I just want to quote one part where I would replace
Italy with India ...
"I'm telling you that we have
no room for muezzins, for minarets, for false teetotalers, for
their fucking Middle Ages, for their fucking chador. And if we
had
room, I wouldn't give it to them. Because it would be the
equivalent of throwing away Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Raphael, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento, the
liberty that for better or worse we fought for and won, our
Patria. It would mean giving them Italy. And I won't give them
Italy."
=================================================================
The following article appeared in the Italian newspaper Corriere.
=================================================================
Oriana Fallaci on Antisemitism
(April 12, 2002)
I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of
individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at
Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose
foreheads
they have drawn the swasitka, incite people to hate the Jews.
And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps,
in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and
Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own
mother to a harem.
I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a
bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man
who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and
explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes,
to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a
microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who
massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them
"martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party."
I find it shameful that in France, the France of
Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize
Jews, profane their cemeteries. I find it shameful that the youth of
Holland and Germany and Denmark flaunt the kaffiah just as
Mussolini's avant garde used to flaunt the club and the fascist
badge. I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of
Europe Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-semitism.
That in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace Prize given to
Shimon Peres in 1994 be taken back and conferred on the dove
with the olive branch in his mouth, that is on Arafat. I find it
shameful that the distinguished members of the Committee, a
Committee that (it would appear) rewards political color rather
than merit, should take this request into consideration and even
respond to it. In hell the Nobel Prize honors he who does not
receive it.
I find it shameful (we're back in Italy) that state-run
television stations contribute to the resurgent antisemitism, crying
only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths,
glossing over them in unwilling tones. I find it shameful that in
their debates they host with much deference the scoundrels with
turban or kaffiah who yesterday sang hymns to the slaughter at New
York and today sing hymns to the slaughters at Jerusalem, at
Haifa, at Netanya, at Tel Aviv. I find it shameful that the press does
the same, that it is indignant because Israeli tanks surround the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that it is not indignant because
inside that same church two hundred Palestinian terrorists
well armed with machine guns and munitions and explosives (among
them are various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aqsa) are not unwelcome
guests of the monks (who then accept bottles of mineral water and
jars of honey from the soldiers of those tanks). I find it
shameful that, in giving the number of Israelis killed since the
beginning of the Second Intifada (four hundred twelve), a noted
daily newspaper found it appropriate to underline in capital
letters that more people are killed in their traffic accidents.
(Six hundred a year).
I find it shameful that the Roman Observer, the newspaper of the
Pope--a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of
apology for the Jews--accuses of extermination a people who were
exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find
it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that
people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms)
the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated
again. I find it shameful that in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew
without whom they would all be unemployed), the priests of our
parishes or Social Centers or whatever they are flirt with the
assassins of those in Jerusalem who cannot go to eat a pizza or
buy some eggs without being blown up. I find it shameful that they
are on the side of the very ones who inaugurated terrorism,
killing us on airplanes, in airports, at the Olympics, and who
today entertain themselves by killing western journalists. By
shooting them, abducting them, cutting their throats, decapitating
them. (There's someone in Italy who, since the appearance of Anger
and Pride, would like to do the same to me. Citing verses of the
Koran he exorts his "brothers" in the mosques and the Islamic
Community to chastise me in the name of Allah. To kill me. Or
rather to die with me. Since he's someone who speaks English well,
I'll respond to him in English: "Fuck you.")
