When you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain't the way

-- Stevie Wonder

On the Italian police website, or maybe it was the U.S. embassy web site, they refer to it as the new "biometric" electronic passport. Well, whatever "biometric" was going to be I knew I was ready to be disgusted by it and that I had to show all my disgust to them. So I went to the police station stressed by the task and in a challenging bad mood.
But on the surface, in my country, having your new electronic passport done isn't that painful after all. It doesn't mean you are "biometrically scanned" or anything. I guess they infer some algorithmic data out of the pictures you give in when you apply for the passport, because the procedure is still the good old grumpy italian one.

You wait for your turn standing in a stark corridor with a group of other people, without a number or anything, just waiting for the calling bark from the other side of the door. You step in, reach the counter. Talk to the young distracted policeman who doesn't seem to listen to you at all. Give in all the papers and watch him slowly cut the border of the pictures, fill in the forms, take your signature here, and here, and here, (grumpy mumbled thanks), and behind the picture, (another grumpy mumbled thanks). Have him acknowledge your payment of €44 to the PO, let him slowly cut the quittance and give your half back. Watch him as he attaches the €40 stamp you gave him, and the picture, and the quittance to the forms and as he stamps all over them; Let him slowly interpret the e-ticket you printed out of the email the agency sent you. Try in vain to suggest him to skip the printed headers on the top of the page and check the all capitals instructions at the bottom. Finally watch him highlight the correct departure day on the top of the papers, and attach the e-ticket to it all too; Finally watch him as he invalidates your old passport, stamping "annullato" on every page of it --and take it back.

Everything happens in the quiet Police Station near Corso XXII marzo. The offices are at the ground level, but there is no traffic in the narrow residential street outside. The naked walls welcome all the white light pouring in from the tall windows, and there's a peaceful atmosphere around that maybe depends on the fact that there are no computers, no cameras, no office noises of any sort.
Next to me a couple of tobacconists are applying for a gun license for personal defense and another policeman is instructing them about the bureaucratic procedure. They endured a robbery already so they are qualified.
The police force seems so reasonable, carefree, unaggressive when seen from here.

I always thought that the residual charms of this falling nation were all in its underdeveloped, neglected parts. All the parts which have not been "upgraded" are what makes this country precious --at moments. Exactly the contrary of what most of our politicians usually assume.

I get out of the Police Station with a small piece of paper in hand, cut off a bigger one by the young policeman. There he wrote down to come and get the new passport two days before I leave.
Outside, the sun shines wildly and the bodies of the cars are reflecting the light with their limited range of colors. The avenue down the road is busy with traffic but from where I am standing, in the empty quite street, all that traffic seems so odd, and its frantic pace so distant.

Saturday I was at home, sleeping. I slept all morning through part the afternoon. I tried to make it as peacefully as I could.
Just as I was working on it, dreaming I guess, grinding my teeth probably as I often do, on the other side of the city, near where I lived with Leni few years ago, actions of guerrilla were going on.
Remarkably for me, It's not the first time I am sleeping while somewhere outside in the city a battle goes on. I might say it happens every time: Me snoring, them fighting. Maybe I dream those battles, who knows.

When finally I woke up, I learned the news, thought of my brother. This also always happens when there's a battle. Because he would have been out there battling, wearing an helmet and throwing stones and looking for fascists or policemen to beat, it's impossible for me not to picture him, earning his grades this way. He would have been there, but he doesn't live in Italy anymore, which is better for me so that my thoughts toward this kind of fighting in the streets can be more detached. Otherwise there would be sheer intolerance without any further rational thought. I don't get along with my brother very much.

What happened is that there was an electoral masquerade going on, the neo-fascist nearly-governative party "Fiamma tricolore" (Three-colored flame) marching the streets with the usual show of celtic crosses, roman salutes, skinheads, moronic chants.
Not having better things to do, organizations of the extreme left, social centers, neo-communists and anarchists organized a march against them. (In the pictures below, from Repubblica.it and corriere.it: the mentioned fascists, with hair uncertainties and roman salutes, all coming from families of immigrants or half-immigrants, marching behind a banner saying: "no more immigrants")

