Miami says to me the same things places like Las Vegas or Saint Tropez say. Solitude, unhappiness, dominance of the appearance, weakness, boredom, excessive loud music everywhere, hard drinks, everything under a blanket of lies and money that keeps it all together. There's nothing into it and nothing I can do here.
There's many many very sexy women around on sunday night, and their unapproachability or even their easy reachability it's not something I am able to use. I long for the sex but everything that surrounds the sex keeps me away.
Walking down the streets at night I am solicited by prostitutes posing as tourists or students, and all their professional questions and attitudes make me depressed and withdrawn into myself. Soliciting is illegal, which means, like with all the illegal things, that just a little more lies and precautions are needed to access certain pleasures.
Ishtar, or whatever invented name she is using, approaches me in front of some big hotel on Ocean drive and we walk together the some twelve blocks down to the Mango club. I haven't invited or asked her anything, I only smiled at her the way I got accustomed to do here. But she wants to ask all her uninterested questions and tell her story and I let her. She's cute, but it is not a real conversation.
From Lithuania, studies in New York, all of a sudden has to pay the term to the school and hasn't the money, she is also a professional masseuse, 21, etc. I try to tell her that I am not the right target for her, that she is wasting her time. I feel more and more naive and stupid talking to her like that. I tell her that I never paid for sex and I am not going to start now. She pretends it is different if I just give her money for the school. I kind of laugh at this. Say no again. I try not to sound judgmental or anything, it's just the way it is. She doesn't seem to want to listen. Finally we part in front of the club, she goes in. She'll probably find one of the many lonesome men in there, those standing there watching at the half-naked bar girls dancing on the counter of the bar, their phallic bottles of beer in hand.
As I walk away, I think of the things I would have wanted to tell her. Those occur to me always when it's too late.
"Ishtar", I would have said, "did it ever happened to you to feel so lonesome and apart from everyone else and impossible to reach and trapped in your solitude, exactly when someone, maybe many, were desperately trying to have you, or have something from you?"
Ishtar would jump into the window opened by the word 'solitude' and say something like, "I can take care of your solitude, you know", but I wouldn't mind the interruption. "What you're doing to me right now, Ishtar, it's exactly that. You are making me feel lonesome and unreachable and trapped in my solitude. You are showing me how wrong it is for me to be here, or how wrong I seem to be for this world. I know that this enhanced feeling of solitude in some weird way is supposed to work in your favor... but I am not like that. I want the real thing, even for one night I need to know that someone is there actually desiring me or finding me attractive or interesting."
"I am just offering you some fun, if you don't want that..." she would say at that point, giving her hopes away. "I am sure the sex would be 'fun' as you say", I would answer. "But I dread the moment when the money is given, the sex is done, and nothing at all is left, not even a bit of regret. I am scared of that moment and of its consequences on my mood." Because I don't want to use the world 'spirit' or similar imprecise tools.

I walk away wondering what Ishtar would have said then. If at my words she would have wandered outside of all the prepared speeches full of details and the well known answers and the well known careful questions. I don't know. It's pretty frustrating and idiot to invent conversations like that anyway. I slowly go back to the hostel, walking under the palms and the neon lights, carefully trying not to smile at the pretty girls again, but there will be more prostitutes to dodge before I am safe in bed, horny and in a bad, bad mood.

While in Paris the riots are still going on after eleven days (in picture: scene from the riots, from repubblica.it), in Italy the few voices that usually speak out on immigration turned even more burlesque.

Northern League coordinator and institutional reforms minister, Roberto Calderoli, speaking about the metropolitan guerrilla in Paris said that it was only the top of the iceberg of what would happen very soon in France, Netherlands and in the other countries that, after a colonial policy, had to accept a strong immigration. He said that it was necessary to stop the invasion of Italy made by irregular non-EU immigrants. Otherwise Italy would have to pay the same price. He said that irregular immigration was the bomb while the left wing political movements were the detonator and the lack of repression of these two forms of illegality was the hand that triggers the bomb. (from AGI)

Calderoli is a blatant racist and an obsessive opposer to any form of immigration to Italy (from poorer countries, doh). But there's something obviously true in what he says and that cannot be denied: things can only get worse in Europe in such matters. Netherlands and France are a lesson that Italy will never learn. Since this is a global unstoppable process anyway, Calderoli's idea of a forced stop to immigration is just ridiculous.

