Last year in Italy, an award-winning image of a guy who had lost a leg in a bomb assault in Syria carrying his kid, who was born without limbs and was another victim of the country’s civil conflict, went viral.
The guy in the image, Munzir El Nezzel, and his son Mustafa, arrived in Italy following a tremendous effort by the organisers of the Siena International Photo Awards to bring them and their family from Turkey, where they had fled after Syria.
“We are coming, thank you,” Mustafa, 6, said in a video message recorded before he and his family — El Nezzel, the boy’s mother, and two sisters, aged 1 and 4, — boarded a plane to journey to Italy on Thursday in Ankara, Turkey. “We adore Italy,” he continued.
Last year, the shot of Mustafa and his father, both smiling lovingly, captured by Turkish photographer Mehmet Aslan in January 2021 and titled “Hardship of Life,” was named photo of the year at the Siena awards.
The moving and frightening image made news in Italy and went viral on social media, prompting the festival’s organizers to respond and launch a fundraising campaign to help the father and boy receive treatment.
The festival’s organizers reached out to embassies, hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and the Catholic diocese of Siena to find a place for Mustafa and his father to get medical care and prostheses.
“The picture was beyond any conception,” said Luca Venturi, an engineer who started the Siena photography festival around six years ago, which gave the medal. “We also felt we could get over our concern of not being able to help this family.”
Italy, like all other nations, can provide humanitarian visas, but refugees must be sponsored by a local group that handles paperwork and finances.
“Leaving your own country is always a big step, but we aim to help them find a new home here,” Anna Ferretti, the city’s Caritas representative, said. Caritas is providing the El Nezzels an apartment on the outskirts of Siena and will cover their daily financial requirements for a year.
