The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

to climb or break down, they represented a momentary solution (even though there were those who would’ve called it the ‘definitive deterrent’) to immigration towards Europe by the sea.

‘They said this part was free!’ Billai shouted.

‘They lied,’ Haziz said, almost in a whisper.

‘Maybe not… I heard barriers can be 3D-printed overnight. The same bulkheads could’ve been between Pantelleria, Lampedusa and Malta… to force boats to turn around or follow long and expensive routes,’ Professor Kysmayo said.

Billai rubbed her temples with her fingers. Every border depressed her, and getting closer to a wall, erected for the sole purpose of separating international and domestic waters, discouraged her even further. With her life savings, she had crossed with me the borders of Kenya, Sudan and Libya before attempting the Benghazi crossing.

‘Why didn’t they tell us?’ Muna said.

Nobody felt like answering such a naive question.

‘They want to canalize boats to navigable checkpoints,’ the professor said. ‘And then come those…’ he concluded, pointing to a spot in the distance.

Some black spots, which from far away looked like seagulls, revealed themselves to be surveillance drones activated by the boat’s movement detected by satellite. I’d heard about those and others, used in the mountains to secure Europe’s land borders. Soon, they circled over us like vultures.

With a solemn air, as if she were about to declare war on the world, Billai rose to her feet. Swaying, she grasped my back so as not to fall and said, ‘We’ve all lived through things that we shouldn’t have lived through and would be better to forget. I’m not turning back. Those drones are informing someone. They’ll come and take us. Doctors without Borders, NGOs, the Coastguard…’

*

Four hours later, one hundred and thirty-two of us were saved.

I was seventeen years old and my life was contained in a backpack: a bar of soap, a smartphone and charger, a sports jersey (number ten, Ike Kamau), and a photo of my mom and brother. They always told me that I had a narrow head, pointed chin, and quick eyes, black like tar. Like my dad’s.

I was seventeen years old and my life had been spent in a refugee camp; since we arrived in Dadaab from Nairobi, I hadn’t seen anything but tents, dust, fences and gates.

Soft clouds glided over the sea: that night the stars would disappear and the moon would have illuminated us all if another silhouette hadn’t appeared to divert the way of our gazes and our lives.

‘That’s an… aircraft carrier?’ Billai asked.

An immense structure stood out on the dark waters.

‘I don’t know,’ I said while she drew near me. The lapping of the water had worn down her combative temperament.

Someone took a picture, but in the high seas there wasn’t a strong enough signal to transform anxiety into hope. It could have been a military ship charged with bringing us back to the dark side of the Mediterranean, but instead the man who drew near us on a lifeboat with four sailors told us a different story.

‘Welcome,’ he said in English. He had blond hair tied back in a ponytail, a pronounced nose and lips, and a smile, sincere but strained. ‘My name is Sergio Torriani and that’s a Green Ship,’ he added, pointing behind him. ‘We take in anybody who needs help.’

The sailors threw us water bottles.

Haziz grabbed my sleeve and asked me to translate. I was one of the few on board, along with Professor Kysmayo, who knew some English besides Swahili. When I was little, I listened to his show ‘Indie Reggae, Beats & Rock’ on Radio Kenyamoja.com, and I knew hundreds of songs by heart.

‘We don’t want to board. We want Europe,’ I said dryly, gesturing to Haziz to show Sergio who those words came from.

He didn’t answer right away but instead tossed us a line that Billai caught in the air. ‘Europe doesn’t want you,’ he continued, bitter, ‘and they don’t care if you’re escaping from hunger or war, if you live in refugee camps or if your children and grandchildren will be born and grow up in those prisons. Where do you come from?’

I heard the names of camps I knew like Dadaab, Nyarugusu, Bokolmanyo and others I ignored like Urfa, Zaatri and Adiharush.

‘Besides, this isn’t a boat for transit,’ Sergio said.

‘So you’ll bring us back or send us to a center for identification and deportation.’ I translated for Muna, who’d lifted the bundle with her son inside.

‘No deportation. The Green Ship is a humanitarian project for the rescue of political refugees and climate migrants.’

‘If you’re not bringing us back and you’re not going to Europe, where are you going?’ Professor Kysmayo asked. He was the only one to reason with his head and not his heart.

Sergio and the other sailors were already throwing lines to ease the transfer onto their lifeboat.

‘Board and you’ll see.’

Once we’d boarded, Sergio asked, ‘Nobody else?’

We looked at each other without the courage to respond. Then Professor Kysmayo said, ‘In the hold there were two cadavers. They died two days ago. They started to stink. We had to leave them at sea… to lighten our load.’

‘Their names?’

We were silent. Sergio added two Xs to the list of one hundred twenty-three.

*

From the parapet, I observed the wake of boats in transit in the Aegean Sea: a Greek ferry, two cargo boats, a cruise ship. Who knew how many immigrants were hidden like cargo in the holds.

The others were still sleeping among the trees, and they were not alone: hundreds of strangers were camping in sleeping bags and tents, and below, thousands were squished in the bunks. Yesterday evening, I didn’t see anything because I quickly lay down to rest, but now, by the light of dawn, things appeared more clearly.

‘Jambo,’ Sergio said in Swahili, offering me a cup of coffee.

‘Jambo, and thank you for picking us up,’ I said, taking a sip.

‘Did you sleep? It’s not easy after being on a dinghy.’

He must have had experience with migrants to speak like that.

‘Little and poorly.’

‘Later we’ll have a