On Thursday, January 21st, the little girl, who was in Italy to get treatment and is originally from a village near Herat, wanted to visit her ‘sky friends’. This began a long period of care and attention, especially from the family that had hosted her all this time. This is the family of Roberto Faccani, the commander of the Bagnocavallo municipal police in the Romagna province of Ravenna and head of the Civil Protection of the Lower Romagna region, who has been collaborating with the Armed Forces since 1995 in the so-called CIMIC programs, that is, those activities aimed at reconstructing the civilian structures of countries devastated by conflicts, carried out by governmental and non-governmental organizations in cooperation with the military contingents deployed there. Faccani has extensive experience in such missions and when he met Nazifa and her family in Herat, he immediately realized that something needed to be done immediately to save the little girl’s life. In a very short time, coordination was therefore established with the Afghan and Italian governments to obtain the necessary permits for the small patient to be transported to our country. Meanwhile, the ’S. Orsola‘ Hospital in Bologna was already on alert. And that was how the journey of hope for Nazifa began aboard the C-130J aircraft of the Italian Air Force. A journey that the little girl never forgot: on board the aircraft, during the long hours of flight, the pilot and specialist staff never abandoned her and literally enveloped her in attention and tenderness. She spent a year and a half there. Then, on November 23, 2009, the tragic crash of a C-130J aircraft of the Aerea Brigade, for which the cause is still under investigation. On November 25, 2009, the medical staff at the ’S. Orsola“ declared Nazifa clinically cured. Nazifa, who in the meantime has learned Italian to perfection and attends the ”Francesco Berti“ elementary school in Bagnocavallo, watches television and sees the image of that plane with which she arrived in Italy and which she has never forgotten. Nazifa doesn’t waste time and immediately asks Faccanidi to come to Pisa to greet her friends and to bring some flowers and a note in which she will write, in an uncertain handwriting, ”ciao, vi voglio bene”.
Today Nazifa is a healed child, but above all she is a smiling, serene child with a great desire to live. She has learned to play chess, backgammon, and cards; she has her best friends Sara and Giulia, and with them she watches cartoons. She speaks with a pleasant Romagnolo accent and tells about her family who remained waiting for her in Afghanistan. A father, a mother, a sister, and five brothers, all older than her.
Nazifa, a few weeks before the day she will leave again for Herat forever, wanted to come and spend a day with her friends from the 46th Air Brigade. On Thursday, January 21st, Brigadier General Stefano Fort, Commander of the 46th Air Brigade, and many staff members who took care of her all day welcomed her. A day spent first in the flight simulator of the C-130J aircraft with Flight Instructor Luciano Boria, then immediately on the runway to experience the aircraft first hand. On board, in addition to receiving a small LED bulb as a gift from Marshal Enrico Giannini, a brief ‘flight lesson’ was given to a very attentive and curious student. When he said goodbye to the little girl, Marshal Giannini, visibly happy, said that “Nazifa is the living proof that you can achieve so much simply with your own work and that she and so many other people like her represent the ‘fuel’ that charges and motivates more than anything else to always give your best.”.
Press review: The Viareggio of Sunday, January 24th
