Drowned the day her visa came through: the tragedy of a Moroccan footballer trying to reach Ceuta

Football was the life Faten Ben Omar El Azizi had wanted. She had long played in Morocco’s regional league for Moghreb Atlético Tetuán, whose striking kit replicates the colours of the famous Spanish club Atlético Madrid.

And in the cruellest of ironies, on the day that she drowned last month, one of nearly 150 people who died in the illegal mass crossing into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, her mother was told that her daughter had just been granted a visa to go to Spain.

El Azizi loved training, says her coach: Tuesdays on the pitch and Thursday at the beach, near the city of Tétouan in northern Morocco, where the 26-year-old lived with her mother and the rest of her family.

But making a living from playing in a women’s football league in Morocco had proved impossible for El Azizi. She received only a small payment of about 260 dirham (£21) when her team won and nothing when it lost – not enough to support her mother, two siblings and other relatives. Her father died when she was 12.

Alongside her football, she had been working in Tétouan’s oldest cemetery, cleaning graves and selling mourners bunches of rayhan (basil), which is associated with blessings in Muslim funeral traditions.

“She dreamed of reaching Europe through football,” says her mother, Jamilla. Instead, El Azizi is now buried in the cemetery she once worked in after she drowned on 30 July while trying to swim from Morocco to Ceuta, the Spanish exclave near Tétouan.

She was among at least 141 people who died during last month’s extraordinary mass crossing to the Spanish territory in north Africa, according to the migrant rights group Caminando Fronteras. It is believed most of those who died – drowning or crushed at the land border – were under the age of 35.

Their deaths have come less than a year after a wave of youth-led demonstrations swept across Morocco – the biggest since the 2011 Arab spring. The protesters had criticised underfunding of healthcare and education amid spending on expensive stadiums as the country gears up to co-host the 2030 World Cup with Spain and Portugal.

For Morocco, the 2030 World Cup has become a symbol of national ambition, although it has also sharpened the debate over public priorities. Nearly 40% of young people aged 15 to 24 were unemployed in Morocco last year, while for those who do find work, wages can be low – Morocco’s gross minimum wage in the non-agricultural private sector is about £270 a month.

Simo, 20, who recently returned to Morocco after the mass crossing into Ceuta last month, says: “Like Faten, many of my friends and myself cannot find work in our country. It’s difficult to build a future here.”

Jamilla says her daughter dreamed of training and developing as a player, but the family could not afford to help her.

On the morning of 30 July, Jamilla says she received a phone call from someone who asked to speak to Faten. “No, I am her mother,” Jamilla replied. An official then told her that her daughter’s Spanish visa had been approved and that Faten should travel to the consulate in Tangier with her identity card to collect it.

Jamilla says she had not known her daughter was applying for a visa or, given she had applied for one, why she spontaneously decided to try to reach European territory by crossing to Ceuta.

Her mother believes Faten had been applying for a visa informally and did not expect to get it approved. She does not know what type of visa it was or where her daughter intended to travel.

In recent weeks, she says, her daughter had become unusually quiet, sad and distant. “She seemed switched off,” Jamilla says.

After Faten disappeared, her family says they searched through the night. A young man eventually came to the house and asked whether she had been wearing a tracksuit. He said that she had struck her head during the crossing.

Jamilla says she could not bring herself to enter the room where the bodies of those who died were being kept. “I did not want that image engraved in my memory,” she says. Instead, her sister went in to identify the body.

For Jamilla, the heartache continues. After learning that Faten had made the crossing, she found out that her other two children had gone, too.

Her eldest son reached Ceuta and phoned her, but Jamilla is still awaiting news of her 14-year-old daughter, who is also believed to have reached Ceuta. “Now I am alone without my children,” she says.

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.