A touch of humanity amidst the ruins. The photo of this father holding his dead daughter’s hand in the devastation that followed the massive February 6 earthquake in Turkey moved the world and sparked a wave of solidarity with this broken man, he says today .
Almost three weeks after that natural disaster killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey and Syria, Adem Altan, the AFP photographer who took the shot, found Mesut Hancer. This grieving Turk, father of four including Irmak, 15, who died buried under the rubble of an eight-storey building, recently left his city of Kahramanmaras in southeastern Turkey to settle in Ankara.
“I also lost my mother, brothers and nephews in the earthquake. But there’s nothing quite like burying your child,” admits the forty-year-old. “It’s an indescribable pain.” Today the family is trying to make a living outside of Kahramanmaras, the town near the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that also struck northern Syria. The photo of Mesut Hancer, petrified, impervious to cold and rain, dressed in an orange jacket and not letting go of his dead child’s hand, has become a symbol of a catastrophe that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
On the front pages of many newspapers worldwide, reproduced millions of times on the Internet, the snapshot triggered a wave of solidarity with the father and his family. A businessman from Ankara offered them accommodation and offered to hire the grieving father as an administrative clerk at his private television station.
“My daughter slept like an angel in her bed”
A drawing offered by an artist, depicting 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.
Turkish father Mesut Hancer with a portrait of his daughter Irmak this Saturday in Ankara. AFP/Adem Altan AFP or licensors
At the time of the earthquake at 04:17 (01:17 GMT), Mesut Hancer was working in his bakery. He immediately called his family for news. Their one-story house stood, though damaged, and his wife and three adult children were safe.
But the family could not reach the youngest child, Irmak, who slept with her grandmother that night. The teenager wanted to spend more time with her cousins who were visiting from Istanbul and Hatay. Worried, Mesut Hancer ran to his mother’s house.
There he found the eight-storey building collapsed, reduced to a heap of rubble, from which emerge scattered the remains of everyday life reduced to nothing. And in the midst of the ruins his daughter. No rescue team will arrive until the next day, leaving Mesut Hancer and other residents in their desperate efforts to find loved ones beneath the rubble.
Mr. Hancer attempted to free Irmak’s body by clearing away the concrete blocks with his bare hands. Vain. So he remained motionless, gnawed by endless grief, sitting next to his dead daughter. “I held her hand, stroked her hair, kissed her cheeks,” he says. He later noticed that an AFP photographer, Adem Altan, was taking pictures. “Take pictures of my child,” he then whispered, his voice cracking and shaking.