The time of quarantined Italians singing old patriotic songs on their balconies next to their flag is coming to an end. This two-month lockdown has made me discover the pleasure of the simple things like enjoying the sun on our patio while reading a book, striking up a conversation with the odd man who used to silently stare at us from his balcony, walking in circles around our house while looking at the trees in full blossom. Even cooking every single meal has not been so bad. The happiness in these restrictions and the appreciation of the small things in life is certainly something we will all remember from this historical time. But it has not been all roses and flowers.
We are all feeling frustrated and my patience is running out. I am tired of seeing William in front of the computer instead of playing soccer, or the daily hassle of having to explain the purpose of a walk from the house to a store on the latest version of this auto-certification form, a very detailed document I had to fill in and sign every day before leaving the house. Enough. I want to leave the house without the damned form, go meet a friend for coffee and I am tired of drinking wine in front of Zoom. We all need to get out over here. It is time.
Personally, on May 4 I hope to hear a loud “Liberi tutti” (Italian phrase to let the children go out and play). John wants to go for a long bike ride. William wants to have a big party in the courtyard, with food, mercatino (yard sale) and movie night, followed by disco. But I am afraid he will have to wait for much longer for his dream to come true.
First, the condo association of our building only allows us to go to the courtyard to throw rubbish or water the roses. So instead of hearing the children play we only used to hear the sound of the glass bottles tumbling down into the large dumpster. We still do, but thanks to the Covid-19 emergency, we also hear the occasional laugh of a small child running in circles in front of a bored parent. Second, here in Piemonte, although the number of people on ICU beds has had a steady decline, there has not been a single day with less than 50 deaths and the number of Covid-19 infections continue to go up, probably due to the large number of people in close contact during lockdown, which is a paradox but there you go. So, contrary to what we all need and were hoping, here in Piemonte, and in Turin in particular, there will be very few changes to the lockdown restrictions; no parties allowed I am afraid. So what are the new rules?
Starting from tomorrow, we will no longer be under house arrest. Many of us will be able to go back to work, and the unbearable rule of the 200-metre radius walks near the house no longer applies. From tomorrow we can go anywhere in Piemonte. Parks will be open, we will be allowed to exercise, but not in groups. Limited numbers of people will be able to travel by public transportation, go to public and private offices to receive services but, and here it gets tough, on the condition that we all respect the 2-metre social distancing rule and that we all wear facial masks. Unfortunately, nor in the decreto the Piemonte Governor just sent out, nor in the previous one, nor in the news this simple but essential social distancing rule has been made clear. On the contrary, in the laboriously written Government documents there is a large list of rules instead, in all possible scenarios, such as taking the dog for grooming, going to second houses, visiting people with intimate relations (yet to be clarified what they mean by “intimate”), what to use the bicycle for even going horseback riding! How social distancing will be enforced in all these situations has not been mentioned and it is not on anyone’s concern.
So What has changed?Questions: (1) who will maintain the 2 metre social distance rule? (2) what will the Italian police do to enforce it?
Many people think that life will not change much from tomorrow, except for the sound of more cars on the road (better to hear traffic than the sound of the ambulances, for sure). However, unfortunately, there are many people who would answer my question with a laugh and go partying afterwards. “Domani andiamo in discoteca!” (Tomorrow we’ll go to disco!), William overheard a teenager say to a friend yesterday.
During lockdown I saw crowds of people in side streets, who not only were not following social distancing but who were also chatting with each other, without wearing a facial mask. In more than one occasion the Italian police was standing next to their car, while looking at them. Last week two ladies got really offended when I asked them to move so that I could walk by without coming too close. Before that, on two occasions, I had to walk two streets out of my way with heavy bags of groceries, in order to avoid having to walk through a crowd of people cheering in front of a concert on top of a balcony. Many people there were smoking, others dancing, with their masks flopping loosely below their chins. Yesterday the baker was insulted and laughed at by a man who had not been allowed to enter the store to buy bread because he wasn’t wearing a facial mask. I later saw the same man buying bread at a different store. He was even coughing. I saw groups of children playing soccer where the police cars were less likely to stop and do checks on people. And I found that whenever I went outside, I always had to play the role of the one who constantly has to run away from people veering too closely. The others? In two months, I only had one person crossing the street to give me space, so I didn’t have to leave the sidewalk.
