The odyssey began when a bully revenged on their misfortune and poverty with numbness and a shutting down port .
How long have they been looking for a habitat of humanity?
A week of instability and
vulnerability was where their piping hot eagerness and impatience seeped into the Mediterranean sea
Sufferance was the only survivor.
Vertical persons became horizontal or curled up into circles. It was their immobility which secured their mere snatches of sleep.
From the Sub- Sahara to the Mediterranean sea, water was still a luxury.
And thirst magnified their fear.
The numbing sea breeze attempted to obliterate their memories of happiness, but the gaiety from a carried-out promise has chased those memories back.
At dawn, their Odyssey will soon be over.
Six hundred and twenty seven Sub-Saharan migrants will dwell on the Flamenco land, and two will be buried underneath.
We created nouns after nouns, titles after titles, and professions after professions to declare our places in the world, but what do we do to claim our souls?
Context
In Summer 2018, I went to Valencia for a summer course with the journalism school at Syracuse University to obtain credits to finish my minor in photojournalism.
While we were in Valencia, the migrant rescue ship Aquarius, operated by SOS Méditerranée, was at the center of an international dispute after several denials of entries. The ship, carrying 629 migrants, was eventually allowed to dock in Valencia, Spain.
The incident highlighted the complexities of managing migrant flows and the need for international cooperation.
To provide us with the best reporting experience, our professors managed to get us to the forefront, and writing a reportage on the incident was each student's main assignment.
I wasn't familiar with the refugee crisis and its complexity in Europe, especially the Mediterranean area, back then, and was completely overwhelmed by my witness.
I wasn't able to write a proper reportage so producing this short film at the end instead.
I wasn't sure who was the bully in this situation, but a vague sense of strong drag and resistance to living beings were there.
I had no saying to a bigger and more generalized systematic issue in nations that I wasn't familiar with. To use the word 'bully' was to help myself depict an imperceptible power and pressure that I felt at the port on that day.
It was the moment when I felt I was in the center of a fight between politics and humanity, which was the exact moment I gave up reportage.
I have been following the issues concerning migration on the Mediterranean ever since.
It was complicated then, and it is more complex now with a more teetering post COVID world.