“Around nine, we arrived at a place where he said, This is it, from here there’s no more road and you have to walk. We walked for four, five, six hours. We were walking until our shoes almost broke. Sadly, while walking we saw dead bodies by the road. I saw three or four bodies with my own eyes, God only knows how they died. It was a moonlit night, I saw the dead bodies and if you asked, he’d tell you, No talking!” Recounts Abbas
Finally, they came to a steep hill and the smuggler told them to climb it and that Israel was on the other side. They crossed the hill and came to a point where they could see Israeli border guards.
“Then Egyptian soldiers came holding their weapons and shouting, Freeze, freeze! We ran away, some to the Egyptian side and some to the Israeli side. There were three people who managed to enter Israel and their officer said, It’s okay! He spoke in Arabic and said, Leave those three! We were surrounded, 17 or 18 people, and the Egyptian soldiers took us.”
They were taken to a police station. Abbas stayed in detention for five months and was then brought to an appeal court in Cairo that ordered him to be deported to Sudan. Today, he is back in Egypt and lives in Cairo. This is his story.
