Like a man forgotten in anonymity

Mr. Ali was not noticed until after he was dead. Bluebottles danced in front of the window of his apartment in Zurich Altstetten. And in the stairwell it smelled sweet and sour. The smell came in waves.

It was a Monday when the neighbors found out that they hadn’t seen Mr. Ali (not his real name) for two weeks. Which was unusual, because he usually trotted to the mailbox several times a day, played in it and let the flap clatter shut again.

The alarmed police officers did not find much of Mr. Ali. The summer heat had taken its toll on the little body. Maggots had eaten through what was left.

A friend of mine told me about Mr. Ali over a glass of wine. She lived diagonally above him. “I rarely spoke to him,” she said. I felt her guilty conscience. He was more on her mind now that he was dead than when he was alive.

I lay awake that night wondering how anyone can be forgotten in our society. I suspected drama.

The next morning I wrote a Whatsapp message to my friend: “I want to write a text about your neighbor.”

lost family

Every week in Zurich, two to three people die a lonely death like Mr. Ali. They were forgotten by their fellow human beings. Or they wanted to be forgotten.

City dwellers lose touch with their fellow human beings more often than the rural population. “Not despite, but obviously because of a higher social density,” reads one Analysis by the Empirica institute from Bonn. And the Zurich public prosecutor’s office also said on request that lonely death is primarily a problem in big cities: “In the country, the public prosecutor’s office is called up less often when someone dies. Many still have a family doctor who knows the entire medical history.”

If no one reports 48 hours after finding a body, the officials in the city of Zurich look for relatives. They look in the civil register office, in hospital files, in tax documents and in the folders of the social welfare offices for references to children, partners, siblings. Most of the time you can find someone who knew the person. No one was found with Mr. Ali.

His story is representative of many destinies. His real name is therefore irrelevant, as is his exact origin. His story represents the increasing number of people becoming lonely in cities. They get lost in the crowd. And which are only really noticed when they are no more.

A house full of stories

Mr. Ali lived in a tiny apartment in a nondescript apartment building at the end of a cul-de-sac. The apartment had a balcony. My friend has never seen him sitting there. Sometimes he stepped onto the balcony for a moment, looked around and then disappeared again. As if he was looking for something or afraid of being looked for.

Many strange stories about Mr. Ali are circulating in the eleven-apartment building. For example, that he followed a neighbor and locked her in the basement. Or punching a man in the face at the neighborhood store. That he sometimes ran up and down the stairs for no apparent reason. That he photographed the license plates of the cars parked in front of the apartment building. That he barricaded his apartment with seven padlocks. That he had a psychosis. And that he had sent a registered letter to a neighbor asking him not to greet him in the stairwell.

They are stories that others tell about Mr. Ali. None he has ever told himself.

But there are also memories of Mr. Ali that paint a different picture. For example, that he greeted everyone politely who passed him, and that he always curtsied like a servant before the king. That he offered tea to neighbors. And many questions asked about Swiss politics. And that he stooped as if he had a heavy load to carry – even though he was only in his fifties.

The woman who lived with Mr. Ali sometimes heard him moving furniture at night. And the neighbor said about it: “He often made phone calls in a foreign language. He often cried then. I think he was talking to his mother.”

The Zurich City Police report states: “Relatives of the deceased could not be found.” The inquiries at the social welfare office, from which he received an IV pension, were also negative. Also research at the residents’ registration office of the city of Zurich. A request from the Metropolitan Police via Interpol to the authorities in Mr Ali’s home in the Middle East went unanswered.

The country index of the Swiss Office of Justice states that a response to an application for legal assistance to the competent authority in Mr Ali’s home country can be expected after six months at the earliest. Often none come at all.

Perhaps there is a mother who does not know that her son has died. A mother waiting for calls. But why did Mr. Ali live in Zurich at all and not in his home country?

