Fault Line

May 23, 2023

Conselice, Italy

The day began with a car crash, for which I was to blame. The accident took place while discussing the usual morning grievances. It was my first-ever car crash, and it was relatively uneventful. It happened during the morning rush hour in a roundabout—a good test of one's intuitive driving instincts. I noticed the car in front of me too late and bumped into its back. Embarrassed, I stepped out of the car and apologized to the two Italians, acknowledging that the fault was mine. Surprisingly, our Golf didn't show any signs of damage, while the vehicle in front had suffered a small crack. The father and son quickly estimated the damage at 50€ and proposed a PayPal transfer. The simple agreement couldn't have been more different from the bureaucratic ordeal such an incident would have caused in car-loving Germany, where the old Golf was still registered.

We parked along the main road, which was still dry. Little waves were forming on its side, looking toward the town. Another car drove by, lowering the window after noticing we had camera equipment: 'Giornalisti? Go to the casa rosa!' the woman shouted, pointing her arm toward a line of houses nearby. "Casa rosa!" she repeated and drove away before we could ask for precise directions. We rolled up our pants and set out for the town. My hiking shoes, a lightweight summer model with openings that allow water to seep in, were already soaked in mud, and I didn't mind the ankle-deep water too much. Soon, though, the water got deeper, reaching all the way to our knees. The town seemed deserted. It was already ten days after the first heavy rainfall, and only a few brown lines had formed on the walls of the houses. Other than that, the water wasn't going anywhere. Its smooth surface cast reflections all over the street, creating a light with almost no shadows. After a while, we saw an elderly man sitting on his porch with a large Labrador stretched at his feet. His pants were rolled up, too, his feet resting on blue Speedo flip-flops. We could see the garden through a big gate — a fruit orchard, peach, and plum treetops sticking out of the water. Among them shone a Venus statue carved out of white marble. The man raised his hand in a greeting but remained seated.

We waded toward the gate. "Hi," I said in Google translated Italian, "Could we take a photo of your garden?" Slowly, he stood up and opened the gate. I thought There were many gates and fences like his in Conselice. While I grew up with the conviction that one's garden should be private, ideally surrounded by an ornamentally cut hedge, I was no longer used to this. Dutch gardens are not very "private" and enclosed. With the first rays of sunshine every spring, my neighbors put entire sofas on the street, on the "public" side of the house, and sit there for hours with a glass of wine.

"Maya, Maya, come here now!' The man shouted. The Labrador was almost entirely submerged in the brown water but determined to follow us around the orchard as we took the photos. Another man showed up, entering through a smaller gate at the back of the garden: "Maya, what the hell are you doing? Go back to the house." He was holding a set of keys in his left hand and a tall wooden stick — not exactly the usual size of a walking stick — in his right. He waved to his friend on the porch, muttered a quiet buongiorno to us, and gestured towards his house, which we thought must have been the casa rosa the car woman referred to earlier. Having met almost no other people in the village, we were happy to be invited.

Crossing the street in the waist-deep water wasn't an easy exercise while carrying the camera equipment, cables wrapped all over us. I couldn't help but think of a story a Dutch friend once told me. He recounted how in the 1990s, his kids would come home and climb the steep stairs to their apartment, leaving an imprint of wet dog shit from the streets on each step with a distinct flatsch. Walking in the contaminated water, each step sinking deep into a layer of soft mud felt similar.

The man's hands were shaking as he unlocked the door. A moldy smell filled the air as soon as he opened it. Everything in Emilia Romagna smelled like mud by then, but it was even worse in closed spaces. We entered a spacious living room in the middle of which stood a tower of white leather sofas. The water was noticeably colder than out in the streets. Walking around the stacked furniture, we continued through the kitchen. It was rather unsettling seeing a stove almost half underwater. Above it hung a line of three children's drawings. Curled up from the moisture, they were decorated with large inscriptions: ti voglio bene Nonna, ti voglio bene Nonno, and per i Nonni. Through the kitchen door, one could see the bedroom, where the bed had been slightly lifted from the ground as if floating on the flood water. A bunch of plastic crates supported its legs and it barely touched the water. The mattress was removed, and the frame was covered with pots and cooking utensils. Among them laid a few sets of Christmas lights and a statue of the Virgin Mary in a seashell. "I mean, you could have taken this in a studio. It's so conceptual," a curator told me during a portfolio review once. That memory still makes me furious. That wasn't the last time someone asked us whether we had staged the flood scenes. There is indeed something theatrical about entering a house, all its belongings balanced in towers of unrelated items reaching to the ceiling. Tables became lifesaving platforms for couches and bookshelves; the chairs go on top of them, and here and there stands a lonely object like a Moka pot, a vase, a bottle of wine, or a framed photograph.

