IN SEARCH FOR HOPE WHILE THE EARTH QUAKES AND INNOCENT GIRLS ARE SLAUGHTERED OUTSIDE THEIR SCHOOL

Melissa Bassi, 16, died in a bomb blast last Saturday

The news from Italy have been terrible this weekend. I guess they got to you all somehow. It has been a tragic, terribly sad end of the week for all of us, though not directly involved in those tragedies.

7:40 a.m. Saturday 19 May  - One student has been killed and seven others injured in a suspected mafia bomb blast at a school in southern Italy. Her name was Melissa Bassi. She was only 16. 

I shared my thoughts on facebook as soon as I heard about it: "As a mother and a teacher I'm stunned, speechless, horrified. It's been a long time since I last felt proud to live in my beautiful difficult country. When   was it? Why was that? Today I must feel sorrowful and ashamed again. Please don't tell me there are crazy people everywhere. I know that."

MUSIC AND FABLES TO GO ON LIVING AND ... DREAMING

Well, it has been a different Saturday night, moving and amusing at the same time.

You must know I love music, classical music, opera, poliphony as well as Brit pop or good Italian music. I studied singing for many years and I used to sing in a choir with whom I toured all over the world. Just wonderful memories now: when I had my first child I stopped, cause it was too complicated to cope with my job (teaching), my family ( husband and a baby son), my house and my beautiful but "time wasting" hobby. So I had to give up. Anyhow, any time they organize concerts or cultural events I'm invited to take part in ... the audience. So they invited me for this evening at 7 p.m. telling me that three young people from L'Aquila would perform in a melodrama show based on fables. One of them is one of my best friend's daughter, the other two friends of hers.

I went, entered the big hall with a bit of nostalgia, sat among the crowd of familiar faces - colleagues, ex-colleagues, some students of mine, my ex-singing mates- and waited for the beginning of the show reading the leaflet with the curricula of MIRIAM, DIEGO and VALENTINA. What extraordinary young people! They've really achieved a lot in their young lives: diplomas, degrees, drama courses and so on. What a pity that on 6th of April the earthquake shattered down their houses and greatly complicated their lives and their expectations. What luck they are still here safe and sound. Valentina did her latest exam at University just few days ago among several difficulties. Miriam had to come back and live in our small town in Lazio -100 km from L'Aquila- and commutes whenever she needs to by car. Diego has been living in a small house in the countryside with the rest of his family since then.

The lights turned off and Miriam led us, with her beautiful persuasive voice, into the fantasy worlds of Babar the elephant and the little Paddington Bear. Yes, she told us good fables, and first Valentina, then Diego, commented those stories at the piano with incredibly fit music by Francis Poulenc and Herbert Chappell. What was their message? The earthquake shattered their houses to pieces but NOT THEIR DREAMS. They are going to "become king" like Babar or to "sing their song at the Royal Albert Hall" like Paddington Bear. They want to make their dreams come true and don't want anybody or anything to stop them. I wish Miriam, Diego and Valentina success and happiness. May all their dreams come true, first of all that of going back living and working in L'Aquila with no more fear and, possibly, in a new house.

Miriam plays the flute, the piano, is a good actress and is the only one of the three to have stuff of hers in the Net. I've found this clip with her playing a melody at the piano by Giovanni Allevi.

When the earth quakes...

When the earth quakes once, twice, three times a day or even more often and your house is there, standing up right but with lots of "scars" on the walls; when you're often woken up in the middle of the night 'cause your bed is shaking and swinging at the rythm of a sinister rattling and creaking and you cannot go on sleeping, well, you start hating your own home because you don't feel safe in there. Your life is inevitably shaken, your self-confidence shattered to pieces, your optimism, hopes and dreams are hidden away in a deep black hole inside your heart waiting for better times.

I force myself to think about those unfortunate who lost their dear, houses, businesses in the earthquake on April 6th and "Look", I say to myself, "you are luckier". But it doesn't work, it's even worse. I go on with a constant sense of anxiety and shakiness, wishing to go and live somewhere else, to escape. I did it for a while, I went to London for some days at Easter but I had to come back, eventually.

Inevitably our conversations at school and at home, with friends and family focus on the earthquake, on our colleagues who live nearer the epicentre and aren't coming to work, who will instead finish the school - year in schools closer to their collapsed or condemn - habitations and are living in tents or hotels, on other colleagues who are looking for a temporary accomodation here, in our town, because there are about 100km between the epicentre and us - so, maybe, it is better to move here. Even though we are trying hard to go on with our routines, it is not that easy. For example, while I'm teaching my classes, reading Conrad or Wilde, I start thinking..."Will I be able to act and react properly if...?" "Will I be able to contain their panic if ...?"

"It will pass", I repeat to myself, "It will pass away" but I can't avoid thinking that, anyway, it will come back sooner or later. It has already happened: in 1980 when I was a teenager, in 2000 when I was at home with my two little sons and felt desperately powerless and inadequate at protecting them, and now again ... and it doesn't stop ... it doesn't end.

Natural catastrophes, like wars, can be radically destabilizing. So I want to close this post with some lines from a poem written during the war in ex-Yugoslavia by an Italian poet-writer, Erry De Luca, I greatly admire:

"In guerra le parole dei poeti

proteggono la vita

insieme alle preghiere di una madre

In guerra gli orfani

e quelli senza un libro

sono senza riparo"

For those who don't understand Italian I'll try to translate:

"In war-time the words of the poets

protect your life

together with the prayers of a mother

In war-time the orphans

and those without a book

are shelterless"

I'm lucky then: I've got plenty of beautiful books and I love poetry. And I've got my mother's prayers as well, that is , my family's support and love. It will pass, it will end, it will fade away...