The Misfortune Of Fools - A Novel

Prologue & The Odyssey

Calls to Reopen Inquest into Italian Tycoon’s Death

By Sid Khan, Deep Magazine

On 15 September 2021, the small town of Battipaglia in Campania became the unlikely epicentre of a political storm. At the heart of the controversy: a plaque, freshly unveiled, honouring local businessman and philanthropist Giancarlo “Zi” Pietro, who was killed alongside his wife in a car crash the previous month.

The inscription hailed Pietro as a protector of the poor. But not everyone is convinced. Prosecutors in Milan are calling to reopen the inquest citing suspicions of corruption, foul play, and links to organised crime.

Pietro was well known far beyond Campania. In Naples, Rome, Milan, and the City of London, he moved among powerful circles—yet he rarely left the South, famously calling himself a “Tyrrhenian at heart.” To the poor of Battipaglia, he was a Robin Hood. To others, something murkier.

“Zi Pietro was just a country boy at heart,” said local farmer Luca Manza. “He helped us when the council acted like thieves. I don’t know what’ll happen to us now. God help us.”

Pietro’s rise from humble beginnings to international success began in the 1990s, when he seized business opportunities amid the post-Soviet collapse. His ventures in gas, minerals, and finance extended across Europe, the US, and the UK. Yet despite his wealth, he remained rooted in the South, where his legend—depending on who you ask—is either sacred or suspect. One anonymous charity CEO in Naples told Deep Magazine, “He’s left a big void here.”

His death came just months after the unexplained disappearance of his flamboyant associate, London club owner Visconti Salvatore, who vanished without a trace in January 2021. The timing has raised eyebrows.

Also unclear is the future of Pietro’s business empire. According to his adopted son, Areen Darwish, Pietro became reclusive and despondent following Salvatore’s disappearance, gradually withdrawing from business affairs and failing to make a clear succession plan. Day-to-day management increasingly fell on Darwish—a Syrian refugee raised by Pietro after working as a farmhand in Battipaglia.

Darwish, now based in London, is executor of the estate and temporary guardian of Pietro’s three young daughters. Little is known about him beyond his loyalty.

But Milanese Prosecutor General Federico Trotta believes the official story doesn’t add up. “This wasn’t some old Fiat Cinquecento,” he told Deep. “It was a brand-new Mercedes-Benz. German cars don’t just explode into flames. Why haven’t Neapolitan prosecutors asked the basic questions? The silence reeks of conspiracy.”

Naples has dismissed the accusations. One senior official, speaking anonymously, said, “Trotta’s playing politics. He wants to run for mayor of Milan on an anti-Mafia ticket. So he slanders the South—it’s easy pickings. He even calls Calabria ‘Saudi Calabria’. That’s racism, pure and simple.”

Still, whispers persist. From Milan to Naples, the connection between Pietro’s death and Salvatore’s disappearance is drawing scrutiny. The South remembers Pietro as a man of the people. The North suspects something else.

Darwish issued a brief press release in response:

“Once again, the North sticks its nose where it’s not wanted. While the Pietro family grieves, baseless allegations tarnish the memory of a good man—our father—who stood against racism, innuendo, and godless politics. We will remember. We will respond. But for now, we ask to be left to mourn in peace.”

1. The Odyssey

The smugglers had put them inside a Maersk cargo ship bound for Copenhagen. As the doors clanged shut and darkness enveloped them, the ten men, women and children were happy. They turned on the battery powered travel lanterns, and were hopeful that they would not suffer the same misfortune like those who came before them. But they were not fools, and accepted all the risks that came with such a voyage.

A few months back, seven north African men died in a container ship bound for Dover, that ended up in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. They perished, starving surrounded by their own shit, hoping for a better life.

The ten felt more confident. The smugglers had a track record of delivering. The boss was so good he had a moniker ‘the Magnificent’, after the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman. The smugglers had given them a ‘deluxe’ container, a forty-foot-long box stashed with goods but with fitted air vents. And space, even for people to do their business. This batch were VIPs; their families had paid thousands of dollars for the privilege and had pulled strings. The families were useful in some way to the boss.

Every single person in that container had a plan, and talked about it quite openly, except for one. When they asked him what he was going to do, he looked distracted, drawn to the squall of seagulls. ‘I’ll figure it out when I get there,’ he said. And they looked at him incredulously.

‘Strange!’ said one.

