They Hope
Sehele
He was walking on the beach burnt by the sun of august, with a slow, shuffling pace, his body partly bended down because of the excessive weight of his merchandises. He felt warm, his ebony forehead was beaded by sweat; I watched his feeth sinking into the sand, his slippers of little worth making difficult his mouvements, and I saw him advancing to the nearest beach-umbrellas, to show plastic sun-glasses and gaily coloured pareos to young couples and families with many children, all lying down on their beach-beds and seasheet, relaxed, taned, without cares. I saw their heads shaking scantily, “No, thanks”, and he, lowing his eyes, went away, wrapped in the warmth, to others beach-umbrellas, walking in the sand, with his back bent, the sweat impregnating his clothes. I don’t remenber his name, not even his story. He came to us while we where eating some sandwiches, waiting for the salt water of the sea could dry on our taned skin.
The same gesture, the same goods. Bracelets, necklaces, summer clothes.
He started talking with my father, my mother, my uncles: I was so young and shy, and kept silent, listening to his words. He sat in the shadow of our beach-umbrella, while I was paying him attention. He was very handsome: fleshy lips, deep onyx eyes, the skin like shining black silk. He was from Senegal, like the most of pedlars that we could meet everyday on the beach.
“I’d like to live here, in Italy. In Milan”, he said resting his forearms on his knees. “Now I live in Paris, in the Latin Quartier”. I was enchanted when he narrated us about his country: I thought he was telling an imaginary story, like those ones that my father was used to narrate me before going to bed.
On the Casamance and Saloum delta, there was a labyrinth of thick mangrovies, little channels, large lagoons and shining planes. He told us about the towns, the Retba lake, so called for his colour caused by the red algae growing in its water; about the sea, the sands – white like chalk -, and an infinite extente of intense blue.
“Come to Senegal one day!” he told us: “You’ll be my guests, it will be a true pleasure for me”. We dreamt a lot about that fantastic trip thet we could never do, thanking him for his courtesy. “On the river, our fishermen sell their fishes for no more than two euros, and cook them directly on the sand. You’ll eat on the beach”. We went on talink, and I, listening silently, imagined to lose myself into the ocean extente in the middle of the night, listening only the sound of the waves, of the wind, and the crackling of the fire. I remenber that we gave him water to drink because it was a hot day, and one of our sandwiches with tuna and tomatoes. Other bathers walking around us were watching surprised the man sitting near us, whose merchandises with little worth were lying in a corner of shadow. Also other sellers were watching quickly at his direction, maybe envious because he had the ‘privilege’ to rest and eat something. A young girl friend of his came near him; I recognized her because my aunt bought a small bread-basket from her a few time before. She smiled and said ironically: “What are you doing?”. She was wearing a long and large blue dress, had a high forehead, the same fleshy lips of him, dark eyes. Her little baskets were very original and coloured, she were holding them in her hands and on the shoulders. He returned the smile, finishing voraciously the sandwich. He gave us some bracelets, coloured strings, yellow, red and green, to be tied up to ous wristes by three knots. We had to express three wishes, and the bracelet had not to be untied or cut. When a knot untied, the correspondent wish was realized. He took my hand and tied it, while I was noticing enchanted the contrast of our skins. “You’ll come to Senegal, OK?”, he repeated again. “We’ll do it!”.
My father spoke with him by phone after our holidays, while the autumn was inexorably coming. He called many times, because he became fond of us. I didn’t see him anymore, I didn’t know what was then his life. If he was back to Paris, or succeded to move to Milan. With whom he lived, how much he earned, and if, after all, he hoped.
Devesh
I knew a man some years ago, that cleaned the glasses of the cars at a cross of the street, near a traffic-lights. He was from Bangladesh. He had black hair, that became less by less grizzled, a long face, kind and calm glance, bronze skin. He was there waiting for the light to become red, ready with his brush and the pall full of soaped water . He came near us (I was sitting on the back seats) and my parents let him do his work, even when the glasses of our car were perfecly cleaned.
I met him going to school.
When we went out for dinner some evenings we met him.
In the morning, afternoon, in every moment.
He was always there.
One day I remember he came to our house and my parents offered him a coffee. And he started telling us his story; it was his personal story, but so similar to other stories never told.
Navneet
There is another man that I still meet, just like the man that ‘hoped’ near the traffic-lights in the Appia street. This man stays leaning against the wall near a very large bar on the same street. Since many years he sells packets of handkerchieves and cigarette-lighters. He has grey hairs, worn out clothes, a silent and tired look, signed by wrinkles. But I never saw on that face resignation. I never spoke with him, I don’t know the sound of his voice, neither where he comes from. I don’t know if he has sons, a wife, just somebody waiting for him at home.
I don’t know if he cries sometime because of the hard conditions of his life. If he counts the moneys gained during the day and if he is able to live with the few he has.
I don’t know.
I have taken a book that my father bought from one of those sellers on the beach, in Sardinia. There were many pedlars selling small books there. Books that tell about their countries, fantastic stories, but also true ones, facts really happened. Often I asked him to buy some of those little books for me, and my mother was used to read them for me in the evening; I remained laying on her breast, fixing the ceiling, listening fashinated the adventures of ‘Mery, the whitish princess’, ‘Mitipì’, ‘The hunter and the crocodile’. The title of this short book is ‘Fron Ethiopia to Rome, letter to her mother of a migrant in flight’.
Simret was a child like many others. She flied from her country, leaving after her back family and affections, tastes and smells, objects and familiar roads. She flied away from her country like many others, compelled by the violence, the war, the hunger, hopeing to see in the unknown a better future. She started a trip through the sea withouth ticket, withouth a return, and maybe be withouth an arrival. She lost her mother crossing the desert, like other thousands of children like her. She was violated, like other hundreds children like her. But the story of Simret belongs only to her, like the story of the pedlar on the beach. Like the one of the glass-washer. Or the one of the man that since many years sells handkiercheves and cigarette-lighters.
They are fragments of an immense and maybe infinite novel that no reader will ever read; pages of pains, frustration, fear, lostness. Sheets of paper written and teared, ruined, destroyed. They are part of a story that is narrated everyday, everywhere in the world. In them are reflected faces of men, women and children disappeared in the nothing withouth anyone that knows. In their eyes are signed the names of all those people, the funerals never celebrated for their deaths, the memory of their lives. They run away through the sea and the countries everywhere. Leaving everything, loves, families, sensations, stability. And they dream. They hope.
They resist for long time, suffering the most miserable conditions, they take long exhausting trips, and sometime they aren’t strong enough, and their life goes away, leaving them for ever. They land on the coasts of unknown countries, often only imagined. They are hungry, thirsty, distroyed by the pain to have lost everything, by homesickness. But you can see them everyday on the strees, at a market, on the beaches. You can see them walking bringing their poor goods, untiring, sometime a little tedious. They come from Africa, East Europe, Asia. Ethiopia, Senegal, Bangladesh, India, Russia, Romania. Everyone has his story, everyone is a chapter of this tragis novel, but a novel full of hope.
Because they hoped.
And they Hope.
Sahara Rossi,
3°E, IISS Charles Darwin
Rome
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