“Night Boat To Misrata was composed in July 2011, after Ghadafi’s forces had besieged the city since February of that year, in order to crush the opposition to the regime . In July of that year, the rebels had managed to push back the loyalists’ troops 40 km west of the city, establishing a “front line” made by pushing forward a number of containers, which were filled up with sand to absorb the impact of the enemy’s shots.
Still today, in Tripoli street in Misrata, the remains of the regime’s tanks are kept as a testimony of the residents’ fierce resistance, and a “weapons fair” on the sidewalks is showing various types of bombs, mostly mortars, dropped the regime.
The author, at that time working as a correspondent for Corbis images, entered the country from Egypt to follow the conflict. The ferry from Benghazi to Misrata, a sea distance of approximately 400 km, was the only way to reach the city, as the ground was constellated by fighting between loyalists and rebels. In the summer of 2011, the opposition was still poorly equipped, and weapons amounted basically to guns and rpg (rocket propelled grenades), mostly pilfered from the enemy’s positions. Ideologically, the rebels were still free, at the time, from radicalization, which brought the west to support them in their struggle against the dictator. Direct interacting between the locals, the fighters and the reporter was critical in order to accomplish the work, both in writing and in photography, as they are the middlemen not only to the physical events, but to the comprehension of the conflict. Although the Libyan political scenario today is extremely complicated, and most observers agree to regret that the west “bankrolled the revolution”, they generally have failed to experience the situation on the ground, which at the time was pervaded at the rebels’s side by a genuine desire for change and participation.
Dona Bozzi was born in 1975. She lives and works in the Milan area. She moved to Montreal, Canada in 1998 where she graduated at Dawson Institute of Photography in the photojournalism programme. She then moved on to contribute to Publiphoto agency of Montreal, then to Demotix and Corbis. She has been published, amongst others, in The Guardian, The Huffington Post, UPI, The British Council Magazine, International Medical Corps reports, 24 Matins France. She currently covers conflicts in the middle east as a freelance writer and photojournalist.
