Mediterranean

Unsettling image: Two men in suits stand in front of 300 coffins. Two representatives of fortress Europe, their heads bowed, look at wooden boxes in which lay: bodies of people, who a couple of days earlier had their eyes fixed towards the north: Europe.

Calling their deaths a tragedy means denying all responsibility, it is treating them as a natural accident, caused by misfortune. The death of at least 300 people was not a tragedy, it is una vergogna, as Pope Francis said: “shame”. Complicit and responsible.

The Mediterranean: Border Sea. Who knows what dream of the other side the 500 people on that boat shared. Who knows what their last sight of Lampedusa, the tiny island where Europe today begins, was. And also: What their lives, if they had made it across Frontex, would have looked like. The dream of a glorious return, as Rushdie described Exile?

Who knows.

State funerals for the deceased, detention for the survivors.

Yto Barrada, Untitled, series Le Détroit: notes sur un pays inutile, 1998-2004.

Yto Barrada, Détroit de Gibraltar, Tanger, 2003