Welcome to Paradise

The Strait of Gibraltar, the ten-mile-wide waterway separating Europe and Africa, is where, at night, immigrant traffickers pit themselves against two sets of coast guards. The passengers include people such as Kacem, an escapee from the civil war in Algeria; Nuara, with her unborn child, whose husband hasn't been in touch for months since moving to France; and Aziz, the young narrator, and his cousin Reda, severed, in different ways, from their families in southernmost Morocco. They all share a…