“He's someone you can’t be comfortable with. From his eyes, his behaviour, to his looks you can’t feel comfortable with him. I told him my wife was pregnant, she was three months pregnant. We had a two-year-old baby. I told him the most important thing was to travel in a car, not walk. He said, Don't worry, just come and whatever you want I’ll do it, you’ll travel in a double cabin and sit in the back seat. You'll never walk.”
The reality was totally different. They were put into a minibus with 16 other people and set off. In the desert, a small pickup truck was waiting for them. The passengers had to sit on top of all the bags while the driver was taking them through the desert at a crazy speed. Raed says he had never been so afraid in his life, not even in the war in Syria. After several hours, the car stopped somewhere near the border. They were told they had to walk across the mountain to the other side, where Egyptian smugglers were waiting. The smuggler promised that they would not have to walk far.
“We started walking, walking, and walking, five minutes, ten minutes. We said, Where is the car? He said, We should walk a bit more. We walked, and walked, and walked. Every time we crossed a hill, another hill appeared. We thought we’d arrived, but we hadn’t. I was carrying my son on one side, my wife was leaning on my hand on the other side and I had three bags on my back.”
They became so tired that they could not keep up the pace and lost contact with the rest of the group. Finally, they reached the place where the other smugglers were waiting. Raed dropped his bags and threw himself on the ground, completely exhausted. That nightmare was over, but the difficult journey continued. The new driver was keeping the same insane speed as the driver in Sudan. Suddenly they saw military vehicles, the driver tried to escape, but they were caught. After being interrogated by the police, Raed and his family could continue to Cairo. Looking back at this horrible journey, Raed is blaming the smuggler for having deceived him and putting his wife’s life at risk. He says he was a despicable profiteer with no consideration for pregnant women and children, and he prays that God will never forgive him.
