Mesut Hancer came running to the building where his daughter was sleeping.
It was four in the morning on February 6, 2023, when a 7,8-magnitude earthquake split southeastern Turkey in two.
15-year-old Irmak was sleeping at her grandmother’s home in Kahramanmaraş when the building collapsed. Mesut tried to lift the concrete blocks with his bare hands. He couldn’t. The only thing he managed to reach was her hand, sticking out from among the rubble.
He stayed there. In the rain, in the cold, for more than an entire day, holding and caressing his daughter’s fingers as he waited for a rescue that would no longer change anything.
The next day, photographer Adem Altan found him sitting alone among the ruins. Mesut called him over and asked him to take the photo.
That image went around the world. Mesut also lost his mother, his siblings, and his nieces and nephews that morning.
Weeks later, in his new home in Ankara, he hung a painting in which Irmak appears with angel wings, beside him.