After taking photos, we asked the man whether he could use some help carrying boxes. While we worked, he had moved a dozen shoeboxes from the garage to the staircase. Judging from his expression, he most certainly didn't want help. Disappearing into the garage again, he returned with a dusty bottle of wine. "For you," he insisted, even after we refused to accept it. I crafted another short message using Google Translate: "Thank you for letting us into your house. We wish you strength while dealing with the repairs. We hope your children will be there for you." He put on his glasses and looked at the message. He broke down in tears and then looked away as we parted.

In July, the waters had drained amid two bad heatwaves, and the town was accessible again. We drove past the house slowly. A young man stood in the yard with his wife and children. He looked at us suspiciously as we smiled and raised our hands in greeting.

Metal, Sand, Heat, Hope: In Conversation with David Yambio, Co-founder and spokesman, Refugees in Libya

“They say that refugees from Sudan are just refugees. Nobody talks about climate change.”

0
“I was born in a war-torn country. In 1997, Sudan was still in civil war — the South was fighting for its autonomy against the northern regime. My family had to flee to Congo when I was only two months old and later to Central Africa. In 2005, the Southern Sudanese regime signed a peace agreement with the rebels. After spending a few years in exile, the people who had previously fled to neighboring countries decided to return. I started going to school, but not for too long as, in 2009, I was forcibly conscripted to fight in the army. This was very traumatizing for a 12-year-old child. My childhood ended abruptly as I was forced to carry out violent actions that I had no control over.”

I
“In 2011, Southern Sudan gained its independence. We dreamt of rebuilding what we had lost, collecting resources for our country and community, pursuing our dreams, getting an education, and improving our situation. However, it was only two years before another bloody civil war began. At that point, my government had become well-known for using child soldiers because it had no well-trained army to combat the rebels. In 2013, as I was just turning 16, I was conscripted again. I would describe it as a form of modern slavery because I was compelled to do things against my will. I stayed under these circumstances until I left the country in 2015.”

II
“I traveled to Uganda and other neighboring countries. One thing that no one talks about is the impact of climate change in that region. Many depend on farming to provide for their families. When I arrived, people had already complained about their crops failing. I couldn't find any opportunities there. I continued my journey through East and South African countries, slowly realizing that I didn't fit in these societies culturally. When I returned home in late 2015, hoping things might be different this time, I found myself under the crossfire between rebels. I was beginning to understand there was no place for me in Sudan. If I were to build a family and have children, they would be born into a traumatizing experience. I chose to be a refugee because I understood I would lose everything otherwise. The moment you decide to become a refugee, you do so at the cost of your dignity, your dreams, and your place in society. As soon as you leave home, you are categorized as an outlaw or as if you don't exist. Few people make it through after being silenced like that.

When I first left for northern Sudan, I couldn't find shelter because I'm not a Muslim, and I didn't want to be identified by my religion anyway. I wanted to be seen as a human being. I crossed to Chad and eventually received international protection. Chad is one of the poorest countries in Central Africa and has hosted thousands of refugees since the genocide in Darfur in 2003. Meanwhile, in the west, there is Boko Haram and the Nigerian society constantly living under the siege of war. Around the time I arrived in Chad, a battle between the Francophone and Anglophone people broke out in Cameroon, and those escaping from it came to Chad and Niger. You never hear about it, but Niger is suffering from the impacts of climate change as well.

I kept moving through West and Central African countries, looking for education and a way of obtaining income to be independent. But I failed because when I traveled to Nigeria, I saw the effects of climate change. Furthermore, I saw how people had been deserted. I saw failing crops in the Delta State (ed. note: in southern Nigeria). It wasn't possible to live a life there. Then, I went all the way to Ghana and Senegal. I never found a space for myself. I went to Morocco and tried to reach Spain, but it was also impossible. I still remember the way from Mauritania, Burkina Faso, and Mali. I can tell you what being in the no man's land means. The desert is deadly; there isn't a single shade to hide from the scorching sun. And that experience makes you think: Why don't people talk more about the climate crisis?

