Why Tunisians are risking their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

We're in Tunisia this week, a country seen as a budding democracy after a wave of mass revolts against autocrats spread through the Middle East and North Africa. The protest that sparked it all started right here almost exactly 12 years ago and led to the overthrow of a strongman.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).

FADEL: But today, Tunisia appears to be returning to autocracy under the populist president, Kais Saied. He got rid of the parliament, consolidated power and is arresting his political opponents, measures the president says are necessary to preserve democracy and address the socioeconomic crisis. But Tunisia's embattled political parties and rights groups say that a parliamentary election this weekend could cement Saied's power grab. So after years of political infighting, as Tunisians' daily lives get more and more expensive, many are choosing to leave. More than 45,000 this year have risked their lives, and sometimes lost them, trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy.

(CROSSTALK)

FADEL: We start in the coastal city of Zarzis in the southeast, where a fisherman-turned-cafe owner, Lotfi Bin Mohammed Issa (ph), serves small cups of black coffee. His shop overlooks the harbor where his colleagues prep their boats with nets and traps for the morning. For 41 years, the sea has been his livelihood in a city where most people fish, farm or work in a tourism industry that caters to all-inclusive beach vacationers. The sea is how Bin Mohammed Issa fed and educated his two daughters - one a doctor, the other a banker - and his son. But in the last decade, the sea has shown him things he wishes he could forget.

LOTFI BIN MOHAMMED ISSA: (Through interpreter) We see bodies. When we go fishing, we find bodies. It's always the fisherman who's in the front line and who brings the bodies.

FADEL: When was the last time you or one of your colleagues found a body in the sea?

ISSA: (Through interpreter) I'm sorry, I can't talk about it. Every time I find a body, I sometimes spend a week - I can't sleep. It's very traumatizing.

FADEL: Because you didn't get - you're not supposed to see that.

ISSA: (Through interpreter) Yeah. We're supposed to fish fish, not bodies. I personally brought 280 African migrants from the sea to the shore. It even happened that once a lady gave birth on my boat.

FADEL: At first, it was mostly people from other parts of Africa taking the risky route to escape famine, violence, he says. But in the past few years, he says, more and more Tunisians are leaving because they see no future.

ISSA: (Through interpreter) People, when they go to the sea, they know that they may die. It's 50-50.

FADEL: That's a huge risk for young people to take, a 50-50 chance of life or death. Why would they take that chance?

ISSA: (Through interpreter) When young people have a dream, they are in a trance state. They don't think about death anymore. All they think about is how to make money, how to make their families happy, how to stop their mothers from working in houses and their fathers from working in construction.

FADEL: Your son, has he ever talked to you about wanting to do that?

ISSA: (Through interpreter) Yes. He keeps telling me I want to leave. My son said, either I go illegally or get me a visa to leave the country. One of my daughters, I spent 20k a year to make her study. And when she got the diploma, she sat here with no work. But then she moved to Switzerland, and now she's working and having a good life. I mean, I wish my son stays with me. I want him to help me when I become old, like I'm helping my 105 years mother now. But I don't see a future for him here.

FADEL: He remembers when a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire all those years ago, which led to Tunisia's revolution that overthrew a dictator.

ISSA: (Through interpreter) We had hopes, big hopes. Then those people, those politicians, came from abroad and settled here. And we thought they're going to make us a better situation and so on. But it was a cake. They split it between them. And they left us the leftovers, you know? That wasn't enough for us to stop feeling hungry.

FADEL: When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, he couldn't afford his life. It doesn't sound like life has gotten better for young men in this country 12 years later.

ISSA: (Through interpreter) If Bouazizi was alive, he would set himself on fire again.

FADEL: Post-revolution governments didn't reform systemic corruption and cronyism. The country's debt keeps growing. Add to that the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine. And there are acute food shortages, soaring energy prices. Inflation and unemployment keep rising. And the economy could collapse if Tunisia doesn't secure another IMF loan. And that requires cutbacks that will be painful and unpopular.

Were you surprised when you started seeing Tunisians take this route?

ISSA: (Through interpreter) No, it doesn't surprise me when I see the general situation of the country. I'm 60. And from the sea, I rose three kids. Young people now, they cannot afford anything even if they work their whole life. I have a kid who's 15 now. He's my only son. And I'm keeping him in Tunisia. But, you know, he can't even find someone in the neighborhood to play with because most of male population left the country. If you go to schools, for a class with 35 pupil, you'll find 33 girls and two boys. Most of the boys left.

FADEL: So your boy can't even find friends?

ISSA: (Through interpreter) Have a walk around the city and you're going to see.

FADEL: So we did. We stop at a high school where teens are getting out for lunch.

(CROSSTALK)

FADEL: Most are teenage girls. And then we head to the city's center, where we find a group of 21-year-olds sipping coffee and scrolling through their phones.

MUNTASER KARDAMI: Oh, Beirut. Beirut.