I find it shameful that almost all of the left, the left that
twenty years ago permitted one of its union processionals to
deposit a coffin (as a mafioso warning) in front of the synagogue
of Rome, forgets the contribution made by the Jews to the fight
against fascism. Made by Carlo and Nello Rossini, for example, by
Leone Ginzburg, by Umberto Terracini, by Leo Valiani, by Emilio
Sereni, by women like my friend Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti who
was shot at Florence on June 12, 1944, by seventy-five of the
three-hundred-thirty-five people killed at the Fosse Ardeatine, by
the infinite others killed under torture or in combat or before
firing squads. (The companions, the teachers, of my infancy and my
youth.) I find it shameful that in part through the fault of the
left--or rather, primarily through the fault of the left (think of
the left that inaugurates its congresses applauding the
representative of the PLO, leader in Italy of the Palestinians who
want the destruction of Israel)--Jews in Italian cities are once
again afraid. And in French cities and Dutch cities and Danish
cities and German cities, it is the same. I find it shameful that
Jews tremble at the passage of the scoundrels dressed like suicide
bombers just as they trembled during Krystallnacht, the night in
which Hitler gave free rein to the Hunt of the Jews. I find it
shameful that in obedience to the stupid, vile, dishonest, and for
them extremely advantageous fashion of Political Correctness the
usual opportunists--or better the usual parasites--exploit the
word Peace. That in the name of the word Peace, by now more
debauched than the words Love and Humanity, they absolve one side
alone of its hate and bestiality. That in the name of a pacifism
(read conformism) delegated to the singing crickets and buffoons
who used to lick Pol Pot's feet they incite people who are
confused or ingenuous or intimidated. Trick them, corrupt them,
carry them back a half century to the time of the yellow star on
the coat. These charlatans who care about the Palestinians as much
as I care about the charlatans. That is not at all.
I find it shameful that many Italians and many Europeans have
chosen as their standard-bearer the gentleman (or so it is polite
to say) Arafat. This nonentity who thanks to the money of the
Saudi Royal Family plays the Mussolini ad perpetuum and in his
megalomania believes he will pass into History as the George
Washington of Palestine. This ungrammatical wretch who when I
interviewed him was unable even to put together a complete
sentence, to make articulate conversation. So that to put it all
together, write it, publish it, cost me a tremendous effort and I
concluded that compared to him even Ghaddafi sounds like Leonardo
da Vinci. This false warrior who always goes around in uniform
like Pinochet, never putting on civilian garb, and yet despite
this has never participated in a battle. War is something he
sends, has always sent, others to do for him. That is, the poor
souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who playing
the part of Head of State caused the failure of the Camp David
negotiations, Clinton's mediation.
No-no-I-want-Jerusalem-all-to-myself. This eternal liar who has a
flash of sincerity only when (in private) he denies Israel's right
to exist, and who as I say in my book contradicts himself every
five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if
you ask him what time it is, so that you can never trust him.
Never! With him you will always wind up systematically betrayed.
This eternal terrorist who knows only how to be a terrorist (while
keeping himself safe) and who during the Seventies, that is when I
interviewed him, even trained the terrorists of Baader-Meinhof.
With them, children ten years of age. Poor children. (Now he
trains them to become suicide bombers. A hundred baby suicide
bombers are in the works: a hundred!). This weathercock who keeps
his wife at Paris, served and revered like a queen, and keeps his
people down in the shit. He takes them out of the shit only
to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the eighteen year
old girls who in order to earn equality with men have to strap on
explosives and disintegrate with their victims. And yet many
Italians love him, yes. Just like they loved Mussolini. And many
other Europeans do the same.
I find it shameful and see in all this the rise of a new fascism,
a new nazism. A fascism, a nazism, that much more grim and
revolting because it is conducted and nourished by those who
hypocritically pose as do-gooders, progressives, communists,
pacifists, Catholics or rather Christians, and who have the gall
to label a warmonger anyone like me who screams the truth.
I see it, yes, and I say the following. I have never been tender
with the tragic and Shakespearean figure Sharon. ("I know you've
come to add another scalp to your necklace," he murmured almost
with sadness when I went to interview him in 1982.) I have often
had disagreements with the Israelis, ugly ones, and in the past I
have defended the Palestinians a great deal. Maybe more than they
deserved. But I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews. I stand
just as I stood as a young girl during the time when I fought with
them, and when the Anna Marias were shot. I defend their right to
exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated
a second time. And disgusted by the antisemitism of many Italians,
of many Europeans, I am ashamed of this shame that dishonors my
Country and Europe. At best, it is not a community of States, but
a pit of Pontius Pilates. And even if all the inhabitants of this
planet were to think otherwise, I would continue to think so.
Wednesday, December 19, 2001
--
Anger and Pride
by Oriana Fallaci
(translated from the Italian by Chris and Paola Newman)
[Translators' note: This piece, and the introduction that
precedes
it, appeared in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on
September 29, 2001. The few translations we've seen since then
since have struck us as too literal to properly convey the
meaning
and immediacy of Fallaci's Italian prose to an American
audience.
