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Sicily

Memorial murals

Pasquale and Giuffrida's Memorial Wall
If you die young in Ballaro` someone will immortalize you with a giant mural of your face and maybe a garden, tended like an altar, that no one will defile. Pasquale Ferrara and Giuseppe Giufridda were two youths of Ballaro` and this mural of them was near the Mercato del Usato, the used items market, otherwise known as the Mercato del Rubato, the market of stolen things. The boys were inseparable, both 18 years old, on a scooter. The police,who rarely enter Ballaro`, had just had a report of a stolen scooter in the area. They told the boys to pull over. The boys probably didn't have a license to drive nor vehicle insurance, so they tried to elude the police by driving the wrong way into a one-way street, and ran headlong into a car. They both died. Together. At their funeral,the mourners released balloons and doves. There were riots in the street, locals throwing bottles and rocks at the police, writing on all the clean walls that the police were infamous, the police were shit. They lit the garbage containers on fire,and the cars parked near them went up in flames. Now all that is left of them are their portraits and the grafitti expressing solidarity with the boys beyond the grave, promising never to forget them. This is how they make the stones talk.
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