diario di un terremotato

FRANCAVILLA - Uncle Sandro calls me on my mobile (to which I have now mounted its headset: it was in the spared car!) since my brain seems to be melting for its uninterrupted use, and says: 'Angelo, your articles that we are reading like the "Gospel" here in the Aquilan community in Roseto, drop pessimism. What's the matter with you? Even you? ". This surprises me: I'm trying to think positive ( "I think positive because I am alive ..." - as Jovanotti's rap goes). Clearly "inside" something is wrong. Perhaps because, on the promenade of Francavilla (the other morning I met Ninnittu's son who wanted to pay for my breakfast: each one pays for himself, do you hear me, I replied) and along the Corso of Pescara, I meet desperate Aquilans. Days go by, and you start to deal with serious problems (the bank, bills, payments, mortgages, bureaucracy, documents ...), but mainly you have to deal with fear. It's the psychological side that is clutching, at this moment, the displaced people and, I'm sure, even more, if more is possible, those dozens of thousands under the tents.

Meeting an employee from the Court of Justice: "I read in newspapers that we will have to return to work to the Guardia di Finanza in Bazzano. But where shall I live. Among the rubbles of my house in Paganica? In a tent at minus ten degrees centigrade? To L'Aquila, in these conditions, we do not want to go back neither do my children: either they relocate me to another office or, as a last option, I'll try to commute." The same concern I hear from another civil servant (as if they had agreed upon it): "I have already brought my children to school here in Pescara as listeners. Next year, I will enroll them here: if anyone thinks that they can stay in tents, they are mistaken ...". And the same for a teacher displaced at Pineto and another at Francavilla while a doctor tells me that it might be easier for him to relocate in Pescara where he may also be a useful reference point for displaced people on the coast.

Pessimism? Let's call it just realism. Almost all displaced persons, for the time being, do not want to speak of going back, either because they are afraid or because they do not have a house any more. But how long can this last? Returning to town is difficult (for some impossible) but if you do not return there will be no starting again. This is the dilemma. My friend Giorgio, almost a brother to me, insists that it is necessary to return, we must return, not to let the city die. And his words make me think and give me a new energy. Perhaps we are still too shaken. We need time to recover, but time is the one thing we do not have.

To give me some optimism here comes the usual Cesare. The evening Sms reads: "Today is my birthday (the first since the rebirth of the "Great Eagle"). My birthday present from destiny was the rupture of the turbine of my car. An Angel, disguised as a mechanic, replaces the turbine and makes me start again! Jemo 'nnanzi (dialect for Let's go on)."