Eventually, I arrived in Libya. I didn't go there by my own volition. I found myself in another dream, another nightmare. But I'm glad that I lived through it and can tell the story of what I experienced.”

III
“I think we cannot refer to refugees as an overall group. We must be more specific. For example, I was in Chad, and climate change pushed me to Libya. I was in Yemen, and then, out of nowhere, for two years, we were not able to grow anything. The extreme climate was something that pushed me to the far north between the border of Libya, Chad, and Niger, as I looked for a land where crops would grow. Libya is practically a desert and is badly affected by climate change, something nobody talks about. What has changed is that there is no more water. It just doesn't come out anymore, which forces people to migrate even within Libya. We should be very specific on these things because the standard narrative is that the refugees are coming only because of war and conflict.

On July 12, 2023, British PM Rishi Sunak posted a video saying: "If you come here, you will be detained. You will be imprisoned, and you will not be accepted." This is a violent message to send to a population that is traumatized and is looking for a space of recognition. Similarly, when Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and foreign affairs minister Antonio Tajani travel to Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya, strike up million-euro gas and oil deals, but no one mentions the issue of migration, we, the people on the move, are the ones who pay the price. We must start questioning who is behind these exploitative systems.

When people talk about refugees, they are missing the fact that we are people with dreams. I am someone in my twenties who dreams of becoming an entrepreneur; others dream of becoming teachers or doctors. And this is something that people need to understand: We are individuals. We have a face, we have a story, we have a life that matters. We want to contribute to a beautiful world. Otherwise reduced to numbers, refugees could sit and dine with you, play football with you, go to school or swim together, and discuss life, philosophy, whatever it is. So when you arrive in Italy, the first question in the interview should be, "What are your dreams?"

Migration, Flood, Borders, Asylum: In Conversation with Anna Brambilia, (im)migration and asylum lawyer

"If you ask me how many climate change asylum seekers I have worked with, I would say more or less everyone I worked with was one, in different ways."

0
"I’ve been working in migration and asylum for a long time. Recently, I’ve been primarily focused on environmental migration and the type of protection the Italian national system can provide for environmental migrants. I’m a lawyer, and I give legal aid to better explain such problems in the interviews—I tell the migrants that they should talk about how the floods, or the droughts have affected their families. I’m trying to understand how we can define climate migrants and recognize somebody as a climate migrant in the first place. What kind of questions to ask?

It is the questions that are the problem, not the answers. Because if I never ask you about climate-related events, you might never tell me as you may think it is irrelevant. When we encounter migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Mali, we try to understand how the climate in those regions is changing and how that change affects people. We are developing instruments to help judges better understand and handle climate migration cases. We try to underline that climate change can affect human rights in several ways, that there is often a link between climate change and human rights violations, and that it can force people to leave their countries of origin."

I
"In Italy, when you ask for asylum, you have to provide information on both your individual situation and the general situation in your country. You must explain how human rights violations are happening for several reasons, including climate change. This also includes how your government dealt with the consequences of natural disasters, how economic support has been distributed, and whether some social or ethnic groups were favored over others. It is possible to talk about these factors with some judges now.

As lawyers, we try to understand in what year the floods affected a particular area and whether there have been floods before and after that. What kind of governmental projects were developed in the area in the aftermath? Often, it is not just a problem of climate, but also a lack of governmental intervention."

II
"Now the European Union recognizes climate change as a pull factor for migration. Additionally, we have had several court decisions in which individual climate migration cases were granted humanitarian protection. Still, we need to do more.

The most critical issue is arriving in Europe, not the kind of protection you will receive once you are in Italy. The border policy makes it difficult for people from West Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to arrive. In March 2023, the Italian government approved a new list of "safe countries of origin." This list includes Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Gambia, and Senegal. That means that if you arrive from one of these countries and request asylum, there is a presumption of an unfounded request. The committee must come to a decision within seven days of your arrival, so your request will be processed with a quick procedure with a lower success rate.

