ROSIGNANO. Ardwan sharing pizza with Faouzi. Their children, a boy and a girl, running around the table, their wives sharing the struggles of a life far from their home countries. The trips together. The wives practically moving into one house when their husbands are away at work.
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Now imagine this scene. And not the words of despairing commentary because Ardwan didn’t say what he felt. And perhaps he never will.
“I was coming down the roof stairs, behind me, a little higher up, there was a colleague. Faouzi was alone on the roof. I heard a noise, actually three distinct ones: the first sheet breaking, the second, a bang. The colleague started screaming: “The boy fell down, the boy fell down“.”
The shocking testimony
Ardwan didn’t turn around, he started descending the stairs more quickly, entered the factory and saw him. His colleague, his friend, the boy who, like him, lived thousands of kilometers from his family (he Moroccan, Faouzi originally from Tunisia). “He was stuck inside the machinery. I saw his face. There was blood, he wasn’t speaking, he wasn’t moving.”
Looking up at the ceiling, the sun penetrated through the roof. A hole had been created, large enough for a person to fall through. It’s a few steps from the end of the roof, from the stairs where the other colleagues had descended or were descending. The area where the accident occurred has been seized and investigators are trying to understand what really happened.
Let’s leave the story of death and return to life. To a friendship born about 4 years ago when Faouzi Marweni came to work at the company in Valmadrera, in the province of Lecco, Ardwan was already there. “He had arrived a few months earlier and got a secure contract, he stopped receiving state benefits. He told me he had arrived by boat: he had left with his wife and, thanks to Tunisian friends, had arrived in Lecco.”
The little girl and the house
Let’s clarify. He had arrived in Malgrate, a municipality with just under five thousand inhabitants, overlooking the branch of Lake Como described by Manzoni. For two years he had been able to rent a house, he had a newborn daughter. He lived on Via Sant’Antonino. Google shows an ocher-yellow parallelepiped with many brown windows. A 1960s house overlooking a wide road, which we imagine is always busy. But around the corner is the lake.
“It’s a condominium,” says the head of the nearby parish of San Leonardo, “where almost exclusively non-EU citizens live. Integrated people whose children, even if of another religion, come to our oratory. Perfectly integrated also because if they live there it means they can pay rent.” It means their dream of stability is a reality. And indeed, Faouzi Marweni is also integrated into the Islamic Cultural Center “La Città” in Lecco. A few lines about what happened in Tuscany, in the province of Livorno, in the Center’s chat and the community responds. They ask for and give news, they know that his wife has been informed of what happened.
The call to the family
“I called my wife,” Ardwan confirms, “it was she who reached her at home and gave her the news. They are friends, they are always together. We see each other a lot also because our children are the same age.” And now? “She doesn’t work. Faouzi was the only one bringing in a salary.” Their dream was shattered. Just like the roof.
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