Sunday book pick: In ‘Small Boat', no one is at fault when 27 migrants drown in international waters

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25-05-2025

'I had no more opinion on the migrants than I did on migration policy or the right to asylum, relations between North and South, problems, solutions, the woes of the world, injustice: I was not required to have an opinion on the migrants.'
The troubles of the unnamed narrator in Small Boat begin when, in November 2021, after receiving distress calls from migrants sinking in the sea, she tells them that help is on the way. To her colleague, off the microphone, she says, 'You will not be saved.' Some four hours later, with help yet to arrive, she signs off the small boat as 'rescued'. Of the 29 migrants onboard, only two survive. The remaining 27, including a young girl, sink to the bottom of the sea, making this 'accident' the worst of its kind since the Channel opened in 2018 for the passage of migrants from France to England.
Unlike the rest of us, for whom France is an idyll, a romantic getaway, the migrants, 'under no circumstances, barring catastrophe', would like to be returned to France. In fact, things have been so bad for them there that they are willing to risk it all to be shipped off to England, also famously racist and coloniser par excellence. These migrants who have turned up from Iraq, Sudan, Syria, and everywhere else are fleeing war and poverty. In the end, like the final act of a cruel joke, the water currents drag their bodies back to the French waters. If only they had the decency to remain in the English jurisdiction, then the narrator wouldn't have been answerable for this mess.
Drowned without noticing
A first respondent at the Coast Guard's office in France, she's been rounded up by the police for negligence. It's not the police's moral duty, but because the call is on record, they are compelled to take action. The recordings are played on loop and scrutinised for an unpardonable slip-up, a monstrous mistake on her part. But, she did as she was taught – she took their calls, recorded their geolocation, and assured them of help without true sincerity. She acted perfectly in accordance with her role and, barring the quip with her colleagues, did not overstep her boundaries in her interactions with the sinking migrants. However, as the 'last link' in the chain, it is easiest to pin the blame on her.
Still, she's not without heart. She watches thousands of migrants cross the Channel every day – to what future, she doesn't know. The man who was on the phone with her on the fateful day wanted nothing more than to arrive safely and perhaps work at a supermarket in England. Of course, she did not know that. These migrants 'were sunk long before they sank, they were washed up well before they drowned.'
The second part of the novel – short and harrowing – is told from the perspective of those onboard. It feels strange to call them 'passengers' as though they were taking a recreational ride on a lovely sea. The cold sea lashes against these ill-protected migrants – what good are lifejackets and tubes in such choppy waters anyway – and the 'icy hands' of companions start to float apart. Delecroix's sober lines on these final moments sent a shiver down my spine: 'In spite of the life jacket, each person's head tipped over to one side, water silently entering their mouths, their noses, as they drowned, without even noticing.'
The narrator reminds the police that she neither wishes good nor ill on these migrants, she repeats that she has no opinion on their status. She has enough worries of her own and the state of the world doesn't bother her any more as it does anyone else in her country. However, on her part, she would like to make it clear that she doesn't want these migrants to 'leave' either. She might be accused of 'moral insensivity, lack of empathy, and dehumanisation', but her neutral stand towards these refugees, in some ways, makes her appear more empathetic than those who have outright washed their hands off all responsibility.
Who's to blame?
In the final segment, we learn that the narrator has been suspended from her job. She lives by the sea and looks out at it in disbelief and wonder. It is by chance that the luckiest of us find ourselves on land – all of Earth is water and the land pushes back the sea every minute of every day to prevent being swallowed whole. She had come to love the sea but now she realises the sea is not something to love, but to be revered and be scared of. Her philosophical musings are punctuated by her anguish – she, too, feels wronged. Not just for being caught but because she is also at sea herself, and has been for a long time. Her husband has left and she's raising their daughter all alone. In a moment of anger, she lashes out at everyone else in the world who is enjoying the 'drama at sea' from the comfort of their homes. The judgment and condemnation are quick to arrive, but no one jumps into the water to help when the small boats are tossed into the sea.
A few days ago, I watched French filmmaker Alain Resnais's 1956 documentary Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) about the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps. When the war was over and the Nazis were being tried for their crimes, the Kapo, the SS, the officers all said, 'I'm not responsible.' And yet, millions were being murdered while the wives of the Nazi men kept clean homes and their children went to school. The narrator of the films asks, 'Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of new executioners. Are their faces really so different from ours?' In a similar vein, Delecroix's narrator says, 'What she called absentmindedness seemed to me so remarkable, so common, and so universal – indeed the basis of everyday life – that one could only conclude that all of us are monsters, that is to say, none of us is.'
As the boat carrying the migrants was sinking in the sea, each one of us was exactly where we were supposed to be – the narrator in her cubicle watching the disaster happen, the politicians sharpening their anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the rest of us watching it on our screens and crossing our hearts.
Was I responsible? No.
Were you? No.
Then who was?