Weeks after Hamdy Ibrahim left his village in Egypt's Nile Delta hoping to reach Europe, his brother's phone rang with a chilling message from Libya: pay now or the boy would die.
A smuggler was on the line, demanding 190,000 pounds ($4,000) to secure the 18-year-old's place on a boat, part of a rising exodus that last year made Egyptians the top African and second-largest global group of irregular migrants to Europe.
"I told him we couldn't afford it," his brother Youssef told AFP from Kafr Abdallah Aziza in Sharqiya, an hour's drive from Cairo.
"But he warned: 'Handle it like the other families do. Otherwise he'll be thrown into the sea.'"
Hamdy left in November with a dozen peers, vanishing without a word after contacting smugglers online. Soon, calls poured in from Libya.
Families were told the men would "be slaughtered or thrown into the mountains or sea" if they did not pay, said 55-year-old Abed Gouda, whose brother Mohamed was among them.
Desperate parents borrowed heavily, sold gold and gave up what little they had to save their sons. But weeks later, they learned the boat carrying the group had sunk near the Greek island of Crete.
Seventeen people died -- including six from the village -- and 15 remain missing, among them Hamdy and Mohamed.
More than 17,000 Egyptians reached Europe via the Mediterranean last year, while 1,328 people of all nationalities died or disappeared on the world's deadliest migration route, according to Frontex and the UN.
In recent years, a currency collapse and soaring inflation have deepened poverty nationwide, leaving much of Egypt's more than 50 million people under 30 feeling they have no future at home.
In Kafr Abdallah Aziza, the pressures are clear: cracked irrigation canals cut jagged lines through unpaved roads, carrying only a trickle of water to parched fields.
Women ride past on donkey carts, piled high with vegetables, jolting over potholes deep enough to trap a wheel.
Half-built brick houses sit on once-fertile land, where families eke out meagre livings through small trades or day labour.
When AFP visited, relatives of the missing packed into a local elder's cramped home, showing WhatsApp and Facebook groups filled with blurry images, unverified lists and rumours.
- 'Lack of hope' -
"Half of our young people are now considering illegal migration," said village pharmacist Refaat Abdelsamad, 40.
Since 2022, the Egyptian pound has lost over two-thirds of its value. Bread prices have tripled and fuel costs have risen four times in two years.
That same year, Egyptians were already among the largest groups attempting irregular migration, with the UN recording more than 21,000 arrivals.
"Desperation and economic deterioration are major factors," Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told AFP.
There is a "lack of hope that things will improve".
Hamdy earned just 500 Egyptian pounds ($10) a week as a plumber. He left, his brother said, because he "just wanted a better life".
After Egypt curbed irregular departures from its own shores in 2016, routes shifted west through Libya, where smugglers move migrants across the desert in minibuses and pickup trucks -- a journey Nour Khalil of the Egypt Refugees Platform calls "more dangerous".
The UN says Egyptians rely on "well-established smuggling networks" that charge high fees while survivors report "arbitrary detention, torture, rape, sexual slavery, starvation and forced labour", according to French charity SOS Mediterranee.
In 2024, the EU signed a 7.4-billion-euro economic development deal with Cairo, in part to curb irregular migration.
But Kaldas said border controls miss the root cause: "People need to feel secure in their homes."
Across Egypt, Khalil said migration has become "a widespread goal", even among educated professionals.
"Those who can leave legally do so. Those who can't are pushed into irregular migration, even if the journey carries extreme risks," he told AFP.
- 'I'd do it again' -
In Kafr Moustafa Effendi, families still mourn the dozens of young men who died or vanished in 2023 when a rusty fishing boat carrying 750 migrants capsized off Greece -- one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, now the subject of multiple court cases over alleged coastguard negligence.
Islam and El-Sayed, both 18 then, were aboard after their families scraped together 140,000 pounds each, their cousin Abdallah Ghanem told AFP.
"Back then, people caught minibuses to Libya as casually as if they were travelling to another town in Egypt."
Despite the grief, the hopeful cling to success stories.
Construction worker Hassan Darwish left Sharqiya in 2023, believing he had "no future" in Egypt.
Now 24 and living in Rome, he says he earns about $700 monthly while awaiting asylum.
"I saw horrors," he told AFP by phone. "But I'd do it again."
He now supports his mother and sick brother, which "would never have been possible in Egypt".
maf/bha/rh/jfx
Commented