Oriana Fallaci: THE RAGE AND THE PRIDE

You ask me to speak, this time. You ask me to break, at least on this occasion, my self imposed silence. Which I have imposed on myself for years in order not to be sucked into the fray. And I am doing it. Because I have heard that even in Italy some are rejoicing, like I saw the Palestinians rejoice on TV the other night. “Victory, Victory!”. Men, women, children. Admitting that one who is capable of such an act can be defined a Man, Woman or Child. I have heard that some fat cats, politicians or so-called politicians, intellectuals or so-called intellectuals, and other individuals that do not deserve the classification of being a citizen, have been acting substantially in the same manner as those in Gaza. They say: “Good, the Americans deserve it!”. And I am very, very, very angry. With a cold furious anger, lucid and rational. An anger that eliminates every obstacle, every indulgence. That compels me to respond to them and above all to spit on them. I spit on them. As angry as I, the American poet Maya Angelou yesterday roared: “Be angry. It’s good to be angry, it’s healthy.” I don’t know if it is healthy for me to be angry, but I know it is not going to be healthy for them, the admirers of Osama Bin Laden, and for those who express understanding or sympathy or solidarity for him. You have lit a fuse which for too long has been harboring the desire to explode. You will see. You also ask me to tell how I have lived this Apocalypse. To give my story. I will therefore start with that. I was at home, my home in the center of Manhattan, and at nine o’clock on the dot, I had a sensation of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but certainly concerned me. The sensation that one feels in war, as a matter of fact in combat, when with every pores of your skin you feel the incoming bullet or rocket, and your ears perk up and you scream to those next to you: “Down! Get down!”. I pushed the sensation aside. I was not in Vietnam, I was not in one of the innumerable fucking wars that since WWII have violated my life! I was in New York, by gosh, on a marvelous September morning, in the year 2001. However, the sensation continued to assail me, inexplicably, and I did something I never do in the morning, I turned on my TV. The audio was not working. The video yes. On every channel, and I have almost 100 channels, it was the same scene, you saw a tower in the World Trade Center that was burning like a gigantic match. A short circuit? A lost small plane? Or else a premeditated act of terrorism? Almost paralyzed, I stared and while I stared, I posed those questions, while on the screen appeared a plane. White and big, an airliner. It was flying very low. Flying low it was going towards the second tower like a bomber aiming at it’s objective, and throwing himself on it. I understood. I understood also because in that instant, the audio returned and transmitted a chorus of savage screams. Repeated, savage, “God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God, GOD!” And the plane buried itself in the second tower like a knife entering a butter cake. It was 9:15 now. Don’t ask what I felt during those 15 minutes. I don’t know, I don’t remember. I was a piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don’t even remember if certain things I saw on the first tower or the second. People, who in order to escape the flames, threw themselves from the windows of the 80th and 90th floors, for example. They broke the window panes, climbed out and jumped, like parachuters out of planes. And they came down so slowly. Moving their arms and legs, swimming in the air. Yes, they looked like they were swimming. And they seemed to hang there forever. Around the thirtieth floor, they accelerated. They started gesticulating desperately, I suppose, regretting their action, almost as if they were screaming help, help. And perhaps, they really were screaming it. Finally they hit with blunt force and paf! You know, I thought I had seen it all in the wars. I considered myself vaccinated from wars and war atrocities, and in substance I am. Nothing surprises me any more. Not even when I get angry, not even when I become disdainful. But in wars I have always seen people that get killed. I have never seen people who die by killing themselves, that is by throwing themselves without a parachute from the 80th, 90th or 100th floor. In wars, furthermore, I have always seen things that explode. That explode like a fan. And I have always heard a great deal of noise. Those two towers, instead, did non explode. The first one imploded, it swallowed itself. The second one fused, it dissolved. Because of the heat, it dissolved just like a pat of butter placed on a flame. It all happened, it seemed to me, in deadly silence. Is it possible? Was the silenze really there, or was it inside of me? I must also tell you that in wars, I have always seen a limited number of casualties. Every battle, 200 or 300 dead. At most 400. Like in Dak To, in Vietnam. And when the battle is over, the Americans began gathering them and counting them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the massacre of Mexico City, where I was wounded, they gathered at least 800 bodies. Thinking I was also dead they threw me in the morgue, the cadavers that soon piled up around and on top of me, soon seemed like a deluge. Well, in those two towers worked almost 50,000 people. And very few had the time to evacuate. The elevators didn’t work, and to descend from the top floors one needed an eternity, flames permitting. We will never know the number of dead. (forty thousand? Fifty thousand?) The Americans will never say, in order not to underline the intensity of this apocalysm. To deny Osama Bin Laden satisfaction and encouragement for other apocalypses. Further, the two abysses that have absorbed the tens of thousands of creatures are too deep. At best, workers will dig out pieces assorted pieces, a nose here, a finger there. Or else a piece of slime that seems like ground coffee and instead is organic matter. The residue of bodies which where pulverized in an instant. Yesterday, Mayor Giuliani sent another ten thousand body bags, but they’re unused. What do I feel for the kamikaze that died with them? No respect. No pity. No, not even pity. I, who in every case, end up with giving in to pity. I have always found kamikaze unlikable, that is, those that suicide to kill others, starting with those Japanese of WWII. I never considered them par to the Italian patriot, Pietro Micca, who in order to block the arrival of enemy troops, ignited the ammunition storage and died in the explosion at the Citadel in Turin. I have never considered them soldiers, and even less do I consider them martyrs or heroes, as Mr. Arafat, hollering and spitting saliva, defined them to me in 1972. (That is when I interviewed him in Amman, where his Marshals trained the terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof). I considered them fatuous and nothing else. Fatuous because instead of searching for glory by means of the movies or politics or sport, they seek it in the death of themselves and others. A death that, instead of an Oscar or a Minister’s seat or a trophy, will bring them (they believe) admiration. And, in the case of those that pray to Allah, a place in the Heaven described in the Coran: "the Heaven where heroes screw the virgins (Uri)". I bet that they are also physically fatuous. I’m looking at the photo of two kamikaze of whom I spoke in my “Insciallah”: a romance novel that begins with the destruction of the American base (over 400 dead) and the French base ( over 350 dead) in Beirut. They had these photos taken before they went to die, and before dieing they had been to the barber shop. Look at what a gorgeous hair cut. What creamed mustaches, groomed little beard, flirtatious sideburns…

