Saturday, August 5, 2006

Argonauts of the modern world, by "Margaret Mead"

One should have a look to the probably award-winning report of Sorous Samura, a cameraman from Sierra Leone, which is being broadcasted, these days, on the CNN. It is a report on illegal immigrants, come up from deep Africa, who wait in the bushes, for so long as three years, to cross to Ceuta,or Melilla, in Morocco. It is better than a good book, more calling than a sudden rush of blood to the head, or a theological tale.
Samura goes all the way down from the snowy bushes in Morocco, to the trailers entering England, where an illegal immigrant may try his luck and his life, hanging between the wheels or struggling against sleep in the fridges. Some swim all their way to Ceuta, after months warming up in camp-fires, sleeping under shreds of newspapers, running away from the Police and eating whatever.In Calais they count on some charity and they meet whichever human zeros from the world, be it from China, Kurdistan or Latin America. They cannot return, some of them will be killed. I've done the same, 30 years ago, somewhere between Spain and France. The dance is the same, but the sleepless night never ends.At some point, the guys celebrate Christmas in the bushes. They find a short pine and they decorate it with coloured newspaper rags and empty cans. They pray, for their children and wives they left behind. Some are sick and will never make it.
These guys are the mythological heros of our times, although they may offer no resistance when they are kicked to death by skin-heads in a night hole of Europe.Their dark faces are covered with the skin of God. We cannot let all of them in, but we have to do something now and right about them. We cannot take care of their frail lives and bomb others in any other place. Unless we want to rot in the deepest pit of hell.

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