered to help me if I agreed to go work for him. I stayed there for a year, and then he helped me go on a boat without me having to pay.”
A future ahead of him
The young Gambian did not dwell on what he was doing at the house of the man named Hakim, as if all this had to remain definitively behind him. He has already been in Italy for four years. He is 21 years old and has a future ahead of him in Palermo, with a work permit, a real gateway for migrants because it is equivalent to a residence permit. Dressed in his t-shirt with the words « My land is where I place my feet »(« My land is where I place my feet”), he displays a broad smile.
Today, Suhag is considered a hero among his family and friends back home. “They tell me they want to come. I tell them that with everything I had to pay to get there, I could have started a small business in Bangladesh. » And he adds: “But not sure they hear me!” »
#Palermo #migrants #Suhag #Kemo #life #ahead