by
Pamela Kerpius

Recorded:
23 June 2021

Published:
17 September 2021

Meet Nabil.

22 years old and from Annaba, Algeria.

To reach Europe he crossed the sea to Italy.

He paid about 1,000 euros for the journey, money he saved up from his time working at a supermarket while he studied at university for two years.

He was waiting at home when he got a call that because the sea was supposed to be calm the next day, a boat would be leaving the Algerian shore. It was a beautiful day, Nabil said.

He took a bus to the seaside and met 11 others, all strangers, all men. Nabil crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a wooden boat on 25 July 2020. Everyone carried food with them, but Nabil was too nervous to eat. He shared sips of water to survive, but regretted it when he later got Covid-19.

He was out at sea for 22 hours before his boat landed in Cagliari, Sardinia on a public beach on 26 July 2020. Everyone on board survived.

They made a fire on the beach to keep warm, and waited four hours before the Guardia di Finanza (the Italian Finance police) arrived and picked them up.

He was quarantined for 55 days in Sardinia before he was transferred with up to 400 others on a boat to Civitavecchia, a port city outside of Rome, Italy. He left custody, took a train to the north, to Ventimiglia, then a bus through Nice and Marseille, France, where he met a friend.

He stayed at his house for a few days before taking a bus to Paris, then a car to Brussels, Belgium. He met two friends there who traveled with him by train to Rotterdam, Netherlands on 27 September 2020.

He was wearing just a thin jacket. “I remember this day. It was so bad, it was so cold.” Nabil said.

He was in the country for 12 hours before he declared his asylum with the police in Rotterdam. He was transferred by train to Ter Apel, Netherlands, and later received temporary 1-year residency documents.

He is 23 years of age now and living in Utrecht, Netherlands, where we recorded this story on 23 June 2021.

Nabil is an amazing human being.

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