Siena, Italy: award-winning photo – from a man who lost his foot in a bomb attack in Syria lifted into his son’s air, born without limbs, another victim of the country’s civil war – became a viral last year in Italy.
On Friday, Munzir El Nezzel, the man in the picture, and his son Mustafa arrived in Italy after a tremendous effort by Siena’s international photo award organizers to take them and their families from Turkey, where they fled after Syria.
“We will come, thank you,” Mustafa said six years old, smiling broadly, in a video message recorded before him and his family – father, mother and two sisters were one and four – on a plane in Ankara in Ankara on Thursday quickly to Italy.
“We love Italy,” he said.
The picture of Mustafa and his father, both with a loving smile, taken in January 2021 by the Turkish photographer Mehmet Aslan and called the “life difficulty”, was declared a photo last year.
The emotional and surprising picture of being headlines in Italy and spread internationally on social media, spurring the festival organizers to take action and start a fundraising drive to get care for my father and child.
The festival organizers contacted diplomats, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and Catholic dioceses in Siena to host the Syrian family so Mustafa and his father could get treatment and prosthetics.
“The picture is beyond all imagination,” said Luca Venturi, an engineer who founded the Photography Festival Siena, who confer award, about six years ago.
“We think we can also surpass our fears not to be able to do anything for this family.” Like all countries, Italy can issue a visa for humanitarian reasons, but refugees need to be sponsored by local organizations that handle documents and provide financial support.
In order with the success of crowdfunding efforts, non-profit who organized a photography festival decided to sponsor the Syrian family.
“It’s a big dream for everyone,” Venturi said.
Venturikept Regular contact with El Nezzel through WhatsApp, using Google Translate to communicate in Arabic with a three-year-old father of 33 years old.
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