Mahmoud’s Story, Italy
(c) UNHCR/ I. Ibba /2014
Mahmoud fled Syria with his two daughters, Rose and Jasmine, after losing his wife in a bombing in Yarmouk.
“I had just lost one of the most important people in my life and could not risk the lives of the other two, my daughters.”
Mahmoud and his daughters arrived to Italy late at night in April 2014. They disembarked from the “San Giusto,” an Italian Navy vessel that had just rescued them at sea. The boat they had boarded in Tripoli was ill equipped for crossing the sea and they had to spend several days at sea packed into the boat with 200 other people. Their journey from Syria to Italy lasted four months during which they crossed five borders passing through Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. In Tunisia, stranded for over three months, they suffered from hunger and thirst.
