Gabriel Lia, a local writer and poet, wrote a touching tribute to Pelin Kaya, the unfortunate victim of the Gzira car crash. Kaya was killed on her birthday, with Lia drawing from this somber fact to write his eulogy.
’You blow out candles on your birthday / It is said that at the end of your life your candle is extinguished /Like the closing credits to Deċeduti’ wrote Lia, in reference to a local TV series.
‘You, who with all your humility / designed beautiful kitchens and bedrooms / to be filled in with life, are now constrained / in between four planks of wood’.
‘St Stephen welcomes you as we continue to devour buckets of greasy chicken’ he wrote, in reference to how the car crashed into a local KFC shop after hitting Kaya. St Stephen was also referenced given how he was martyred via stoning, a shocking symbolic image compared to the perpetrator’s continued aggression as he threw stones at Pelin.
Gabriel ended the poem with a Turkish proverb which states: ‘Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose’.
The perpetrator, Jeremie Camilleri, was tased and arrested after he assaulted people who tried to help the victim as well as the police officers assigned to address the situation.
Rest in Pelin Kaya.
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