Nizar Abbasi

In Sfax, Tunesia, the sea has always been part of life—its rhythm, its bounty, and sometimes, its cruelty. It fed me when I was young and eager, mending nets alongside my father, the salt spray in my face as we brought in sardines or sea bream. It carried me through my early years as a fisherman, a life I thought would be mine until I grew old.

But the sea, like life, is not predictable. It stopped yielding enough. Costs rose, catches dwindled, and my debts swelled like a tide that refused to recede. I was 43 when the choice that damned me presented itself clearly for the first time. My friend, whose life seemed gilded with money and ease, had long whispered temptations. "Come, work with me," he said, his tone casual but knowing. "There’s no risk, and the money is too good to ignore."

I resisted until I couldn’t anymore. The first time was easier than I expected—a boat, packed with faces filled with hope and fear, gliding into the darkness. I didn’t captain it, but I had helped arrange it, played my part in a system that fed on desperation. The money came fast. For the first time in years, I could breathe. I paid off my debts, bought new clothes for my wife and children, even repainted our small home. But the cost, I would come to learn, was far greater than I understood.

The night of the wreck is burned into my memory. Over a hundred souls lost to the deep. The cries, I imagine, must have pierced the air before the water swallowed them. I wasn’t on that boat, but my hands were stained with their fate. The authorities searched, but we were invisible, ghosts in the shadows. My friend called it luck. I called it torment.

I quit soon after, walking away from the blood money and the promises it held. Now, I earn a pittance doing honest work. It’s barely enough, but it’s clean. Still, the nights offer no peace. Faces haunt my dreams, accusing, drowning, pulling me under with them.

We can’t keep forcing people to risk death to seek life. There has to be a better way. But until one exists, I carry their weight, knowing Jahanam waits for men like me.