We thought it worth a try. Comments can be sent to
***@hotmail.com. Because of its length, the piece is
divided into two posts.]
Introduction by Ferruccio de Bortolo:
With this extraordinary piece, Oriana Fallaci breaks a decade of
silence. A very long silence. Our most celebrated female writer
(she calls herself a writer and refuses to use the word
"journalist" anymore) lives a good part of the year in
Manhattan.
She doesn't answer the phone, opens the door rarely, and goes out
even less. She never gives interviews. Everyone has tried, no-one
has succeeded. Isolated. But history and destiny saw to it that
the center of the modern apocalypse opened, like a Dantesque
abyss, not far from her lovely and literary home. The shockwave of
the morning of September 11 disturbed even Oriana's
hermit-like--and hermetically sealed--repose. She opens the door,
seeming to marvel at the unfamiliar gesture... Her glance is at
once tender and ferocious. Oriana has been working for years on a
very important work, awaited by all the world, among piles of
documents in a disorder that only appears as such, with
warriorlike fervor. I asked her to write what she had seen,
experienced, felt after that Tuesday, and Oriana gathered a few
pages of emotions and thoughts. "I leave shreds of my soul on
every experience," she wrote some years ago. It's still true, very
true. These are bracing thoughts. Explosive ones. Thoughts to
reason over and reflect on. On America, on Italy, on the Islamic
world. On patriotism (it's surprising what she says about
patriotism). Invectives and theses that surge at once from the
head and from the heart, or rather from the head toward the
heart. She bursts out: "Someone had to say these things. I said
them. Now leave me in peace. The door is closed again. And I don't
want to reopen it." Her usual talons. People are going to be
talking about this piece. And how.
----------------------------------------------------------------
You ask me to speak, this time. You ask me to break at least this once
the silence I've chosen, that I've imposed on myself these
many years to avoid mingling with chattering insects. And I'm
going to. Because I've heard that in Italy too there are some who
rejoice just as the Palestinians of Gaza did the other night on
TV. "Victory! Victory!" Men, women, children. Assuming you can
call those who do such a thing man, woman, child. I've heard that
some of the insects of means, politicians or so-called
politicians, intellectuals or so-called intellectuals, not to
mention others not worthy of the title of citizen, are behaving
pretty much the same way. They say: "Good. It serves America
right." And I am very very, very angry. Angry with an anger that
is cold, lucid, rational. An anger that eliminates every
detachment, every indulgence. An anger that compels me to respond
and demands above all that I spit on them. I spit on them. Angry
as I am, the African-American poet Maya Angelou roared the other
day: "Be angry. It's good to be angry, it's healthy." And I don't
know whether it's healthy for me. But I know that it won't be
healthy for them, I mean those who admire Osama Bin Laden, those
who express comprehension or sympathy or solidarity for him. Your
request has triggered a detonator that's been waiting too long to
explode. You'll see. You also ask me to tell how I experienced
this apocalypse. To give, in other words, my testimony. Very well,
I'll start with that. I was at home, which is in the center of
Manhattan. At exactly nine o'clock I had a sensation of danger,
of a danger that perhaps would not touch me, but that undoubtedly
concerned me. It's the sensation you feel in war, or rather in
combat, when every pore of your skin feels the bullet or the
rocket as it approaches, and you perk up your ears and yell at the
person next to you: "Down! Get down!" I pushed it away. It's not
like I was in Vietnam. It's not like I was in one of the many
wars, those fucking wars that have tortured my life since World
War II. I was in New York for God's sake, on a marvellous
September morning in 2001. But the sensation still possessed
me, inexplicably. So I did something I never do in the morning and
turned on the TV. The audio wasn't working. The screen was. And on
every channel--and here there are almost a hundred--you saw a
tower of the World Trade Center burning like a giant match. A
short circuit? A small plane gone off course? Or an act of
deliberate terrorism? I stayed there almost paralyzed, fixed on
that tower, and while I fixed on it, while I asked myself those
three questions, another plane appeared on the screen. White,
huge. An airliner. It was flying extremely low. Flying low, it
turned toward the second tower like a bomber who draws a bead on a
target and then hurls himself at it. That's when I understood. I
also understood because in that same moment the audio came back on
and transmitted a chorus of primal screams. Repeated and primal.
