A report card in his pocket: the story of the Malian child we left to die at sea…
He was a small migrant from Mali: he had sewn into his jacket a report card with full marks as a curriculum to be accepted by “grande” Europe. We didn't give it a chance.
The writer Paul Auster said that the truth is in the details and that the details make history.
The writer Giulio Cavalli who with “carnaio” narrated a monstrous mixture of corpses, power, selfishness and money, explains that when Mediterranean fishermen haul up the bodies of migrants what is left in the nets is “boiled”. The meat falls apart. E’ the water. E’ because of the water and the salt. E’ blame all those days adrift, among the waves
Cristiana Cattaneo is a coroner, but he wrote a book. Is titled “Faceless castaways” (Curtain Publisher). As reported by Il Foglio: “In collaboration with the Office of the Government Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons, Cattaneo created the world's first protocol to identify the victims of an oozing that, violations include crimes committed through air strikes 2001 till today, it has seen over thirty thousand people disappear into the sea, sprinkling Italy with nameless tombstones“.Among the thousand, desperate events reported in the pages of his book between pietas and great dismay, great respect for the victims there is one that is the detail Paul Auster talks about.
The castaway's corpse has an apparent age 14 years, origin Mali. Wear a jacket. Inside the pocket a carefully stitched report card. He has excellent grades. This kid we don't know about, we won't know the name, he had hoped for a pass to a freer and more just world, a more welcoming world, with his report card from “rare pearl”. The illustrator Makkox dedicated a poignant cartoon to him. painful. Of salt, like tears. Of salt, that burns.
There is always a before and an after in the stories of migrants, so similar to those of earthquake victims, of those who at a certain point find themselves forced to leave, to flee, to run away from his house and take with him, a detail that makes history. A picture, a lock of hair, a document, a writing, a bottle, a T-shirt. It's their wounds and our scars. They are denied stories that float. A report card to tell the world: take me with you, I study and I'm good.
He didn't arrive in time to tell us. Who knows what engineer we have lost, what a mechanic, what a physique, what a mathematician or what a poet.
Apparent age 14 years. How deep is the sea. How dark they are, dark as a well, the consciences of those who do not lift a finger in front of this massacre.
