Refugee Cross

©1990-2014 Refugee Cross by Jill Saur, all rights reserved

I stood motionless on Little Cayman Island as I gazed at the stained canvas shelter attached to the tattered cross.  We heard the night before that the police had arrested a group of six men who had fled Cuba on a tiny handmade boat.  Silence swept over the room when it was announced that those men would be flown back to Cuba to be executed or imprisoned for life.

The seas had been particularly rough that week.  None of us knew how it would be possible to brave the turbulent rough waters in a tiny vessel.  We rode our bikes down the road to the beach where this little boat had been impounded. 

Six men?  There was barely room for three!  We heard that while three or four were crowded into the boat, two others clung to the outer tubes in the shark-infested waters. 

The sight was stunning.  A myriad of thoughts raced through my mind and then there was this cross.  Out of all the photos that I took, this one was the most powerful.  This is what the men would have seen as they were clinging to the sides of their boat, as they were clinging to their desperation to be free.

Ten years have passed since I stood on that beach.  But, in my mind, it was only a moment ago. – Jill Saur  WEBSITE