When a child discovers that people die, they let their adults know that they don't want anyone else to do it. It doesn't matter if you absurdly point to the sky because children are the first to not swallow. There is no worse surprise for a child than the knowledge of death because there is no worse concern for a parent than not knowing what your child is thinking and not knowing how to explain it to them.
We are used to fable the death of a child but surely a father does not know how to express the death of a child.
On Tuesday La Vanguardia showed the best photo to illustrate the terrifying earthquake in Turkey. A father in an orange jacket, squatting in the ruins of a building, caresses a hand that emerges from the middle of the stones. According to the AFP photographer, it is Mesut Hancer holding the hand of his 15-year-old daughter who was buried because of the earthquake.
No relatives crying, no crowd watching, just a father with an eerie peace overlooking nothing. You wait for the evolution of his emotions and instead the look is the survival of himself. Seeing the image, you wait for the miracle to appear, for the girl to move her hand, prior to the discovery that everything was a photographic clickbait. Then the readers would click on the penalty while the father, seconds later, would reach out and take his princess out of Snow White's stepmother's castle. It is already known that the creatures are much better in the open air.
I continue, therefore, with the hope that everything has been a faker's dream because I never want to see that father's gaze where the malicious permissiveness that God has is projected, if he exists.
Before looking for a follow-up to veteran AFP photojournalist Adam Alten's excellent image, let's think about how horrifying someone else's gaze might be if we were the father in the orange jacket. That unbearable and intolerable sensation should help us discover the luxury of living in places where seismic movements allow us to finish reading this article and turn the page.
