Immortalized with his dad, Mustafa smiles. The 5-year-old Syrian boy was born with no arms and no legs. The father, mutilated in one leg, raises his son to heaven. The work of the Turkish photographer Mehmet Aslan, winner of the Siena International Photo Awards 2021, tells one of the symbolic stories of the many tragedies caused by the conflict in Syria. “A story that hopefully will seriously awaken the consciences of world leaders”, commented also the spokesman of Unicef Italy Andrea Iacomini, underlining how the risk is to meet “the umpteenth test of intermittent indignation”.
The escape from Idlib and the arrival in Turkey
Turkish photographer Mehmet Aslan met Mustafa and his father in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. There lives the whole family consisting of two other children and their mother Zaineb. Then the move in an attempt to help 5-year-old Mustafa: he needs medical care that the two parents cannot afford special prostheses, which cannot be found throughout Turkey. The child was born with tetra amelia disorder. Legless and armless, she has a malformation caused by the medications Mom Zaineb was forced to take after nerve gas poisoning she breathed in during an attack. “I swear I went from hospital to hospital. There is not a city where he has not asked for information on the necessary prostheses, but nothing has come of it, ”says his father Munzir, who was mutilated in his leg during the conflict. For more than three years the family has relied mainly on charity, since it fled Idlib, the last great pocket of Syria in the hands of Islamist rebels after 10 years of war, attacked by government forces and their allies. That corner of northern Syria sits along a border filled with refugee-crammed camps. In a decade of conflict, millions of Syrians have flocked to Turkey and other countries in the region. In this regard, photographer Aslan hopes that the shot, which is now traveling around the world, will also help alleviate hostility against refugee communities in Turkey, accused of damaging the country’s economy.
“For years we have been looking for help”
«We wanted to draw attention to this issue and I hope that the image will help the search for prostheses for the refugee child», added the author of the shot, «the little one always has a lot of energy. The father, on the other hand, seems to have given up ». Speaking with the Washington Post Mustafa’s mother says: “We have been trying for years to be heard to help my son with the treatments, we would do anything to give him a better life.”
