Nearly three weeks following this disaster which killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey, Adem Altan, the AFP photographer who took the shot, found Mesut Hancer.
This grief-stricken Turk, father of four children including Irmak, 15, who died buried under the rubble of an eight-storey building, recently left his town of Kahramanmaras, in southeastern Turkey, to settle in Ankara.
“I also lost my mother, my brothers, my nephews in the earthquake. But burying your child is nothing comparable,” says this forty-something. “It’s an indescribable pain.”
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Today, the family is trying to rebuild a life away from Kahramanmaras, the city near the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that also hit northern Syria.
The photo of Mesut Hancer, petrified, insensitive to the cold and the rain, dressed in an orange jacket and not letting go of the hand of his dead child, has become the symbol of a disaster that claimed tens of thousands of lives .
On the front page of many newspapers around the world, reproduced millions of times on the internet, the photo provoked a surge of solidarity with regard to the father and his family.
An Ankara businessman, Nejat Gulseven, owner of the television channel TV 100, and his wife, Turkish singer Ebru Yasar, offered them accommodation and offered to hire Mr Hancer as an administrative employee in his television channel. private television.
“Like an angel”
Offered by an artist, a drawing representing Irmak as an angel next to his father now adorns the family living room.
“I mightn’t let go of her hand. My daughter was sleeping like an angel in her bed,” he says.
At the time of the earthquake, which occurred at 04:17 am (01:17 GMT), Mesut Hancer was working in his bakery.
He immediately called his family, in search of news. Their one-story house, although damaged, was standing and his wife and three adult children were safe.
But the family mightn’t reach the youngest child, Irmak, who that night had slept at her grandmother’s. The teenager wanted to spend more time with her cousins who came to visit from Istanbul and Hatay.
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Worried, Mr. Hancer rushed running to his mother’s house.
There, he found the eight-story building collapsed, reduced to a mountain of rubble from which emerged, scattered, remnants of a daily life reduced to nothing. And in the middle of the ruins, his daughter.
No rescue team will come until the next day, leaving Mr Hancer and other residents alone in their desperate efforts to find their loved ones under the rubble.
Mr. Hancer attempted to extricate Irmak’s body by clearing the concrete blocks with his bare hands. In vain.
So he remained, motionless, gnawed by infinite grief, seated next to his dead daughter.
“I held her hand, stroked her hair, kissed her cheeks,” he said.
Later, he noticed that an AFP photographer, Adem Altan, was taking pictures.
“Take pictures of my child,” he whispered then, his voice breaking and shaking.