Eh! Who knows how Mr. Arafat would fry if he heard me. You know that between him and I there is little or no love lost. He has never forgiven me neither for the heated differences of opinion that we had during that encounter nor for my judgement of him expressed in my book “Interview with History”. As for me, I have never forgiven him anything. Including the fact that an Italian journalist, imprudently introducing himself as “my friend” found himself with a gun pointed at his heart. Therefore, we don’t speak anymore. It’s a shame. Because if I were to meet him again, I would scream in his face who the martyrs and heroes are. I would scream: Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the passengers of the four hijacked planes that were transformed into human bombs. Among them the four year old child that disintegrated in the second tower. Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the employees that worked in the two towers and at the Pentagon. Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the firemen who died trying to save them. And do you know who are the heroes? The passengers of the flights that should have landed on the White House and that instead crashed in a Pennsylvania countryside because they rebelled. For them, yes there should be a Paradise, Illustrious Mr. Arafat. The problem is that now you are the perpetual Head of State. You are acting like a Monarch. You visit the Pope, affirm that you do not like terrorism, send your condolences to Bush. In your chameleon ability of inconsistency, you would be capable of replying that I am right. But let’s change topic. I am very ill, it is known, and talking with the Arafats I get a fever. I prefer to talk of the invulnerability that many, in Europe, attribute to America. Invulnerabilty? But how invulnerable?!? The more a society is democratic and open, the more it is exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more one risks hijackings or massacres that occurred for many years in Italy and Germany and other regions of Europe. And that now occurs, giant size, in America. Not for nothing the non democratic governments of the police regimes, have always hosted and financed and helped the terrorists. The Soviet Union, the satellite countries of the Soviet Union, and China, for example. Gadaffi’s Lybia, Iraq, Iran, Syria. Arafat’s Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and all the Muslim countries of Africa. In the airports and planes of those countries I have always felt safe. Serene like a sleeping newborn. The only thing I feared was being arrested because I wrote about terrorists. In European airports and planes, instead I always felt a little nervous. In American airports and airplanes, I’m outright nervous. An in New York, twice as nervous. (Not in Washington, however, I must admit it. I truly did not expect the plane on the Pentagon). For me it has never been a question of “if” but rather one of “when”. Why do you think that Tuesday morning my subconscious picked up on the sensation of danger? Why contrary to my habits, did I turn on the Tv? Why, among the questions I asked myself, while the audio did not work, did I include the one on premeditated attack? And why do you think that as soon as the second plane appeared, I understood? Since America is the strongest nation in the world, the richest, most powerful, most modern, many fell into the trap of believing it invulnerable. Even the Americans themselves, at times. But America’s vulnerability is born from it’s strength, it’s riches, it’s might, it’s modernity. It is also born from it’s multi-ethnic essence, it’s freedom, it’s respect for the citizens and for it’s guests. Example approximately 24 million Americans are arab-muslims. When a Mustafa or a Muhammed comes let’s say from Afghanistan to visit his uncle, no one prohibits him to take courses in a school to learn to pilot a 757. No one stops him from taking university courses to study chemistry and biology ( I hope this will stop). No one, Not even if the government fears that that son of Allah may hijack a 757 or throw a vial of bacteria in the water reservoir and unleash a massacre. ( I say if, because this time the government knew nothing about it, and the FBI and CIA emerged with black eyes. If I were the president of the United States, I would get rid of them all by kicking them in the posterior for idiocy). Having said this, let’s get back to the initial argument. Which are the symbols of the strength, the richness, the power, the modernity of America? Not certainly jazz, not rock and roll, chewing gum and hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It is it’s skyscrapers. It’s Pentagon. It’s science, technology. Those skyscrapers are so overwhelming, so tall, so beautiful that looking up you almost forget the pyramids and the divine palaces of our past. Those gigantic planes, exaggerated, which are now commonly used as once sail boats and trucks were used. Because here everything moves on planes. Everything. The mail, fresh fish, ourselves (don’t forget that they invented aerial warfare. Or at least developed it to where it is today). That terrifying Pentagon, the fortress which frightens one just looking at it. That omnipresent, omnipowerful science. That overwhelming technology which in a few years has changed our daily existence, our way of communicating, eating, living. And where did the reverend Osama Bin Laden hit them? On the skyscrapers, the Pentagon. How? With planes, with science, with technology. By the way, do you know what strikes me most about this sad ultra-billionaire, this missing play-boy who instead of flirting with blonde princesses and crowding into night-clubs (as he did when he was 20 in Beirut) amuses himself killing people in the name of Mohamed and Allah? It is the fact that his inheritance derives also from the earnings of a corporation specializing in demolition, and himself is an expert in demolition. Demolition is an American specialty. When I met you, I saw that you were almost stupefied by the heroic efficiency and admirable unity with which the Americans have faced this Apocallypse. Oh, yes, in spite of their faults that are always thrown in their faces, which I myself throw in their face, (but those from Europe and particularly from Italy are even harsher), America is a country that has great things to teach us. Speaking of heroic efficiency let me sing the praises of the Mayor of New York. That Rudolph Giuliani, whom we Italians should thank on our knees. Because he has an Italian last name, he is of Italian extraction, and he makes us look good in the entire world. He is a great, in fact a very great Mayor. This is coming from someone who is never happy about anything or anyone, starting with herself. He is a Mayor worthy of another great Mayor with an Italian last name, Fiorello La Guardia, and many of our Mayors should go to be schooled by him. Present themselves with their heads bowed, in fact with ashes on their heads, and ask him: “Mr. Giuliani, please tell us how to do it.” He does not delegate his duties to others. He does not waste time in being a prick and thirsting for power. He does not divide his time between being Mayor and a senator or a representative. (is there anyone listening in the three cities of Stendhal, namely Naples, Florence and Rome?). Running to the site immediately, he entered the second skyscraper, and he risked being transformed into ashes with the others. He saved himself by a hair and by chance. Within four days he had the city back on it’s feet again. A city that has nine and a half million residents, note, and two million only in Manhattan. How he did it, I don’t know. He is ill like me, poor man, he makes believe he is well: he works just the same. However, I work at a table, sitting comfortably! He instead…He looked like a general that was personally participating in a battle. A soldier that throws himself forward with his bayonet. “Come on people, Get on with it! Let’s pull up our sleeves and get to work!, hurry!!” He was able to do this because these people were, are, like he is. People without conceit and laziness, my father would have said “people with balls”. As to the admirable capacity to unite, the compact almost martial manner in which the Americans respond to tragedies and the enemy, well, I must admit that there and then it even surprised me. I knew that at the time of Pearl Harbor, the population rallied around Roosevelt, who had entered into the war against Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and Hirohito’s Japan. I had smelled it, after Kennedy’s assassination. But this event was followed by the Vietnam war, the lacerating division caused by the Vietnam war, and in a certain sense it had reminded me of their Civil War of a century and a half ago. So when I saw white and blacks crying in each others arms, republicans and democrats arm in arm singing “God Bless America”, when I saw all the divisions being erased, I was thunderstruck. The same when I heard Bill Clinton ( a person towards whom I have never felt tenderness) declare “Let’s pull together behind our President, have faith in him”. The same, when these same words were repeated with force by his wife Hillary, now Senator of New York. The same when they were re-iterated by Lieberman, the ex-candidate for Vice President. (Only the defeated Al Gore has remained squallidly silent). The same when Congress voted unanimously to accept war and punish those responsible. Oh, if Italy would learn these lessons! It is such a divided country, so factious, so poisoned by it’s tribal squabbles. In Italy, they hate each other even within the same party. They cannot be united even when they belong to the same party, they’re jealous, argumentative, vain and petty, they don’t consider anything but their own personal interests. Their own petty little career, their petty little glory, their suburban popularity. For their own petty interests they betray each other, play mean tricks on each other, they accuse each other and prostitute themselves… I am absolutely convinced that if Bin Laden would blow up Giotto’s tower or The Tower of Pisa, the opposition would hold the government responsible, and the government would accuse the opposition. While the heads of the government and the opposition would accuse their own comrades. Having said this, let me explain from where the capacity to unity that characterizes the Americans is born. It is born from their patriotism. I don’t know if in Italy you saw and understood what happened in New York, when Bush went there to thank the workers (men and women) that are digging in the ruins of the two towers, trying to save survivors but have not found anything but a nose here a finger there. Without giving up, nonetheless. Without fatalism, so that if you ask them how they do it, they reply, “I can allow myself to be exhausted not to be defeated.” Everyone. Young, very young, old, middle age. Whites, blacks, yellows, browns, purple… Did you see them? While Bush thanks them they waved little American flags, lifted a clenched fist and roared: “USA! USA! USA!”. In a totalitarian state, I would have thought, “look how well the powers have organized this demonstration!”