Italian Essay for France

THAT LITTLE GREEN CAP

We all were so young, more or less eight years old, we were not able to understand. It was easy to bias us, and some women, mothers of my schoolfriends, started to point at the new arrived, accusing him to bring lice on the heads of their children. They were pitiless. And he was only eleven, and didn’t deserve all that gratuitous hate, insults, leg-pulls because of his country of origin,

Rumenia, and his social condition. Yes, he lived in a gypsy camp, and it was enough to call him “The dirty child”, or “The thief”. The mother of a friend of mine came to our classroom, and pretended to control all our hairs, to discover who was the original “guilty”.

“It is you, isn’t it true?”, she started shouting, interrupting the lesson, addressing to Cristiano.

Cristiano. This was his name.

High for his age, slim, olive-complexion, short black hair, deep eyes. Sometime we talked together, and he had a strong liking for my father, that was able to speak his language: in the morning, when he toke me to the school, my father said hallo to him in rumenian, exchanging few words.

I remember that a few time later strange voices started to circulate, that arrived to our children ears counterfait, sweetened, half hidden.

I knew the truth a few days ago, now that I’m sixteen, and I can understand. Now that I can understand the reality in which I lived my infancy.

Cristiano didn’t come anymore to school. “Where is he gone?”, we asked, looking for an answer in the eyes of the adults.

One day my parents read about the scandal on a newspaper. Gypsy children sexually abused by Italian men, that were used to reach the gypsy camp to pay the relatives of the children and get their sexual services. There were photos of those poor creatures, whose faces were obviously covered for the privacy. And my mother cried, because she recognized a little green cap, the one that he was used to wear.

Among those abused innocents there was Cristiano too.

Cristiano that brought lice.

Cristiano that was used to steal pens, pencils, erasers.

Cristiano that was a gypsy.

Yes, he was a gypsy, victim of the prejudices of this dull-minded society.

We, the Italians, apparently so pure, perfect with our ties fresh from laundry, we that accompanied to school our children wearing new aprons, with culs just washed, we got stained with the fault, laing the blame on someone else.

We were the victims. And he was the “Evil”.

It is terrible to realize how stereotyps distort our minds, showing a reality absolutely different.

We were guilty, he was the victim.

This is not a novel, a happy-end story.

This wants to be a denunciation, a warning, a protest.

I’m talking with you, that could be Italian as I am, or French, Spanish, or English. It doesn’t matter which your nationality is, or your social condition. I’m talking with you.

Think with your head, learn to love, to accept, to go in the depth of the things.

Don’t be satisfied with a fatuos superficial image; you are intelligent, use your capacity and open yourself to the world.

And watch it in colours, that world, not only black and white. Bring your message to everybody around you, don’t let your words die. Because if a voice grows up from silence and starts shouting, someone first or late will hear it. And could start shouting with you.

Cristiano was a child like many others; many times we listen to stories like this one, every day; but we never stop enough to understand them completely.

When may arrived, I prepared as usually the invitations for my birthday party. And of course I prepared the invitation for him too. But I couldn’t give it to him.

He didn’t come to school. Never again.

I knew later that a father, Giorgio, that worked many years as missionary in Mozambique, found a place for him in a community.

I have few memories of that child: I remember his smile, and how he called me “Saharetta”, jocking.

I didn’t see him anymore.

Sahara Rossi
IISS Charles Darwin
Italy