When I was growing up in Albania in the 1990s, the father of one of my friends was a people smuggler. We used to call him B the Lame. B the Lame had not always been a smuggler. Before the country transitioned from a communist state to a liberal one, he worked shifts in the dockyard, where he would make fishing nets and repaint boats.
He did not look like a smuggler – he was tiny and anaemic and walked with a limp. He did not choose to be a smuggler – the privatisation reforms that accompanied the arrival of political pluralism forced dockyard managers to make redundancies, so B and his wife found themselves unemployed. Nor did he think of himself as a smuggler: it was a job like any other. He was paid to help people on dinghies reach Italy, and he needed the money to feed his children. He was a little afraid, but not ashamed of his activity. For decades, Albanians had been murdered by their state whenever they tried crossing the border. In the very rare cases in which people succeeded, relatives left behind were deported. Finally, Albanians were free, and B the Lame was helping them realise their dreams. He spoke of this with a touch of pride.