. In America, no! In America one does not organize these things. You can’t command them, you can’t stage them. Especially not in a disenchanted metropolis such as New York, and especially not with New York City workers! They are terrible types, the workers of New York. Freer than the wind. They don’t even obey their unions. But if you touch their flag, if you touch their country… In English the word “Patria” does not exist. To say “Patria” one needs to put together two words, Father Land, Mother Land, Native Land. Or say simply My Country. However, the substantive patriotism does exist. The adjective Patriotic exists. Besides France, I cannot imagine a more patriotic country than America. I was so moved to see those workers with their fists clenched waving the little American flags and roaring “USA! USA! USA!” without anyone having ordered them to. I also felt a kind of humiliation. Because I am incapable of even imagining Italian workers that wave the tri-color and roar “ITALY, ITALY”. In demonstrations and meetings I saw them wave many red flags. Rivers, lakes of red flags. But the tri-color I have seen very few. As a matter of fact, none. Misled and tyrannized by an arrogant left devoted to the Soviet Union, they have always left the tri-color to their adversaries. In my opinion, their adversaries failed to put this advantage to good use. Thank God, they also did not abuse it. The same holds true for those that go to Mass. As for the boors with the green shirts and ties, they don’t even know what the colors of the tri-color are. "I am a Lombard, I am a Lombard is their cry". They would bring us back to the war between Florence and Siena. The result of all this is that the Italian flag today is only seen at the Olympics if by chance you win a medal. Even worse, you see it only in the stadiums when there is an international soccer game. The only occasion, furthermore, where one can hear the crowd screaming “Italy-Italy”. There is a great big difference between a country in which the flag is only waved by fans in bleachers and a country where the entire population is waving the flag. For example, by the unregimented workers that are digging in the ruins to retrieve small body pieces of the creatures massacred by the sons of Allah. Or else to retrieve that coffee grind. The fact is that America is a special country, my dear. A country to envy, to be jealous of, having nothing to do with it’s riches, etc. It is special, because it was born out of a soul-need, the need to have a mother land, and from the most sublime idea that man has ever conceived: The idea of liberty, in fact liberty wed to equality. It is so special also because at the time, the idea of liberty was not fashionable. Neither was equality. The only ones who spoke of these concepts where the philosophers known as “illuminists”. The only place you found these concepts where in enormous and extremely costly serial volumes called l’Encyclopedie. Besides writers or other intellectuals, princes and lords that had the money to buy them, who else had ever heard of illuminism? It was not something to eat, not even the French revolutionaries spoke of it. Seeing as the French Revolution began in 1789 or rather thirteen years after the American Revolution, which began in 1776. (Another item that the anti-Americans of the “Good-the-Americans-deserve-it” ilk, ignore or feign to forget. The hypocrites!). It is a special Country, A Country to envy furthermore, because that idea was understood by the farmers often illiterate and certainly uneducated. The farmers of the American Colonies. It was realized by a small group of extraordinary leaders: By men of great culture, of great quality. The Founding Fathers. Do you have an idea who the Founding Fathers were, the Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and John Adams and George Washington ect.? Well above and beyond the petty little lawyers (as Vittorio Alfieri justly called them) of the French Revolution! They were totally different from the morose and hysterical henchmen of terror, the Marat and Danton and Saint Just and Robespierre! The Founding Fathers had a knowledge of Greek and Latin like the Italian professors of Greek and Latin (admitting that there are any left) will never possess. They were men who had read Aristotle and Plato in Greek and Seneca and Cicero in Latin. They had studied the principles of Greek democracy in depth, not even the fanatics of my time studied the Marxist theory in such depth (admitting that they actually studied it at all). Jefferson was fluent in Italian (he called it “Tuscan”). He spoke and read Italian fluently. In fact along with the two thousand vines and the thousand olive plants and music sheets, that were in short supply in Virginia, in 1774 the Florentine Filippo Mazzei had also brought various copies of a book written by a certain Cesare Beccaria called “Of crime and punishment”. As to the self taught Franklin, he was a genius. A scientist, publisher, editor, writer, journalist, politician and inventor. In 1752 he had discovered the electric nature of lightning and invented the lighting rod. It was with these extraordinary leaders, these men of great quality, that in 1776 the farmers illiterate and uneducated rebelled against England. They had the war of Independence. The American Revolution. Well, notwithstanding rifles and gun powder and the cost of lives that every war exacts, they did not do it with the rivers of blood of the future French Revolution. They did not do it with the Guillotine and with the massacres of Vandea. They did it with a sheet of paper which together with the need of the soul, the need to have a Mother Land, made concrete the sublime idea of liberty, in fact liberty wed to equality. The Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal…”It is that sheet, that from the French Revolution on we have all copied for better or worse, or from which we were inspired, and it still constitutes the back bone of America. The life blood of this nation. Do you know why? Because it transforms the subjected into citizens. Because it transforms the masses into a population. Because it invites them, no it orders them, to govern themselves, to express their own individuality, to find their own happiness. The complete opposite of what Communism used to do, forbidding people to rebel, to govern themselves, to express themselves, to enrich themselves, and placing His Majesty the State at the place of the usual King. “Communism is a monarchy, an old fashioned monarchy. As such it castrates men. When a man is castrated he is no longer a man” my father used to say. He also used to say that instead of ransoming the masses, communism transformed everyone into one of the masses. It rendered everyone a peasant. Well, in my opinion, America ransoms the plebeians. They are all plebeians in America. White, black, yellow, brown, purple, stupid, intelligent, poor and rich. In fact the rich are the most plebeian. In the majority of cases they are unrefined, badly mannered, rednecks. You can immediately ascertain that they have never read Monsignor della Casa, that they have never had anything to do with sophistication, good taste and refined ways. In spite of the money that they waste in dressing, for example, they are so inelegant that by comparison the Queen of England looks chic. However, they are ransomed, by God. In this world there is nothing stronger, more powerful and the ransomed masses. You always break your horns butting heads with the ransomed masses. With America everyone has gotten their horns broken, England, Germany, Mexico, Russia, Nazi, Fascist, Communist. Lastly even the Vietnamese, who after the victory had to come to terms with them so that when an ex president of the United States goes to visit them, they touch the heavens with a finger. “Welcome, Mr. President, welcome”. The problem is that the Vietnamese don’t pray to Allah. With the sons of Allah the matter will be difficult. Very long and very difficult. Unless the rest of the Western world stops shitting in it’s pants and start reasoning a little and lend it a hand. Obviously, I am speaking of the hyenas who enjoy seeing images of massacres and laugh under their breath “good, it serves the Americans right”. I am speaking to the people who although they are not stupid or bad, they are still rocking themselves in prudence and doubt. To them I say: wake up, people, wake up! Intimidated as you are by the fear of going against the main stream, that is to appear racist (a word inappropriate here because we are not discussing race, but religion), you do not understand or don’t want to understand that what is underway here is a reversed Crusade. As used as you are to the double play, blinded as you are by your myopia, you don't understand or don’t want to understand that what is in motion here is a religious war. A war that they call Jihad. Holy War. A war that is not after the conquest of our territory, perhaps, but certainly aims to conquer our souls. To the disappearance of our freedom and our civilization. To the annihilation of our way of living and of dying, our way of praying or not praying, of our way of eating and drinking and dressing and enjoying ourselves, and informing ourselves… You don’t understand or don’t want to understand that if it is not opposed now, if we don’t defend ourselves, if we don’t fight, the Jihad will win. It will destroy the world that good or bad we have managed to create, change, make better and render it a little more intelligent, that is less bigoted or not bigoted at all. With that it will destroy our culture, our art, our science, our morality, values, pleasures… Christ! Don’t you realize that the Osama Bin Landen consider themselves authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or beer, because you don’t wear a long beard or wear a chador, because you go to the teather and the cinema, because you listen to music and sing some songs, because you dance in the discothèques or in your house, because you watch TV, because you wear mini skirts or short pants, because at the beach or pool you’re naked or almost naked, because you make it with whom you want, when you want, where you want? Don’t you care not even about this, idiots? I am an atheist, thank God. I don’t have any intention to let someone kill me because of it. I’ve been saying this for twenty years, twenty. With a certain degree of mildness, not with this passion, twenty years ago I wrote an article for “Il Corriere” which dealt in depth with this topic. It was an article of a person used to being with all races and creeds, of a citizen used to fighting all the fascisms and intolerances, of a lay person without taboo. But it was also the article of one indignant with whom did not smell the stench of a Holy War coming, and with the sons of Allah she forgave a little too much. I followed a reasoning that more or less followed these lines, twenty years ago. “What sense is it to respect someone that does not respect us?” What sense does it make to defend their culture or presumed culture when they scorn ours? I want to defend ours, and I inform you that I like Dante Alighieri more than Omar Khayan”. Open up Heavens. They crucified me. “Racists, Racists”, they were the same progressivists (at that time they were called communists) who crucified me. I also was handed that insult when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. I remember those bearded men with a slip and turban who before shooting the mortar, in fact each mortar round, bawled out the praises of the Lord. “Allah akbar! Allah akbar!” I remember them well. And to see the pairing of the word God with the mortar rounds I got the chills. It felt like I was in the middle ages, and I used to say “The Soviets are what they are. But one must admit that waging that war they also protect us. And I thank them” . Heavens open up again, “Racist, racist!”. In their stubborn blindness they didn’t want to even hear me speak of the monstrosities that the sons of Allah were committing on military prisoners. (They used to saw off their legs and their arms, remember? A vice to which they had already abandoned themselves to in Lebanon with Christian and Jewish prisoners). They did not want that I should say this, no. And in order to pose as progressives they applauded the Americans who out of fear of the Soviet Union, foolishly armed the-heroic-Afghan-population. They trained the bearded, and with the bearded, an extremely bearded Osama Bin Laden. Get-the-Russians-out-of-Afghanistan-OOOOOUT! The Russians-must-go! Well, the Russians went, happy? From Afghanistan, the bearded ones of the most bearded Osama Bin Laden arrived in New York with the unbearded Syrians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, Saudis that comprised the band of the nineteen identified kamikazes: happy? Worse: now here they discuss the next attack that will hit us with chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear arms. The say that the new attack is inevitable because Iraq is supplying the material. The talk of vaccinations, gas masks, plague. We ask ourselves when it will occur, happy? Some are neither happy nor unhappy. They don’t give a damn, that’s all. America is far away, between Europe and America there is an Ocean… Oh, no my dears, No. There is only a thread of water. Because when the destiny of the West is on the table, the survival of our civilization, New York is us. America is us. Us Italians, us French, us English, us Germans, us Austrians, us Hungarians, us Slovaks, us Poles, us Scandinavians, us Belgians, us Spanish, us Greeks, us Portuguese. If America falls, Europe falls. The West falls, we fall. Not only in the financial sense that, I think, worries you the most. (Once I was young and naïve, I said to Arthur Miller “Americans measure everything with money, they only think of money”. He answered me “don’t you?”) We fall in every way, my dear. And in place of church bells we will find the Muezzin, in place of miniskirts we’ll have the chador, in place of the cognac we’ll have camel milk. Don’t you even understand this, don’t you want to understand? Blair has understood it. He came here and brought to Bush, in fact renewed to Bush, the alliance of the British. Not an alliance based on hollow words and wringing of hands, but an alliance based on hunting the terrorists and military support. Chirac, no. As you know, last week he came on an official visit. A State visit that had already been planned for months, not a spur