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You sit on the floor in your new empty house, you sigh, you look out from the top of the fifteenth floor and you see everything you've been through. How big your mother's heart must be to be able to fit everything inside. You, the giant man you had at your side, your children, first one, then two, now three, who look you in the eye without having to lower your gaze because they are becoming as big as their father, the long, very long journey that you did it together. You have arrived, finally. You look beyond the horizon, distinguish the places in the city where you received help and those where you were hunted like a plague victim, for the black of your skin or the green of your pockets, you remember the moments in which you wanted to disappear under the earth and the moments when you could still believe you could do it.

You have waited for years for the granting of public housing, because as with all truly useful things, there are a handful of places and a mountain of questions, very long waiting lists and an infinite amount of time. before your turn comes. You and your children went to prison, reported for a very bad thing for which you were acquitted after they took everything from you: your shop, your house, your honor. You only remember your tears and their tears, which fell inconsolably and uncontrollably, because in there the sadness was contagious and when you cried they cried too, when they cried you cried too. You got nothing back and started from scratch as you had done when you arrived in Italy. The house of fear where you lived for years was the only one you could afford, it looked like the one in via Matti number zero in the children's song.

The door on the street is no longer there, it is a building where whoever wants can come and go freely at any time of day or night. To reach the top floor, you have to climb an endless series of stairs in total darkness, because there isn't even a small light bulb that works in the apartment building. The rain was falling in the house and there were puddles, what was left of the roof seemed like it could collapse at any moment over your head; it was colder inside than outside, the jacket was worn even for eating and sleeping. There was no hot water and, if there was a need to wash, it was heated pot by pot over the fire. The marks on your little girl's body from the boiling water that fell on the way from the kitchen to the bathroom, the marks on her heart, every time you came home in the evening and walked five floors of darkness to reach the front door : you who went up in silence, trying not to bump into the rats and drug dealers who came down.

Being able to go to school, eat something hot in the canteen while stocking up for the evening, stay at least a few hours in a normal place, upon leaving run towards the Arsenal of Peace to spend a few more hours in a warm, lighted place, before night fell. The legal assistance service with free legal aid activated thanks to the generosity of a lawyer to understand how to get out of that cursed house, close the VAT numbers and be entitled to receive housing help from the Municipality, contacts with the local police unit to understand if someone could really live there or if it was all too dangerous, the help activated by Social Services and the community where you found refuge. You look outside and see all the people who have given you even just a little help on this journey, you look inside and see your children running happily from room to room thinking they live in a skyscraper. And cry.


Marco Grossetti
NP October 2023