Twenty-two days

“Don’t you dare go," Mariam said, as Aicha tucked the money into a hidden belt around her waist.

“If I stay, nothing changes for any of us," Aicha replied.

"You are as stubborn as a donkey."

Aicha smiles, thinking about that last conversation with her sister, as she stands on a windy beach looking at the rickety boat that's meant to carry her 800 kilometers across the open ocean. Even a donkey would have more sense than to ride in that. But she's already travelled for weeks from the Ivory Coast to Mauritania to hand the money she’s saved since she was fourteen, working twelve-hour days, to the skinny man with the gold teeth.

The boat looks more like a large canoe to Aicha. Ten metres of splintered wood painted white and blue, like the ocean, but flaking under the baking sun. The canoe is widest in the middle, a meter and half across, before tapering to points at each end, punctuated with wooden crossbars spaced about one meter apart, like ribs picked clean from a scavenged elephant. Stuffed between the ribs are dozens of people. There can't possibly be space for another, but room is made for her, and five more after her.

For the first few days the roar of the outboard motor and the rush of wind in the ears drowns out conversation. Aicha watches the coastline fade to a hazy lump, her right hand gripping the side of the boat, her left the crossbar in front of her. The motor struggles to make progress against the waves and wind and currents, weighed down by nearly sixty people in a boat designed for half as many. The broker, the man with golden teeth, told her it would take three to four days to make landfall on Tenerife, but at this pace, it will take twice as long.

The engine runs out of petrol on the third day. The men take turns dipping two small paddles into the sea. Aicha speaks in snippets of French and Arabic with the passengers closest to her, packed shoulder to shoulder near the bow of the boat. At seventeen she is one of the youngest people on board, though most are in their twenties and thirties, travelling without their wives or husbands, brothers or sisters. Everyone who makes this journey knows the dangers. The unscrupulous ferrymen, the treacherous ocean, the sharks on land and sea drawn to the smell of blood. But they go anyway. Facing possible death is better than living in certain fear.

Aicha learns that the woman next to her, Prista, is also from the Ivory Coast. Last year she tried to make it to Europe by boat, but the border patrol made them turn back to shore. Since then she’s been working as a housekeeper, even though she has a degree in biology. Two months ago, her younger brother died in a shipwreck on the way to Italy from Tunisia. His body was never recovered.

On the fifth day the food and water run out. The sun beats down and the wind and waves push them further away from the coast. They can’t see land anymore, or other boats, only endless sea. Even though it’s hot, Aicha wears a knitted hat, the one Mariam made for her, with a black and white checkerboard pattern topped with a black pom-pom. Sometimes she sees birds gliding on the surface of the ocean and she imagines her sister is one of them. Once Aicha reaches the Canary Islands she will work hard and earn enough money to send back home. Her family can have food and medicine. Maybe Mariam can go to school, then she can get a good job in a tall office building or on an airplane winging through the clouds.

On the eighth day, one of the men, too weak to stand, screams out from thirst. He pleads for someone to give him water. A young man takes off his shoe, fills it with seawater. The man drinks quickly and asks for more. The next day, he is dead. Aicha joins the prayers with a parched tongue. It takes three men to roll him overboard, into the roiling sea.

A few days later, she doesn’t have the strength to say the prayers. Nobody has the energy to roll the dead into the sea or dip the flimsy paddles. Aicha drifts with the gone and going and wonders if she will join them, but the donkey in her kicks such thoughts away. She pictures the panic on her mother’s face after the last election. Her parents lived through two civil wars and fear they won’t survive a third. For weeks Aicha and her sister were not allowed outside. Every evening they pushed the table to block the door to their tiny apartment. Outside, gunfire punctuated the air joined by the plaintive prayers of women trapped in alleyways, begging the soldiers to stop.

On the morning of the twelfth day, it rains. She opens her mouth wide, daring not to close it until it’s nearly full, in case the deluge stops. She nudges Prista, who rests her head on Aicha’s aching shoulder. “Wake up, drink!” But Prista doesn’t move. Aicha gently leans her against the other side of the boat. If she had the strength she'd tip her slim body into the sea, where Prista's soul might swim to her brother.

A shimmering below the waterline catches Aicha's eyes on the fifteenth day. Fish scales reflect the sunlight. Aicha imagines reaching in, tickling the fish, putting it to sleep, before cupping hands on either side and scooping it into the canoe. It would lay flapping and gasping for air, like she gulps for rain, like her empty mouth chews on phantom food.

On the eighteenth day, a handful of people are left. A dragonfly lands on a body near Aicha. She admires the green iridescent body and lacy wings, before capturing it and crushing it in her hands. Popping it whole into her mouth, the crunching in her ears is louder than any sound she’s heard for days. The legs stick in her throat as she swallows, making her cough.

For several days Aicha fades in and out, between waking and sleep, drifting in a floating grave in the middle of the ocean. She thinks about drinking the sea, salty and stinging, if she could dip her shoe, but her stubborn arms refuse to move.

One morning, she’s a ghost hovering over her motionless body, like a black dragonfly who’s feasted on all the prayers, drained all the tears, drank all the dreams. The thumping of powerful wings hums in her ears, the wind buffeting her from above. She opens her eyes. A helicopter. She tries to call out, but no words can crawl from her desiccated lungs. All she can do is nod her head, the black pom-pom flapping in the downwash of the spinning rotors. She knows if they don’t see the boat, they’ll all be ghosts.

The men in the helicopter bring her to the nearest island, flying nearly 500 kilometres to reach Tenerife. They tell her she’s been adrift for twenty-two days, and is one of only three survivors. It takes two days to tow the boat to Tenerife’s harbour. Firefighters must saw it into pieces, to free the dead. They bury them in Santa Cruz cemetery, where the graves look out over the Atlantic ocean.

Aicha calls back home to let her sister know that she made it. Her parents tell her that Mariam left weeks ago, to Mauritania. She’s saved some money, and will buy passage on a boat.

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This story is inspired by a true account of a seventeen year old girl, Aicha, who travelled by herself from the Ivory Coast to Mauritania, where she bought passage on a boat, and survived 22-days at sea before being rescued by the Spanish Air Force. More here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-57089249