In most cases, you are in a closed center, so you cannot be informed about the procedure, your rights, or what to mention in the interview. People cannot adequately explain the situation in their countries. In short, the problem is not the type of protection we can offer to environmental migrants but how we can prepare them for these interviews in the first place.

It is also crucial to consider the environmental cost of closing the borders. When people on the move are stranded for an extended period of time in refugee camps, this is also an environmental problem."

III
"You also must consider that these problems sometimes affect multiple generations. For instance, many people who arrive from Nigeria to Italy will tell you how their grandparents were from the Delta State. It is interesting to understand why they moved because the environmental situation in the Delta State has been horrible for a long time.

Yet, generally, there are very few decisions from the court in which climate change is cited as the main reason for migration. Even when the judge thinks it is crucial, human trafficking is always a more important factor. Sometimes, they don’t have enough time to spend with these cases, so they settle for the easiest way. And mostly, the easiest way is to prove violence, conflict, and human rights violations. If you ask me how many climate change asylum seekers I have worked with, I would say more or less everyone I worked with was one, in different ways. But how many decisions mention that clearly? Very few."

September 15, 2023

Sostis, Greece

In nearly every village we visited, we were initially met with suspicion. A shiny rental car (a hybrid, on top of everything) driving into a town of thirty houses does not go unnoticed. Our host in Alexandropouli told us that a friend living in the mountains had called her a few days ago, inquiring about the blonde man and his girlfriend photographing houses. Strange, she thought. However, without exception, our goodbyes looked nothing like those of strangers.

Leaving Sostis — for the third time, as we kept forgetting pieces of equipment at the Kousminas' — the entire family lined up at the gate, waving. They insisted we share a glass of tsipouro just before, the same tsipouro they drank while sitting in front of their burnt house daily as if trying to have one last word with it before it gets demolished. We grew fond of the family, even though we barely saw eye to eye.

We had worked the entire day with nothing to eat except for substantial portions of sugary bougatsa at breakfast. Late into the night, Nikolaos kept throwing his arms around our shoulders. Eleni mentioned that her father was very pleased we took a portrait of them since all their family albums burned in the fire, leaving only cellphone photographs. To capture the picture, we had to walk from the house they had been staying in since the fire to what was left of their home. Since neither of the parents spoke English, we communicated through smiles and pointing in different directions. We positioned them on the staircase and gestured for them to look into the camera. The mother was ten years younger and a few inches taller than the father. They stood still on the staircase, holding hands. Under the glimmer of the streetlights, it seemed as if he was crying, but their postures were upright—they stood firmly. The photograph would become their last memory of the house and the only portrait they had in that moment. For Nikolaos, a new family history began at fifty-five.

After a while, Nikolaos came to check on us. The naked Rhodopi mountains were illuminated with streaks of lightning—a storm was coming. He approached with a folded piece of paper in his hands.

"Here, you have to see this," he said, opening it with pride.

"Do you recognize it?"

It was indeed a familiar document—an extract from the Dutch personal records database. It's funny how these objects are spared in such disasters.

"I worked on a ship. Old times."

September 16, 2023

Plaka, Greece

We followed Sevinç and her father along a rocky path to the olive grove. We walked in silence, partly for the lack of a shared language and partly because we were walking toward everything they had lost in the fire. "Beautiful," she said, pointing to a charred trunk of massive oak split apart in the middle. "It was, at least." Mr. Moursel followed a few meters behind, slowly but with a firm step, hands crossed on his back. We occasionally paused to let him catch up. I worried that the heat might be too much for a man his age, but then I thought he must have walked this same path a thousand times. He lost thirty sheep in the fire, Sevinç told us. When he returned to the grove after a few days and found their carcasses scattered around, he cried so hard he had to be taken to a hospital.

As we arrived, the dead sheep were no longer there, which I found comforting, having spent the last days working in the nauseating stench. She picked up a small bell from the ground: "This is what's left." A cousin had buried the sheep in a large hole—the same cousin who later drove by on a motorcycle, amused by the sight of two strangers taking a portrait of his relatives under a sad-looking olive tree. There were still leaves on the trees, only they were now grey, the withered olives hanging from the branches like black raisins. Now and then, a gust of wind filled the air with ashes, making all the tiny particles sparkle under the midday sun. There was a faint outline of Samothraki on the horizon. I wondered how it must feel living all these years with an island always in sight but having never been there.

