Rabat, Morocco - Amir Ali stood on a narrow strip of land between two countries. Ahead, Moroccan guards moved through the darkness with flashlights and dogs. Behind him, Algerian security forces waited.
For two days, he stayed hidden in the hills between the Algerian town of Maghnia and Morocco's Oujda, watching the patrols below. Ali had been travelling for more than a year. He had fled a war in Sudan that killed his family, been detained and beaten by the country's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), extorted by police and trafficked to a farm in Libya, where captors demanded money and tortured those who could not pay.
He had crossed deserts and borders, slept rough and gone hungry. Now Morocco, the last stop on his journey, was close enough to see. At about 10pm, Ali set off with two other men, moving slowly through the hills, sometimes on his knees, sometimes crawling.
The 17-year-old Sudanese refugee could see the border ahead. But before they reached it, a vehicle pulled up nearby. He and the others pressed themselves into the darkness.
Like many times before, they tried to disappear. As the guards closed in, his heart began pounding violently in his chest – a symptom of an untreated heart valve condition. They took everything that we had ... phones, clothes, documents." After two days in prison, he was put on a bus and driven south, back towards the edge of the Sahara, away from what he thought would be a place of refuge.
But he would try this journey again.
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