of the moment visit. He saw the ruins of the two towers, he learned that the number of deaths is incalculable in fact inadmissible, but he did not loose his balance. During his interview with CNN four different times, my friend Christiane Amanpour asked him in what way and to what length he meant to declare himself against this Jihad, and four times Chirac evaded the question, squirming out of it. I wanted to shout at him, “Monsieur le President! Do you remember Normandy, do you know how many Americans died to chase the Nazis out of France?” Excluding Blair, not even among the other Europeans do I see a Richard the Lion Hearted. Even less do I see one in Italy where the government has not identified and therefore not arrestated a single accomplice or suspected accomplice of Osama Bin Laden. By God, sir Knight, by god! Even with the fear of war, in every country of Europe at least one accomplice of Osama Bin Laden has been identified and arrested. In France, in Germany, in England, in Spain… But in Italy where the Mosques of Milano and of Torino and of Roma overflow with rascals that sing the hymns of Osama Bin Laden, they did not find a single terrorist waiting in the wings to blow up the Cupola of St. Peter’s, not one, zero, null, nobody. Explain to me, Sir Knight: are your police officers so incapable, your police and your carabinieri? Are your secret service such pricks? Are your functionaries such idiots? Are they all angels, all strangers to what happened and is happening, the sons of Allah that we host? Or else are you so intimidated by the prospect of being blackmailed with the usual label “racist-racist”, that you will not investigate properly and identify and arrest those that until today you have not. I am not afraid, as you can see. Christ! I don’t deny anyone the right to be afraid. The one who is not afraid of war is an idiot. And the one who wants to have others believe that he is not afraid of the war, as I’ve written about a thousand times, is together a cretin and a liar. However, in life and history there are cases in which it is not permissible to be ruled by fear. Cases in which to be afraid is immoral and uncivilized. Those who, out of weakness or lack of courage or used to having a foot in each camp, come less in this tragedy, in my opinion they are masochists. Masochists, yes, masochists. Because do we want to have this discussion about what you call the Contrast-between-the-two-cultures? Well, if you really want to know, it bothers me to even talk about two cultures. To put them on the same level as if they were two parallel realities, of equal weight and measure. Because behind our civilization there is Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Fidia, by god. There’s ancient Greece with her Parthenon and her discovery of Democracy. There’s ancient Rome with her greatness, her laws her concept of law. Her sculptures, her literature, architecture. Her buildings, amphitheaters, aqueducts, bridges, streets. There is a revolutionary, that Christ who died on the cross, that taught us (and patience if we haven’t learned) the concept of love and of justice. There's even is a Church which yes, gave me the Inquisition, I agree. That has tortured and burned a thousand times on the rack, agreed. That has oppressed me for centuries, and for centuries has forced me to sculpt and paint only Christs and Madonnas, that almost killed Galileo Galilei. Humiliated him, and shut him up. However, it also gave a great contribution to the History of Thought: you must agree! Furthermore, behind our civilization there is the Renaissance. There is Leonardo da Vinci, there is Michelangelo, Raffaello, the music of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. Up and up until Rossini and Donizetti and Verdi and Company. That music without which we don’t know how to live and that in their culture or supposed culture is prohibited. Heaven help you if they whistle a little song or mimic the chorus of the Nabucco. Finally there’s science, by god. A science that has understood many illnesses and their cures. I am still alive, for now, thanks to our science: not the one of Mohamed. A science that has invented marvelous machines. The train, car, plane, spaceships with which we went to the moon and Mars and soon we will go who knows where. A science that has changed the face of this planet with electricity, radio, phone, television, and by the way: is it true that the ultra saints of the left don’t want to say what I have just said?!? God, what dicks! They’ll never change. And now here is the fatal question: What is there behind the other culture? No clue! Search as I might I can only find Mohamed with his Koran and Averroe with his merits as a scholar. (The comments on Aristotle, etc.), Arafat even finds numbers and mathematics. Again hissing and spitting all over me in 1972 he told me that his culture was superior to mine, much superior to mine, because his ancestors had invented numbers and mathematics. But Arafat has a short memory. This is why he changes ideas and is caught in lies every five minutes. His ancestors did not invent numbers and mathematics. They invented the shape of the numerals that even we infidels use, mathematics was conceived almost contemporarily in all the ancient civilizations. In Mesopotamia, Greece, India, China, Egypt, among the Maya… Your grandparents, illustrious Mr. Arafat, have only left us some beautiful Mosques and a book with which for the last one thousand four hundred years you’ve been breaking my balls, more than the Christians have with their bible or the Jews with their Torah. Now lets look at what are the values that distinguish this Koran. Really values? Since the sons of Allah have semi destructed New York, the experts of Islam have done nothing else but sing the praises of Mohamed to me. They explain that the Koran preaches peace and brotherhood and justice. (After all even Bush is saying it, poor Bush. It is self evident that Bush must appease the twenty four million American-Moslems, convince them to squeal and tell what they know on the eventual relative or friend or acquaintances devoted to Osama Bin Laden). Well then how are we to reconcile this with the story of a tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye? How do we explain this chador, in fact the veil that covers the face of the Moslem women so that in order to be able to make out their neighbors they must look through a thick net placed at eye-level? How do we deal with polygamy and with the principle that women must count less than camels, that they must not go to school, they must not go to the doctor, they must not be photographed, etc. How do we deal with the veto of alcohol and the death penalty for those that drink it? This is also in the Koran, and it does not seem to me to be very just, brotherly, pacifistic. Therefore, here is my answer to your question on the contrasts between the two cultures. In this world there is room for everybody, I say. In one’s own home, everyone is free to do what they please. If in some countries the women are so stupid to accept the chador, or the veil where they have to look through a thick net at eye level, worse for them. If they are so idiotic to accept not going to school, not going to the doctor, not letting themselves be photographed etcetera, well worse for them. If they are so foolish as to marry a prick that wants four wives, too bad for them. If their men are so silly as to not drink beer, wine, ditto. I am not going to be the one to stop them. Far from it! I have been educated in the concept of liberty, and my mother used to say: “the world is beautiful because it is varied”. But, if they demand to impose these things on me, in my house… and they do demand it. Osama Bin Laden affirms that the entire planet Earth must become Muslim, that we must convert to Islam, that either by convincing us or threatening us, he will convert us, and for that goal he massacres us and will continue to massacre us. This cannot please us. It has to give us a great desire to reverse roles and kill him. However, this will not resolve itself, it will not be exhausted with the death of Osama Bin Laden. This is because the Osama Bin Ladens number in the tens of thousands now and they are not confined to the Arabic countries. They are everywhere, and the most militant are in the West. In our cities, our streets, our universities, in the nerve centers of our technology. That technology that any obtuse can manage. The Crusade has been underway for a while. It works like a Swiss watch, sustained by a faith and a malice which compares only to the malice of Torquemada when he led the Inquisition. In fact it is impossible to deal with them. To reason with them, unthinkable. To treat them with indulgence or tolerance or hope, a suicide. Anyone who believes the contrary, is deluding himself. *** The one who is telling you this, is one that has known this type of fanaticism first hand in Iran, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Libya, in Jordan, in Lebanon, and in her own home, that is in Italy. She has experienced it, and even in trivial episodes, in fact grotesque, she had chilling confirmation of it. I will never forget what happened to me at the Iranian Embassy in Rome when I asked for a visa to go to Iran, to interview Khomeini, and I went wearing red nail polish. For them, a sign of immorality. They treated me like a prostitute that should be burned at the stake. They ordered me to immediately remove the red nail polish. Had I not told them, rather shouted what I would enjoy removing, rather cut off, of them. Neither do I forget what happened to me at Qom, the holy city of Khomeini, where because I was a woman I was not allowed to register in any hotel. To interview Khomeini I had to wear a chador, to put it on I naturally had to remove my blue jeans, in order to remove my blue jeans, I needed some form of privacy. I could have effectuated the change in the car in which I had arrived from Teheran. The interpreter refused to allow me to do so. You-are-crazy, you-are-crazy, to-do-such-a-thing-in-Qom-one-is-shot. He finally brought me to the ex Royal Palace where a custodian had pity on us and hosted us. He loaned us the throne room. In fact I was feeling like the Madonna, who to give birth to Jesus took refuge with Joseph in the stable warmed by the donkey and bull. But the Koran forbids a man and woman who are not married to be alone together behind closed doors, Yikes! Suddenly the door burst open. The Mullah in charge of morality came in shouting shame-shame, sin-sin, there was only one way not to end up shot to death, to marry. To sign the marriage act which would elapse in time (four months) that he was waiving in our faces. The problem was that the driver had a Spanish wife, a certain Consuelo that was not at all disposed to accept polygamy, and I did not want to marry anyone. Even less an Iranian with a Spanish wife who was not at all disposed to accept polygamy. At the same time I did not want to be shot nor lose the interview with Khomeini. I was debating this dilemma with myself and … You laugh, I am certain of it. They seem like jokes to you. Well then I won’t tell you how this episode ended. To make you cry I will tell you the one of the twelve young men declared impure who at the end of the war in Bangladesh I saw executed in Dacca. They executed them on the field of the stadium of Dacca, bayonetted in the chest and stomach, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded in the bleachers in the name of God. They thundered “Allah akbar, Allah akbar”. I know, I know: in the Coliseum the ancient Romans, those ancient Romans of whom my culture is very proud, amused themselves seeing the Christians die as meals for lions. I know, I know: in all Christian European countries, those Christians, who in spite of my atheism I recognize the contribution they made to the history of thought, amused themselves seeing the heretics burn. However, a lot of time has gone by since then, we’ve become a little more civilized, and even the sons of Allah should have understood that certain things are not done. After the twelve impure young men, they killed a child who in order to save his brother who had been condemned to death , had thrown himself on the executioner. His head was squashed by military boots. If you don’t believe it, well re-read my article or the articles of the French journalists and the Germans who horrified like me, were witnesses. Better yet, look at the pictures that one of them took. However this is not the point I want to underline. What I do want to dwell on is that at the conclusion of the slaughter, the twenty thousand faithful (many of them women) left the bleachers and went down into the field. Not in an unruly mob like way, but very orderly, solemnly. Slowly they formed a line and, always in the