"God! Oh, God! Oh, God, God, God! Gooooooood!" And the plane went
into that second tower like a knife going into a stick of butter.
By now it was quarter past nine. Don't ask me what I felt during
those fifteen minutes. I don't know, I don't remember. I was a
piece of ice. Even my brain was ice. I don't even remember whether
certain things I saw were from the first tower or the second. For
example, the people who threw themselves from the eightieth or
ninetieth floor to avoid being burned alive. They broke the glass
of the windows, they climbed up and jumped out like someone who
jumps out of an airplane with a parachute on. They came down so
slowly, waving their arms and legs, swimming in the air. Yes, they
seemed to swim in the air, never arriving. Around the thirtieth
floor though, they sped up. They started to gesture desperately,
penitently I imagine, almost as though they were shouting for
help. And maybe they really were. Finally they fell like rocks and
splat. You know, I thought I'd seen everything in war. I'd
considered myself vaccinated against war, and in substance I am.
Nothing surprises me anymore. Not even when I get angry, not even
when I get indignant. But in war I'd always seen people who died
by the hand of others. I'd never seen people who die killing
themselves, throwing themselves without parachutes from the
eightieth or ninetieth or hundredth floor. In war, I'd always seen
things that explode. That blow up in all directions. And I'd
always heard a huge racket. Those two towers though, didn't
explode. The first imploded, swallowed itself. The second fused
and melted. It melted just like a stick of butter placed on the
fire. And it all happened, or so it seemed to me, in tomblike
silence. Is that possible? Was that silence real, or was it inside
me?
I also have to say that in war I'd always seen a limited number of
deaths. Every battle, two or three hundred dead. Four hundred at
most. Like at Dak To in Vietnam. And when the battle was finished,
the Americans would gather up and count them. I couldn't believe
my eyes. In the massacre of Mexico City, the one where I caught a
fair number of bullets myself, they gathered at least eight
hundred dead. And when, thinking me dead, they stuck me in the
morgue, the cadavers I soon found around and on myself seemed like
a deluge. Well, almost fifty thousand people worked in the two
towers. And very few had time to evacuate. The elevators didn't
work any more, obviously, and to go down on foot from the highest
floors would have taken an eternity. Flames permitting. We'll
never know the number of dead. (Forty thousand, fifty thousand?)
The Americans will never tell, so as not to underline the
intensity of this apocalypse. So as not to give satisfaction to
Osama Bin Laden and encourage other apocalypses. And anyway the
two abysses that absorbed those tens of thousands of creatures
are too deep. At most the workers will unearth pieces of scattered
members. A nose here, a finger there. Or else a kind of paste that
seems like ground coffee but is actually organic material. The
residue of bodies pulverized in a flash. Yesterday the mayor
Guiliani sent more than ten thousand body bags. But they went
unused.
What do I feel for the kamikazes who died with them? No respect.
No pity. No, not even pity, I who always wind up giving in to
pity. I've always disliked kamikazes, that is people who commit
suicide in order to kill others. Starting with the Japanese ones
from World War II. I never considered them Pietro Miccas who torch
the powder and go up with the citadel in order to block the
arrival of the enemy troops at Torino. I never considered them
soldiers. Even less do I consider them martyrs or heroes, as Mr.
Arafat, hollering and spitting saliva, described them to me
in 1972. (Or when I interviewed him at Amman, where his marshalls
were also training the Badder-Meinhof terrorists.) I just consider
them vain. Vain people who instead of seeking glory in cinema or
politics or sports seek it in the death of themselves and others.
A death that, in place of an Oscar or a ministerial seat or a
medal, will get them (they think) admiration. And, in the case of
those who pray to Allah, a place in the paradise that the Koran
speaks of: the paradise where heroes get to fuck houris. I'll bet
they're even physically vain. I have in front of me a photo of the
two kamikaze I speak of in my novel Inshallah: the novel that
begins with the destruction of the American base (more than four
hundred dead) and the French base (more than three hundred fifty
dead) at Beirut. They'd had it taken before going to die, this
photo, and before going to die they'd gone to the barber. See what
lovely haircuts. What pomaded moustaches, what well-groomed little
beards, what coquettish sideburns...