What will happen tomorrow with more of these people outside and a confusing set of rules? Will the Italians obey? Maybe it will not matter anyway as it is confusing and everyone does what they want here anyway.
An ambulance leaves the municipal hospital in Codogno, southeast of Milan, on February 22, 2020. –
Since the schools closed for the Mardi Gras break, we have been house-bound for more than two weeks now to fight the coronavirus. We were told that we all must self-isolate to limit the contagion. Despite this, three weeks ago, Italy had only three coronavirus cases. Now it has more than 15,000. We began self-isolating on February 22nd, before Italy decided to quarantine the whole country. Since then, my social outings, including the Carnival events my ten year old and I had been really looking forward to, have all been cancelled as most of them involved being in crowds.
Here in Italy we are now all quarantined and it kind of sucks. It’s stressful. It is worse than being stuck in the house on a snow day in Boston. There, on a snow day, at least I was able to hang out with the neighbours who were shoveling snow outside their houses. William still misses jumping in the snow drifts from the heights of our patio, sliding around in daddy’s car, and sledding on the Arlington hills.
Being house-bound now in Turin is worse. The vacant days continue but there is no hanging out with the neighbours outside, no coffee with a friend, no playdates, no lunches or dinner outside the house, no sledding. It is worse than being alone here in Turin at the end of August; a dream in comparison! The only social interaction I had in the last two and a half weeks has been at home over a boxed pizza, two meters away from my best friend Monica. And I was wondering for most of the time we have been together whether I should have been wearing the N95 mask or not to avoid breathing unwanted particles.
Now William and I only leave the house to quickly walk around our neighbourhood, much like the elderly people do. I occasionally go to the pharmacy to purchase my meds but I have to wait outside. They let you in one at a time, exactly like a bread line in Prague circa 1984. In these two and a half weeks house-bound, I have turned into a full-time cook, cleaner, home-schooler, soccer player, playmate. I feel exhausted. To make things more difficult, my husband John is currently in the US and it is not clear when and how he can join us. It feels as if William and I were in jail or in self-isolation on a desert island but I should be thankful: we are ok and our necessities are well taken care of.
It is not the coronavirus itself that frustrates me. It’s what is happening around here. During this period I have to reduce the dosage of my immuno-suppressors to avoid being in the high-risk group. So I have to deal with my immune system attacks again (my eyes today are all red). And I am worried about my 76 year old mom – who I am not supposed to visit. She often laughs at my strict measures, especially when it forces her to give up habits of a lifetime (e.g. using the same ironed white cotton handkerchief every day). This upsets me. Not to mention the other at-risk elderly people that fill Italy, without whom most children who are now out of school would not have care, while the parents are working.
What upset me most is the fact that in my home land, there are basically two groups of people: the saints and the idiots, I said to John in a moment of discomfort. I have tried hard to not overreact to this and I tried to defend my personal space but I think I have been riding a dead horse!”.
Foto 1 – Night shift at ER Ospedale di Cremona. Courtesy of nurse Elena Pagliarini Foto 2 – Crowd of idiots in Via Garibaldi in Turin on March 6.
Here in Italy, there is no sense of responsibility within the community, only the idea that the community has to provide all the solutions, and that the individuals have to do nothing, just wait and see.
This morning, despite the “stay at home” billwhich just came out, I overheard two middle-age women, who were standing outside my front window, chatting about the lack of hospital resources in Italy. They were reiterating over and over again that they were tired of following the mandatory hand washing measures – they were standing so closely next to each other I could not see space between them! They kept blaming the Italian Government’s lack of funding for everything. While they were ignoring the National health measures, once again they were pointing the finger at the Italian authorities.
In reality, here in Italy, all doctors, Emergency Rooms personnel and intensive care units are free under the Italian National Health Service. Testing is free, and preliminary results are available and public. Furthermore, anyone who is forced to stay at home in quarantine gets paid sick leave. The Italian Government, the public Health Institutions and all the physicians and nurses have worked incredibly hard to slow down the infection: they isolated the worst-affected areas, set up national and regional telephone hotlines,asked medical trainees and retirees to join in, opened infectious disease dedicated areas in hospitals, instructed a large number of volunteers placed in telephone and triage. I don’t see what else they could have done.
