As long as there is life there is hope. The incredible story of Dylan and his journey to Italy.
It is December 25, 2023, Christmas Day. In the mental photograph imprinted in each of our heads, the image that appears in the foreground is that of our family, finally reunited and happy around a set table. That same day in Zuara, off the coast of Libya, in the moments when we were laughing punctuating the time between a glass of wine and a gift to unwrap, Dylan (fictitious name for privacy reasons) was swimming through the furious waves of the sea, desperately trying to get on a barge with his children and his wife. With water at his throat and his arms raised to the sky, almost as if in prayer, he held his two- and four-year-old children aloft to protect them from the stormy sea and lead them to the boat. After a strenuous struggle against the current, Dylan managed to reach the dinghy together with his children, but his wife was not with them. He desperately searched for her with his eyes and saw her struggling in the distance against the waves that were trying to engulf her. As the boat was slipping away, Dylan thought about diving back into the sea to rescue her, but in the frenzied chaos of the moment he was blocked by the other migrants who confronted him with a stark reality: if he went down to help her, neither parent would return to the dinghy and the children would end up at the mercy of themselves. In a few moments, fraught with heartbreaking pain, he had to choose between saving his wife's life or staying with his children, embarking on a journey that would last for days, with no certainty of survival. He chose, with enormous suffering, to continue on the journey.
As Dylan, his voice broken with emotion, told me this part of his story, amidst the screams of his children and the painful memory of those terrible moments, in his room at Villa Pettini in Montevarchi-where the John Paul II Foundation welcomes and supports immigrants arriving in Italy-a question rumbled in my mind: why set out on such a dangerous journey, risking not only one's own life but also that of one's children? The answer was encapsulated in his life story.
Dylan was born in Nigeria in the late 1980s and from an early age he worked hard, working to scrape together some money and studying to build a better future for himself than what would have awaited him had he chosen to lead a life on the streets. In his homeland, life was made difficult because of terrorist groups that sowed fear and death. "After changing several cities and jobs," Dylan recounts, "to escape from that reality from which I was trying to keep away, I was tracked down by some members of the groups I had refused to join, and after my umpteenth refusal, I was taken to a forest and beaten to a pulp. There I realized that I would have to leave my homeland for good, and with it my mom as well." Despite the forced departure, Dylan, in his early 20s, hopes to start a new chapter in his life by setting off for Libya. During the journey, however, he was kidnapped and segregated in a room, along with other men, for about three months, reliving the nightmare of torture and abuse. This difficult time had been compounded by the difficulty of crossing the desert in an extremely precarious situation. When he finally reached Libya (a land in which he remained for ten years until his arrival in Italy), he found work as a mechanic. Although the salary was low, he was happy with his job and especially excited to learn a new trade. After much harassment in the past, it seemed that life for Dylan was beginning to turn around. Soon he also met his wife, a young woman of Nigerian descent who was working as a hairdresser. The two move in together and begin making plans for the future, both with dreams of setting up their own businesses.
In 2014, however, the second civil war broke out in Libya, a bloody conflict that would last until 2020 and repeatedly put Dylan and his wife up against the wall. Because of the war, the two lost their jobs several times (as the workshops and salons where they worked were systematically destroyed). "At that time," Dylan continues, "we were living in a really complicated situation because of the war, the absence of work and the repeated thefts in our house. I started to stop sleeping at night, I was always afraid that someone would break through a window or the door of the house to rob us of the few things we had left. When I got here to Villa Pettini, the door to my room wouldn't lock and I freaked out. Then they explained that I didn't have to worry and that nothing would happen to me here, but I still sleep at night with one eye closed and one eye open." But back to the experience in Libya. In 2019 his wife had become pregnant, and amid the rubble of a country at war their first child came into the world. Dylan was not with her when she was born because the hospital in Benghazi, where they lived, had been destroyed by shelling. His wife, therefore, had had to leave for Tripoli, where the nearest hospital was, about an eleven-hour drive away.