name of God, the stomped on the cadavers. Continuously thundering Allah-akbar, Allah-akbar. They destroyed them like the Twin Towers. They reduced them to a slow bleeding carpet of squashed bones. Oh, I could go on indefinitely. Tell you things that have never been said, things that will make your hair stand on end. About that imbecile Khomeini, for example, who after the interview held a meeting at Qom to declare that I had accused him of cutting off the breasts of women. From that meeting they made a video that was aired for months in Teheran, so that the following year when I returned to Teheran, I was arrested as soon as I got off the plane. It was really bad that time, really bad. It was during the American Hostage crises… I could talk to you about that Mujib Rhaman who, always in Dacca, had ordered his guerrillas to eliminate me since I was a dangerous European, and thank goodness that at the risk of his own life, an English Colonel saved me. Or about that Palestinian called Habach who for twenty minutes had a machine gun pointed at my head. God, what people! The only ones with whom I had a civil rapport remains the poor Alì Bhutto, the first minister of Pakistan, who was hung because he was to friendly with the West, and the very good king of Jordan: King Hussein. But those two were Muslims like I’m Catholic. However, I want to give you the conclusion of my argument. A conclusion that will not please many, seeing that to defend one’s own culture is becoming a mortal sin in Italy. And seeing that intimidated by the improper word “racist”, everyone is keeping quiet like rabbits. I don’t go and put up tents in Mecca. I don’t go to sing Our Father or Hail Marys before the tomb of Mohamed. I don’t go and pee on the marble walls of their Mosques, I don’t do cacca at the feet of their minaret. When I find myself in their countries (something from which I have never derived any pleasure) I never forget that I am a guest and a foreigner. I am careful to not offend them with my dress or my gestures or the way I act which for us is normal and for them inadmissible. I treat them with due respect, with due courtesy. I apologize if by some absent mindedness or ignorance I break one of their rules or superstitions. I wrote this scream of pain and disdain while having in my mind's eye scenes which did not always give me apocalyptic fits. Sometimes I would see the image, for me symbolic (therefore infuriating), of the big tent with which one summer ago the Somali Muslims disfigured, smeared with shit and profaned for three months piazza Del Duomo in Florence. My city. A tent raised to curse and condemn and insult the Italian government that was hosting them but would not give them the necessary documents to run around Europe and would not let them bring into Italy their hordes of their relatives. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, pregnant in-laws and even the relatives of their relatives. A tent raised next to the beautiful building of the Archbishop’s residence on whose sidewalk they kept their shoes and slippers which in their countries they line up outside of their Mosques. And with their shoes and slippers, the bottles of water with which they wash their feet before prayer. A tent raised in front of Brunelleschi’s cupola and next to the Baptistery with Ghiberti’s doors of paradise. A tent, furnished like a primitive apartment: chairs, tables, chaise-lounges, mattresses to sleep on and to copulate, ranges to cook the food and stench up the piazza with the smoke and smell. Thanks to the usual unconscionable Enel who cares about our works of art as much as it cares for our countryside, the tent was furnished with electricity. Thanks to a tape recorder, enriched by the coarse ugly voice of a muezzin who punctually exhorted the faithful, deafening the infidels, and suffocated the sound of the bells. To add to this, the yellow lines of urine that profaned the marble of the Baptistery. (By gosh! They have a long "spray" these sons of Allah! How did they manage to hit their objective, which is separated from the street by a protective fence, hence almost two meters distant from their urinary apparatus?) With the yellow lines of urine, and the stench of the excrements the huge door of San Salvatore was blocked and the Bishop unable to use it. The exquisite romanic styled church (built in the year one thousand) which is right behind Piazza del Duomo and that the sons of Allah had transformed into a shit-hole. You know it well. You know it well, because I was the one who called you about it, begged you to speak to your editors, remember? I called the mayor too. I will concede that he came to my house, politely listened to me, agreed with me, said “you’re right, absolutely right” but did not take the tent down. He either forgot about it, or was unable to. I even called the Minister of the Foreign Affairs, who was a Florentine, in fact one of those Florentines who speak with a heavy accent, even though he was not involved in the matter. I concede he was also very polite and kind. He listened and let me finish. He agreed with me and told me I was right. But he did not lift a finger to remove the tent. As to the sons of Allah that urinated on the Baptistery and defecated in San Salvatore al Vescovo, he quickly gave in to their demands. (The results as I have ascertained them are that the fathers and the mothers and the brothers and the sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and pregnant sister-in-laws now live where they wanted to live). That is in Florence and other European cities. Therefore I changed my methods. I telephoned a likable policeman that is in charge of the office of internal security and I told him: “Dear officer, I am not a politician. When I say I will do something, I do it. Further, I am acquainted with war and I am knowledgeable of certain things. If by tomorrow the fucking tent is not down, I will burn it. I swear on my honor that I will burn it, not even a regiment of cops would be able to stop me, and for this I want to be arrested. Brought to jail in handcuffs. This will ensure that I end up on the front page of all the papers”. Well, being more intelligent than all the others, in a few hours he had the tent taken down. In place of the tent all that was left was an immense and disgusting stain of filth. However it was a hollow victory. It was hollow because it had no effect or influence on all the other acts of desecration and destruction with which for many years they have been humiliating and wounding what had been the capital of art, beauty and culture. I am not discouraged at all. The other arrogant guests of the city: the Albanians, Sudanese, Bengalis, Tunisians, Algerians, Pakistani, Nigerians who with much fervor contribute to the commerce of drugs and prostitution, which apparently is not prohibited by the Koran. Oh, yes, they are all where they were before my policeman took down the tent. Inside the piazzale of the Uffizi, at the foot of Giotto’s Tower. In front of the Loggia of the Orcagna, around the Logge of the Porcellino, in front of the national Library, at the entrance of the museums. On Ponte Vecchio where every so often they knife or shoot each other. They are on the Lugarni where they demanded and obtained municipal financing (yes sir, they finance them). In the churchyard of Saint Lawrence where they get drunk with wine and beer and other alcoholics, mass of hypocrites, and where they yell obscenities at women. (Last summer in that churchyard they even shouted obscenities at me, an elderly woman. It goes without saying that it went badly for them. It went very badly. One of them is still lying there simpering over his genitals). In the historic streets where they camp with the pretext of selling their wares. For wares, understand counterfeit pocketbooks and luggage which have registered trademarks, therefore illegal goods. They also have photo murals, pencils, African statues that ignorant tourists believe were sculptured by Bernini, and things to sniff. (I know my rights, hissed one of them that I saw selling sniffing products on Ponte Vecchio). If the citizen dares protest, or say to them “go exercise those rights in your own home”, then the dreaded cry “Racist, Racist” is heard. If a police officer dares to say to them “Mr. Allah’s son, your excellency, would you mind moving over a an inch so that people can get by?” They eat him up alive. They assault him with knives. At the very least, they insult his mother and his ancestors, along with the cry “Racist! Racist!). The people put up with this, resigned. They don’t react not even if I shout at them what my father used to scream during the time of Fascism: “Don’t you care anything about dignity? Don’t you have a little pride? You mass of sheeps”. It happens in other cities too, I know. In Turin, for example. That Turin that made Italy and that now doesn’t even look like an Italian city. It looks like Algeria, Dacca, Nairobi, Damascus, Beirut. In Venice, where the pigeons of St. Mark’s square have been replaced by carpets with wares, even Othello would feel out of place there. In Genova, that Genova where the marvelous buildings that Rubens admired so much, have been seized by them and they are wasting away like beautiful women that have been raped. In Rome, that Rome where the cynicism of politics lies, protects every color in the hope of obtaining their future vote and where the Pope is protecting them. (Your Holiness, why in the name of the only God, don’t you take them into the Vatican? On the condition that they don’t smear with shit the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s sculptures, Raffael’s frescos, of course). Now I’m the one that does not understand. Instead of sons of Allah, in Italy they call them “foreign workers”. Or else, “needed laborers”. I have no doubt that in fact some of them do work. The Italians have become such a leisure class. They go vacationing in the Seychelles, they come to New York to shop at Bloomingdales, they are ashamed to be laborers or farmers, and you can no longer associate them with the proletariat. But those whom I’m talking about, what kind of laborers are they? What work do they do? How do they supplement an fill the labor shortage in those areas where the ex-proletariat Italian refuses to labor? Camping in the city pretending to sell their knick-knacks. Loitering about and raping our monuments? Praying five times a day? Further there’s one more thing I don’t understand. If they really are so poor, where do they get the money to travel to Italy? Where do they get the ten million liras per head (minimum ten million) necessary to purchase a ticket? Is it by any chance Osama Bin Laden with the motive of launching a conquest not only of souls, but also one of territory? Well, even if he does not finance them, I am not at ease with the present situation. Even if our guests are absolutely innocent, even if among them there isn’t a single individual who want to destroy the Tower of Pisa or the Tower of Giotto, not one that wants to impose a dress code on me, not a single one that wants me burned at the stake of a new inquisition, their presence still alarms me. It fills me with foreboding and ill ease. Those who react to this situation with optimism or taking it lightly are wrong. Above all, those who compare this migratory wave to the one that took place at the end of the eighteenth century the beginning of the nineteenth, are especially mistaken. I will now tell you why they are wrong. *** Not long ago I happened to pick up a phrase uttered by one of the thousand of the Counsel presidents that Italy has honored herself with in the last two decades. “Well, even my uncle was an immigrant! I remember my uncle with his cloth suitcase who was leaving for America!”