In addition to having killed at least 47 thousand people – according to the most recent official figures – the earthquake in Turkey and Syria has also “generated” a life, that of Afraa, a girl of just 13 days, born after the quake that buried and killed all her family: she was found still attached to her mother by the umbilical cord, she is now well and has been adopted by her uncle, who closely followed the desperate rescue operations.
The house where he lived, in Jindires, a city in northwestern Syria, is no longer there. Collapsed along with most of the other buildings in that area. Khalil al-Sawadi, the closest survivor of the tragedy by family line, underwent a DNA test which found an affinity between him and the little girl, before being able to adopt her.
“She is one of my children,” he told the Associated Press, “there will be no difference, the child represents the memory of the entire family that I have lost.” A story that had become very popular ended in the best possible way, to the point of starting a request for international adoption.
According to the Syrian White Helmets, some merchants linked to the Damascus regime had tried to kidnap the baby, who was then taken into the care of the pediatrician Hani Marouf and the wife of the medical director, mother of a four-month-old baby, who had asked to be able to breastfeed her too .
She had arrived at the hospital in hypothermia, her breathing slowed down, full of cuts and bruises: now her conditions have stabilized and Uncle Khalil has taken her to a new home, that of her cousins. In fact, even her home collapsed under the force of the earthquake.
