Twenty years ago, writer and historian Caroline Moorehead got to know 57 Liberian young men, aged between 16 and 23 who had escaped massacres and managed to get to Cairo, where they were seeking asylum and resettlement in the west.
Their stories formed the basis of an article Moorehead wrote for The New York Review of Books and then a chapter for a book, Human Cargo (which was short-listed for a National Book Critics Circle Award). Many were subsequently resettled in the U.S. Others fled across the desert to Israel with the help of the Bedouin and paid off their debt in forced labor. Others eventually returned to Africa.
In this project, Moorehead reports on what became of them. Through their stories, Moorehead hopes "to paint a picture of migration/asylum/refugees over the last 20 years."
