To Palestine| From boats of death to boats against death

I don’t like the sea at night. I cannot swim in the dark even if the shore is calm and safe. Perhaps it’s not about the sea itself, but about a fear of dark waters that I do not let touch my feet at night. I always need enough light to see the water.

This feeling is not terror, not even fear. It is awe and reverence, respect for the majesty of the dark sea. Although the sea never loses its symbolism and romance, even at night when city lights or moonlight shimmer across the water. That romantic and dreamlike view is mostly conditional on us not being on the water ourselves.

We watch it from the shore, or through the lens of television and cinema that preserve the romantic gaze. Many films remain within this frame. In reality though, when we are out at sea and no longer see the lights of towns or villages, even if the moon is bright, the sea looks different. On a small boat especially, its romance fades and is replaced with anticipation and a warning: do not be reassured, do not relax.

Of course, we can admire the wide horizon, endless waves, and the moon’s reflection. The scene is beautiful but it reminds us of our smallness and fragility. It warns: do not feel safe.

In recent nights, I could not stop staring at the sea, day and night, as though searching for bodies or the wreckage of migrant boats. The once beautiful Mediterranean has become a graveyard.

I think of those who risk their lives for something better, crossing the Mediterranean from south to north on boats of death, or the Atlantic from Senegal towards the Canary Islands.

I cannot forget a news story I read more than a year ago. One of these boats lost its way in the Atlantic and never reached the islands. The wind carried it all the way to a Brazilian shore, on the Ocean’s southern edge, laden with the decomposed bodies of people who had tried to improve their and their families’ lives.

He resembles Samawal Hassan El-Sharif

I know him from television and from some protests. Dark-skinned, thin, very tall. His name is Serigne Mbayé Diouf, one of the leaders of the Union of Street Vendors in Spain.

Years ago, he joined the leftist Podemos movement, became its anti-racism coordinator, and later a member of Madrid’s regional parliament. In the last European elections, he was fourth on the party’s list, but did not win a seat in Brussels because Podemos secured only two seats.

At one of the preparatory meetings for the Sumud Flotilla in Madrid, he was there. I knew then he would sail with us, not just provide support from land. Perhaps because he leans towards action rather than words.

A few days ago, we received a radio update from the Sirius, a large vessel that had been turned from a museum piece into one of the flotilla’s ships, carrying about 30 people plus crew. The message said Serigne had caught a large tuna, cleaned it, cut it, and shared it with the group.

We all felt a pang of longing, except for the vegetarians among us, wishing we were aboard with Serigne, who was a Senegalese fisherman before he became a migrant street vendor chased by the police, before he became a politician in Podemos.

I have not met Serigne at sea, since we are on different boats, but I got to know him during the waiting days in Barcelona and later in Tunis. He told me about his first journey on a boat of death to reach the Canary Islands. He was lucky. He survived.

And here he is again, embarking on another risky journey, this time to stop the killing machine in Gaza. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke. He grew animated, moving his body to match his emotions. He looked like my Sudanese friend Samawal Hassan El-Sharif, both in physique and in expression. Yet he avoided my eyes when he said he was leaving behind his four children, for the sake of other children he does not know, children in Palestine who are worth the risk.

Serigne did not migrate for comfort or youthful adventure. He had a stable life as a fisherman in Senegal. But the giant European and Chinese fishing corporations, with their massive vessels and advanced equipment, pushed him and others into unemployment and poverty.

In 2006, in despair, he boarded a migration boat; a boat of death. For a week, he stared into the ocean, day and night, into the face of death. His luck was to reach land: the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Tens of thousands of others were not as fortunate.

Yet he, like me, knows instinctively what capitalist exploitation means: a machine of hunger and death, whether in Senegal, in Europe, or anywhere else. In Gaza, it now reveals its ugliest face: savage, fascist, barbaric.

Serigne knows poverty and need too well. He migrated and boarded a boat of death because he was poor, seeking a better life. He sought the movement that could bring that life within reach. He worked in construction, in fields, in whatever marginalized jobs he could find.

Now, he returns once again to the movement; this time for the poor and the hungry of another land. For Palestinians.