A neighbor believes he was in prison in his country of origin. He was tortured there and his friends killed. So he fled to Switzerland – also to protect the family from state repression. An escape for love of family? It became an escape into solitude.

Mr. Ali was naturalized in Switzerland and joined the SP in Zurich. He supported National Councilor Angelo Barrile in the election campaign. He says about him: “He was a very pleasant and warm person. Polite but quiet. I remember him well, but actually I can’t tell you anything about him. Except that he was suddenly there and wanted to help – and then I didn’t see him anymore. I didn’t know he died.”

Mr Ali is an “extraordinary death”. The summoned medic reports this to the police on the day of the discovery. Extraordinary because it is initially unclear what caused his death and his identity is not immediately clear. And so, suddenly, a number of people are taking care of the corpse of a man whose life apparently nobody in Switzerland has cared about. So be it actions provided for by law in the case of a discovery, explains the public prosecutor’s office.

A undertaker drives the deceased to the forensic medicine department of the University of Zurich. An expert doctor examines him. The public prosecutor conducts a special procedure regarding extraordinary death. Police officers search the apartment for evidence of a crime – and for assets, money, jewelry, pictures to secure them. You won’t find anything.

Mr Ali hardly owned anything. A narrow bed. A table. Three chairs. A shelf. And a small gray backpack that he always carried with him. The police seal the door. This is also standard. Even if nothing points to a crime.

In the forensic medicine department at the University of Zurich, Mr. Ali is identified thanks to a blood sample that his family doctor once took. The forensic pathologist states that the cause of death was natural internal events. There is no evidence of criminally relevant behavior by third parties, the reason given in the non-handling order. The public prosecutor ordered no further investigations. And Mr. Ali will soon be forgotten again.

What if nobody wants to say goodbye?

Rolf Steinmann, head of the Zurich funeral home, knows many fates like that of Mr. Ali. He says: “People like him die twice: before biological death, they die social death through loneliness.”

If relatives are missing or do not care, Steinmann decides whether a body will be released for burial. And what happens then? Steinmann says: “No one is ‘disposed of’ here.”

If someone has paid church tax, then the churches take care of the burial. The funeral home takes care of the rest. In Zurich there is a free basic burial and a small, fine ceremony for everyone. That’s not the case everywhere. The Swiss Federal Constitution guarantees everyone a decent burial. What that means, however, is up to the communities themselves to decide.

Once a year, at the end of September, in Zurich, we say farewell to the deceased who had no relatives. For four years, the celebration has been accompanied by poets. The funeral home gives the poets the addresses. They try to find out something, write a poem that they read during the ceremony. music is playing. Sometimes a carer from a retirement home joins them, or a distant acquaintance. No one remembers whether someone came to see Mr. Ali. Not even the cemetery gardener who buried him.

After studying the procedural documents and the police report, after all the talks with neighbors, party colleagues, public prosecutors, forensic experts and undertakers, I am now writing this text and I ask myself: who was he really, this Mr. Ali?

For the public prosecutor, the Ali case was “not unusual”. The process was completed in less than half a year.

It was a tragic case for the funeral director. But one of many.

For the neighbors, Mr. Ali was an oddball.

For the party colleagues a silent helper.

And for me Mr. Ali is the man whose story leaves me perplexed. At a loss as to who he really was. Why his tracks are covered. And why he got lost in our society.

Mr Ali now lies in Witikon in a row grave for Muslims. The property management had the few items he owned disposed of. Employees from a municipal second-hand store picked them up.

The apartment on the first floor on the dead-end street was empty for four months. An exterminator has destroyed the bluebottles. A crime scene cleaner scrubbed the floor. Then the parquet floor on which Mr. Ali had lain for two weeks was torn out and relaid. He couldn’t be saved. The city and the owners shared the costs because Mr. Ali was an IV recipient, says an administration employee on the phone.

A young woman from Eastern Europe has now moved into the apartment. The neighbors greet her in the stairwell. Hardly anyone knows exactly who she is.