Banner

No Man’s Land

Rebecca Collard June 22, 2009 Egypt is shooting them. Israel won’t recognize them. What’s a poor refugee to do?

Cairo, June 2007: late one night, Ghebre piled into a car with four other African migrants. They were headed east across the Sinai Peninsula toward Israel. Ghebre had fled his native Eritrea, by way of Sudan, eighteen months earlier. “The plan was … if Egypt is okay, we would stay here,” he tells me. “If not, we go to Israel.”

Ghebre was in Cairo for just four days before traffickers convinced him their $700 US fee was worth passage into the Promised Land. The route, over the Suez Canal and across the 266-kilometre frontier with Israel, has become a thoroughfare for …

  • You must be a subscriber to view the rest of this content.
Tenth Anniversary: Spring

ISSUE 43 Tenth Anniversary: Spring 2012

online content:

also in this issue:

  • Face the Music

    by Tim Falconer How can someone who passionately loves music also be a terrible singer? Tim Falconer takes up voice lessons—and discovers the surprising science of tone deafness.

  • The Big Job

    by Deni Y. Béchard As a teenager, Deni Y. Béchard went to Vancouver to live with his father, an ex-con with a penchant for telling tall tales. He met a man desperate to forget the past.

  • The Homesickness of Astronauts

    by Johanna Skibsrud "She felt a great sadness. She would remember next to nothing of this, even soon."
  • [see full issue contents]