Thirty-five soft toys arranged in a circle with a white t-shirt in the center with the writing Kr46M0 written on it, the wording used to indicate one of the dead children of just a few months.
And then 94 candles lit to risk the darkness of the night.
Thus, on the beach of Steccato di Cutro at least a hundred people wanted to remember the tragedy of a year ago, the shipwreck of the gulet Summer Love which caused the death of 94 people, 35 of them minors.
An initiative promoted by the 26 February network - which brings together around 400 associations - celebrated at 4am, the time when the gulet collided with a shoal about a hundred meters from the shore.
Some survivors and families of the victims also wanted to be present.
Heartbreaking, the tears of an Afghan woman who lost her sister and two nephews in the shipwreck.
The woman couldn't handle the emotion of finding herself a few meters from that sea - rough as it was that night - which took away her loved ones and she fell ill.
"I relived the same emotions as that day, when the boat sank and it was very difficult."
He told the story of Samir, an 18-year-old Afghan who saved himself by clinging to a piece of wood.
"The help arrived late - he remembers - we had seen a light and we thought it was help but instead it was a fishing boat but when we arrived on the beach there was no one there".
Now he lives in Hamburg and he asks the Italian and German governments - like all the other family members of the victims and survivors - to be able to reunite with the family members who remained in their homeland with the opening of humanitarian corridors.
During the silent commemoration, the uncle of a boy who died in the shipwreck recited some verses from the Koran.
Then survivors and families of the victims prayed in the direction of Mecca.
At the end, two survivors, together with the two fishermen who were the first to intervene at the site of the massacre, threw a wreath of flowers, then hugged each other, melting into tears at the memory of that night a year ago.
A catch: 'I would like to forget, but I can't'
"I have bad memories, I still can't forget. I saw corpses, children. I remember everything, a real tragedy that could have been avoided. If they disembarked at four and spent two hours at sea alone, we could have saved someone."
Vincenzo Luciano, one of the fishermen who was the first to intervene after the shipwreck of the gulet Summer Love, said it with difficulty holding back his emotion.
Today Vincenzo wanted to return to that beach to remember the victims.
"I blame myself first - he added - because I usually always went to the beach first. That morning I didn't go as
I usually did around 4 but I arrived at six. And I blame myself because I wasn't able to save no one. As soon as
I arrived I pulled 4 or 5 children out of the water but later, over the course of the day, I rescued about fifteen of them.
I would really like to be able to forget, but I still can't."
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