"I pray that the bones found are not my husband's: after almost four years of waiting and pain, I still have the hope of being able to embrace him again". Caterina Deiana is the wife of Pietro Arrius , a 67-year-old pensioner from Arbus who disappeared in May 2019 at the Montevecchio mining site. "Until they find a body that is clearly identified, I will continue to wait for his return or for someone to tell me where he is," assures the woman on the phone shortly after reading the news of the discovery of some bone fragments under a rock in the countryside in Cumbua. «My husband – says the woman with her voice broken by tears -. they have to look for him alive. A long period of suffering, a slow agony, cannot end with the discovery of a few bones and the rest of the body vanishing into thin air».

The memory

Yesterday morning, the whole village recalled Arbus's latest disappearance and a story that mobilized relatives, friends, voluntary associations and the forces of order who searched for him for a long time and without success. «For days and days - recalls the president of the Civil Protection Jonathan Concas - we sifted through every corner of the village, starting from the town, right where Pietro Arrius was seen for the last time. It wasn't easy. We are talking about an extended location, with dense vegetation and rocky areas. Everything useless. The area where the bones were found has also been explored. In the end we gave up." The thread of hope to arrive at the truth has not yet broken. «Sad episodes – says the mayor Paolo Salis – that we would like to never happen again. It's something to deliver bones to family members. It means giving a burial to the loved one, a place to bring a flower».

The discovery

At the moment these are just speculations. The only element on which there seems to be no doubts is that they are human remains, for the rest the indispensable laboratory tests will be needed to give an exact age to the bones. In fact, it is not excluded that the remains belong to a grandfather of Arbus, Santino Demontis, 89, who disappeared 26 years ago or, again, to Costantino Pusceddu, another pensioner who vanished into thin air in the same period. The fact that the remains were found sheltered and under a rock, in an extremely ancient area, full of archaeological sites, including Nuragic ones, suggests a connection with the locality of S'Omu and s'Orku, about 6 kilometers away distance, where in 2008 the oldest skeleton ever found in Sardinia was discovered. Only with the extraction of the DNA which will then be compared with that of the missing persons will it be possible to clarify things. Until then the mystery will remain.

Santina Ravi

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