I can just imagine how Mr. Arafat would seethe with rage to hear
me. There's bad blood between us, you know. He never forgave me,
either for the scorching differences of opinion we had during that
meeting or for the judgments I expressed about him in my book
Interview With History. As for me, I never forgave him anything.
Including the fact that an Italian journalist who imprudently
presented himself as "a friend of mine" found himself with a
revolver pointed at his heart. So we don't see each other any
more. It's too bad. Because if I met him again, or rather if I
were to grant him an audience, I'd scream in his face who the
martyrs and heroes are. I'd scream: "Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the
martyrs are the passengers of the four airplanes that were
hijacked and transformed into human bombs. Among them is a four
year old little girl who disintegrated in the second tower.
Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the martyrs are the employees who worked
in the two towers and at the Pentagon. Illustrious Mr. Arafat, the
martyrs are the firemen who died trying to save them. And do you
know who the heroes are? The passengers of the flight that was
supposed to throw itself into the White House but instead crashed
into the woods in Pennsylvania because they fought back! There
ought to be a paradise for them, illustrious Mr. Arafat. The real
problem is that you are now a perpetual head of state. You play
the monarch. You visit the pope, announce that you disapprove of
terrorism, send condolences to Bush." And in his chameleonlike
ability to contradict himself, he'd even be capable of telling me
I'm right. But let's change the subject. I'm very sick, as you
know, and talking with the likes of Arafat gives me a fever.
I prefer to talk about the invulnerability that many, in Europe,
attributed to America. Invulnerability? What invulnerability? The
more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to
terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police
regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones
that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other
parts of Europe. And that now take place, magnified, in America.
It's no accident that non-democratic countries, countries governed
by a police regime, have always hosted and financed and helped
terrorists. The Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's satellites and
the People's Republic of China, for example. Ghadaffi's Libya,
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Arafat's Lebanon, Egypt itself, that same Saudi
Arabia of which Osama Bin Laden is a citizen, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, of course, and all the Islamic African regions. In
those countries' airports or airplanes I have always felt safe.
Tranquil as a sleeping newborn. The only thing I was afraid of was
being arrested because I used to write bad things about the
terrorists. In European airports and airplanes, on the other hand,
I always felt uneasy. In American airports and airplanes I
actually felt nervous. Twice as nervous in New York. (Not in
Washington DC, though. The plane at the Pentagon was a complete
surprise to me.) In my opinion it was ultimately never an issue of
"if": it was always one of "when". Why do you think that on
Tuesday morning my subconscious felt that anxiety, that sensation
of danger? Why do you think that despite my habits I turned on
the TV? Why do you think that one of the three questions I was
asking myself while the first tower was burning and the audio
wasn't working was that of a terrorist attack? Why do you think
that when the second airplane appeared I immediately understood?
Since America is the strongest country in the world, the richest,
the most powerful, the most modern, almost everyone fell into that
trap. The Americans did themselves, at times. But America's
vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its
power and its modernity. It's the usual story of the dog chasing
its own tail.
It comes from America's multi-ethnic being, its liberality, its
respect for its citizens and guests. Example: about 24 million
Americans are Muslim-Arabs. And when a Mustafa or a Mohammed
comes, say from Afghanistan, to visit his uncle, nobody tells him
he can't attend pilot training school to learn how to fly a 757
jet airplane. Nobody can keep him from enrolling in a University
(something I hope will change) to study chemistry and biology: the
two sciences necessary to wage bacteriological war. Nobody. Not
even if the government fears that this son of Allah might hijack
that 757 or that he might toss a vial full of bacteria into the
reservoir and unleash a disaster. (I say "if" because this time
the government knew absolutely nothing and the disgrace of the CIA
and FBI goes beyond all bounds. If I were President of the United
States I'd send them all packing for stupidity with well-placed
kicks to the posterior.) Having said that, let's go back to the
original thought. What are the symbols of American strength,
wealth, power and modernity? Certainly not jazz and rock and roll,
not chewing-gum or hamburgers, Broadway or Hollywood. It's their
skyscrapers. Their Pentagon. Their science. Their technology.
