Earthquake in Turkey and Syria
Solidarity for the father holding the hand of his dead daughter
The photo of Mesut Hancer holding the hand of his daughter trapped under the rubble has been around the world. Thanks to this image, this Turkish father was offered housing and a job.
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For long hours, Mesut Hancer did not let go of the hand of his 15-year-old daughter Irmak buried under the rubble of an eight-storey building. An image that has become a symbol.
AFP
The photo of this father holding the hand of his dead daughter, in the devastation that followed the violent earthquake of February 6 in Turkey, moved the whole world and sparked an outpouring of solidarity for this broken man.
Nearly three weeks after this natural disaster which killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey, Adem Altan, the AFP photographer who took the shot, found Mesut Hancer. This grief-stricken Turk, father of four children including Irmak, 15, who died buried under the rubble of an eight-storey building, recently left his town of Kahramanmaras, in southeastern Turkey, to settle in Ankara.
An indescribable pain
“I also lost my mother, my brothers, my nephews in the earthquake. But burying your child has nothing comparable,” confides this forty-year-old. “It’s an indescribable pain.” Today, the family is trying to rebuild a life away from Kahramanmaras, the city near the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that also hit northern Syria.
Mesut Hancer poses with a painting given to him by an artist. We see her alongside her daughter portrayed as an angel. The portrait now sits in the family living room.
AFP
symbol of disaster
The photo of Mesut Hancer, petrified, insensitive to the cold and the rain, dressed in an orange jacket and not letting go of the hand of his dead child, has become the symbol of a disaster that claimed tens of thousands of lives . On the front page of many newspapers around the world, reproduced millions of times on the internet, the photo provoked a surge of solidarity with regard to the father and his family.
A businessman from Ankara offered them accommodation and offered to recruit Mesut Hancer as an administrative employee in his private television channel. Offered by an artist, a drawing representing Irmak as an angel next to his father now adorns the family living room.
“I couldn’t let go of his hand. My daughter slept like an angel in her bed,” he says. At the time of the earthquake, which occurred at 4:17 a.m. (2:17 a.m. in Switzerland), Mesut Hancer was working in his bakery. He immediately called his family, in search of news. Their one-story house, although damaged, was still standing and his wife and three adult children were safe.
Died because she slept at her grandmother’s
But the family couldn’t reach the youngest child, Irmak, who that night had slept at her grandmother’s. The teenager wanted to spend more time with her cousins who came to visit from Istanbul and Hatay. Worried, Mesut Hancer rushed running to his mother’s house.
There, he found the eight-storey building collapsed, reduced to a mountain of rubble from which emerge, scattered, the remains of a daily life reduced to nothing. And in the middle of the ruins, his daughter. No rescue team will come until the next day, leaving Mesut Hancer and other residents alone in their desperate efforts to find their loved ones under the rubble.
“Take pictures of my child,” he whispered
The father of the family tried to extricate Irmak’s body by clearing the concrete blocks with his bare hands. In vain. So he remained, motionless, gnawed by infinite grief, seated next to his dead daughter. “I held her hand, I stroked her hair, I kissed her cheeks,” he says. Later, he noticed that a photographer, Adem Altan, was taking pictures. “Take pictures of my child,” he whispered then, his voice breaking and shaking.
(AFP)