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Tears fall as little Manny walks tall
IT was the moment Manuel Musu dreamed of - his daughter Manny, 5, the girl who captured Australian hearts when her life was smashed apart by the Jakarta Australian Embassy bomb blast, walking for the first time since the terror attack. Manny's beaming face tells a story of triumph as she holds the hand of her Aunt Esti, her mother's sister, in her father's photographs of the moment. She has overcome her grief following the death of her mother, Maria Eva Kumalawati, in the September 9 blast, endured months of agony with shrapnel still spread through her body, and defied the medical odds to take her first steps. Mr Musu, 31, said he choked back tears as he photographed his daughter's short but brave journey. "It happened just a few days ago," an emotional Mr Musu told The Sunday Mail. "It was a late Christmas present, but it was perfect." Manny will soon return to Singapore for an operation to remove a piece of metal wedged 7cm inside her brain. If it remained there it would always endanger her life. Mr Musu said that after the operation he planned to take Manny to her mother's grave in Jakarta, and to visit Maria Eva's other sisters in the Indonesian capital. Manny, five, made world headlines when it emerged her genetic father was Australian police constable Dave Norman, 25, the result of an affair with Maria Eva, 27, which Mr Musu knew nothing of. After weeks of confusion that loomed as an international tug-of-war for Manny's custody, Mr Norman and Mr Musu agreed that she should be raised in Italy by Mr Musu, the only father she has known. Posted by: God Save The World 2005-02-05 |
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