Those impressive skyscrapers, so tall, so beautiful that while
you raise your eyes to gaze at them you almost forget the pyramids
and the divine buildings of our past. Those gigantic airplanes,
oversized, which they now use as they once used sailing ships or
trucks because everything here is moved by airplane. Everything.
The mail, fresh fish, ourselves. (And don't forget that they
invented the air war. Or at least they're the ones who developed
it to the point of absurdity.) That terrifying Pentagon, that
fortress which scares you just looking at it. That all-present,
all-powerful science. That chilling technology that in a few
short years has completely changed our daily lives, our millennial
ways of communicating, eating, living. And where did he strike
them, the reverend Osama Bin Laden? In the skyscrapers and in the
Pentagon. How? With airplanes, with science and technology. By the
way: do you know what gets me the most about this wretched
multi-millionaire, this AWOL playboy who instead of courting
blonde princesses and running wild in the night clubs (as he used
to do in Beirut when he was 20 years old) enjoys himself by
killing people in the name of Mohammed and Allah? The fact that
his endless wealth comes from the earnings of a corporation
specializing in demolition, and that he himself is a demolitions
expert. Demolition is an American specialty.
When we met I found you almost stupefied by the heroic
efficiency and admirable unity with which the Americans have faced
this Apocalypse. That's right. Despite all the shortcomings that
always get rubbed in their face--that I myself always rub in their
face (though those of Europe, and of Italy in particular, are even
more serious)--America is a country with important things to teach
us. And speaking of heroic efficiency, let me sing a paean to the
Mayor of New York. That Rudolph Giuliani to whom we Italians
should kneel in gratitude. Because he has an Italian last name
and an Italian origin and he makes us look good before the whole
world. Rudolph Giuliani is a great mayor, one of the greatest. And
that's coming from someone who is never happy with anything or
anyone, starting with myself. He's a mayor worthy of another great
mayor with an Italian last name, Fiorello la Guardia, and many of
our mayors ought to go and study under him. They ought to come to
him with bowed heads, or better with ash on their heads, and ask
him: "Signor Giuliani, sir, please tell us how it's done." He
doesn't delegate his duties to others, no. He doesn't waste
his time with bullshit and greed. He doesn't split himself between
the tasks of a mayor and those of a minister or deputy (is anybody
listening in the three cities of Stendhal--Naples, Florence and
Rome?). He ran over there immediately, and immediately entered the
second tower, at the risk of being turned to ashes with all the
others. He only made it out by a hair and only by chance. And in
the space of four days he put this city back on its feet. A city
with nine and a half million inhabitants, mind you, and almost two
million in Manhattan alone. How he did it, I don't know. He's sick
like me, the poor man. The cancer that comes and returns has got
him, too. And, like me, he pretends to be healthy: he works
anyway. But I work at a desk, for God's sake, sitting down! He, on
the other hand... He looked like a general who joins the battle in
person. A soldier who charges with his bayonet: "Come on, people,
come on!!! Let's roll up our sleeves, move!" But he could do it
because those people were, are, like him. People without airs and
without laziness, my father would have said, and with balls. As
for the admirable ability to unite, the almost martial compactness
with which the Americans respond to disaster and to the enemy,
well: I have to admit that then and there I was astounded as well.
I knew, yes, that it had exploded at the time of Pearl Harbor,
that is when the people huddled around Roosevelt and Roosevelt
entered the war against the Germany of Hitler and the Italy of
Mussolini and the Japan of Hirohito. I had caught a whiff of it,
yes, after Kennedy's assassination. But that had been followed by
the war in Vietnam, the lacerating rift caused by the war in
Vietnam, and in a certain sense it had reminded me of their Civil
War of a century and a half ago. So, when I saw whites and blacks
crying in each other's arms--and I mean in each other's arms--when
I saw Democrats and Republicans arm in arm singing "God Bless
America", when I saw them drop all their differences, I was
flabbergasted. Just as I was when I heard Bill Clinton (someone
for whom I've never harbored much tenderness) declare: "We must
stand behind Bush. We must have faith in our president." I felt
the same when those same words were forcefully repeated by his
wife Hillary, now senator for the State of New York. And when they
were reiterated by Lieberman, the ex-Democratic candidate for the
vice-presidency. (Only the defeated Al Gore remained squalidly
silent). I felt the same when Congress voted unanimously to accept
war and punish those responsible. Oh, if only Italy would learn
this lesson! It's such a divided country, Italy. So factious,
so poisoned by tribal pettiness! They hate each other even within
their own parties in Italy. They can't stick together even when
they have the same emblem, or the same banner, for God's sake!