Back in the village, we sat down around a plastic table. Biscuits, two cups of Turkish coffee, and two glasses of water were waiting for us. "Drink," Mr. Moursel nodded to the table while climbing the stairs to enter the house. An orange cat approached.

"Is it your cat? What's her name?" I asked Sevinç.

"She doesn't have a name. But I love her."

Mr. Moursel returned carrying a plastic bag. He put his other hand on his heart. " This is a present for you. Take it, please."

It was a package of coffee wrapped in a silver foil embossed with Greek letters: AXMET XOYΣEÏN. The aroma reminded me of the coffee I always received as a present from my grandmother in Slovenia. Every gift bag ever given to me, whether for my birthday, Christmas, or Easter has consistently contained a bright magenta package of Barcaffe (100g), produced by Droga Kolinska and faithfully drunk by the entire nation since the 70s. I collect these packages in the back of our kitchen cupboard in Den Haag. I liked knowing they were there, although I never drank the coffee.

"What are we going to do now that everything is burnt? Our life became hell!" Sevinç wrote to me over Instagram. With every constant in your life gone, what do you do, indeed? When an olive grove passed from generation to generation burns, you lose not only a source of income but a sense of belonging. The Samothraki is still there, though.

Fire, Time, Air, Future: In Conversation with Eleftherios Vergidis

“They came and marked the houses with red and yellow crosses. Now one wall of the house is yellow, the other is red, and we must figure out what to do.”

0
"I heard a loud sound from the mountain. What I felt was more than fear because I didn't know what to expect in the next ten minutes. It was burning like crazy. Things the manufacturer labels said would melt at 600 C were melting away.

It was completely gone.

We are lucky to have the community. We will try to fix it, rebuild it, and make the black forest green again."

I
"They came and marked the houses with red and yellow crosses. Yellow is for those deemed safe to repair, and red is for the ones to be demolished. Now, one wall is yellow, the other is red, and we must figure out what to do. Instead of tearing down the entire house and building a new one, we must put down one or two walls and leave the rest. And that is how they try to give us less money.

They said they would review the process, but how long will this take? People don't have homes—they stay at friends' places or hotels. The whole family lives in a single room. For how much longer? One year, two or three years? We need the money to rebuild our houses now.

When our village, Sostis was burning, they only sent two firefighting trucks, one of which had no water. Only four people were trying to save an entire mountain. These young guys stood there, watching the flames engulf the houses, saying, 'Oh my god, I've never seen such a fire before.' When I heard this stuff and realized that in 10 minutes, my house would be burnt, I lost all hope. Together with friends, we tried to save whatever was possible. We had no masks or protective equipment. At one point, the electricity went out, too, and we had no water supply. There was no water for six or seven hours, but the fire kept coming, and we couldn't save our homes. I don't blame the firefighters. I understand that for €800 a month, no one would go into a 20-meter-tall flame. But where is the government when it comes to providing training or updating the firefighters' equipment so they can do their jobs in an emergency?"

II
"Nobody came to analyze the air, the soil, anything. The residents are coughing and developing asthma and lung problems because everything is burnt and covered in soot. Even if your house was not burnt, this is not a safe place to stay. The forest used to be green, but now it's completely gone. The winds keep bringing down the ashes and black stuff from the mountains. The smell is horrible.

When countries like the Netherlands or Germany provide tons of money for Greece to protect the villages from floods or fires and nobody does anything, that isn't good. All the money goes to the military. It's why everyone my age, people in their 20s or 30s, is leaving, trying to find better lives abroad.

This summer, we had days where the temperature reached 43 and even 45 Celcius again. The land is dry, and that is probably caused by climate change. On the other hand, we never saw as much fire or water coming so suddenly. My grandma is eighty and hasn't witnessed anything like it all her life. You can believe whatever you think, but this is not normal. I do a lot of research about these things and think they are planted. Many conspiracy theories are coming up on how the storms are created—they use electromagnetic things to modify the weather (Ed note. Eleftherios refers to High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program here). Too many bad things are happening for no reason, such as the earthquakes in Turkey and Morocco, and now there are the fires and the floods. You cannot destroy the entire country in one week. It's not just climate change. Somebody must have done something. It's human stuff.