. Or something to that effect. Oh, no my dear. No. It is not at all the same thing. It isn’t for two simple reasons. The first is that in the second half of the eighteen century the migratory wave to the United States did not occur in an illegal manner nor by the forcible actions of those who were migrating. It was the Americans themselves who wanted it, they solicited it. It was done by a specific act of Congress. “Come, come, we need you. If you come, we will give you free land”. They even made a movie about it. The one with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the ending of the movie struck me. The scene where they were racing to plant the white flag on the lot that would become their homestead, since only the youngest and strongest would make it. The rest are left empty handed and some even die trying. As far as I know, in Italy there has never been an act of Parliament that invited or solicited our guests to leave their country. Come, come, because we need you so badly, if you come we will give you an estate in Chianti. They came to us of their own initiative, in their damned rafts and thumbed their noses to the Border Police who tried to send them back. More than an immigration, it was an invasion conducted in a clandestine manner. One that disturbs me because it was not meek nor painful. It is arrogant and protected by the cynicism of the politicians that close an eye, or perhaps both. I will never forget the meetings which the illegals called last year and filled up all the piazzas of Italy in order to obtain legal residence. Those distorted evil faces, with their fists in the air, threatening. Those angry voices that reminded me of Khomeini’s Teheran. I will never forget them because I was offended by their demands in my own home, also because I felt taken advantage of by those ministers that said: “We would like to deport them but we don’t know where they are hiding”. Turds! In those piazzas there were thousands of them, they weren’t hiding at all. To repatriate them all one needed to do was line them up, please kind sir, have a seat, and accompany them to the nearest port or airport. The second reason, dear nephew of the uncle with the cloth suitcase, even an elementary school child would understand. Only a few facts need to be stated. One: America is a continent. In the second half of the eighteen century, when the American Congress opened up immigration, this continent was almost empty. The majority of the population resided in the eastern States, on the Atlantic, in the mid-West there were few people, California was almost empty. Well, Italy is not a continent. It is a very little nation, and not at all unpopulated. Two: America is a very young country. If you think that the War of Independence took place at the end of 1700, you can deduct that is only two hundred years old and you understand why it’s cultural identity is not at all well defined. Italy, on the other hand, is a very old country. It’s history is at least three thousand years old. It’s cultural identity therefore is set ...all chatter to the contrary aside. You cannot leave out Christianity or the Catholic church. People like me have a saying: “I have nothing to do with the church”. I do, heaven help me, I certainly do. Whether I like it or not, I am involved. How could I not be involved? I was born in a landscape of churches, convents, Christs, Madonnas, Saints. The first music I heard coming into the world was the music of church bells. The bells of Santa Maria del Fiore which were drowned out by the shrill voice of the muezzin during the episode of the tent. With that music, with that landscape I grew up. Through that music and that landscape I learned what architecture is, what sculpture and painting is, what art is. Through that church (which I later rejected) I began to ask myself what is “good”, what is “evil”, by God! Here, see? I have once again written “by God”. With all my laicism, my atheism, the culture of Catholicism is so intrinsic to me that it is part of my way of expressing myself. Oh my God, my God, thank God, by God, oh Jesus, Christ here and Christ there. These words and phrases are so spontaneous that I am not even aware of uttering them or writing them. Do you want me to tell you the entire story? Although I have never forgiven Catholicism for the atrocity it imposed on me starting with the inquisition, that even burned our granny poor granny, although I don’t get along with priests and I have no use for their prayers, I do like very much the music of the church bells. It caresses my heart. I also like those Christs and Madonnas and Saints that are painted or sculpted. In fact I have a mania for Icons. I also like monasteries and convents. They give me a sense of peace, at times I envy the residents. After all, let’s admit it, our Cathedrals are more beautiful than the mosques and the synagogues. Don’t you agree? They are even more beautiful than the Protestant Churches. Look, my family cemetery is a protestant cemetery. It accepts the dead of all religions, but it is protestant. One of my grandmothers was Valdese, one of my great aunts, Evangelical. I never met my Valdese grandmother, but I did know the Evangelical great aunt. When I was a child she always used to take me to the functions of her church in Via de’ Benci in Florence, and… God, how bored I was! I felt so totally alone with those faithful that sang psalms and nothing else, with that priest who was not a priest and read the Bible and that’s all, that church that did not look like a church to me and, except for a small pulpit, only had a large crucifix and that’s all. No angels, no Madonnas, no incense… I even missed the incense, and I would have wanted to be in the nearby basilica of Santa Croce where all these things were present. The things I was used to. And let me add: in my country home in Tuscany, there is a miniscule chapel. It’s always closed since my mother died no one goes there. However, sometimes I go in to dust, to check that the mice haven’t nested, and notwithstanding my laical education I find myself at my ease. Notwithstanding my “priest devouring” stand, I move about there with self confidence. I believe that the overwhelming majority of Italians would confess the same thing. (Berlinguer confessed it to me). Holy Christ! (Here we go again). I am telling you that we Italians are not in the same place as the Americans were: a mosaic of different ethnicities and religions, a medley of a thousand cultures, at the same time open to all invasions and capable of deflecting it. I am saying that, just because it has been defined by many centuries and it is very precise, our cultural identity cannot withstand a migratory wave composed of people that in one way or another want to change our way of life, our values. I am saying that in our country there is no room for the muezzin, for the minarets, for the false abstainers, for their fucking Middle Ages, for their fucking chador. And if there were, I would not give it to them. Because it would be the same as throwing away Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raffaello, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento, the freedom that for better or for worse we have achieved, our Mother Land. It would mean giving them Italy gift wrapped. I will not give it to them. I am Italian. Those idiots who now consider me American are wrong. I have never requested American citizenship. Years ago an American Ambassador offered it to me on a Celebrity Status, and after having thanked him I replied: “Sir, I am very tied to America. I always fight with her, I even reproach her, and yet I am profoundly tied to her. America is for me a lover, in fact a husband to whom I will always remain faithful. Provided he does not "two-time" me. I love this husband. I will never forget that if he had not bothered to go to war with Hitler and Mussolini, today I would be speaking German. I will never forget that had he not kept the Soviet Union in check, I would be speaking Russian. I love him and I like him. I like for example that when I arrive in New York and give my passport with my residency status, the guard says to me with a smile: welcome home. It seems like such a generous, affectionate gesture. Furthermore, it reminds me that America has always been a refuge for sinners for those without a country. But I already have a Mother Land, Sir. My Mother Land is Italy, and Italy is my mother. Sir, I love Italy. It would seem like negating my own mother if I were to become an American citizen”. I also replied that my language is Italian, I write in Italian, and am translated in English, in the same manner as I am translated in French, in other words, experiencing it as a foreign language. Further I told him that when I hear the Italian National Anthem I get teary eyed. Hearing that “Fratelli d’Italia, l’Italia s’è desta, parapà, parapà, parapà...." , I get a knot in my throat. I am not even aware that as a National Anthem, ours is rather ugly. I only think: it is the Anthem of my Mother Land. The knot in my throat also is present when I look at a white, red, green flag waving. Of course not taking account of the hoodlums of the soccer stadiums. I have a red-white-green flag from the 19th Century. It is all stained, blood stained, all gnawed by mice. Although in the center there is the crest of the Royal House of Savoy (albeit without Cavour, Vittorio Emanuele II and Garibaldi who bowed to that crest, we would not have made a united Italy) I treasure it as if it were gold. I care for it like a jewel. We died for that tricolr, by God! Hung, shot, decapitated, killed by the Austrians, the Pope, the Duke of Modena, the Bourbons. We had the Risorgimento with that tricolor and the Unification of Italy, the war on the Carso and the Resistance. For that tricolor my great-great maternal grandfather Giobatta fought at Curtatone and Montanara, and was left horribly disfigured by an Austrian projectile. For that tricolor my paternal uncles suffered the horrors of the Carso trenches. For that tricolor my father was arrested and tortured at Villa Triste by the nazi-fascists. For that tricolor my entire family joined the Resistance myself included. In the ranks of Justice and Freedom, with the battle name Emilia. I was fourteen years old. When a year later they discharged me from the Voluntary Italian Freedom Corp, I felt so proud. Jesus and Mary, I had been an Italian soldier! When I was informed that with my discharge I was to receive 14,540 Liras, I didn’t know whether to accept them or not. It did not seem right to be paid for having done my duty towards my country. I ended up accepting them, no one at home had shoes. With that money I bought shoes for myself and my younger sisters. Naturally, my Mother Land, my Italy, is not today’s Italy. The Italy of leisure time, a little sly, vulgar of those Italians whose only goal in life is to retire before reaching 50 and whose only passions are foreign vacations and soccer games. The bad, stupid, cowardly Italy, of the little hyenas who in order to be able to shake hands with a Hollywood celebrity would sell their own daughters to a Beirut bordello and who when the kamikaze of Osama Bin Laden reduce thousands of New Yorkers into a mountain of ashes that looks like ground coffee, scornfully say “it serves them right”. The squalid Italy, cowardly, without a soul, the Italy of presumptuous and inept parties who don’t know neither how to win nor lose, but do know how to glue the fat posteriors of their representatives to a deputy, ministry or mayoral seat. The Italy which is still echoing the ideas of Mussolini, the black fascists and the red ones that induce you to remember the terrible line of Ennio Flaiano: “In Italy there are two categories of fascists: the fascists and the antifascists”. It isn’t even the Italy of the magistrates and the politicians that ignoring the sequence of tenses, pontificate on television screen with monstrous syntactical errors. It is even less the Italy of the young, who having these type of teachers are drowning in the most scandalous of ignorance, in the most excruciating superficiality, in vacuum. To syntactical errors they add writing errors and if you ask them who were the Carbonari, the Liberali, Silvio Pellico, Mazzini, Massimo D’Azeglio, Cavour, Vittorio Emanuele II, they stare at you with spent pupils and lolling tongues. They don’t know anything, at most they know how to recite the comfortable role of aspiring terrorists in a democracy during peace, they know how to wave little black flags, and hide their faces in ski masks, the inept little fools. Even less the Italy of the mouth pieces, all talk no action, who after having read this will hate me for having told the truth. Between one mouthful of spaghetti and another they will curse me, they will wish that I were killed by one of their protected ones, that is by Osama Bin Laden. No, no: my Italy is an ideal Italy. It is the Italy that I dreamt about as a child, when I was discharged from the Italian Corp of Volunteers for Freedom, and I was full of illusions. A serious Italy, intelligent, courageous, filled with dignity, and therefore deserving of respect. This Italy, an Italy that exists even if it is shut up, laughed at and insulted, heaven help anyone that touches it, steals it or invades it. Whether the invaders are Napoleans French armies, Francesco Giuseppe’s Austrians, Hitler’s Germans or Osama Bin Laden’s buddies, for me it’s the same thing. Whether they use cannons or rubber rafts to invade it, it’s still the same. With this I sign off affectionately my dear Ferruccio and I warn you: don’t ask me anything else. Less than ever before, to participate in vain polemics or arguments. What I had to say, I’ve said. Anger and pride demanded it of me. A clean conscience and my age permitted me to do it. But now I must go back to work, I don’t want to be disturbed. That’s all. --- Oriana Fallaci

