Numbers
( A Sea of Fear and Laughter )
Original sound recording – #41 A Sea of Fear and Laughter – Maria Margaroni – Karfas, Chios
“In the summer of 2016 I got to know an Afghan family living in the Vial migrant camp in Chios. They had fled Afghanistan because of direct threats to the father’s life from the Taliban, but conditions in the camp were so dire that they were thinking of going back. I took the parents and four young children down to the beach for a day; they had not seen the sea since crossing from Turkey a month earlier in a rubber dinghy.” – Maria Margaroni
The sea – a thing of beauty, calm, enjoyment, holidays and fun for children. It is also an immense power, rage, frightening, uncontrollable, and a place of fear and death.
I decided to use only the original sound file of the children laughing and playing in the sea but I also wanted to highlight the two sides of the water – a place of enjoyment and short respite from the difficulties of the refugee camp and the perilous journey from North Africa across to Greece, one that claims many lives.
The children’s fun and laughter is accompanied by shimmering drone sounds to represent the light sparkling on the water and calming waves. However, disconcertingly, when I used some simple processing on the sound file of the children, it took on a somewhat darker tone and, to me, sounded like a person shouting for help and struggling in the water. By editing and layering this file there are more distressed voices crying for help. At times these are a sonic juxtaposition to the happy enjoyment of the original children playing. I imagined people struggling to keep afloat until in the end there are no voices. This is all accompanied by increasing layers of sea and wave sounds to enhance the idea of a place of fear and danger. In the end, the children’s voices appear laughing and playing in the very same sea that claims so many lives.
The Mediterranean migrant crisis has been a tragic and ongoing humanitarian issue. The perilous journey across the Mediterranean remains one of the world’s most dangerous routes for migrants and refugees. The numbers of known and recorded deaths I cite in the track, are the figures provided for years 2015 – 2023 by UNHCR UNHCR data visualization on Mediterranean crossings charts rising death toll and tragedy at sea | UNHCR UK
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 1,800 migrants have lost their lives in the central Mediterranean so far this year (2024), compared to 1,400 deaths for the entire year of 2021. However, it’s important to note that these figures likely underestimate the true death toll, as there is strong evidence that many shipwrecks go unrecorded, with no survivors, due to badly designed and overcrowded boats, stormy weather, and gaps in international efforts contributing to the perilous conditions. People attempting this journey come from various backgrounds and have different reasons for seeking refuge in Europe, including fleeing war, torture, or searching for better economic opportunities. The situation underscores the urgent need for safe migration routes and improved humanitarian responses.
I kept the title that Maria used as it best describes the Mediterranean – there is a fine line between a place of enjoyment, beauty, our package holidays and fun and the converse of this – fear, immense risk, danger and for many, death.
You can read and listen to the whole Migration Sounds at Cities and Memory.
museleon 