As they became three, life there was becoming more and more difficult, unbearable, and getting to the end of the day seemed like an achievement. Then, in 2022, their second child arrived, and the responsibilities increased more and more. Not long before, moreover, one of the most difficult episodes of their lives had occurred: after being robbed of even what little money he and his wife had painstakingly saved over the previous years, without a job and with a dependent daughter and one on the way, they found themselves forced to sell the furniture of their house in order to scrape together some money. Gripped with despondency and with nothing left, both Dylan and his wife realized that they had to leave Libya. In their minds, they dreamed of returning to Nigeria and re-embracing their families. But the situation there was still too dangerous and therefore, they had to opt for another solution. "Besides," Dylan adds, "Nigeria meant still turning our eyes to the past and suffering. But what we wanted was to look forward and live a different, better future. That's why we decided to risk everything by leaving for Italy. This land represented our only chance and our last attempt to live a better existence. We knew how dangerous the journey was, but we were ready to risk death so as not to continue living like this."
After a past marked by torture, death threats, rubble stores, wars, and fleeing their home country, the knowledge that they would die at sea (or worse, see their loved ones die) in a desperate attempt to turn their lives around was nonetheless a better prospect than continuing to lead the existence they were currently living. Thus, in October 2023, the four set out for Zuara, where they would stay for about two months, until December 25, 2023, in a refugee camp, crammed like sardines into small rooms with many other migrants. Christmas Day 2023 was not the day to leave for Italy because the sea was too rough. Everyone knew this, but they had no choice. While Dylan and his children, however, managed to board the dinghy, his wife remained at sea, at the mercy of the waves. Because the current was too strong, she was unable to swim to the dinghy, and given her inexperience, Dylan was convinced that she would die at sea and not make it back to shore. In any case, the man, in the very few frantic moments when he had to choose whether to dive into the water to pull his wife to safety or stay with his children, made the difficult decision to remain on the barge, setting off without his wife on a sea voyage that would last about two days. Days that seemed interminable and from which Dylan did not think they would make it out alive. During the sea voyage on the dinghy, moreover, the precarious situation, the stormy sea, and the fear of death were compounded by an accident involving Dylan. The man had been burned with gasoline, sustaining serious injuries that had permanently wiped out any hope of making it to safety.
Then, suddenly, the migrants began to scream. In the distance, they had spotted an NGO (nongovernmental organization) ship that, after spotting them, rescued them by offering them primary health care and ending the nightmare from which it seemed impossible to awaken. Dylan and his children arrived on Italian shores on December 27, 2023, and that same day they were transferred to Villa Pettini. Dylan's wife managed to save herself by swimming back to shore, with the strength of hope and the happiness of knowing that her family had managed to leave. Although she did not get on that dinghy, swimming back to shore and thus staying in Libya, the first thing she said to Dylan, when she could finally hear his voice again, was that she was happy that the three of them were okay and had made it. To her, that was the most important thing.
When I asked Dylan how he saw his future, now that he was safe with his children and eager to start a new life, he replied with a bright light in his eyes and a sweet smile. The greatest wealth to which she aspires is a job, a small home, and her family safe, simply a quiet life. "This has always been, is and will be the biggest dream of my entire life," Dylan concluded, "and now I know with certainty that as long as there is life there is hope."
The John Paul II Foundation is a reality that operates in Villa Pettini, Montevarchi, and is dedicated to hosting and facilitating the integration of migrants in Italy and, in particular, families. The hosting facilities aim to help these families with bureaucratic issues, active job search and housing, which is why the John Paul II Foundation puts the community at the center. Creating a community that allows the people taken in to feel part of a country and helps them on their path to integration is one of the main goals around which the Foundation's work revolves. Community is the beating heart of a country's life, and the Dylan people around the world deserve a caress after the many slaps they have suffered in life.
Vanessa Contino
for Valdarno 24