Tears of Salt Quotes

“People who want to put up walls and turn refugees away today are not acting all that differently from the Nazi collaborators who, in the words of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, embodied the “banality of evil.” Anyone willing to countenance thousands of children dying at sea or living in subhuman conditions within the confines of refugee camps is just as cruel as they were.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“You can wear all the protective gear you like, but you cannot protect your soul.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“Curar las heridas del cuerpo es mi trabajo. Hacer todo lo posible para aliviar el dolor. Una de mis preocupaciones, sin embargo, es no tener las herramientas para sanar las heridas del alma.
Cuando pensamos en los miles de refugiados que llegan todos los días a nuestras costas, nos resulta difícil darles una identidad, enmarcarlos como personas, no reducirlo todo a simples números. Sea como sea, sentimos pena cuando sabemos que sufren agonías atroces o mueren antes de alcanzar la meta deseada. Lloramos cuando vemos a un niño sin vida en los brazos de un socorrista. Podemos conmovernos, incluso llorar, pero es como si viéramos una película. Son sensaciones que duran un tiempo limitado. Todo se simplifica, se trivializa. No existe complejidad en nuestro modo de enfrentarnos al problema.
Casi nunca nos planteamos la cuestión de la debilidad, de la fragilidad emocional, de los traumas de quienes llegan a nuestro país en busca de ayuda.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story of the Refugee Crisis

“Whenever I see images of migrants being callously deported in their thousands, forced to return to the hell they have escaped, I am outraged. What kind of person has the nerve to seal the destiny of all these people with a mere signature on a piece of paper, then smile about it to the cameraman and pose for photographs? What has happened to us? How can we have so completely lost the memory of who we used to be?”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“What kind of person has the nerve to seal the destiny of all these people”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“kidnapped so that their organs can be sold to the highest bidder”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“To pay the extortionate fare to Europe and escape their countries, every day, desperate migrants sell their own kidneys.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“They cut off his head in front of our children.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“he opened his right hand, and let go of his son. He watched him disappear forever under the waves.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story

“To pay the extortionate fare to Europe and escape their countries, every day, desperate migrants sell their own kidneys. At first, I did not want to believe accounts of kidney selling, and dismissed them as sensationalist journalism. But the reports are true, and increasingly the migrants I treat have the scars to prove it.”
― Pietro Bartolo, Tears of Salt: A Doctor's Story