The University of Bologna awaits Patrick Zaki

The University of Bologna awaits Patrick Zaki. It has been waiting for him since February 2020: thirty months, one hundred and twenty weeks.

From today, while waiting for yet another hearing, scheduled for 27 September, thirty pictures of Patrick and one hundred and twenty coloured drapes will fill and colour the corridors and courtyard of Palazzo Poggi, seat of the Rectorate and centre of the University of Bologna.

We know Patrick's cardboard cut-outs: we have encountered them in the streets, in classrooms, in libraries, in study rooms. We wanted to gather them here as today thousands of students meet again in the city and the university. Patrick is missing among them. These images remind us of his presence and absence: a permanent presence in our thoughts, a painful absence in our daily lives.

The drapes along Patrick's pictures are an embrace of the many people who over so many months and weeks have gathered around him, around his absence.

These are not just any drapes. They are drapes made from scraps of a thousand different fabrics; these scraps left alone were destined to disappear. Recovered and sewn together, they now form the ideal chain of solidarity, indignation and hope that has united us in Patrick's name.

These colourful drapes come out of a prison. The tailor's shop “Gomito a gomito” (Elbow to elbow), which operates in the women's wing of the Dozza Penitentiary, sewed the scraps creating them.

To Patrick, for Patrick, this embrace.