A Mediterranean Survivor To The Victims Of Gaza, Faces To Remember

-Essay-

CAIRO — A Brazilian filmmaker friend was visiting Portugal a few weeks ago. Somewhere, as he was photographing some tourism landmarks with his professional camera, a young man and woman, who appeared to be of African descent, approached him. They asked him to take their photo with his camera. Smiling before the lens, they embraced each other as lovers.

My friend took several pictures of them and then asked for their phone number to send the photos. They replied that it wasn’t the pictures themselves they wanted, but rather just to have a moment captured with a good camera — to be seen, and to remain in my friend’s memory. Perhaps, without realizing it, they wanted to preserve themselves forever in that moment of love and joy they were experiencing, even if only through the lens of someone they would never meet again.

When my friend shared this story with me and showed me their photos, I was immediately reminded of the slogan we chanted months ago, referring to the people of Gaza, direct victims of genocide: “They are not numbers.”

Face of the moon

This slogan captured the essence of artist Sally Samir’s book of that title. In it, she illustrated the faces of Palestinians from Gaza alongside sentences that circulated about them during the genocide.

This allowed our children in the future to recognize them, learn about what happened to them, and preserve their words, even if the drawings didn’t precisely depict their features. Words, paired with simple, childlike lines like Sally’s, bring the person back to life, recreate their essence, and make us remember them anew.

We don’t know the moon’s exact features; it doesn’t have a face. It has a mysterious surface we’ve seen in films and through advanced scientific telescopes. But because it’s round and perhaps enigmatic, we’ve adopted it culturally to describe beauty: “as beautiful as the moon.” Even in its darkness or incomplete state, the moon never loses its eloquence or its association with beauty.

In Spanish, the moon is “luna.” Over the decades, as spectators of the tragedies of repeated migration attempts via small boats, crossing dangerous borders and water barriers for a better life, we came to know Luna Reyes. In 2021, 20-year-old Luna, a Spanish Red Cross volunteer, was photographed hugging distressed African migrant who had crossed to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, off the Moroccan coast.

Victims and survivors

Her actions briefly broke the relentless counting of deaths in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; it was among the few acts that gave victims names, faces, and voices, transforming them from mere numbers into human beings. Yet Luna did not intend to do what Sally and others did for the genocide victims in Gaza by sharing their stories, pictures, and words to ensure they didn’t remain mere numbers.

Three years ago, everything happened spontaneously and without a plan. Most of the young Africans attempting to swim from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta drowned. A few survivors swam into deeper waters to bypass the border fence — because the sea, too, has borders, walls and barbed wire— and swam back toward the shores officially belonging to Spain.

This migrant ceased, in that moment, to be merely a number.

Rescue teams and volunteers rushed to the sea and shore to assist survivors and save those drowning. Those who managed to reach solid ground were utterly exhausted. One man was crying and trembling, unable to stand, unable to believe he had survived the realm of death and emerged alive.

Luna spontaneously hugged him to calm him down. He clung to her as if holding onto a new life. Through this embrace, it was as if he was affirming to himself that he was still alive. They both cried, unaware that cameras were capturing the moment.

TV channels broadcast this scene of Luna embracing the African survivor. This sparked a campaign of bullying and attacks against her, accusing her of harboring sexual desires in this spontaneous act. The ferocity of the right-wing extremist groups forced Luna to shut down all her social media accounts for over two years and change her phone number to escape the accusations and insults.

Black and white bodies

The reasons for this frenzy and bullying are neither complex nor require lengthy analysis. European right-wing factions prefer migrants and refugees to drown before reaching the shores—and they do not deny this preference. What Luna did could inspire new volunteers to join rescue efforts, potentially reducing the number of victims.

Additionally, many men struggle to separate such a humane, spontaneous act from their sexual fantasies. Among these men are racists, many of whom find the mere idea of a Black man’s body interacting with a white woman’s body enraging, though some might accept the reverse — where a white man impregnates a black woman.

In the mechanics of power, oppression and exploitation, the victim must remain anonymous.

Another aspect of what Luna did that provoked anger was that this migrant ceased, in that moment, to be merely a number. He became a visible, clear face with distinct features, a body with a unique rhythm and interaction through the act of hugging. He had a voice, even if it was a trembling cry. Unlike those who drowned, he now had a new document that would forever bear his face—not in tears.

Never forget

In the mechanics of power, oppression and exploitation, the victim must remain anonymous. No one should know their name, face, voice, or what they said before being killed or defeated — whether they are poor members of the African diaspora in Portugal, as in my friend’s story, on the shores of life or death with Luna, or slaughtered in tents by the sea in Gaza.

This is the same struggle and challenge between Palestinians and the killing machine known as Israel. The state seeks to erase Palestinian faces, stories, and history from collective memory. Meanwhile, Palestinians understand that preserving their faces, stories, and history is an act of defiance against the killer, even if only on the margins — or perhaps further.

By spreading the faces of every woman, child, and man, they/we contribute to weakening the killing machine, forging an emotional and empathetic connection with distant audiences who never knew Palestine.

Everyone desires to avoid becoming mere numbers in the human tally that passes through this world.

This applies beyond the Palestinian cause to all oppressed peoples and individuals. In Syria, for instance, after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, we recalled the face of Mazen al-Hamada, who condemned the regime for years with his words and face from exile.

Yet we never knew the faces of his direct torturers, those who received orders from anonymous yet infamous figures to kill him under torture for four years, after he was deceived into returning from exile to Syria. We saw his face again before and after his death. We recognized his gaze, tears, and voice. Mazen became an icon, entering the realm of eternal remembrance, a face that immortalizes the reality of a great tragedy. A face that drives some of us to strive to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

As we begin a new year, where disguise is a playful act for fun and joy, it’s still true that everyone — yes, everyone — harbors a desire for immortality: to be remembered by someone, through their voice, face, words or actions; to avoid becoming mere numbers in the human tally that passes through this world. Everyone desires be our unique self, remembered by others, even if by just one person, who knows how our life ended and the contours of our fate.