That is exactly what pastry chef Imad Tartoussi did with a group of friends and acquaintances. They were 33 people, including many children. “We had been preparing for two months,” he says. “We had enough food and fuel, we had a GPS system, there was a place for everyone to sleep. Our goal was to get beyond Cyprus, towards Italy. That should have taken five days.”
But despite the well-worked out plan, they ended up in a storm during the trip. They decided to wait in the Cypriot coastal city of Limassol for it to blow over. But the Cypriot authorities preceded them: “They brought us ashore and then brought us back to Lebanon, our boat is still there. I am furious at how they treated us.”
According to Nour Sidawi, many people make the crossing with a smuggler. According to him, that costs about $ 500 per person. “In the harbor you can hear their henchmen hissing at passers-by: ‘Cyprus, Cyprus’. Those smugglers often send inexperienced people to drive the boat. They are after money. They cram dozens of people on a boat, water and food are allowed. not along. It certainly does not always end well. “
Middle East correspondent Daisy Mohr meets a family in Tripoli trying to leave for Cyprus. The journey should have lasted 10 hours, it turned into an 8 day nightmare:
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