Apart from ‘Areen,’ for that is what he called himself, all had one family member or other in Germany, Sweden, or England. He had none; and he appeared to not need none. They viewed him as a curiosity, a mad man destined for a bad fate. They glanced over at him occasionally, as they huddled on the plywood floor inside the shipping container, talking amongst themselves, smoking their Gauloises Blondes, playing cards, dreaming of Stockholm or London. They talked about what they would do once they got out of the container that stank of cigarettes, piss, diesel and despair — bearable only by hope. The smell became fainter as they willed the ship to get into Germany and onto Denmark. After that onwards to Sweden, the promised land! There they would be integrated, take on ordinary jobs - become bakers, Uber drivers, shawarma dons - civilians that served the economy of the host country. Willingly and happily they exchanged one master for another. All such hopes were smattered with the sigh of ‘Ya Rabb’ – O Lord!

The Fethiyeh left Aliağa port in Izmir on a calm spring day in 2015, when an exodus of men, women and children flew, sailed but mostly walked their way to safety in Europe, fleeing wars, poverty, and tyranny and looking for a better life. The ship was followed by a colony of seagulls that looked like silver bombers diving into its foamy trail. And even if the water was rough it wouldn’t matter, for they weren’t crossing the Aegean Sea like the rest of them in fragile dinghies or barely seaworthy boats. Theirs was a solid container ship, and, unless the sea was really angry, would not disturb it, for it ploughed along slowly, imperiously towards its destination. Many would probably have got on the dinghies if they had to. Their homes were burning and ravaged by years of war. They had little choice. Many were wanted by the government.

In 2011, they belonged to prominent families in Syria who, instead of shutting their mouths at the death of a young boy in Deraa, had gone out to protest and put flowers in the barrels of the weapons pointed at them. Those dreams brought them misfortune. They thought that such acts of poetry and kindness would win the hearts of those who were meant to protect their nation. What fools they were. The soldiers shot them, they were thrown into prison cells the size of a cupboard; others joined the armed rebels and some just ran and were still running. Many ended up in that shipping container that rumbled on, impervious to world events. The only thing they had to make sure of was to make enough noise to alert people that they were inside and that the humidity and heat didn’t kill them. They had been given contacts to get in touch with the coast guards when they docked.

‘In Sweden,’ said a Yemeni, ‘they look after you, they give you a flat, money, education everything a man needs, to raise his family.’

‘In Germany,’ said a Syrian, ‘you can call Angela Merkel a whore and live!’

There was laughter all round, even from the women.

When they asked Areen what he would do, he replied, ‘I don’t have exact plans.’

‘But you do have an idea?’

He nodded.

The rest of the migrants found that strange. They felt at once protective towards him, for he looked almost wounded, and yet also perturbed and repelled by his presence. They couldn’t place him. Was he from a Syrian border town like Mayadin or Bu Kamal? Was he an Iraqi or Syrian? Was he fleeing ISIS or was he ISIS? Or was he a Shi’ite belonging to Assad’s militia? Maybe he was just a man whose heart had been torn up by war, and he had lost his mind, and so he had decided to wander the earth alone.

‘Being a refugee isn’t like being a tourist,’ said one, ‘you need a plan not just an idea, otherwise you’ll end up in Serbia or somewhere. They’ll beat the shit out of you. One of my friends was killed by some drunk Serbs for sport.’

Areen didn’t reply. But the expression on his face told them that there would be no chance of that happening, wherever he went to execute his vision.

The rest of the men started to become concerned for him as the journey progressed. They began to mutter prayers for him. ‘God help this Dervish.’

One concerned Kurd showed Areen the refugee Facebook groups about life in Europe, and what to do once they reached the mainland. But Areen didn’t seem to care. So the rest of the group called him Dervish even though he offered no prayers but seemed to trust in the Almighty intrinsically, as if he was a dark saint.

He spent three days inside the container ship and said little to the others, keeping himself to himself during the voyage. The only courtesy he did them was to turn his back when the women breastfed their children. He also shared his plentiful supply of bread, cheese, and cigarettes with the rest, to ensure that they stayed away from him.

When the time came, he dealt with his predicament stoically. The rest went from being overjoyed that the container ship had finally arrived in Europe, to despair. Instead of arriving in Copenhagen, Denmark they had arrived in Salerno, Italy.

‘The sons of bitches, those fucking Kurds,’ cursed the men, ‘they told us the ship would go to Denmark.’

‘I paid what was his name? Oh yes, Khaled. Hundreds of dollars – son of a bitch.’

‘Khaled? Wasn’t it Suleiman or Selim? Those lying cunts.’

‘What you smirking at, Dervish,’ said one, looking at Areen.

‘Suleiman the magnificent and Khaled the cunt,’ he replied, ‘has a nice ring to it. At least we’re in Europe.’

‘Yes, but Sweden is far.’

‘Be patient, trust in God.’

‘True.’

For those reading this as a forward, my name is Tam Hussein an award winning investigative journalist with a particular focus on conflict. The Blood Rep is my newsletter that covers security, jihadism, militancy and criminal networks. Do read my books To The Mountains, The Travels of Ibn Fudayl and The Darkness Inside.