Gioia Piazzi

Dear friend,

For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I see you there in Israel and I don’t know how you feel.

I thought of your people who throughout history have scattered throughout the world and thought they could live together alongside other peoples without having to give up themselves and have been disappointed, raped and persecuted. I thought of the Palestinian people who lived on earth without believing that they had to own it or set up a state.

During the last few months I have been horrified and shocked by the amount of rape and violence that newspapers have been constantly publishing. Group violence perpetrated by teenagers on their companions, domestic violence, sale of minors on the prostitution market by the same relatives. All this is made even more unbearable by statements by politicians or engaged politicians who seem to have emerged from a patriarchal and violent culture that we all hoped was dead and buried. But that is clearly not the case.

“Enough, it’s over!” I thought as I walked across the school hall at a brisk pace. Outside, the blinding light of summer.

I stand on the entrance steps and catch my breath. This was my last day of school, but the very last of my life.

I look at my identity card and it reads “organ donor”. The same sentence I imagine is on many other documents especially from my medical colleagues. I think about what happened last week: a woman, a psychiatrist, was brutally attacked by a man, a former patient of hers and sadly she died. We were told, in all psychiatry services, to observe two minutes of silence in honor of my colleague, but after all this I no longer want to be silent.

A strange thing happens every year in summer. The first part of summer seems to pass slowly, lazily. The days of July and the first part of August last a long time, and in dazzling light we put our feet in the water, stretch out on the sand, look up at the stars, and without almost realizing it let go of the year of work behind us.

Then August 15 comes and suddenly things change.

From March to today, our life has completely changed. Nine months in which the world came face to face with the truth of nature. For years, we have kept our eyes closed under the illusion that our running, running, running around in circles was the only possible way to live.