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By the third day of a trip that was supposed to last two days, the Somalis feel the vehicle slowing down, and then see smoke pouring from under the hood. The Sudanese smugglers stop and splash water onto the engine and the truck coughs back to life. The frightening ritual bath is repeated over the next few days. But when the truck rolls to a stop on the seventh day, something more serious is wrong. This time, the bath doesn't work. The drivers are nervous as they try to get the motor turning again. No luck. Getting stuck out here means almost certain death. The drivers try to calm the passengers by telling them, "We're in the same situation as you." Finally, after three hours, the motor kicks over and the truck starts rolling north again. Roughly three days later they cross into Libyan territory.

A few hundred kilometers later — and after 10 days in the truck — the driver brakes to a halt and tells the Somalis to hop off the back. One of the smugglers points north toward a distant, green landscape: "There is Kufra," he says, the oasis outpost in southern Libya. For more than an hour, the Somalis walk along an unpaved road toward what Abdi Salan fears is nothing more than a mirage.

FROM KUFRA TO ZLITAN
It's disorienting to be back in civilization, and Abdi Salan's legs are cramped from the long walk. But he must get his bearings quickly, and make his next move. He has arrived at a smugglers' bazaar: Libya has become — in just the past six months — the most active hub in the people-trafficking trade between Africa and Europe. While authorities in other developing countries such as Albania, Egypt and Tunisia have stepped up border patrols, the Libyan government has turned a blind eye to smugglers. Unable to absorb its own foreign population (in a country of just 5 million, there are 2 million immigrants) and hoping to pressure the European Union into lifting economic sanctions, Libya has allowed camps of would-be immigrants to flourish near the coastal towns of Zuwarah and Zlitan. From there, small and often unseaworthy boats carry passengers across the Mediterranean to Malta, Lampedusa and Pantelleria. It is a considerably more dangerous voyage than other routes — in much larger craft from Egypt or Turkey, or across

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) much shorter distances from Albania to southeast Italy or from Morocco to Spain. But the would-be immigrants choose it because it offers the steadiest flow of outgoing boats.

As the Somalis approach the edge of Kufra, a swarm of Libyans comes to greet them. "Tripoli! Tripoli! Benghazi!" the local men bark. "Where do you want to go? We have food. Do you want a place to stay?" Abdi Salan has little choice, agreeing to spend $150 for a hot meal, two nights' lodging and a jeep ride north to Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city. The Kufra smugglers convince him that there he can obtain a foreigner identity card, to avoid any trouble with the Libyan authorities. It will cost another $40, and he now has just over $1,000 left.

By the time he arrives by bus at Tripoli on June 17, Europe is finally starting to feel close. He's lucky to find a group of Somalis who let him sleep for free in their cramped flat. And he begins to look for boats to Europe. After a week in the Libyan capital, he learns the name of a smuggler chief in the town of Zlitan, two hours east. "Abdi Ladif?" he asks someone on the street after arriving by bus in the bleak coastal town. He never meets Ladif, and no one seems to know for sure if he even exists. But his name opens doors. Still, when Abdi Salan finds his man, he's told there's a backlog of people waiting to depart. "Come back another time," the man tells him. So Abdi Salan heads back to Tripoli, where he lies low with the other Somalis who warn him that Libyan police are getting more violent toward black-skinned Africans. It will be more than three months, and several more bus trips back and forth to Zlitan, before he finally secures a passage to Europe.

FROM ZLITAN TO LAMPEDUSA
The trip to Italy costs $800 and Abdi Salan is told he'll be on the next boat. But instead, he is hurried into a warehouse where dozens of other would-be immigrants are camped out. One of them is a 24-year-old Somali named Ismail, who has traveled a route not unlike Abdi Salan's from Somalia to Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya. Swapping road stories, they form a close bond. Others have been trapped in this building for more than a month, and told nothing about when or if they will be leaving. With less than $100 left in his black satchel, Abdi Salan is terrified that the smugglers will simply walk off with his payment.

But three nights later, on Oct. 4, he is pushed outside to a jeep and a small bus. The vehicles shuttle passengers to the beach, where a dinghy ferries them to a white-and-green fishing boat. Some 85 people board the boat — two Egyptians, a Tunisian, a Libyan, an Ethiopian and the rest Somalis, including 13 women, one of them pregnant. They occupy every centimeter of space. This is not how Abdi Salan — who doesn't know how to swim — had imagined the crossing. But nothing has turned out as he'd expected, and he feels lucky to have his cramped spot on the peeling deck.