GUJRAT: The last time Muhammad Tayyab heard his father’s voice, it was in a voice note sent on June 9 in which Muhammad Tahir said:
“Assalaam-Alaikum, my son, we have boarded the ship, just keep praying.”
Tahir, 42, was among at least 350 Pakistanis onboard an overloaded boat that capsized and sank in open seas off Greece earlier this month, along the world's most deadly migration route from Libya to Italy. There were 750 illegal migrants in total on the vessel, with only 104 survivors and 78 people who drowned brought to shore by Greek authorities. Nothing has been found since.
“[We] have no Eid, what is Eid without a father," Tayyab told Arab News outside his small house in the Pakistani city of Gujrat, believed to be a notorious hub for human traffickers. "We pray to Allah for a miracle."
Pakistanis have increasingly been making perilous sea journeys in recent months amid skyrocketing inflation, joblessness and other economic hardships. From Gujrat district alone, at least 90 people, including Tahir and his brother Qaisar, left home on April 15, flying from Islamabad airport to Karachi to Dubai, Egypt, and finally Libya, where they boarded the doomed vessel in June. Each of the men from Gujrat had paid around $7,000 to traffickers and now all 90 are missing and presumed dead, highlighting the perils faced by people who seek to enter Europe illegally.
“It was his mission to take his children there for their better future,” Tayyab said about why his father choose the illegal migration route.
“But I'll advise people, don't go through this route. It's a very dangerous route and mothers don't get their beloved ones back through this route. It is a dangerous route and agents there intentionally do all this.”
According to local estimates, at least one member from each family in Gujrat district lives and works in Europe and sends back remittances, inspiring confidence among others in the area that they too could use traffickers to seek a better life abroad.
In fact, Tahir had himself successfully traveled to Germany via a boat around 15 years ago and afterwards, helped three of his brothers migrate to the country as well. Two of them, Faisal and Sheraz, are now legal residents of Italy while Tahir was deported to Pakistan from Germany in April 2023 as he still did not have valid documents
Immediately upon returning, he wasted no time in planning to go back.
“They [Tahir and Qaisar] asked us to pray for them, that we are leaving now and your prayers will help us reach our destination,” Tahir’s mother, who only identified herself by her first name, Maryam, told Arab News, surrounded by her grandsons and daughters, an entire family in mourning.
Sixty-eight-year-old Mohammad Deen was also grieving, but said he was still waiting for news from his stepson, Muhammad Faizan Ali, 22, whose elder daughter had sold agricultural land to pay Rs2.35 million (over $7,000) to a local smuggler so Ali could travel to Italy.
“He was adamant to go abroad, he would say, send me, I want to go to Italy, that I have to take care of my home's resources,” Deen said. “He said nothing else but insisted that we send him as quickly as possible.”
Sitting on a worn-out sofa in his drawing room, Deen said the community would not be celebrating Eid this year.
“What is our Eid, Eid is happiness and what is our happiness,” he asked. “It has been twelve, thirteen days. Whenever we remember him, we grieve and shed tears.”
Tahir Manda, an ex-municipal mayor of Gujrat, said every house in the city was in mourning:
“We cannot even feel it, … we cannot even narrate it. They [the grieved families] have lost their sleep, don’t know where their children are,” he said.
“Agent mafia, what is it to them, they have already fled after fleecing them but what will happen to the families whose loved ones are missing or dead?”
