IBRASH, Egypt — The last time Sabah Abd Rabu Hussein heard from her son, Yahia Saleh, he was planning to board a migrant vessel from conflict-ridden Libya to Europe. That was two weeks ago.
“I had begged him not to go,” the Egyptian housewife said Sunday, “but he became fed up with our difficult (living) conditions.”
The 18-year-old was onboard an old fishing trawler that sailed from the town of Tobruk in eastern Libya on June 9. He was heading to Italy, like many other young men from his village in Egypt’s Nile Delta.
There were as many as 750 migrants including women and children on the boat that capsized and sank off Greece in one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean Sea.
Only 104 survived. Greek authorities retrieved 80 bodies as of Monday, and chances of finding anyone else alive have diminished. The shipwreck appears to be one of the worst tragedies in the Mediterranean in recent history, raising questions and outrage over how European authorities have dealt with the influx of migrants.
Like many other relatives, Saleh’s family doesn’t know the fate of their son. He was the second of four children born to a family of farmers and left home less than a month ago without telling them about his plans.
The family is from Ibrash, in the agricultural Nile Delta province of Sharqia, where water buffalos, cows and donkeys share dirt roads with cars, motorbikes and three-wheeled rickshaws known as tuk-tuks.
Many of the area’s young men and teenagers have made the perilous trip to Libya, hoping to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. Some of them managed to reach Italy, but many others were detained and returned, according to five villagers, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities.
Egypt, the most populous Arab nation with 105 million people, has sealed off its maritime borders for migrant boats following a 2016 deadly shipwreck off the Mediterranean town of Rossetta. The government regularly tries to discourage young men from illegal migration, but the country’s economic crisis has motivated many to try to leave despite the dangers.
Greek authorities arrested nine Egyptian men and charged them with people smuggling and participating in a criminal enterprise in the days following the wreck.
Those looking to reach Europe have turned to neighboring Libya, which has become a major transit point for those fleeing violence and poverty in Africa and the wider Middle East. They travel thousands of miles on land to reach the Libyan shores where traffickers pack them in unseaworthy boats to Europe.
There were dozens of Egyptians on the trawler, including as many as 35 from Saleh’s village. Only six are known to have survived the shipwreck, according to relatives.
On Saturday, the Egyptian Embassy in Athens shared a list of 43 Egyptians, including minors, who it said had survived. The list included migrants from Cairo and other Nile Delta provinces.
“The village is wounded,” said one villager, Sameh el-Gamal. “It’s a catastrophe. Each family has a funeral.”
For over six months, Saleh’s parents tried to talk him out of his plans to make the perilous trip. But he had become increasingly determined as his family’s living conditions deteriorated. He helped his father cultivate their small farm, and sometimes worked as a daily laborer earning about $60 a month, his mother said.
“He wanted to help us,” Hussein said.
Saleh planned to follow in the steps of other villagers who traveled to Europe via Libya over the past few years and sent money back home, his father, Mohammed Saleh, said.
One evening in mid-May, he bid farewell to his mother without telling her where he was going. She thought he would spend his evening with friends.
“He kissed my forehead as if he knew that it would be the last time he would see me,” Hussein remembered.
A day later, the parents found out that he traveled to Libya with his cousin and four other men. He had borrowed around $50 from a villager to pay for the trip. The five traveled first to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and then to the coastal town of Salloum on the border with Libya. There, traffickers smuggled them across.
His father and other relatives frantically reached fellow Egyptians living in Libya, who connected them with traffickers working between Egypt and Libya.
“I begged them to get my son back,” he said, fighting tears. He said he offered to pay them up to over $1,600 to return him. They refused.
“They told me, ‘He has been warehoused, waiting to sail’ and asked me to send the bill,” Saleh, the father, said.
Eventually, he gave in and paid the equivalent of more than $4,500, most of which he borrowed, for fear that if he didn’t his son could face torture or death at the hands of the smugglers.
For the past week, Saleh’s family have been desperately hoping for word of their son or the others. They want to know whether he is among the survivors, the dead, or still missing.
“I want my son, I want him alive or dead,” his mother said, covering her face with her hands and sobbing.
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