Chapter xx
xx
THE SUN SEEMED brIGHTER IN LAMPEDUSA, AND IT was really windy.
“Do you want to drop your bag at the hotel?” Rachele asked when she picked me up at the small island airport that afternoon. The main section of the airport was decorated with paintings of fluorescent turtles and, incongruously, had a shining black grand piano in the middle of the entrance hall. I wondered if they had airport concerts there, and if they did, what kind of music was played.
I shook my head. “It’s okay,” I said. I hadn’t packed much, just a small duffel bag I was wearing cross-body.
“Okay,” she said. “Then to the library we go.”
On the way there, she explained the history of the island to me. “There’s been a reception center for migrants on this island for the past thirty years,” she said. “And typically, the people who come through are political refugees or economic migrants. There were a lot of arrivals from Tunisia in the ’90s, then Libyans and Syrians who crossed through Libya to travel here, and now there are many migrants from Tunisia again.”
“When my friend was here to report on Lampedusa,” I told her, “there was a big shipwreck.”
“There are many shipwrecks,” she said. “But perhaps he was here in 2013? That was the worst one. We have memorials to the victims on the island—and we honor the survivors every year.”
“Yes,” I said. “It would have been 2013.”
Rachele nodded as she drove. “The boat sank off the coast. When they saw land, someone set a blanket on fire to attract attention. The fire scared the people on the ship, who rushed to the opposite side. The ship couldn’t balance with so many people on one side, and it capsized. The coast guard here were able to save more than a hundred and fifty people, but an estimated three hundred and sixty-eight drowned. It was awful. A lot of journalists came to the island to cover it.”
“And now?” I asked.
“This past September we had the highest number of arrivals since that time. Fewer people attempt the trip in winter, when the ocean is rough, but when it calms in the summer and autumn, many more boats arrive. With the state some of those boats are in, it’s amazing they get here at all. My father and brother are fishermen; they have found boats while they were out fishing and called the coast guard. They once caught a body in their net.”
I shivered. “It’s a problem, then, so many people at once, and so little space.”
“A big problem,” Rachele said. “The Red Cross has taken over the center, but they can only process people so quickly. And then the sea has to cooperate so that the ferries can cross, taking the migrants to Porto Empedocle in Sicily. In September many islanders did what they could, bringing food and clothing—and toys for the children. This is only a first-response center, so migrants aren’t meant to be here for more than one to two days, maximum. That’s not always the case, though, in reality.”
“Wow,” I said, my words failing me as I tried to wrap my mind around everything she had just said.
“Do you want to drive by the hotspot?” she asked.
“The hotspot?” I echoed.
“The Italian Red Cross calls this place the Lampedusa Hotspot,” she explained, “but most people here just say hotspot.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go to the hotspot.” Maybe seeing it would help my mind make more sense of her words.
She turned to the right, and we drove for a while. She pointed to the right and said, “We called that the collina della vergogna, the Hill of Shame. People slept there on plastic sheets, lived there for weeks, when the reception center was too full and the processing too slow.”
“My god,” I said, immediately imagining Bashir and Sahar there, then myself and my children. “Do you take people to the reception center often?”
Rachele shook her head. “Not so often right now. But I’m usually the one called when an English- or French-speaking journalist or documentarian comes to Lampedusa. Otherwise, I give nature tours of the island to tourists.”
“I’m not a journalist,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “But you are trying to follow one. That’s what my contact at the Associated Press said.”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but I guess you’re right. I’m walking in his footsteps, trying to uncover his past.”
“Ah! So an archaeologist!” she said.
I laughed again. “An archaeologist of stories, I guess.”
I liked Rachele. She was open, easy to talk to, quick to smile—and she knew so much.
“You never met Gabriel, did you?” I asked, wondering if she might have been around then. She seemed like she was in her thirties, and had clearly grown up on the island.
She shook her head. “I only started working with journalists from the Associated Press a few years ago.”
She stopped the car. “Here we are,” she said.
We were in front of a gate that was patrolled by uniformed guards and had a mobile medical trailer in the front, along with a Red Cross tent. One of the guards came over to us to ask what we were doing there, and Rachele introduced me as a curious American archaeologist. The guard nodded at me, and I nodded back.
“Is there anyone here now?” I asked.
Rachele shook her head. “We had two boats arrive on Thursday and Friday of last week, but I think everyone who came then has been processed by now. I saw the ferries leaving for Sicily this weekend.”
There was something so incongruous about this beautiful tourist destination being the gateway to Europe for so many desperate families.
Rachele and I sat in silence, both reflecting.
“You need a coffee?” she asked finally. “A moment?”
I was thinking about Bashir, about the thousands and thousands of Bashirs. And about you, absorbing and documenting pain along with beauty. I was so overwhelmed, Gabe. I needed more than a coffee, more than a moment. But I shook my head.
“Let’s go to the library,” I said.
I had no idea what I would find there.
Did you know, Gabe? Did you know what I was really looking for?