These days, the government also blames climate change. They don't have a responsibility if it is caused by climate change. They say it's nothing they can control—it's out of their hands."

III
"At the end of the day, I know my house can get burnt; perhaps the floods will take it at some point. I don't know who will protect it. What's the point of paying taxes if you don't feel safe in your country? That's the reason everyone is leaving. There's no point in staying in Greece. There is no future."

May 24, 2024

Almería, Spain

I'll remember the places we photographed with the color of the ground, the smell of the air, and the taste of chlorine in tap water. Italy, after the floods, was sticky and greenish brown, the air sickening as mold and wastewater evaporated under the hot sun. The mud was already thickening and cracking on the top while 30 centimeters under; it was only starting to solidify. In Greece, the roads were anthracite black, and so was the view in any direction you looked, all the way to the horizon. Car and metal bed frames, chairs, and broken pots were sticking out of the black sand, all covered in soot. We thought the soot made us sick. That was before we smelled burned cats, dogs, and goats. In Spain, a white haze hovered over the greenhouses of El Ejido, smelling like pesticide and vegetable rot. It was the end of the season in Almeria, with the last of the vegetable crops being harvested and the narrow dirt roads between the greenhouses already lined with heaps of excess produce. For most of the day, it seemed lonely, until at a particular time, usually around midday, hundreds of men—mainly workers from Morocco, Ghana, and Senegal, would emerge on electric scooters and bicycles, followed by an occasional farmer in an SUV. We stared at the kilometers of white plastic covering the greenhouses, the so-called "mar de plastico," standing on top of a hill in the La Mojonera district and watched the swirls of hot air rise from the reflective roofs. Until the Sierra Nevada, there was nothing but greenhouses. Nobody we asked knew how many people really worked in Almería, and perhaps they didn't want to know. It was strange to think how the Netherlands is one of the largest markets for Spanish fruits and vegetables, and I could recall the exact labels from Albert Heijn. People would judge you for not completely giving up meat, but they didn't seem to mind buying supermarket avocados, zucchini, and tomatoes produced through modern-day slavery. I also knew we minded very much, but we had to buy them anyway because these were the vegetables we could afford.

We must have driven through every road in El Ejido during our two weeks there. By the time we left, we could recognize certain farmers on the street and the waiter at our daily restaurant, who had not been so welcoming at first but later became friendly. He was especially appreciative when you ordered something that, in his opinion, tourists don't eat, such as pork trotters or blood sausages, and paid in cash. After these early lunches, we would drive around and look for people who wanted to talk to us. We knocked on heavy electric gates, sneaked into greenhouses, and approached workers on the street. At first, some would tell us they didn't speak English, Spanish or French. Once they ensured we were not journalists, however, we could mostly communicate in one of the languages or a combination thereof. Our first encounter, on the very first day, was with a 30-year-old man from Senegal named Ebou and his friend, who asked for his name to be withheld. They walked along the field in high plastic boots and wore clothes drenched in soil. We asked if we could have a chat, but they repeatedly refused. Only after we drove away and eventually took a wrong turn, passing them again, did they wave to us and say that Ebou had changed his mind. He now agreed to take us to their place where we could chat and take his photograph. We arrived at a small garage door covered in graffiti. Ebou's friend, who appeared older and more cautious, stepped in first and quickly closed the door behind him. After a minute, he reopened it and gestured for us to come in. Inside the small space were several bunk beds where three guys slept during their midday break. There was also a large refrigerator with a freezer compartment, a tiny cooking plate, and a sofa missing a leg, leaning sideways. In front of each bed stood an electric scooter. "This is where we live," the friend said. "Now, do what you want. You can talk to the guys."

In the next settlement, a smaller one by the road, Jakob and the guys who lived there had a long chat about football and exchanged opinions on who would win Euro 2024. There was a clothing line full of football socks in front of their tent and behind it, the residents built an improvised gym. They had a bench press, something that resembled a pull-down machine for training one's biceps and back, and a couple of weights lying around. We mainly photographed a man called Moustapha, who was wearing an "I <3 Senegal" bracelet we had seen before and a Tupac shirt saying "Only God Can Judge Me." Moustapha was caring for a puppy called Maria who stayed close and circled us while we took the photos, as if trying to ensure he was OK. Like many other young people we met, Moustapha wore EarPods throughout our encounter.

