From the article, he did sneak off the ship routinely after it ran aground some years later. He would sneak off, buy food and recharge his phone, then return to the ship for some bizarre reason.
I believe he was allowed to go to shore. Unfortunately, the closest place is a restricted military area and he was only allowed to stay for 2 hours each visit. He cannot even sneak off as he is getting into a military base for food, water and power. If it has been a civilian area, he could have just stayed on the land.
It is a sad state of affairs, whichever way you look at it.
That region is experiencing a lot of chaos and I'd say that being alone on a ship is a lot safer than being alone with no passport and wanted by the law.
They don't care.
Just to let you know how bad are we treated. As a Syrian, I should exchange 100 dollars to enter the country. Some people were stuck at the border with Lebanon when that bill was issued and a woman died waiting for someone to bring her the 100 dollars (or 200 because he also needs to go back).
We pay 800 euros to get our 2 years of validity passports.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to wait from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. to get the embassy in Berlin to attest my signature on the passport.
I had to wait 4 hours to attest my papers at the totally empty embassy in Jakarta.
A random Syrian, or someone 'without passport' is not going to raise any scrutiny in Egypt. Just a few handfulls of cash could have expedited his way to at least Lebanon.
There's something odd about this story because neither a passport nor money should have kept him there, unless there was literally some kind of watch for him, and/or the cash situation was really that extremely dire. That said, he was able to survive for 4 years so money had to be coming from somewhere.
I suggest that he was maybe being paid a tiny amount, and that he felt it'd be better to 'stick it out' as a nearly worthless cog, than to take a risky path home to what might be nothing anyhow.