You probably heard so much criticism from the media on the measures they adopted here in Italy, compared to what they did in Wuhan, China (“here they did nothing! It is too late now). Later on, when the situation became serious, and a few small towns in Lombardy and Veneto got locked up and people forced to stay at home, they started complaining about the excess in safety measures… (“They are going overboard with this! It is just a flu.”). Despite this, the media here did a great job in broadcasting three simple concepts: (1) self-isolate yourself even if you have no symptoms (2) if you have cough and fever, use the phone. Don’t go to doctors’ offices or emergency rooms (3) If you think you might have coronavirus, ask a doctor to take a swab.
It would be excellent if my countrymen had followed these simple rules, but as usual many of them didn’t. “A Rome policeman developed a cough on February 28th after hosting a houseguest from Lombardy, the northern region where coronavirus disease is most rampant. Instead of calling his doctor or the hotline he went to an emergency room, where the ER staff left him to stew in the regular waiting room, where he infected at least 15 fellow patients in addition to his wife and children”. At the Molinette hospital in Turin an 80 year old couple with flu symptoms arrived at the emergency room and were mistakenly sent to radiology as they had failed to communicate the fact that their son was working in a town in the red area. So they had to quarantine the entire radiology unit as a result.
These stories and others I read every day remind me of the dumb comments I constantly hear outside the house. ‘Oh, ma non muoiono solo gli over 70? Ma dai, non possiamo andare fuori? Ma dai e chi l’ha detto? Non e’ una pandemia. Sono tutte stronzate dei media!” (Oh, but aren’t the ones dying over 70? C’mon, we can’t even go out? Who said we can’t? It’s not a pandemic. It’s all media bullshit!) The older guy making these statements was wondering if it is correct to call it a pandemic or not, while blowing waves of cigarette smoke in our faces. He then laughed when he saw William and I taking a few steps back, in order to defend ourselves.
How can such stupidity still manifest itself here in Turin, after days, actually weeks (feels like months) of seeing all over the news that Covid-19 is more contagious than the normal flu, as people can carry the virus for up to two weeks without any symptoms at all, and that the infection is now spreading as fast as oil stains all over Italy. Do they have to find their parents or grandparents refused for intubation in a hospital or do they have to fall sick themselves to start taking this matter more seriously? The latest news from the doctors in Lombardia is that there are now more and more cases of younger (40+) people infected.
It hurts me when I think of the so many dedicated Italians (the saints, see photo 1), including the doctors and nurses working days and nights with few breaks in between to fight this virus on one side and on the other side the other Italians (the idiots, see photo 2), who were laughing while they were not respecting the national measures three days ago. Sad and pathetic.
A woman who was repeatedly coughing next to me on the fruits and vegetables I was about to purchase at the market defended herself, instead of apologizing, with the following comment: “Ma guarda che non ho un virus. Non c’e’ bisogno che tu mi stia lontana. Credimi, sono una infermiera! ” (Hey, I don’t have a virus. You don’t need to keep the distance from me! Believe me, I am a nurse!.) Do I have the right to protect my personal space from a nurse coughing on me? I asked but got no reply in return.
Here in Turin I saw people of all ages ignoring or joking about the coronavirus, daily. Yesterday, one of the children in the playground we quickly walked past was calling William and could not understand why we were not stopping at the playground so William could play football with him. When the 12 year old saw us leaving, he said loud and clear: “dai qui non c’e’ il coronavirus. Sono tutte balle!”. (come on, here there is no coronavirus. It’s all bullshit!) His father shrugged his shoulders with a smile.
Too many Italians seem convinced that in their small group the virus will not arrive and that, as a result, they can do whatever they want, regardless whether they could pass the virus on to “others”. They just don’t care about the “others” even if theseMIGHT BE their parents or grandparents, who are IN the high-risk group.
“How individuals respond to advice on how best to prevent transmission will be as important as government actions, if not more important”, concluded a recent commentary from researchers at my University, Imperial College London, University of Oxford in the UK and Utrecht University.
Photo 3 – Carabinieri questioning people, courtesy of Brenda Sena
Yesterday, in our quick walk outside the house, we saw trucks in the street loaded with cops alerting the public to keep the social distance of one metre to fight the infection. Now there is police presence in all major areas to check any outside movements. Locking down Italy was beyond anyone’s imagination a week ago. Now it is serious. Today all stores were closed except for grocery and pharmacies and cops were questioning people walking in the street l with auto-certification forms on their whereabouts. Until two days ago, there were still too many irresponsible individuals going shopping at the mall, despite they had been told not to do so.
