Every year, thousands of people leave everything — their land, their language, their traditions, the weight of a culture carried in the details of a headscarf, a coin, a braid. They leave because the world has become too voracious, too cruel. Because war, poverty, and desperation leave no other door open.
Many of them don't arrive.
This woman has no name. She wears a Berber headscarf — an entire civilization on her head. Around her, the dark water of the Mediterranean. The fish pass indifferent. The gold above her is a halo, or a grave marker. Both things at once.
When a person drowns in the Mediterranean, they don't drown alone. Their story drowns with them. Their culture. Everything they were carrying.
Mare Nostrum — our sea, the Romans called it.
We named it ours. And we let it become a cemetery.
This is not a refugee crisis. It is a crisis of humanity.
A single work. 2026.