I don't go to raise tents in Mecca. I don't go to sing Our Fathers and Hail Marys at the tomb of Muhammad. I don't go to pee on the marble of their mosques, I don't go to make caca at the feet of their minarets. When I find myself in their countries (something I never derive pleasure from), I never forget I'm a stranger and a guest. I'm careful not to offend them with clothes or gestures or behavior which for us are normal and for them inadmissible. I treat them with dutiful respect, dutiful courtesy. I apologize if through carelessness or ignorance I infringe one of their rules or superstitions. And this cry of pain and indignation I have written you not always with the apocalyptic scenes with which I began my piece before my eyes. At times instead of those I saw an image that for me is symbolic (and therefore infuriating), of the great tent with which for three months a summer ago the Somali Moslems disfigured, defiled, and outraged the Piazza del Duomo in Florence. My city. It was a tent raised to blame, condemn and insult the Italian government that played host to them but didn't grant them the necessary papers to run around Europe and didn't let them bring hordes of their relatives into the country Mammas, daddies, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, pregnant sisters-in-law and even relatives of relatives. It was a tent situated near the beautiful Archbishop's Palace and on the sidewalk outside it they put the shoes or the slippers that in their countries they line up outside the mosques. And together with shoes or slippers, empty water bottles they used to wash their feet before prayer. A tent set up in front of the cathedral with the dome by Brunelleschi, beside the baptistery with the golden doors of Ghiberti. A tent, in fine, furnished like a sloppy flat: chairs, tables, sofas, mattresses to sleep or to fuck on, cook stoves to prepare food and befoul the square with smoke and stinking smells. And thanks to the usual insensitivity of the ENEL, which cares about as much about our works of art as it cares about our landscape, it was furnished with electric light. Thanks to a radio-tape player, it was enriched by the tortured voice of a muezzin who regularly exhorted the faithful, deafened the infidels, and drowned out the sound of the church bells. And together with all that, the yellow lines of urine that profaned the marbles of the baptistery. (Good God! They have a long stream, these sons of Allah. How do they manage to hit a target separated from the protective railing and therefore almost two meters away from their urinary organ?) With the yellow lines of urine was the stink of their shit which blocked the gate of San Salvatore al Vescovo: the exquisite Romanesque church (A.D. 1000) which sits on the shoulders of the Piazza del Duomo and which the sons of Allah had turned into a shithouse. You know it well. You know it well because it was I who called you, begging you to speak of it in Il Corriere, remember? I also called the mayor who, I must concede, kindly came to my house. He listened to me, he said I was right. "You're right, you're really right..." But the tent wasn't removed. He forgot about it or couldn't manage. I also called the Foreign Minister, who was a Florentine, indeed one of those Florentines who speak with a very Florentine accent, not that he was involved in the matter. And he too, I concede, listened to me. He said I was right: "Ah, yes, You're right. Yes." But he didn't raise a finger to remove the tent and as for the sons of Allah who urinated on the Baptistery and shat upon San Salvatore al Vescovo, he soon made them happy. (As far as I know the daddies and mammas and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and pregnant sisters-in-law now are wherever they want to be.) That is, in Florence or other cities in Europe. Then I changed my strategy. I called a friendly cop who runs the security office and said, "Dear officer, I'm not a politician. When I say I'm going to do something, I do it. Moreover I have war experience and I'm wise to certain things. If you don't remove that frigging tent tomorrow, I'll burn it. I swear on my honor that I'll burn it, not even a regiment of carabinieri will be able to stop me, and I want to be arrested for this. Handcuffed and carried off to jail. I'll wind up in all the papers as a result." Well, being smarter than the others, in the course of a few hours he took it away. Where the tent had been there was nothing left but a huge disgusting pile of garbage. It was a Pyrrhic Victory. In fact it didn't in the least influence the creeps who for years have been wounding and humiliating what was the capital of art and culture and beauty. It didn't in the least discourage the other very arrogant guests of the city: Albanians, Sudanese, Bengalese, Tunisians, Algerians, Pakistani, Nigerians who with such fervor contribute to the drug trade and prostitution, apparently not prohibited by the Koran. Oh, yes: they're all still where they were before my cop took away the tent. In the courtyard of the Uffizi Gallery, at the foot of Giotto's tower. In front of the Loggia dell'Orcagna, around the Loggie del Porcellino. In front of the national library, at the entrance of the museums. On the Ponte Vecchio, where every so often they stab or shoot each other. Along the Arno, where they've sought and been granted financial support from the municipal government (yes, ladies and gentlemen, financial support). On San Lorenzo's church square where they get drunk on beer, wine, and liquor, race of hypocrites that they are, and where they utter obscenities to women. (Last summer, on that church square, they did that to me, who am by now an old woman. It goes without saying they brought more harm upon themselves. Oh, they brought more harm on themselves! One is still there moaning over his genitals.) In the historic streets where they bivouac with the pretense of selling "goods." By "goods" you must understand pocketbooks and suitcases copied from models protected by patents, and therefore illegal, and carvings, pens, African statuettes which ignorant tourists think are sculptures by Bernini, and "stuff to smell." ("Je connais mes droits," "I know my rights," he hissed at me, on the Ponte Vecchio, one I'd seen with his "stuff to smell.") And too bad if a citizen protests, too bad if he responds with "go exercise those rights at home." "Racist! Racist!" Too bad if by walking between the goods blocking a passage way a pedestrian damages a so- called Bernini sculpture. "Racist! Racist!" Too bad if a city policeman approaches and attempts an "Honorable son of Allah, sir, would you very much mind moving aside just a hair so people can get by?" They eat him alive. They menace him with a knife. At the very least they insult his mamma and his progenitors. "Racist! Racist!" And people endure with resignation. It has no effect even if you yell at them what my dad shouted during Fascism: "Doesn't dignity mean anything to you? Don't you have a little pride, pigs?"Full text, translated from the original Italian here
ML/NJ
Great book, great courageous woman. I bought all she wrote.