Because I have heard that even in Italy some are rejoicing, like I saw the Palestinians rejoice on TV the other night. “Victory, Victory!”. Men, women, children. Admitting that one who is capable of such an act can be defined a Man, Woman or Child.

I have heard that some fat cats, politicians or so-called politicians, intellectuals or so-called intellectuals, and other individuals that do not deserve the classification of being a citizen, have been acting substantially in the same manner as those in Gaza. They say: “Good, the Americans deserve it!”.

And I am very, very, very angry. With a cold furious anger, lucid and rational. An anger that eliminates every obstacle, every indulgence. That compels me to respond to them and above all to spit on them. I spit on them. As angry as I, the American poet Maya Angelou yesterday roared: “Be angry. It’s good to be angry, it’s healthy.” I don’t know if it is healthy for me to be angry, but I know it is not going to be healthy for them, the admirers of Osama Bin Laden, and for those who express understanding or sympathy or solidarity for him. You have lit a fuse which for too long has been harboring the desire to explode. You will see.

You also ask me to tell how I have lived this Apocalypse. To give my story. I will therefore start with that. I was at home, my home in the center of Manhattan, and at nine o’clock on the dot, I had a sensation of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but certainly concerned me. The sensation that one feels in war, as a matter of fact in combat, when with every pores of your skin you feel the incoming bullet or rocket, and your ears perk up and you scream to those next to you: “Down! Get down!”.

