Mirko Farci as Gessica Malaj . The 19-year-old from Tortolì was killed two years ago , in May 2021, to defend his mother Paola Piras from the murderous fury of his companion Shaid Masih , a Pakistani sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime. So Gessica in the night between Saturday and Sunday, to defend her mother, acted as a shield and was stabbed to death .
Destinies that intertwine between the town of Ogliastra and Torremaggiore, a town of 16,000 inhabitants in the province of Foggia. Paola Piras as Tefta Malaj, a survivor but with immense pain that will accompany her for the rest of her life .
Paola Piras wrote a letter to the Albanian woman, published by Corriere.
“Dear Tefta, I don't know you, and yet somehow luck—bad luck—makes us two close. I know that everyone goes through pain in their own way but I think I know what you're feeling. I know because I passed in the same darkness as you. On 11 May two years ago my son Mirko tried to defend me from the violent man I had sadly loved and whom I had then left and denounced , when our story had become a prison for me. That May 11th he showed up at dawn armed with his revenge. And he started hitting me with a knife: one, two, three, 18 times. I was on the cliff of death, in a coma, for 40 days. When I woke up my instinct asked about him, about Mirko, and my ears heard the most unspeakable words for a mother: “Mirko didn't make it” » , we read.
"I thank heaven every day for having erased the memories of what happened, because I couldn't bear to think back to my son who dies," continues Paola Piras. « Mirko as your daughter Gessica. Two boys lost to defend us from men as strong of violence as lacking the courage to bear a farewell . I've thought many times about this type of men. Are you unable to handle abandonment? Do you feel that you can no longer live without the woman who left you? If this becomes so destructive to you, kill yourself."
Again: «Dear Tefta, I wish you to be stronger and more responsive than me. Not to go the same way as I do but to take a better, less distressing one, even if I know it will be difficult. I am at the mercy of a pain that changes and with the passage of time becomes deeper, as if it were taking ever more vigorous roots in my life. Sometimes a perfume, a color, a tiny detail is enough to make a river of memories flow that takes me to him, to my Mirko. Sometimes it is the expressions of his little brother, his gestures that remind me of it ».
Then a piece of advice: « Don't shoulder responsibilities that you don't have . Feelings of guilt are a perennial lurking torment and it will be impossible to always be able to drive them away, but you have to try so as not to let evil win twice. It wasn't me and it wasn't even you who wanted and did what happened to us. The fault lies with those who killed, with those who know no other reason than violence . It is absurd and unfair that it falls on our shoulders."
Paola Piras has been accused several times: «I hope – she concludes turning to Tefta – that no one from the outside ever dares to say it was your fault, a malignity that puts you on the same level as the murderer. They've done it to me several times. My fault, someone said, because after the separation I have not only been a mother and a saint but I have ventured into the wrong story with a violent man, a Pakistani one moreover . My fault that I would have looked for it. I read that you have another son, hold him as close as you can, and cultivate and keep the memories of Gessica alive ».
(Unioneonline/L)