21 March 2011
I am in Zarzis, a small fishing town (110,000 inhabitants) on the southern coast of Tunisia, set between the tourist splendour of Djerba and the dark trafficking at the Libyan border. I am with the two respectable daughters of one of the local bosses involved in organizing the arrival of illegal immigrants on the Italian coast. After keeping me waiting for three hours, the boss, let us call him Mustafa, arrives at last to take me downstairs to meet the young people he has gathered in his home before handing them over to boat-people traffickers.