Yesterday a photo, and today, another. Young people, between fourteen and twenty years old – I would say, teenagers – all in the water, standing, arriving at the beach, already touching the sand. They all have fashionable haircuts, the two-layer kind, like footballers'. Most of them are shirtless and show thin, toned bodies. Those who are wearing shirts have "decided" on them. They are shirts (wet, of course) with a drawing, a slogan, a photo. "If I die, let them find me well-dressed," they must have thought. There's one wearing a Lakers logo. Another, the Real Madrid kit. Some are still wearing the tire, which we mentioned yesterday. A tire that's meant to be a joke: an imitation of a truck's wheel. Two of them, and it's curious, are carrying their flip-flops in their hands, placed as if their hands were feet. Maybe they helped them swim. Maybe they wanted to keep them, whatever the case, so they wouldn't walk barefoot through the city when they arrived. "This is very important; shoes will save you from the police!" the mafia members must have told them. One of them is holding his mobile phone and seems to be taking a photo. Maybe he held it up high the whole time or protected it with aluminum foil. The phone shows us Europe made into a reel, but it's also the connection with those who have stayed behind.
Most of the women have stayed. In this photo, of people who have swum, there are only men. Young, strong men, now forever relentless. The old, the women, the boys and girls, the fat ones, the sick ones cannot do what they have done. When we talk about the hope and faith of all these young people, we forget about them. They, if necessary, will be called. If they want to cross the border now, they will have to deal with mafias of another kind.