In face of the riots in France, anyway, a statement (widely attacked from the right) by Mr Romano Prodi, (sort of) leader of the left-wing opposition, proved that more politicians are beginning to worry. It sounded quite unheard, considering how our politicians usually (besides Calderoli) underestimate the problem.

"We should not believe to be in a so different situation from the one in Paris", he said: "it's just a matter of time. We have the worse suburbs in Europe. Our suburbs are a human tragedy and if we don't take some serious action, on the social and residential sides, we are going to have many [situations like] Paris. There are very bad conditions and unhappiness even where only Italians are" (from La Repubblica).

New and better residences are certainly a good project. Also working on the social side (which means roughly trying to give the immigrants welfare protection, a legal job, not a "black" one as for the majority is today) is important.
After all, one person over ten in Italy migrated here from another country in the last years. In 2004, italian population grew of just 574,100 units. Of these, 558,200 were immigrants. Believe it or not.

But not Calderoli nor Prodi won't ever have the courage to fight illegal immigration with the only possible mean: by legalizing it.
Consider that Ndrangheta and Mafia this way won't make a penny out of illegal immigration. Plus a legalized immigrant hardly falls into criminal organizations. Legalization is right and good. And why immigration should be illegal anyway?

I say, give them a decent boat to cross the sea from Africa (not a sinking one). Identify them. Give 'em the damn papers. Give them a permit of stay and to travel across Europe. Later, when they find a job, let them bring their families too.
A part of the fact that this way the problems should be easier to face (there'd be a past deal between the institution and the immigrant) and less people would go underground: this would also be the only right thing to do.

Because they're free people, like us, aren't they. Well, until we put them all in detention, of course.

Beautiful, compelling writing by Marco Rovelli on Nazione Indiana. Not long ago we covered the vicissitudes of Fabrizio Gatti, who posed as an illegal alien and got detained. Now Rovelli pieces together the story of runaway 'illegal' immigrant secluded in a detention camp in Bologna. It's Sahid's story, "Dark into the eyes" (Il buio dentro gli occhi).

You can read it here, but since it is in Italian, once again Italy is falling provides you with the best free bits of translation on the Italian blog market. Some lines have been stripped because of the lazy translator. Blame him.

Please be warned that the story you are going to read it's a violent, unjust, tough story. It's not recommended for the ones who do not want to admit, for example, how much racist and violent and abusive Italian security forces can be.

You meet Sahid at the library. You want me clandestine, but you are not going to cut me off the world. He reads newspapers, talks, argues. As he always did, in Morocco too. You have to keep your sight, to save yourself, to avoid being drowned by the non-existence to which they condemned you.(...)
It happened at the CPT¹ in Bologna, his city. It's been his city for fifteen years already. It was his city before March the 2^nd, and still is.

It's Sunday (...) At ten Pm Sahid is in the TV hall... in the intervals among words, the sound of rain against the cells' roof. Then a rumble. Not a thunder, but cries. Shutting up, snapping, running to see. A stronger beat, more irregular.

Across the fence the carabinieri took two boys that just tried to climb over. On that side of the fence there are Red Cross' rooms, the police's hut, the infirmary. But it's the only possible way out. They drag them towards the hut, shoving them, insulting. Sahid and the others scream, Leave 'em alone. They already know what is about to happen. They also know, though, that the cries won't stop them. And this just make them scream even more.

The two boys are a Russian and a Tunisian. They became buddies, learned to trust each other. To run away you have to trust your buddy, you must turn into a single body with him. If he stumbles, you stumble. You must be coordinate. Not that it would be enough anyway. It didn't worked for them. The carabinieri handed them over to the police (...)
And the speechless hear, not being deaf, the cries of their comrades, of the Tunisian and the Russian one, coming from the hut, they are being beaten. Thus someone climbs on the roof, untwists the light bulbs and throw them across the fence. Others go in front of the entrance and throw garbage bags. Then others go all the way back to the courtyard, detach a piece of gutter, throw it on the other side of the fence.

Demonstrative actions, policemen keep doing their job, and for the speechless there's only but to scream even more, and who is in charge cannot stand this. Policemen come out of the hut with the two boys, who have blood all over them, and that blood wasn't there when they got in. They bring them to the entrance, behind the gates there's Sahid who's resisting along with the comrades, they don't want retaliations. They duly open the gates enough to let the Russian and the Tunisian in, then they close them back.

