"I said goodbye to my brother, who boarded a small boat that left Annaba on September 1st. There were fourteen people on board, including three children. We haven't heard from him since then. Help me look for him." This desperate plea was launched by Aouachria Med Cherif, a young Algerian who, after reading the L'Unione Sarda website that recently reported the latest wave of arrivals, wrote to him asking for help finding information about a boat carrying his 27-year-old brother, Abd Erraouf, which had set sail for southern Sardinia.

The journey

"When we left, my brother was wearing shorts and a white T-shirt. Since the day of departure, I and the relatives of the other passengers have had no news of them. We have been unable to find any trace of their arrival or their fate. We don't know if the vessel ever reached the Sardinian coast."

He had left on a small fiberglass boat, one of the vessels that have almost entirely replaced the wooden ones. "We haven't even received a phone call, and we're desperate; we don't know what to do," he added. "We've been in anguish for 40 days."

The anguish

Aouachria Med Cherif's family is in sad company during this wait, and there are also those who have been waiting for over a year just to grieve over the body of their relative who drowned while trying to reach the island's shores. Like the family of the migrant who remained in the refrigerated cell of the mortuary of the CTO hospital in Iglesias for 14 months after the shipwreck of August 10, 2025.

Fabio Murru

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