Fifty-Fifty, betting your life on a roulette table

“When you board a rubber dinghy, you have a 50-50 chance of dying. Better to be on the frontline, where you can move and have a say in your destiny, than staying stuck on a rickety rubber boat in the middle of the sea” Nick a MOAS swimmer rescuer told me on the fo'c's'le of MOAS Responder. Among all the stories I have heard and situations faced in a week on board, this phrase is what struck me the most, because I immediately imagined thousands of people like chips on a huge roulette table. Black, you live; Red, you die. And the image is getting stronger everyday, no space for excuses or reason; from complexity all is brought back to its quiddity: Life or Death. For this reason, I have chosen black and white to tell this story, trying to reduce the complexity of political speech and thought around migration to its substance. We have to accept this is only the beginning and start finding a solution. A shared one. In the present context, the hard work of rescuers is a momentary and partial answer, if Europe doesn’t change the approach. However, there are men, women and children putting their lives on a roulette table. Black or Red. Life or Death. It has not been a free choice, but a choice for freedom. In the middle of the sea, where our sight fumbles without borders mixing sky and water, identity becomes capable of flowing, easily changing shape, so we have just two options: save them or let them die.