‘I DON’T NEED HIS STUFF. I NEED HIM.’

WHEN NAZZARENO TASSONE DIED FIGHTING ISIL IN SYRIA, ALL HIS MOTHER GOT BACK WAS HIS KNAPSACK

Tina Martino handed the invoice to the receptionist at the DHL courier office and said, “I’m here to pick up a package.” Out the window an unexpected spring snow was coming down in the parking lot at the Hamilton airport cargo centre.

An employee came out 15 minutes later with a backpack. It was black and heavy. Martino signed for it. “Thank you very much,” she said. She carried it to the car and put it at her feet. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” she said. “I just hope that it helps.”

Martino is a Niagara Falls casino dealer. The backpack had belonged to her son, Nazzareno Tassone. He loved video games and guns. He had tried unsuccessfully to join the Canadian military and had instead begun working for CN in Edmonton. He had also gone through a painful breakup. Then last June he announced he was leaving for Iraq.

He had a job there teaching English, he told Martino. She gave him money for the plane ticket. Her son had dreamed of teaching in Japan and she thought the contract in Iraq might get him started on a new path.

It wasn’t until three months ago that she found out he wasn’t really teaching, that in truth he was fighting with Kurdish guerrillas in northern Syria. With its trademark over-the-top cruelty, on Dec. 22 ISIL had posted photos of Tassone’s body on the Internet.

Once his identity was confirmed, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, sent Martino a condolence letter on Jan. 3 saying Tassone, 23, had been killed in Raqqa province along with a British chef named Ryan Lock, 20, and three Kurdish fighters.

“He crossed continents for the destiny of our people and humanity,” the letter read, adding “with great regret” that ISIL had taken the bodies. Tassone and Lock seemed to have been ambushed at night but how it happened was not explained in detail.

Lock’s remains arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport on Feb. 19 to a hero’s welcome. Kurdish demonstrators clutching roses, flags and martyrdom photos came out to watch the hearse carry him to his resting place.

Determined to bury her son at home as well, Martino pleaded with Canadian and Kurdish officials for help. Her daughter started a Bring Nazzareno Tassone Home page on Facebook. There was talk of negotiations with ISIL, but if they ever happened there was nothing to show for them.

Martino went to Toronto on March 18 to receive a phone call from the YPG’s official spokesman, Redur Xelil. She was told he would answer all her questions. He spoke in Kurdish so a translator was needed. But he told her nothing and she left disappointed. “My heart is empty,” she wrote on Facebook.

A few days later, a box arrived from Edmonton. His ex-girlfriend had sent his possessions. It was difficult for Martino to see his comic book collection, the gold family ring he wore, his black clip-on tie and the suit she hoped to bury him in.

Then his backpack arrived in Canada on March 29. The Canadian embassy in Irbil, Iraq, had sent it by courier. It travelled through the United Arab Emirates, Leipzig and Cincinnati before arriving at Hamilton airport.

She picked it up the next day. Inside she found a package of Skittles, a toothbrush, mess kit, scarf, Turkish coins, pants, a couple of T-shirts, prayer beads, a slingshot and a bag of rocks. “A lot of rocks,” she said. Canadian officials told her they were ammunition for his slingshot but Martino knew better. He’d been collecting rocks since he was a kid. He’d dig them up in the backyard and his grandfather would tell him they were dinosaur bones.

What Martino was most eager to get back were his notebooks. The courier invoice said there were three of them in his pack. Her son liked to write and she hoped they might give her some insights into his experiences.

The first notebook was just a list of Kurdish words and their translations. The second was a diary in which he had written about arriving in northern Iraq on June 26 and crossing the border to Syria for training three days later.

He said the Kurds had named him Agir, which he said meant Fire. He thought that was “awesome.” He underwent training. He adopted a dog he called Rocket. He got a haircut. He got sick. But many of the entries were about his ex-girlfriend in Edmonton.

July 14: “So I gusse (sic) the first thing is that I’m in this shithole country for the wrong reasons. I’m all for the Kurds being free, and all that jazz, but its not my real want in this place ... I wanted to escape from a woman ... I just really want to get to the front. This ideology is horseshit. I’m not here to be indoctrinated. I’m here to stack bodies.”

July 16: “I want to shoot Daesh (ISIL). Shoot shoot shoot. Shoot em dead. Dead dead dead. Ideology is dumb. Kill kill kill.”

Aug. 10: “I got my first confirmed kill.”

Aug. 20: “Had a lot of time to think in the hospital (he had been there a week with an illness) and if I get home I want to settle down and run my company ... That’s what I want above all else. Easy no? Just have to get home.”

Tucked into one of the notebooks were several small sheets of paper, folded and stapled shut. They were a handwritten note dated a week after Tassone’s death. “I was in the same action that saw your son’s passing and I can assure you that he died bravely, loading ammunition for his comrades even though already injured in the hand,” it read. It was signed A.J. Woodhead, who fellow fighters said was a YPG volunteer from Regina.

A third notebook was empty except for a letter dated Dec. 25. The author said his name was Andok Cotkar and that he had met Tassone at training camp. They had reconnected when Tassone had joined his fighting unit a month earlier.

“Our team of four Westerners, Agir, Ryan, Andy and me, were sent to the front at our request, to participate in the push towards Raqqa. We joined an assault on a village, but were ambushed,” wrote Cotkar, believed to be a German.

“During the resulting firefight that lasted for four hours, Agir and Ryan were killed in their rear guard action. I was not there at this point as I was evacuated as a casualty, but by Andy’s account, Agir, even while wounded, helped by supplying Andy with ammunition for his light machine gun and prepared grenades as Daesh assaulted their position. Due to them being the last element to withdraw, it was not possible to recover Agir’s body.”

After going through the pack, Martino seemed disappointed. The belongings weren’t enough. “I don’t need his stuff. I need him,” she said. “I need him to come home. I need answers. I need some kind of explanation.”

She said Global Affairs Canada had kept his passport. They said they would need it to transport his body if it was found. Hearing that gave her hope but after more than three months she just wanted to know whether to keep waiting. “I just need them either to say, ‘We have him and he’s coming home,’ or ‘We’re sorry.’ ”

I WAS IN THE SAME ACTION THAT SAW YOUR SON’S PASSING AND I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT HE DIED BRAVELY, LOADING AMMUNITION FOR HIS COMRADES EVEN THOUGH ALREADY INJURED IN THE HAND. — A.J. WOODHEAD IN LETTER ON DEATH OF NAZZARENO TASSONE

PHOTOS: TYLER ANDERSON / NATIONAL POST Tina Martino sits with some of her son’s belongings at her home in Niagara Falls. Nazzareno Tassone was killed a few days before Christmas while he was fighting with the Kurdish forces against ISIL in Syria. She was told his body was not recovered.

Nazzareno Tassone had told his mother that he had a job teaching English in Iraq, but she learned on his death that he had been fighting with Kurdish guerrillas in northern Syria.