Pizza King, Once Homeless Himself, Honors Homeless Victims in NYC

İngilizce links to original English article

(New York Times, 11 October 2019)

//Ed. Note: click on 'İngilizce' above to read the entire
NYT article.//


             Flowers with pizza topping.

In New York City, candles, flowers and handwritten tributes flow onto 

the sidewalk like surf filling a void in the sand, replacing the body just 

taken away from there. Memorials in Chinatown this week marked the 

spots where four homeless men were killed on Saturday, their heads 

smashed while they slept by an attacker wielding a metal bar.

But something else was left at the sites. Fresh boxes of hot pizza were 

stacked at each memorial. And with them, a note. “I wish with all my 

heart,” it read, “that I could have been there at that very moment to 

protect all of you guys.”

             Hakkı Akdeniz

The author added, “you know me as the pizza guy.” Then he revealed 

something from his own past: “As a former homeless man, I know the 

struggle that all of you guys went through every day.”

The pizzas and notes came from Hakki Akdeniz, a 39-year-old 

immigrant who has built a small chain of pizza shops in the city and, 

with it, something of an unofficial, but solid, support network for the 

homeless in Manhattan. His visits to the memorials this week, each 

time lugging a stack of pizzas that reached his chin, follows a remarkable 

journey even in a city built on rags-to-riches tales.