“In return for the journey, we were told to work one year aboard the ship,” Ahmed said. “But they never let us go. Every time the year ended, they made up excuses—delays, paperwork, docking issues. I’ve been here for two years. Some men,” he gestured around, “have been trapped much longer.”
The conditions, he said, were brutal. They were crammed into containers with no ventilation or running water, made to assemble firecrackers for hours on end, or forced into heavy labor around the ship. “No pay. No rest. Just shifts that never end,” he said. “They don’t have any intention of ever letting us off this ship.”