—

"Thank you for the pictures. Hope you're doing fine over there." Isaac texted me. When I asked for his number the week before, standing at the door of a small camping trailer, he couldn't remember it. He looked through his stuff for a small white receipt where the number was scribbled. I copied it into my phone and sent him a quick "Hi" Isaac was one of the undocumented migrants from Ghana tending the greenhouses in San Isidro, Andalusia. He was the first to talk to us when we arrived at the settlement. "Jakob and Ana. Ana and Jakob", he repeated. He asked whether we were siblings and said we had nice names while the other guys peeked out of their tents but didn't approach. Isaac had been working in Spain for twenty-five years, mostly picking tomatoes. His trailer was filled to the brim with old suitcases, blankets, and clothes. On the left side was a small bed, intended to be used as both a bed and a collapsing dining table. Isaac’s belongings on it suggested he had forgone using it as a dining table altogether. The walls of the caravan were decorated with marine blue wallpaper featuring an alternating sun and moon pattern, and all the windows were covered with scarves. These patterns proved to be common in all the homes we visited: From the outside, they were built out of large plastic sheets — bits and pieces of the greenhouses, while on the inside, they were carefully draped in tapestries, towels, and wallpapers. These spaces felt very personal for people who owned only a few essentials.

After spending some time with Isaac, one of the other men approached us and asked if we could take his picture. I asked for his name but couldn't quite catch it. He wanted us to be in the picture as well. He had a prominent scar running from the root of his nose across his left eyelid and an expression that was both amiable and frightening. We wanted to photograph people in their homes rather than on the street, so we asked if we could see his tent, which turned out to be a cement cave lined with mattresses. There was only space for one of us to enter, and you had to walk on your knees since the ceiling was barely a meter and thirty centimeters high. The portrait that we took of him in this cave haunted me long after coming home and will probably remain the most painful photograph of our series.

Each day, we stopped photographing late, sometimes at 10 pm, dirty and exhausted. We looked for a cheap tapas restaurant and drank one beer after another since we were eager to get more complimentary plates. I was mainly happy to get a triple portion of whatever form of pork was available, with fries and bread. Eating vegetarian was not an option in Almería, nor did I wish for it after the physical toll working in the greenhouses took on us. Yousra and Sofi drove us back to Almería in the Medicos del Mundo ("Doctors of the World") van that day. Yousra parked in the big IKEA parking lot and helped us unload the camera equipment.

"Sometimes, we come home and feel sad after visiting the settlements," she said. "But during the visits, you have to put on your happy face. It's not a job for everybody." She paused and continued. "Yousra can do it, though. I love working with her."

During the ride, Sofi talked a lot about the racism and violent incidents in her neighborhood. She also told us that Yousra doesn't like to visit the Moroccan settlements because they don't treat her well. "You see, she was born Moroccan, but she is a modern European girl. I always tell her to cover up when we are on a mission." Sofi and she must have had some forty years of age difference, but they talked and acted like old friends. Earlier at a cafe, Yousra showed me her Instagram account, where she regularly posted videos from her wedding, which took place the previous summer. In those videos, she wore bright-colored traditional dresses embroidered with golden lace and details. She had a lot of make-up on and looked quite different, but her face was already beautiful without make-up. She was incredibly confident for a twenty-something-year-old woman delivering essential goods to settlements of mostly male workers. She lifted heavy cartons of milk and oil from her white van, parked skillfully, and gave light medical advice for the everyday ailments of the workers. She thought they were being overly dramatic. "When they get a fever, they think they are dying," she laughed. It's important for us to teach people how to treat basic health problems. How to disinfect wounds, and when to see a doctor. It's generally very difficult to get medical help here, so we try to do as much as we can and, in extreme cases, refer them to the doctors we know will help.

When we said goodbye, we gave Sofi and her a bag of tomatoes we had received earlier that day in exchange for taking pictures of the tomato plants. "I'll make gazpacho. A lot of it," Sofi said, then drove away.

Yes Isaac, I guess we are doing fine.