Favor's smile

I met Favor 7 years ago. It's winter, Favor is wearing a light leather jacket. he has a tired face, dirty clothes. He has an expired residence permit. He says nothing but it is clear that he is one of the many victims of human trafficking. She is forced into prostitution to pay a priceless debt. We respect her silence and offer her hospitality. Over time, psychic suffering emerges. At her request, we start the process for assisted repatriation but on the day of departure she changes her mind: she disappears, and reappears in our life after a year, choosing the bridge over the Dora next to us as a residence. Favor went through these years barefoot, even when the thermometer went below zero. She lived days and nights, summers and winters without any shelter other than cardboard wrapping, wearing the same clothes as if they were a second skin. Her psychic suffering has been growing and she has increasingly put her in the corner at the mercy of her hallucinations.

We asked for help from the whole world but her condition as an irregular foreigner with psychiatric problems never made her visible. We stood by her, maintaining the distance she required of us and experiencing all the helplessness of those who he feels the suffering of the other but has no tools to help him. Three years ago to "defend her place" she was wounded in the face with a shard of a bottle. You have lost your right eye. Two years ago you had a brain hemorrhage. What to do in front of a person whose mental suffering forces him to live in inhuman conditions? Is it right to respect her freedom? But is that freedom of those who live imprisoned by her delusions? It was not an easy choice but we decided to request the appointment of a guardian. After a year and an honest psychiatric report, a guardian was finally appointed and Favor admitted to psychiatry. For two months she remained in the hospital. The first few days she slept on the floor refusing the bed and food, then she slowly let herself be approached and she started the therapy. She resigned, she was transferred to the community.

Now every morning Favor goes out, takes the bus and returns to his corner by the river. But he arrives in clean and carefully chosen clothes, communicates, lets himself be approached, expresses tastes and desires and has a wonderful smile that more than anything else tells of the victory over his persecutors.


Simona Pagani
NP June / July 2022