Meanwhile more policemen open the hydrants against the ones on the roof. Some of them start to come down, but someone resists. One does not want to stop yelling, he just cannot be silent once again: he lived in Italy for years, he comes from Morocco but his children were born in Italy, they're italian, and he's now supposed to be quiet and let them deport him, leave his family behind, his life, no, this cannot be done without resisting. He goes on screaming. The foreman of the Red Cross convinces him to come down, one should trust his word. Come down, he tells him. It's all over. We are not going to do you no harm. He comes down, on the other side of the fence, and instead there, fists and kicks from the guards. Onto another one, who resisted with him up till the end, pours down a piece of cement, one that was thrown from the other side, a policeman decided to give it back to him.

A load of fists, then it seems over. Everybody gets back to the rooms, someone to the TV hall, but the TV is off now, some other attempts to have a coffee trying to swallow his rage. (...)
Sahid sees them as he comes out from the room. Policemen with the anti-riot outfit, harnessed with shields, helmets, truncheons. Punitive expedition. Woe to the vanquished. Along with them Sahid sees the foreman of the Red Cross, the only one who has all the keys of the camp. Sahid runs to the coffee room, They're coming, cries, Let's lock ourselves in. (...)

Policemen are before the door now. They begin to hit the door with the truncheons. One of Sahid's comrades gives it a try, Inspector, he says, there's no need to break through the door. We open it and we talk about it, he says. (...) The Inspector does not agree to the deal. No, he says, I am going to break through the door, and to break through you too. The Inspector is a man of his word. The moment he gets in he hits him with his truncheon. Then twelve more guards get in. Twelve, as the apostles. It may sound as a made-up detail for a story. But it's all real. The clubbing, besides, it's even more real. As it is the blood scattered all around, on the coffee machine, on the chairs, on the TV. Sahid gets his head ripped open and a finger broken.
When it's all done, and nobody keeps is legs, they go. They throw teargas in and close the door. There are no windows in the room, they're suffocating, but the boys have not the courage to get up and out. They hear screams from the other rooms. Everybody gets it, nobody has to be unaccounted for. It has to be written on their body that they are the speechless.

At the end of the roll call they are all gathered in the alley, in a row. They have been all written on cautiously, but it is quite clear that it takes a seal now, a neat and indelible signature. The seal goes on for three hours. All standing, exposed to clubbing, slapping, fists. A particularly creative policeman breaks his shield on Sahid's head. Spits in the face, insults yelled in the ear. And you have to stay put, motionless, if you don't want to make it worse. At Sahid's side someone faints. A policeman put a foot on his chest, as a hunter with the killed beast, glances with a satisfied look to his colleague, The bastard it's a three cylinders engine, he keeps working.

There's also the officer, Sahid recalls, going around with his mobile phone taking pictures. Who's the cutest? Then he stops in front of Sahid and takes a picture. Sahid stands still, as it should be for a souvenir picture. He looks at the lens, keeps his eyes wide open. And he sees the Red Cross' Foreman, the one who opened the fence, the one that should be humanitarian, heading the police, pointing with his finger the detainees, the good and the bad, doesn't leave anybody short. And policemen gain by his instructions. Two of them stand on the door, when the doctor arrives they warn, the doctor should not see the beating happening, it's risky, he could talk. The doctor arrives, one by one folks go to the infirmary, he gives them stitches, send them back. He doesn't see anything, but he doesn't want to see either. As many, too many in the italic borderlands of the European fortresses.

- Here the police is in charge, don't you see? That this is a land separated from Italy? That they made the law for us? Don't you see it, that we can do whatever we want? If you don't want to go to your country in flesh and bones, we will forward you in pieces, pieces of shit...

This is the guards' litany as Sahid remembers it. (...)
He says: to me, it's been an action planned in the slightest details, to give an essay to the CPT's guests on how the place is cut off from the rest of the world and that in that place police rules. We clandestines, as they call us, have only to endure it because, as the police tells us, we have no right to denounce them. We are cannon fodder, just that.

Yet Sahid, along with other comrades, didn't stand it. That writing of beatings on the flesh wasn't enough to make memory of their mutism. They went on talking. And they denounced their torturers. Not all of them did though. Some of them were repatriated right away. Among them, the Tunisian boy who tried to escape.