Not with the same intensity (everything is less intense in Milan), things went as in Genova during the G8 few years ago. Groups of demonstrators from the left-wing march, forced by the police to continuous stops, started their acts of "political" vandalism.
At the end of the morning (me always sleeping), Corriere.it recounted: Four car burned down, more damaged, a local shop used for electoral propaganda by AN (right-wing government party originated by the same party as "Three-colored Flame") burned down, a paper-bomb detonated near a Mac Do already rampaged by some of the protesters, scaring away customers with kids and all, a motorbike, garbage cans, a news stand, all burned down, windows and flower pots destroyed in the numbers, etc. (In the following pictures, from Corriere.it and Repubblica.it, scenes from the battle)

You must understand that, although not clearly visible by this selection of pictures, the battle went on between some groups of demonstrators and the police. Fascist marchers and communist marchers never actually met.
Too bad. Maybe that way we would have gotten rid of both, once and for all. Eliminating each other.

Instead, every now and then we are forced to watch this shameful idiocy going on. On one side, unharmed fascists with their roman salutes and racist chants going around the streets like it is a normal day; on the other, the childish nonsensical vandalism of this so-called rebels who give their best hand to right-wing governments, proving once again that the alternative to the moderate right-wing non-idea is disorder, anarchy, and disrespect of the peaceful indifference of middle-class lifestyle.
Well, the middle-class is the third character in this story not coming out very well. According to many news sources, the police had to save some of the protesters from the hands of passersby who wanted to lynch them. Or, more cowardly, who wanted the police to lynch them before their eyes. "Destroy them!" the enraged mob of peaceful citizens allegedly screamed. Of course only when the battle was finished.
The peaceful middle-class fathers wanting to lynch their sons, both parts high on confusion and hatred and boredom, and ignorance. What a nice, beautiful picture. Who wanted to take it, just a month before the elections, I wonder.

There's the stupid Book Fair this morning, and I have to be loading boxes at seven thirty. But I'd so get back to sleep just to give this dream another plot, if possible.

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.

The Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti has been arrested near Brescia, in Italy.
He was strolling among courtyards and condos in the city, looking for his roots. One of his parents is supposed to be from Brescia (I don't know the story exactly).
Well, as it happens, the police spotted him, conspicuous old bearded man, mistaking him for an illegal immigrant, and turned him in.
He took it rather well, considering that after the incident he posed for a picture with the policemen. This short story is told in Italian by Ansa.
I would like to comment something sarcastic and cynic about the stupid Italian police and its fixation with immigrants. About the new global order of random persecutions and fear.
I would like to comment how it is all so ironic, anyway. After all, what Ferlinghetti was looking in Brescia, were the possible remaining traces of the past immigrations of his family.
Well, instead of prolonging this, I'll just end quoting few lines from a 2004 Ferlinghetti's poem.
It's part of the coda of "Totalitarian Democracy". Its entire version is readable on Citylights website.

Cut down cut down the alien corn
Cut down the crazy introverts
Tongue-tied lovers of the subjective
Cut down cut down the wild ones the wild spirits
The desert rats and monkey wrenchers
Easy riders and midnight cowboys in narco nirvanas
Cut down the wild alienated loners
Cut down cut down all those freaks and free thinkers
Wild-eyed poets with wandering minds
Soapbox agitators and curbstone philosophers
Far out weirdos and rappers
Stoned-out visionaries and peace-niks
Exiles in their own land!
O melting pot America!

* * update:
Ferlingetti tells this story to the NYTimes (November 6 2005).
After all he wasn't arrested. He was "only" kept standing for three quarters of hour by the policemen, after "very hostile" folks called them after him.
People from Brescia. What do you expect.
Here's a couple of lines from the interview:

They mistook you for a burglar?
There's a climate of fear and paranoia since 9/11, and in this country it was generated by Bush.
But you can't possibly blame President Bush for fear and paranoia in northern Italy.
It's the same with Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Is it true that Bush believes that anyone caught reading books should be banned from government?
That's such a flaky, California thing to say.
I made it up.

Dear Ferlinghetti. Oh, I'm sorry so much. That hostile rudeness you endured has nothing to do with 9/11, Bush and Berlusconi - although 9/11 made everything worse-
That's just us, the Italian province, our pitiful stinking ignorance and mistrust.
I wish I was one of those policemen to read your name on the papers. I would have looked gravely at the hostile folks from Brescia and said to them: "This is a very important person. You are so screwed. I hereby order you to go and buy his books. Immediately! Get Pivano's translations! Marsch!".

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.