Migrants, 15 years from Egypt to Lampedusa: “So I crossed the sea to become a policeman”

Palermo, June 23 (Adnkronos) – Today he left Lampedusa aboard the scheduled ferry to Porto Empedocle. Destination a center for unaccompanied minors in Sicily. But the 15-year-old Egyptian, who landed on Monday on the largest of the Pelagie Islands, wearing a shirt very similar in shape to that of the police operational uniform, left his mark. Especially in the rescuers. “Such a thing has never happened in many years of service,” they tell Adnkronos. The young migrant who dreams of becoming a policeman was traveling alone. Without family and without friends. And without even a cell phone. In his pocket only a card with the home phone number. And a hope: to find a job, perhaps just as a police officer. “When we saw it we were stunned” say the officials involved in the landing operations on the Favaloro pier. The clean face, that of a good boy. “When he saw us he lit up, he looked at us in uniform with his eyes full of joy, happy to have arrived in Italy but also because he was finally seeing the ‘real’ Italian policemen”. “How do you become an agent?” he asked immediately. On the boat that took him to Lampedusa he arrived after a long journey. He left in May from the town of Fayoum, in the Egyptian hinterland, reached Libya and from there, from Zuwara, he embarked. On board a cart of the sea, one of those dilapidated boats used by smugglers, he tackled the deadliest route in the Mediterranean. He left his parents and siblings at home. “My father is a teacher,” he told rescuers. Not finding work, however, the father of the young migrant who dreams of wearing the Italian uniform has adapted to washing cars. “To bring some money home”. He, however, hopes for a different future. So with the little money left in his pocket in a market in Tripoli before his journey of hope, he bought a faithful reproduction of the shirt worn by the policemen with lots of frogs but without ranks. It was displayed on a stall and she didn’t think twice about it. Purchased and worn. “When we saw him we were stunned. A young man who was wearing the same shirt as us,” the policemen say. The strongest emotion? “Seeing the joy in his eyes as soon as he saw us, he felt among ‘colleagues'”. Just enough time for a souvenir photo, then the medical triage procedures on the pier and the transfer to the Lampedusa hotspot. “Who knows he may not realize his dream”, the rescuers conclude.