Aquila
24/06/2009
Pass it on!!!
This letter has been written by Adrea Gattinoni, an
actor who was in Aquila, showing a movie. The words are directed to his
wife; but these words stand for a strong testimony for everybody that has
not yet been in Aquila (Italy).
Andrea, for those who don’t remember him, was one of
the actors in the recent movie, Si può fare (It can be done), with
Claudio Bisio, about a group of “mad people”’.
Subject: I have seen Aquila
A Letter to my wife written last night.
I saw Aquila. A ghostly silence, an unreal peace,
houses destroyed, and the ice between the ruins. The stray dogs abandoned
to their destiny. A soldier on duty was standing and watching each of the
accesses within the off-limit redline.
Jeeps, bulldozers, caterpillars, gutted houses. A
tent city. I ate in the only place open, where everybody goes, from the
army to the civil defense. Beautiful. I ate roast, mozzarella, tomatoes
and salami.
We went, while inside of a tent two hundred people
were watching “Si può fare” - It can be done. These were me,
Pietro, Michele, Natasha, Cecilia, Anna, Maria, and Franco with his woman.
We returned when the movie came to its end. People
were crying. Holding the microphone, people asked me how does a person not
go mad; what I learned from Robby and from Robby’s madness; if I was not
afraid to go mad while acting.
I spoke with the boys, all in their thirties and
disheartened. Some lost fiancées, others lost parents, others lost
neighbors. Francesca, they are in a bad way. Only yesterday, they
managed to prevent the civil defense intruding and invading their privacy;
entering their tents without notice, even in the middle of the night, for
CONTROL.
The elderly people are going mad
The use of Internet in the tent-city has been
prohibited, because they don’t have a use for it, they (the controllers)
say. The distribution of leaflets in the camp is also banned on the
pretext that the word “cazzeggio” was written in the text.
Twenty kilometers from Aquila the news is obscure.
The city is completely militarized. People here are shattered by
everything. Everyday, in the tent-city, episodes of madness and
unspeakable violence are spreading; just yesterday somebody was knifed.
Meanwhile, in all the zones and in the wood above the
city, the army is ever more numerous; the soldiers control every tree and
every rock for the upcoming G8. Do you have any idea what will happen to
these people when these pieces of ***** arrive with their helicopters and
their armor-plated cars?
There???? In order to get inside the tent cities, you
have to go through a series of humiliating perquisitions; a terrible third
degree, as if you are a criminal, even just to say hello to a friend or a
relative.
These people have nothing; they need everything. They
have rejected international aid; but they are in want of ordinary
overalls, a pair of sneakers. For Ratzinger to celebrate Mass, the
government spent €200,000 to bring a mobile chapel from Cinecittà to
Aquila.
The time drags; the elderly go mad. The tent-city is
abounding with illegal drugs. The soldiers allow everything to enter:
heroin, ecstasy, cannabis, anything. It’s like the people have been
isolated from everything and from everybody, and preferring to let them
stone themselves with anything, the important thing is that nothing gets
out of there.
Berlusconi shoots his mouth off, I SWEAR, as the
Prime Minister.
The boy who told me that said he was like a salesman
selling houseware. The media says that over there all is fine.
The boy that told me those things that I just told
you, together with other older boys, and an elderly person, also told me
that “the government is experimenting on them, on their skin, a gigantic
lab test to see how to imprison an entire city, without allowing anything
to leak out”.
Also he explained to me the great struggle for
everyone not to go mad. This on top of the mourning,
the homes that are no more, the work that doesn’t exist, everything lost.
Before eating in that place we walked more than three
kilometers looking for a restaurant; but they were all closed, because the
owners must go back to their tent-city before dark.
The silence was terrifying; it seemed a ghost town in
a movie of Zombies. And then this humanity with beating hearts and lost
dignity, what’s more, crying they thank you because you went there.
I will go back. With that gigantic full moon
watching me in the night, along the road when we departed, I thought of
you and how much I wanted to throw myself on your neck and tell you that I
will never leave you, never and never.
Inside a private eating place [a sort of rotisserie]
where we had our meal, while they were preparing something to eat along
with its bills, outside there were tables in the evening breeze, one of
the staff behind the bench offered some roast meat to Michele (Michael),
saying: “Have a taste, have a taste.”
Michele said no to him, for someone was already
getting something for him, but he insisted to the point Michele finally
accepted; and he said smilingly: “No need to lose good manners.”
Tomorrow, I will write something on the internet
about what has come to pass; people must be told. Actually, I will publish
my letter to you.
Andrea Gattinoni, the night of the 11th of May.
I can’t explain it to myself...I
{Translated from the Italian: "HO VISTO L 'AQUILA"}
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