The Strait Remembers

When Water Reunites What Politics Divides

In early February 2026, Storm Leonardo swept across the Mediterranean without checking passports. The same clouds gathered over Ksar el Kebir and Málaga. The same rain fell on olive groves and carnival streets. The same rivers swelled beyond their names.

The Strait of Gibraltar did not divide — it conducted.

This series documents that conduction: not as journalism, not as disaster reporting, but as meditation on what water reveals when it exceeds our plans. Three dispatches from inside the experience, written in real-time between evacuation and return.

The Dispatches

1. Water and Clay

February 4, 2026 | From inside the evacuation

The knock at the door. The river entering the present tense. A first-hand account of leaving Ksar el Kebir as the Loukkos overflowed — on what waters take away and what they reveal.

Status: Published
Read “Water and Clay” →

2. The Phantom City That Still Breathes

February 9, 2026 | From Larache, in waiting

Watching Ksar el Kebir empty through a screen while Málaga celebrates Carnival. On digital exile, sardine messengers, and the strange mathematics of being in two places at once.

Status: Published
Read “The Phantom City” →

3. Returning to the Mud

Coming February 2026

The physical work of return — buckets, shovels, neighbors carrying sofas. Because resilience is not just philosophy. It is also what you do when the water recedes.

Status: In progress
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The Geography of This Series

Between them: The Strait — 14 kilometers of salt and current that became, for one week, a single atmospheric system.

About This Series

These articles were written in real-time, from borrowed rooms and temporary shelters, between scrolling through disaster footage and pressing olives that would never be harvested. They do not claim completeness. They claim presence.

The Strait has long been a metaphor in my work — the eight-mile gap between Africa and Europe that culture, memory, and now climate, refuse to accept as separation. This series makes that metaphor material.

“Geography is not destiny. But it is conversation.”

Themes Across the Series

• Water as memory — what rivers remember that humans forget
• Digital exile — watching catastrophe through screens
• Strait consciousness — the Mediterranean as connected system
• Rooted nomadism tested — when movement is forced, not chosen
• Resilience as craft — not metaphor, but buckets and shovels

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Have you lived through these floods? Witnessed from either shore? Share your story →