Casablanca - A Moroccan expatriate in Italy traveled 80 km to return a wallet to an Italian businessman who had lost it and ruled out the possibility of ever retrieving it.
Casablanca – A Moroccan expatriate in Italy traveled 80 km to return a wallet to an Italian businessman who had lost it and ruled out the possibility of ever retrieving it.
At a time when the extreme right in Italy and Europe is leading a massive anti-immigrant campaign, the story of a virtuous Moroccan expatriate has enjoyed widespread coverage in Italian newspapers and moved the Italian people with his gesture.
Carlo Merenda, an Italian businessman lost his wallet on Friday in one of the markets of Lecce, a city in the south of Italy. He came back to his house, 80 km-away, and told his wife he was desperate to find it but was sure he’d never see it again. The wallet contained bank notes, credit cards, ID and his driver’s license.
On the same day, the businessman received a call from his wife who told him that a Moroccan man, a street vendor, found the wallet and travelled 80 km to hand it back to its rightful owner.
The businessman rushed back home and thanked the Moroccan expatriate for his honesty and his gesture of returning the wallet in person and decided to share the story on Facebook. That story soon went viral and Italian newspapers published the account on Sunday.
After thanking the Moroccan man on Facebook for his effort, the Italian businessman stated:
“Well, I wholeheartedly feel ashamed to have been prejudiced in the past, to have thought badly [of immigrants] and to have thought that honesty is connected with a specific skin color.”
The businessman went on to say that he thanked the Moroccan man for the gesture. “However, the real expression of gratitude is for the lesson he taught me in life.”
