The Italian Red Cross (CRI) has announced the publication of "Mediterraneao." This is a graphic novel narrating the tragic journeys of hope made by migrants to Europe written and illustrated by Sergio Nazzaro and Luca Ferrara.
The novel tells of "the complexity and tragedy of the migration phenomenon and of a long and silent war that has claimed thousands of lives over the last 20 years." It is "the story of a sea that, out of shame and modesty, has decided to draw back its waters to reveal everything that it has concealed until now." What emerges is the biggest cemetery in Europe, "with large pools of bodies, ghosts wandering about, ships hanging on threads linking pieces of land that were once islands": "arid depths" that are shown to readers "in their simple cruelty."
Amalia's journey towards Italy
Mediterraneo is the tale of a journey, like the one undertaken by thousands of migrants. It is the journey of Amalia, "a child of the Mediterranean world, who lost her entire family in a massacre." Only her friend Giufà remains to keep her company and give her a semblance of life. Amalia "is determined, and her journey becomes one of formation, of knowledge, of ghosts that tell of a sea that no longer exists". Her destination is Italy, "a safe haven, now the peak of a mountain among those corroded by the sun".
'It is policy, not the sea, that kills,' says CRI
The graphic novel "leaves no room for interpretation, placing the reader before the only possible truth page after page", the President of the Italian Red Cross (CRI) Francesco Rocca said in the preface. "For years the Mediterranean was blamed for killing human beings fleeing in search of salvation," Rocca said. "But it is not the sea that kills them, it never has been. Rather, it is policies adopted over the years, the raising of walls and the unscrupulousness of the human smugglers. The sea, by its very nature, has merely concealed that blame, becoming an unwitting accomplice in one of the world's biggest human tragedies." The work of Nazzaro and Ferrara, she wrote, "therefore has the merit of revealing the truth and turning the received narrative on its head: the sea becomes the means, the journey is the horizon".