What will happen next? “Gli italiani hanno bisogno di nuovo di un duce per iniziare a cambiare il loro comportamento?” (the Italians need a dictator again in order to start changing their behavior?) I heard people saying this and that we are in a war. Are we really?
I consider myself lucky; I have a house, food and despite I have an auto-immune disease, I am not forced to go to work like all the people who are forced to do it and can take care of my child. William and I can continue to be careful, self-isolate and take precautions (we keep away from people and wear the mask when we have to go to a store), but not because the Italian Government says so, not because the Church says so, but becauseit is a social act for ourselves and our community.
Opps, I just had a visit from the Italian postman who came to my door with no mask and asked me to sign the receipt of a letter.
We have to be patient. As my 92 year old father Dolfy would now say if he was still alive: “Voi giovani avreste bisogno di un po’ di guerra per imparare a vivere! Il coronavirus e’ niente in confronto.” (dudes, you would benefit from living through a little bit of war in order to learn how to live. The coronavirus is nothing in comparison).
Maybe living through a pandemic will have some value for our society but this is another story.
After spending twenty three years outside my native country Italy, here I am. For almost half of my life, while living outside of Italy, I tried really hard to avoid being the stereotypical Italian. I worked hard not be perceived as either too passionate, too dramatic or just plain rude. I got used to be concise and not get lost in details when answering a question. I learned to answer precisely rather than vaguely. I learned to not dress as though it were twenty degrees colder, I learned to tip, to swallow spicy meals and icy drinks, to not be constantly in fear of the “colpo d’aria” (a blast of cold air) hitting me when I am all sweaty and to cope with the irresistible desire to not always haggle prices. I trained myself to correctly stand in a queue and to wait without finding excuses to step in front of everyone. I have discovered the pleasure of talking in turn rather than stepping on others to get my say.
I enjoyed the freedom of being myself without having to fit into a specific group.
After being convinced I could or I would not want, for any reasons, to go back to live in my home town Turin, I finally did it. Two years ago, a few months after the death of my father and, on the advice of my father, I decided to leave behind icy Massachusetts. So on a beautiful sunny day, I landed in Milano Malpensa with my eight year old son William. I kissed my hand and touched the Italian soil and then happily returned to my hometown Turin. We went to live in the same condo where I lived as a child, close to my mom’s apartment. My husband John is travelling backwards and forwards from America to Italy to be with us as much as he can. Hopefully, he will move closer to us in the not too distant future.
So I am finally home but… am I? Do I really feel at home here? Miriam Adeney says: “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere”. Can an expat really feel at home and preserve the identity in one single place? This blog aims to find answers to this question.
What happened today will not be easily forgotten in our family. I experienced something strange but, at the same time, frighteningly familiar now that I am back in Turin.
So I decided to have my birthday lunch there. I was particularly looking forward to introducing my nine year old and my mom to such a unique restaurant right in the heart of Turin. Our table was the first one to be occupied and a variety of yummy Piemontese dishes I grew up eating appeared on our table almost immediately: insalata russa, peperonata, vitel tonne’, parmigiana, verdure in carpione, albese, tomini elettrici. Everything was so delicious it was hard to say “no” to the offer of an another spoon. There was no music playing in the background but I liked it that way as the sound of the rain outside was very pleasant.
Imagine a romantic dinner by the river with your partner in a cute historical villa by the river, with fresh flowers hanging from wooden windows, decorated interiors and eclectic collections of teapots, vases and lamps in every room. The rooms with the tiny flowers embroidered on the tablecloths, matching the flowers on the nearby drapes and wood beams on the ceilings reminding the visitor of the houses featured in Inspector Morse books or some pretty hotel you may come across in the English countryside.
William was very annoyed at first – he kept saying he hated the restaurant as more antipasti were placed on the table – but was coming around as we moved from the antipasti into the primi. I was feeling happy, as did my mom and hubby. Then the room began to change with more lively atmosphere. New people started entering the room from the doorway next to our table, and went to occupy the beautifully laid out tables next to ours. The newly arriving guests were joyfully greeting the others who were already seated. The greetings quickly spread across the room and continued while a group of seated women was clapping their hands in excitement. The clapping continued. “Wow, they are happy. I wonder what they are celebrating…Mom, don’t be hard on them. They are young, they just want to have fun!” I was telling my mom, who had started to feel annoyed.
