Wafae Atid is 28 years old, and her story began to make headlines around the world after she took to the sea on July 30 to swim from Morocco to Ceuta. It was not an improvised decision, she has said: she claims she wanted to leave behind a country where she felt that her family and social norms limited her life too much.
“Women are below men”, she said. She also said that her parents had interrupted her studies and did not want her to travel or be able to freely decide how to dress.
Wafae says that she stopped believing in Islam and rejected the hijab her family wanted her to wear. “I don’t want to cover myself as my family asks me to”, she explained. According to her account, she felt that her options in Morocco were becoming increasingly limited: “They destroy your dreams, they don’t let you go to school. They try to stop you from traveling; they want you to stay at home”.
Her plan now is to stay in Europe, reach Barcelona, work and start a new life.
But then another part of her story emerged: her own social media. In pictures and videos posted before she arrived in Ceuta, Wafae appears traveling through places such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. There are also records of her studies and jobs she held outside Morocco, including work in hospitality. Those images began to raise questions about her past and the circumstances that ultimately led her to cross the sea.
She does not deny that she had positive experiences before leaving. In fact, when questioned about the images, she replied: “I lived well. I worked and was away from my parents”.
She also criticized the way some media outlets have told her story: “The press often cuts out what is said and doesn’t include everything”. For Wafae, the pictures of her travels do not, by themselves, explain the reasons why she decided to leave Morocco.
While she remains in Ceuta, she has also said that some women in the area around the CETI are experiencing harassment and fear.
“Many men try to harass the girls every night, sometimes even when they go to the bathroom; they follow them”, she told Reuters. According to her testimony, the men involved were reportedly of different nationalities.
Thus, Wafae’s story turned out to be much more complex than the image of a young woman who simply crossed the sea in search of an opportunity. There is her account of a family that, according to her, limited her freedom; there are her previous travels, studies and jobs; there are the photographs she herself published and, above all, there is her decision to risk swimming across the sea to reach Spain.
Now, her story is sparking debate precisely because of all those pieces that people are still trying to fit together.