A Pakistani mega-rich and his son were unlucky enough to die at sea this week. More than 300 poor Pakistanis had the misfortune to die at sea in the previous week. We know the names of both. We do not know the names of the 300. For four days, half the world was on edge, watching the news to see if the rich were rescued alive. The day we found out about the fate of the poor, it was already too late for a miracle.
I refer first, for those readers who could have spent the week on Mars, to the case of the Titanic submersible, whose five passengers, including the two Pakistani billionaires, died trying to see the remains of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. Atlantic. I am referring, for those readers who are not too interested in international news, to the sinking of a fishing boat from Libya in the Ionian Sea, off the Greek coast, which claimed the lives of some 400 "immigrants without papers", as we call them, most of them Pakistanis.
Of less interest, except here in Spain, was the death of another 37 "simpapeles", this time due to the sinking of a boat coming from Africa headed for the Canary Islands.
What to say? Two things to start with. That, everything indicates, there was a thousand times more effort in the rescue mission of the small submersible of the five rich people than in the rescue missions of the hundreds of poor people. That, without a doubt, the media paid a thousand times more attention to the drama of the revelers on the Titan than to that of those who risked everything to reach the promised European land.
I will jump, in a disinterested way, to the defense of the media. There are two categories of news, as they say in my native country: “Dog bites man and man bites dog”. Dog bites man and man bites dog. For unusual, for surprising, the second category sells more. The news of the drowned in search of a better life belongs to the first category. It happens so often that, terrible as it is, we numb ourselves against it. In 2022 alone, the Canary Islands maritime route added 1,800 deaths. Fortunately, there are committed people who fight for the cause of these waves of refugees, but there is a general feeling among the bulk of the population that their tragedies belong to the realm of natural disasters of life, such as cancer or accidents. car.
Speaking of which, I saw a four-paragraph story this week here in La Vanguardia about a baby who died after being run over by a van in Barcelona. An anecdote compared to the Titan news, to which hundreds of paragraphs were devoted, but it struck me more. I imagined the pain of the baby's parents more strongly than that of the relatives of the five aquatic adventurers.
But therein lies the question. They were adventurers. They were movie characters. The news they generated was a live thriller. If all five had made it out alive, like the three Apollo 13 astronauts, there would be an auction going on today in Hollywood to see who would get the movie rights.
As for the relative lack of interest that there supposedly was in rescuing the victims of shipwrecks off the coast of Greece and the Canary Islands, I don't know. I do not have the data and I cannot pronounce myself. I dare to suspect, however, that if the sinking vessels had been yachts with billionaires on board, first, a greater effort would have been made to save them and, second, it would have made headlines around the world.
George Orwell writes in, for me, his best book, Animal Farm, that "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." The book, published just at the end of World War II, is a satire of the Soviet Union. The comment is of a lacerating irony. Even in communism, with its promise of equality, there are people whose lives are worth more than those of ordinary mortals. It has always been like this, no matter if the system is feudal, neoliberal or Marxist.
Some, Orwell might have added, are luckier than others. Like, for example, Shahzada Dawood, the Pakistani billionaire killed in the Titan mini-submarine. From wealthy parents, Dawood studied in England and the United States, and lived legally, without having to get on a boat, in London. The half million dollars he paid for him and his 19-year-old son to have their underwater adventure could have come from one of the secret accounts he was known to have offshore, a drop in the bucket from his colossal treasure. . On the other side of the coin are the hundreds of his compatriots drowned on the Greek coast who could have paid their entire savings to the smugglers who organized their failed trans-Mediterranean expedition. For the former, the investment was a luxury (buy another Lamborghini or go on a titanic tour?); for the latter, a matter of hunger.
The temptation is to be outraged. Well, no. I am outraged. But for what? The contrast between the two stories, that of rich and poor Pakistanis, offers us just one more metaphor for the countless injustices that surround us. The indignation, if it serves any purpose, is so that we do not resign ourselves, that we continue in the fight for a world in which fortune is distributed less unequally, or in which more help is offered to the poor to compensate for their ills. luck.
There are those who dedicate their lives to the task in a practical way, such as members of NGOs who do what they can to come to the rescue of those who arrive in Europe through the sea. But what can those of us who are not heroes do? Talk, protest, shout, write and, I would say, vote for parties that understand that the rich do not deserve to be rich and the poor do not deserve to be poor, but that each one is what they are thanks, above all, to the lottery of life and that, therefore, you have to do what you can to balance the scales. If it doesn't work, at least we can say that we want it, that we try, that before the death that touches us all equally, the Dawoods as well as the nameless, we live life with an attitude of generosity.