I then realized that, actually, those were not young adults as I had first perceived, but strange 35-40 year old adults: a mix of crew cut short dyed hair cuts, worn out jeans, large tattoos on arms and necks, metal chains hanging on their vests, shirts with death stars, plucked eyebrows and piercings on various parts of their bodies. I could put them neither in the punk nor in a recognizable class group. The loud cheering on both tables and across the room was becoming unbearable. A couple of women started hitting the table with their fists. Only now I can picture them as the Italian correspondent of British football hooligans.
I asked the restaurant Manager if he could play some music which could help them calm down but he said he couldn’t as the speakers were right on top of one of them. I felt I had been transported into a badly written horror movie. We could no longer hear a single word coming from our table, only the ecstatic screams of that large group of people while they were moving around the room. Then a woman started clapping endlessly while she was looking at me. The waiter said: “what an earthquake here!”. The Chief Manager decided to go talk with them. In reply, he was offered a bread-stick by one of the women seated at the table!… A loud laugh followed. Then came another waiter, who had previously heard me complain. He thought that the “undisciplined kids” I had previously complained about, were literally children! Once he saw them he left with a resigned look on this face.
So we were no longer there to celebrate my birthday but to fight a war against a group of idiots. Clearly, they were treating all of us, restaurant staff included, with complete lack of respect. And nobody was doing or saying anything to stop it. I was feeling humiliated and violated of both my family privacy and my human rights.
I walked to the nearest group and asked them to please be quieter. ” Sorry, we are the majority here. So we can do what we want!”, followed by other sarcastic remarks about my elderly mother. I tried one more time to get help from the restaurant Manager but she kept repeating with a sad look on her face: “Sorry but they are the majority. We cannot do anything to stop them”.
“But really? Because they are the majority?” A number of painful memories of Italian life came back to stab me: the rich boy successfully forcing other children to look at him play, the boy pushing another boy with the help of his classmates to lift a wooden gate and go play in the animal barn after it had been clearly forbidden, a young girl witnessing a classmate throw bread crumbs on her “best” friend’s head while she was smiling at her, a rich teenager calling the waiter to tip him, only to then throw 50 euros worth of lira on the floor with his classmates laughing in the background as they were leaving the restaurant. And more recently, a mom who was protecting the insulting behaviour of her son at school with the excuse that the child he was treating badly was not joining the “games” played by the majority of the other kids. Yes, I should dedicate a separate posting on each of these.
So I went to them and said: “Listen, I’ve lived in Italy, in England, in America, in Ireland, but in my entire life, nowhere, I came across people as “maleducati” as you are.” A loud laugh and a joke followed. At that point I said with a high pitch: “I just hope that none of the women seated here will ever get pregnant! That would be terrible for our society.”
So at the end they managed to push us out of the room. When I walked past the entryway I found myself inhaling something with a vague resemblance of marijuana but stranger. So my birthday lunch continued, with relief, in the adjacent bar/break room. To feel better, my mother started crying. William went to play with a dog. We slowly got back into eating by talking it through with the restaurant Manager. She said with a resigned facial expression, “It happens all the time. The kids’ First Communions are the worst…” Before she finished the sentence, I heard a couple of them chat behind me, while they were waiting to go to the single bathroom behind us. We then heard a loud crash and saw two men with a skull on their tee-shirt knocking over a glass vase with flowers. They had done it on purpose. After that I even heard a woman recite the Padre Nostro to suggest that we were a bunch of old nuns. Another couple disappeared in the single bathroom but we kept hearing them talk. This wasn’t a single occurrence as more couples of the same group of lunatics were going to lock themselves into the bathroom for long periods of time. I was wondering what they were up to and whether I should try to get William out of there.
We were trying to pay and escape but William needed to go to the bathroom. While I was distracted with paying, I heard a loud noise and a scream. William came out of the bathroom with a shocked expression and he said: “Mom, there were two of them outside the toilet. One of the women crashed through the door. I saw broken pieces falling down in front of me, even the door knob! She laughed, pushed me out and got in.” I couldn’t believe a human being, a woman, had reached the point of violating the privacy of a nine year old boy going to the bathroom. I cannot explain to myself how anyone can support such indignity to go with the crowd.
In Medio Stat Virtus 