MIGRATION - END OF THE JOURNEY ... MIGRAZIONE - FINE DEL VIAGGIO

Sicily 2016 At the harbor of Pozzallo the April sun burned as if it was the end of June. No refugees anywhere. Some people of Pozzallo said "We never see any refugees here ... ". They didn't see or perhaps didn't want to seet them. Instead many people had arrived at the piers of Pozzallo during the last twenty years. But the ID (identification center) and the CPA (refugee reception center) have been relocated somewhere between Pozzallo and Modica. On the left of the harbor area I saw an unfinished building and behind it a fence with a sign reading "boarding area". It was a huge space full to bursting with wrecked refugee boats. Libyan writings and drawings on every boat ... I decided to squeeze myself under a fence to get closer to the wrecks: broken, rusted, piled up containers of dreams, illusions and hope. A weird, sad and desolate atmosphere. It seemed that desperate people would suddenly come out of these wrecks. It felt like hearing men, women and children talking, praying or crying. Abandoned personal belongings, water bottles, hundreds of life jackets everywhere, as if people left the area only a few minutes before ... . "Our Sea who is not in heaven and who embraces the borders of the island and of the world, may your salt be blessed, blessed be your seabed, receive the packed boats over your waves without a road, the fishermen who go offshore in the night, their nets among your creatures, who come back in the morning with the catch of rescued shipwrecked ..." (Erri De Luca, Secular Prayer)