FADEL: (Laughter).

Muntaser Kardami (ph) jokes with me about my Lebanese accent and then invites us to sit with him. He's hanging out in a black knockoff Dior sweatshirt.

What are you working now?

KARDAMI: I'm not working.

FADEL: You're not working?

KARDAMI: At home.

FADEL: Is it hard to find work?

KARDAMI: It's so hard.

FADEL: So when you finish high school, what have you been doing?

KARDAMI: I want to leave Tunisia.

FADEL: You know, we've been talking to a lot of people who even are taking the illegal route to leave Tunisia. And have a...

KARDAMI: Yeah.

FADEL: Have a lot of your friends done that?

KARDAMI: Yeah, many friends.

FADEL: How many?

KARDAMI: My friends in France.

FADEL: They live in France?

KARDAMI: Aye.

FADEL: Yeah. How many friends have left of your friends?

KARDAMI: One, two hundred.

FADEL: A lot?

KARDAMI: A lot. Canada.

FADEL: Do they go with visa? Or do they go on the ships?

KARDAMI: To visa and ships.

FADEL: Both ways?

KARDAMI: Yeah. Serbia.

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: They go to Serbia. Then they cross the border to Austria, then Switzerland and then France.

FADEL: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: They cross the border illegally.

FADEL: Are you thinking about doing that?

KARDAMI: Yeah, I'm thinking in the future.

FADEL: But it's dangerous.

KARDAMI: Very dangerous.

FADEL: So why would you do it?

KARDAMI: We have no solution.

FADEL: What's the biggest problem here?

KARDAMI: (Through interpreter) Finding jobs, unemployment. There's nothing.

FADEL: What do you want to do?

KARDAMI: I want to leave Tunisia.

FADEL: How many...

KARDAMI: But not on the ship. No risk. I'm flying Emirates (laughter).

FADEL: You want to fly Emirates (laughter)?

KARDAMI: Qatar Airways (laughter).

FADEL: At least 544 people drowned off the coast trying to cross the sea this year. Some were Tunisians. It's why the wall next to the cafe is covered in graffiti that reads the country of death. It's a reference to a makeshift boat that sank in September with 18 Tunisians on board - young men, but also young women and a 1-year-old girl. Her name was Sajida (ph). Weeks later, fishermen began recovering bodies, one identified only by the blue shorts he wore. Seven have been returned to their families. The rest are still missing. So most families have no one to bury.

(CROSSTALK)

FADEL: Mounira Kerimi (ph) wants the local government to give her answers about her 18-year-old son, Rayan Awdi (ph), and her two nephews who were on that boat. Every day, she protests by sitting across from the municipal building. Other mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of the missing join her on blue plastic chairs in the shade of a blooming tree.

MOUNIRA KERIMI: (Through interpreter) We've been sitting here for three months, trying to get news. If they're dead, they can just bring them and drop them here in the street. And then we know that they are dead.

FADEL: Mounira, if you could, tell me why your son and your nephews decided to travel?

KERIMI: (Through interpreter) My son wanted me to stop working in homes. He wanted a better situation for me. I remember once, I was going home from - after work. And he was walking behind me. And he was crying because he saw how tired was his mother. All my son wanted when he left is to improve his mother's situation. But what happened is what happened.

(Non-English language spoken, crying).

FADEL: I'm so sorry.

KERIMI: (Through interpreter) He wanted to be a mechanical so that he goes to France.

FADEL: Is anything better? Are there jobs? Are there opportunities for young people?

KERIMI: (Through interpreter) The situation is very hard. We lack of everything. You cannot find one single bottle of milk in all Zarzis. So what do you expect people to do? Of course, they're going to try to go abroad and make their own situation better. I mean, I remember when we went to the mayor of Medenine and told him that our sons left illegally. We told him, imagine it was your son. And he answers, no, my son takes the plane to go abroad. He doesn't go on a ship. Should our children die because they're not the sons of the mayor?

FADEL: Another woman jumps in here, Wafaa Jertili (ph). Her brother, Mohammed (ph), was also on the boat. He was 27, just ten months older than her.

WAFAA JERTILI: (Through interpreter) This country is killing its children. Imagine, my brother is dead, and I cannot find him. Do you think this is normal?

FADEL: She pulls out her phone.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FADEL: So she's showing us a video of her brother on a motorcycle and on a four wheeler, in his sunglasses, laughing and happy in her town.

JERTILI: (Through interpreter) He was a normal guy, you know, living a normal life. The most thing he wanted is to make my mother happy.

FADEL: On December 17, there's another parliamentary election.

Are you going to vote?

JERTILI: No.

FADEL: Why not?

JERTILI: (Through interpreter) No, I'm not voting. I don't like this country anymore.

FADEL: The day she can finally bury her brother, she says, she will leave Tunisia.

(SOUNDBITE OF AHU SAGLAM'S "GULUMCAN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.