The moment I am writing this, Sahid has the appeal pending. His Stay Permit was not renovated by the police department, but the tribunal emitted a suspension, thanks to which if he's arrested he's not sent to a camp. Sahid keeps on walking in the streets of Bologna. To work illegally. What's more important he will keep to exercise his eye on the world. And he will resist until they will tear is eyes away, his tongue.

I was writing this only a few days ago. Today, October 20 2005, everything is changed. They tore Sahid's eyes away.
Simone, his lawyer, just called me, Sahid is on the line. Tomorrow I'm leaving, I'm going away from Italy. I'm scared. They won't let me live. They caught me again, the beat me again. It's been the same one, the chief of the camp, the one that broke through the door.
They caught him again, few days ago, while he was helping a friend to bring his bags to the railway station. He had the suspension of the tribunal... Instead they brought him at the police department, and from there, disregarding the tribunal's decree, they sent him back to the CPT at Mattei Street. Four days.

It's worse than it was. Much much worse. There are bars everywhere, over the head, aside, it's like staying in a hen house. There's not the courtyard anymore, just few meters outside the cells (...)
After four days the revocation of the incarceration arrived, Sahid cannot stay at the CPT, has to get out. As he went to the police department to get the revocation, there was the Inspector waiting for him. He took him to the bathroom. He slapped his face. He spat on his face. You have to understand that we are in charge here, he told him- No use to scream, we are at the police department here, nobody hears, nobody sees.
There was the revocation, but they took Sahid back to the CPT again. Not even there they could believe it when they saw him. The lawyer talked to the judge, and with his intervention he managed to get out again.

I have to run away, I'm leaving Italy tomorrow. I'm scared. They know where I live, they can come and get me whenever they want. And if they put drugs in my house... who's gonna believe me? I go. Where are you going, I ask him, Do you already know where to go, do you have friends that can give you hospitality? No. Only thing I know is that I have to get away from Italy. The only link he will keep, from tomorrow, will be the phone wire to the lawyer. For the rest, nothing. Bologna won't be his city anymore.
Before me is darkness, Sahid says.
Finally they managed to tear his eyes away, the dogs.

As the author tells us, this story is part of a book that will come out soon, all about the stories of the CPT detainees. Looking forward to the reading. Egoistically, I don't want to wake up ten years from now and ask myself: what, why didn't I figuered this out? What was I thinking? Were my own business so important in face of all that?

1.CPT, "Centro di Permanenza Temporanea" (Center for temporary stay): It is in fact a detention camp, where italian and international laws do not apply and everything is ruled out by security forces.

On september the 15th one of the leaders of the Northern League Mario Borghezio, leading a delegation of Members of the European Parliament, said that the center of Lampedusa is a five star hotel and that he'd live there: that same day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs let him find only 11 recluses in the center, and that same week the smugglers deviated the barges route up to Sicily. Who knows, maybe in Mr. Borghezio apartment it's normal to have floors covered by sewage. But the most part of the immigrants confined in here comes from clean houses where you even have to enter with bare feet.
Original story here (temporary link)

Following a fourth disembark in few hours last night, the number of illegal immigrants in the detainment camp of Lampedusa is around 550 people as of Today. The maximal capacity being of 190 persons.

I already covered in previous posts this issue.
There are in Italy concentration camps.
Today, 2005.
They are the shame of this country, more shameful than having a filthy rich tycoon as PM, more shameful than having a national bank in the hands of pirates as we have.
In front of the indifference of italians and europeans, desperate africans and asians stranded on italian coasts after deadly trips are detained for undefined amounts of time under inhuman conditions. Then, against any human right, they are supposed to be deported with the agreement of Libya under secret bilateral accords aimed at fighting illegal immigration. The expulsions have triggered fierce protests from a number of international organizations including the UNHCR and Amnesty International.
Recently a brave journalist, Fabrizio Gatti, entered the immigration center on the island of Lampedusa by feigning to be an illegal immigrant .
His story is in the this week's issue of L'Espresso.
The Ansa website gives you a summary of the article in english.
Few hints about what Gatti saw and tells: 450 immigrants detained, with one toilet. People sleeping on the outside. Lack of medical assistance. Detention for no reason and without explanations. Police beatings. Police stealing money from them. No rights. No prerogatives.

More shameful than this? Just our indifference maybe. Our impotence. Our everyday trick, of not considering themselves like ourselves. Blah.