I pushed the sensation aside. I was not in Vietnam, I was not in one of the innumerable fucking wars that since WWII have violated my life! I was in New York, by gosh, on a marvelous September morning, in the year 2001. However, the sensation continued to assail me, inexplicably, and I did something I never do in the morning, I turned on my TV. The audio was not working. The video yes. On every channel, and I have almost 100 channels, it was the same scene, you saw a tower in the World Trade Center that was burning like a gigantic match. A short circuit? A lost small plane? Or else a premeditated act of terrorism?

Almost paralyzed, I stared and while I stared, I posed those questions, while on the screen appeared a plane. White and big, an airliner. It was flying very low. Flying low it was going towards the second tower like a bomber aiming at it’s objective, and throwing himself on it. I understood. I understood also because in that instant, the audio returned and transmitted a chorus of savage screams. Repeated, savage, “God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God, GOD!”

And the plane buried itself in the second tower like a knife entering a butter cake. It was 9:15 now. Don’t ask what I felt during those 15 minutes. I don’t know, I don’t remember. I was a piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don’t even remember if certain things I saw on the first tower or the second. People, who in order to escape the flames, threw themselves from the windows of the 80th and 90th floors, for example. They broke the window panes, climbed out and jumped, like parachuters out of planes. And they came down so slowly. Moving their arms and legs, swimming in the air. Yes, they looked like they were swimming. And they seemed to hang there forever. Around the thirtieth floor, they accelerated. They started gesticulating desperately, I suppose, regretting their action, almost as if they were screaming help, help. And perhaps, they really were screaming it. Finally they hit with blunt force and paf!

You know, I thought I had seen it all in the wars. I considered myself vaccinated from wars and war atrocities, and in substance I am. Nothing surprises me any more. Not even when I get angry, not even when I become disdainful. But in wars I have always seen people that get killed. I have never seen people who die by killing themselves, that is by throwing themselves without a parachute from the 80th, 90th or 100th floor.

In wars, furthermore, I have always seen things that explode. That explode like a fan. And I have always heard a great deal of noise. Those two towers, instead, did non explode. The first one imploded, it swallowed itself. The second one fused, it dissolved. Because of the heat, it dissolved just like a pat of butter placed on a flame. It all happened, it seemed to me, in deadly silence. Is it possible? Was the silenze really there, or was it inside of me?

I must also tell you that in wars, I have always seen a limited number of casualties. Every battle, 200 or 300 dead. At most 400. Like in Dak To, in Vietnam. And when the battle is over, the Americans began gathering them and counting them, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the massacre of Mexico City, where I was wounded, they gathered at least 800 bodies. Thinking I was also dead they threw me in the morgue, the cadavers that soon piled up around and on top of me, soon seemed like a deluge.

Well, in those two towers worked almost 50,000 people. And very few had the time to evacuate. The elevators didn’t work, and to descend from the top floors one needed an eternity, flames permitting. We will never know the number of dead. (forty thousand? Fifty thousand?) The Americans will never say, in order not to underline the intensity of this apocalysm. To deny Osama Bin Laden satisfaction and encouragement for other apocalypses.

Further, the two abysses that have absorbed the tens of thousands of creatures are too deep. At best, workers will dig out pieces assorted pieces, a nose here, a finger there. Or else a piece of slime that seems like ground coffee and instead is organic matter. The residue of bodies which where pulverized in an instant.

Yesterday, Mayor Giuliani sent another ten thousand body bags, but they’re unused. What do I feel for the kamikaze that died with them? No respect. No pity. No, not even pity. I, who in every case, end up with giving in to pity. I have always found kamikaze unlikable, that is, those that suicide to kill others, starting with those Japanese of WWII. I never considered them par to the Italian patriot, Pietro Micca, who in order to block the arrival of enemy troops, ignited the ammunition storage and died in the explosion at the Citadel in Turin.

I have never considered them soldiers, and even less do I consider them martyrs or heroes, as Mr. Arafat, hollering and spitting saliva, defined them to me in 1972. (That is when I interviewed him in Amman, where his Marshals trained the terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof). I considered them fatuous and nothing else. Fatuous because instead of searching for glory by means of the movies or politics or sport, they seek it in the death of themselves and others. A death that, instead of an Oscar or a Minister’s seat or a trophy, will bring them (they believe) admiration. And, in the case of those that pray to Allah, a place in the Heaven described in the Coran: "the Heaven where heroes screw the virgins (Uri)".

I bet that they are also physically fatuous. I’m looking at the photo of two kamikaze of whom I spoke in my “Insciallah”: a romance novel that begins with the destruction of the American base (over 400 dead) and the French base ( over 350 dead) in Beirut. They had these photos taken before they went to die, and before dieing they had been to the barber shop. Look at what a gorgeous hair cut. What creamed mustaches, groomed little beard, flirtatious sideburns…

Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the employees that worked in the two towers and at the Pentagon. Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the firemen who died trying to save them. And do you know who are the heroes? The passengers of the flights that should have landed on the White House and that instead crashed in a Pennsylvania countryside because they rebelled. For them, yes there should be a Paradise, Illustrious Mr. Arafat. The problem is that now you are the perpetual Head of State. You are acting like a Monarch. You visit the Pope, affirm that you do not like terrorism, send your condolences to Bush. In your chameleon ability of inconsistency, you would be capable of replying that I am right.

But let’s change topic. I am very ill, it is known, and talking with the Arafats I get a fever. I prefer to talk of the invulnerability that many, in Europe, attribute to America. Invulnerabilty? But how invulnerable?!? The more a society is democratic and open, the more it is exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more one risks hijackings or massacres that occurred for many years in Italy and Germany and other regions of Europe. And that now occurs, giant size, in America.

Not for nothing the non democratic governments of the police regimes, have always hosted and financed and helped the terrorists. The Soviet Union, the satellite countries of the Soviet Union, and China, for example. Gadaffi’s Lybia, Iraq, Iran, Syria. Arafat’s Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and all the Muslim countries of Africa. In the airports and planes of those countries I have always felt safe. Serene like a sleeping newborn. The only thing I feared was being arrested because I wrote about terrorists. In European airports and planes, instead I always felt a little nervous. In American airports and airplanes, I’m outright nervous. An in New York, twice as nervous. (Not in Washington, however, I must admit it. I truly did not expect the plane on the Pentagon).

For me it has never been a question of “if” but rather one of “when”. Why do you think that Tuesday morning my subconscious picked up on the sensation of danger? Why contrary to my habits, did I turn on the Tv? Why, among the questions I asked myself, while the audio did not work, did I include the one on premeditated attack? And why do you think that as soon as the second plane appeared, I understood? Since America is the strongest nation in the world, the richest, most powerful, most modern, many fell into the trap of believing it invulnerable. Even the Americans themselves, at times. But America’s vulnerability is born from it’s strength, it’s riches, it’s might, it’s modernity. It is also born from it’s multi-ethnic essence, it’s freedom, it’s respect for the citizens and for it’s guests.

Example approximately 24 million Americans are arab-muslims. When a Mustafa or a Muhammed comes let’s say from Afghanistan to visit his uncle, no one prohibits him to take courses in a school to learn to pilot a 757. No one stops him from taking university courses to study chemistry and biology ( I hope this will stop). No one, Not even if the government fears that that son of Allah may hijack a 757 or throw a vial of bacteria in the water reservoir and unleash a massacre.

all right I formatted this far and thought I'd read enough.

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