Yasemin and Andrea, the boy’s parents killed at 14 with a stab wound, decided not to surrender: «We don’t want revenge but that his memory serves something. The law must change, no discount to those who make such a gesture ». He loved music, skate, holidays in Misano and his cat Pandi, who died a few weeks after him
In his neck, Yasemin brings a small silver pendant. Behind a tiny showcase, carefully kept, there is a tuft of the hair of his only son. He keeps him there, near the heart. A minute presence. It was she who wanted him: before the burial he asked that they cut a strand, then he made the jewel made from an Armenian goldsmith. “And all that I have left of Mattia Ahmet,” he says to 7. “I always carry it with me everywhere.”
In Istanbul, where Mattia was born and had lived all his fourteen years; In Misano Adriatico, where she and her husband Andrea returned a few weeks ago, for the first time without him; At the Guns N ‘Roses concert, during which the band projected Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi on the mega -screen during the execution of Knocking on Heaven’s Door. A song that he loved, that Yasemin and Andrea are no longer able to listen without crying.
On June 2, Mattia Ahmet should have been there, right under the stage. The ticket was a gift from the father, an appointment that the family had been waiting for for some time. It was Yasemin after his death to write to the band. No explicit request, just a story of a few words. The Guns responded with a discreet gesture, necessary after listening to the boy’s story and seeing the video of the attack. A sudden, brutal aggression taken by the surveillance cameras of the Kadikoy market, in the Asian part of Istanbul, where Mattia had gone early in the morning to buy some accessories for his skate. It was January 24. The images passed on TV, on social media, they crossed the boundaries. Only Andrea has never seen them. “I can’t do it. Not yet, I don’t know if I will ever succeed ». Yasemin yes. «To understand. To look in the face of pain ». In those fragments of video there is the exact moment in which everything changes. In which time is divided when Mattia was and in a time that there is no longer Mattia. In the middle over twenty days of coma. An agony ended in the hospital on February 9th.
His father had given him tickets for the Guns N ‘Roses concert on June 2: the band decided to project his photo on the mega screen during the performance of KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR
At the home of the grandparents, in Misano, every room talks about him. On the fridge, in the kitchen, there is a very small photo of him, who slips into the washing machine. On the wall of the living room there is its cartoon style image printed on canvas. Supported in the entrance, on the ground, a great portrait with the signatures of all the friends of the father above. “Too cumbersome to carry it by plane,” says the grandmother. He pulls him up, he plays him on the table to observe him better, passes a finger on the glass to caress the face of his nephew, while Yasemin is on the balcony, to smoke. “Let’s get back to place before you come back. I don’t want to make her shake, “he murmurs. Then he stays there for a moment, to fix the void.
A huge community has formed around this family like many others. Made not only by Italian friends, Turkish friends and Expat – our compatriots who live abroad – but from almost half a million people who started following Yasemin on Instagram. Where, from the day of the murder, placed every day, constantly, photos of Mattia Ahmet, (re) tells the story, asks for justice. It is a way not to let it go, in order not to hear it to tear it away completely, to keep the attention high on the process. But it is also sharing, resistance to silence, a way not to allow everything to slide away like this. Every time someone writes to them in the comments “We will not forget it” or tag her in a photo (“Look, seeds ok, a well -known artist, he made this murals for Mattia”, he says showing me the last post), finds more strength to go on.
Also thanks to this strength, the death of Mattia Ahmet – similar to many other murders with the knife between minors – has become a national case, even landing in the form of fiction within a popular Turkish TV series (Kizilcik Serbeti, in Italian blueberry sorbet). And also for this reason the family was received a few weeks ago by Erdogan himself. “The president kept us almost two hours,” says Andrea. “It’s not a obvious gesture.”
In Misano, during the meeting with the boys of the Giovanni XXIII secondary school, Yasemin refused the chair and went to sit on the ground, in the midst of them. An instinctive gesture, as if only there could hear the breath of his son, his thoughts. He listened to the concert with his master’s cello at the Milan Conservatory, Christian Bellisario, with his head down. Andrea read a message: «Violence does not make strong. Do you know what makes you really strong? To say “I’m sorry”, help a friend, choose not to respond to badness with other badness ». And again: «Violence does not arise alone: you learn. And therefore it can be disimpated. It can be stopped. With education, with the example, with the care ».
Then the title of a hall of the municipal library to the son. A light classroom, overlooking the garden, where the quiet of reading reigns. A quiet that makes you forget at least for a moment that on the day of the start of the trial, in Istanbul, someone desecked the boy’s tomb. That in Istanbul the family lives under escort, after Yasemin received death threats on social networks. During the ceremony, the students listened in silence. Some have cried. Others asked: “But now, how do you go on?” Andrea replied sincerely: «Pain cannot be taught. But you can try to transform it. Talking about it, as we are doing here, is already a form of strength ». It is a beginning. Tiny.
Valeria, the aunt: «Mattia Ahmet spoke three languages in a family with two cultures. He had the lightness of the adolescence and the curiosity of those who had already traveled a lot “
There is also Valeria, Andrea’s sister, he addresses journalists with a simple request, who weighs like a prayer: «Call him Mattia Ahmet, not just Mattia. That double name was him: a bridge live between two worlds, two languages, two families. He was just three years old when he was already an interpreter among us, translating our words. It was our voice, when we could not understand each other. It was our connection ».
Mattia Ahmet loved music, the skate, his cat Pandi, who died a few weeks after him (“see, sometimes, the animals …”, murmurs his grandmother). He spoke three languages. He was growing in a family with two cultures, two nostalgia. He had the lightness of adolescence, the curiosity of those who have already traveled a lot. He loved to cook with his father. He dreamed, perhaps, to do it one day like him, for profession. “Now it’s an angel,” says Andrea. A light that does not let go of.
The trip to Italy, for the parents, was a necessary step. Returning to the places where Mattia Ahmet always went on vacation, at the grandparents’ house, to look at the sea where he had learned to swim, where he had collected the first shells. The sea of Misano, calm and flat, welcomed them in silence, the still empty roads of tourists, the waiting plants. Andrea found the time to take a walk in the wet, alone. Fix the water. Stay there, silent. “In Misano he was always happy,” he said.
They are gestures that only make a little better. But now the attention and the energies are all on the process. Yasemin wrote on social media that everyone must go to the hearings, everyone: it is an appeal to keep attention high, to ask for help even Italy. There will be sure the general console, Elena Clemente; In Misano there was the deputy of Fdl Beatriz Colombo “representing Giorgia”.
“We don’t want revenge,” said Andrea. “We want his memory to serve something. For this we ask for the maximum penalty, we want the Turkish law to change, and the new one will perhaps bring the name of my son. There can be no discounts of punishment for those who kill, not even if they are minors. If a boy pulls out a knife and kills, he is not a dispute. It is something that has broken much earlier: in the family, in school, in society. This must be clear. But above all we want those who killed him to know that he will never be able to turn off our love ».
In the backpack Andrea put a volume that someone gave him, pulls him out. «The right distance from the stars. The elaboration of parental mourning according to Gestalt Therapy ». He looks at him, puff him, tired. “Those who never imagined that in life I would come across books of the genre,” they murmur. “Parental mourning,” repeats. He smiles, but he is a bitter smile. «There are words for everything: orphans, widows, widowed. But there is no word for those who lose a child. Maybe because … »
Next to him Yasemin shakes the pendant, the pain bends it to tears. He finds no other words. It remains silent.
