17-year-old Ethiopian migrant Abdul-Rahman Taha, shows his amputated leg, at his home, in Basateen, a district of Aden, Yemen.
When Taha landed at Ras al-Ara, Tigrayan traffickers took him and 50 other migrants to a holding cell, lined them up and demanded phone numbers. Taha couldn’t ask his father for more money so he told them he didn’t have a number. Over the next days and weeks, he was beaten and left without food and water.
One night, he gave them a wrong number. The Tigrayan traffickers flew into a rage. One, a beefy, bearded Yemeni, beat Taha’s right leg to a bloody pulp with a steel rod. Taha passed out.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the sky. He was outdoors, lying on the ground. The traffickers had dumped him and three other migrants in the desert. Taha tried to jostle the others, but they didn’t move — they were dead.
A passing driver took him to a hospital. There, his leg was amputated.
Now 17, Taha is stranded. His father died in a car crash a few months ago, leaving Taha’s sister and four younger brothers to fend for themselves back home.
Taha choked back tears. In one of their phone calls, he remembered, his father had asked him: “Why did you leave?”
“Without work or money,” Taha told him, “life is unbearable.”
And so it is still.
