I woke up again last night from the same nightmare. Faces, dozens of them, then hundreds, dissolving in heat, hands reaching up into the air as if grasping for something that isn't there. Not for water. Not for shade. Just for a way out that doesn't exist. I don't know these faces. But this summer, in Europe, they were real. They belonged to grandmothers who died alone in fifth-floor apartments without air conditioning, to construction workers who collapsed on scaffolding, to infants left too long in cars, to people whose hearts simply gave out three, four, five degrees before their bodies could adapt. I keep seeing them because we, collectively, decided not to. In late July this year, when around 72,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Spain declared it a national emergency within hours. The army was deployed. The prime minister was at the border within a day. Madrid and Rabat struck a bilateral return agreement overnight, and by the next afternoon...
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