Mediterranean Sea – On the open sea, thousands of miles from land, in a flimsy blue wooden boat, Linda*, 21, from Daraa, Syria, didn't care if she lived or died.
She and 125 other refugees had left the Libyan coastal city of Sabratha in the dead of night, and their only goal was to take their sick mother to safety, far from the war in their country, far from the frozen sea in which they They had been sailing for almost two days without food or water.
Their boat was then intercepted by the German search and rescue ship Humanity 1 and Linda, her mother and the others were saved.
In the first chaotic hours after the rescue, she walked across the open deck crying. Dressed in a black tracksuit with white stripes, she weaved between people queuing to change clothes and a long line of frozen survivors waiting to see the ship's doctor.
Some of them were wrapped in shiny aluminum emergency blankets. When they moved, the sound of it reminded her of opening bags of candy when she was a child.
Grabbing one of the crew members, frowning in an effort to hold back tears, Linda whispered in Arabic: “Can I charge my phone please? I need to send a message.” She handed him an iPhone with a broken screen and dried traces of salt.
She had been out of contact for 22 hours, so her fiancé of three weeks, still trapped in a smugglers' shelter in Libya, did not know if she was dead or alive.
When she was told she would have to wait a few hours, tears came to her eyes.
