Page - 210 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

210 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Estela Schindel | Sea border crossing to Europe As they aim to apply for asylum, refugees climb into the boats without carrying documents or any other object that may reveal their civil identity. They might or might not count on a biographical narrative that supports their claim of refugee status. And newly acquired identities, alternate kinship ties, will probably be forged during the journey. families are separated before or during the journey – some members may have not been put on board by the traffickers on time, or they may have been detained and imprisoned elsewhere – but new ties, friendships and extra-biological family relations might arise. Nuclear families are torn apart; sometimes it is uncles and aunts – and not parents – who travel with children; unaccompanied minors form groups to support each other in their aim to reach Europe and call for the rest of the family from a safer place. Boat people dissolve and reinvent alliances and kinships. Not like Schifbri- der, born out of the foreseeable routine of a month-long journey through the ocean to a distant land, but as a bond created through the urgencies and contingencies in which decisions are taken and fates sealed. Ties born out of sharing the horror and the uncertainty. Before embarking, travellers may lose most of what they were carrying. By this point, refu- gees fleeing Afghanistan and Syria already have faced hard times traversing mountains and deserts on foot, crossing Turkey in overcrowded vans and living in harsh conditions at the mercy of the trafficking networks or the Turkish police. They might have been object of black- mailing and robbery several times. Eventually, about to jump in a boat, they may be once again forced to leave their bags, or robbed. Life jackets are sold at an arbitrary higher price. “It’s a very bad moment” says hamid, an Afghan journalist fleeing Taliban persecution, who was threate- ned by the trafficker with a knife and robbed of his luggage, his smartphone and cash reserves just when getting into the boat. Migrants are in a situation of radical vulnerability: “In the moment before embarking one remembers the mother, the father, the girlfriend. You are afraid. Your life is up to a 90% in risk.” At this moment, hamid says, the agents can sell life jackets at any price, and travellers would pay it. Right before starting off the boat, all conventions and securities have been largely broken. On the boat, the group is at the mercy of the contingent driver, the sea, the weather and the navigation of patrol vessels. In the dark, according to the testimonies, some travellers pray. Nasimgul, a 38-year-old Afghan woman travelling with her nephew and 5-year-old daughter, was in a small boat carrying 13 persons on a very rough sea. Everyone was praying on the boat, she says, and she was urging her daughter not to fall asleep: “Don’t sleep, pray, you are a child and God will listen to your prayers.” After half hour navigation, around midnight, the boat capsized, throwing all the passengers into the sea. Nasimgul reported that she couldn’t hold her daughter and lost contact with the group. The rest of them, her nephew says, managed to sit the girl on the boat and all hold to it with their bodies in the water until, after 11 hours, they reached the shore. Nasimgul spent 18 hours on the water: She could see the mountains, the lights, and the following day she twice saw a helicopter that was indeed looking for her. There was a moment, she says, when she was about to take out her life jacket and give up but then she made a last plea: “If you want to help me drop me to the beach,” she asked God. And the waves did.8 Out on the water, religious beliefs, contracts with God are questioned and renewed. Stratos, a fisherman who was able to rescue several migrants close to cape Karakas when their 8 A detailed account of this story by Efi Latsoudi can be read in <http://lesvos.w2eu.net/2014/08/30/life-not-death- by-efi-latsoudi/> [accessed 2015-01-28]