Jealous, bilious, vain, small, they think only of their own
personal interests. Of their own careers, their own petty glory,
their own small-town popularity. For the sake of their personal
interests they spite each other, they betray each other, they
accuse each other, they expose each other... I am absolutely
convinced that, if Osama Bin Laden were to blow up Giotto's tower
or the Tower of Pisa, the opposition would blame the government.
And the government would blame the opposition. The heads of the
government and the heads of the opposition would blame their own
party people and comrades. And having said this, let me explain
where the ability to unite that characterizes the Americans comes
from.
It comes from their patriotism. I don't know whether in Italy you
saw and understood what happened in New York when Bush went to
thank the rescue men (and women) who are digging in the ruins of
the two towers trying to save some survivor but only coming up
with the occasional nose or finger. In spite of this, they do it
without giving up. Without resigning themselves, so that if you
ask them how they do it they say: "I can allow myself to be
exhausted, but not to be defeated." All of them. The young,
the very young, the old, the middle aged. White, black, yellow,
brown, purple... You saw them, didn't you? While Bush was
thanking them all they did was wave their little American flags, raise
their clenched fists, and roar: "USA! USA!" In a totalitarian
country I'd have thought: "Look how nicely organized this was by
the Powers That Be!" Not in America. In America you don't
organize these things. You don't manage them, you don't command them.
Especially in a disenchanted metropolis like New York and with
workers like New York workers. New York workers are real pieces
of work. Freer than the wind. They don't even obey their unions. But
if you touch their flag, or their Patria
In English the word
Patria doesn't exist. To say Patria you have to put two words
together. Father Land. Mother Land. Native Land. Or you can
simply say My Country. But they have the noun "patriotism." They have
the adjective "patriotic." And apart from France, I can't imagine a
country more patriotic than America. God! I was so moved to see
those workers clenching their fists and waving their flags and
roaring USA-USA-USA, without anyone ordering them to. And I felt
a kind of humiliation. Because I can't even begin to imagine Italian
workers waving the tricolor and roaring Italia-Italia. Oh, I've
seen them wave plenty of red flags in the marches and rallies.
Rivers, lakes, of red flags. But never very many tricolor flags.
None at all, actually. Ill-led or tyrannized by an arrogant left
devoted to the Soviet Union, they always left the tricolor flags
to their adversaries. Not that the adversaries made very good
use of them, I'd say. Nor did they waste them either, thank God. And
those who go to Mass, ditto. As for that yahoo with the green
shirt and tie, he doesn't even know what colors make up the
tricolor. I-am-Lombard, I-am-Lombard. That guy wants to take us
back to the wars between between Florence and Siena. So the
result is that today you see the Italian flag only at the Olympics if
you happen to win a medal. Worse: you see it only in the stadiums,
when there's an international soccer match. Which is also, by
the way, the only time you'll ever hear a cry of Italia-Italia.
Well let me tell you something. There's a big difference between
a country in which the flag is waved only by hooligans in a stadium
and a country where it's waved by the entire population. Waved,
for example, by indomitable workers who dig in the ruins to come
up with an ear or nose of the creatures slaughtered by the sons
of Allah. Or to gather the ground coffee.
The truth is that America is a special place, my friend. A country
to envy, to be jealous of, for reasons that have nothing to do
with wealth et cetera. It's special because it was born out of a
need of the soul, the need to have a homeland, and out of the
most sublime idea that Man has ever conceived: the idea of liberty, or
rather of liberty married to the idea of equality. It's special
also because the idea of liberty wasn't fashionable at the time.
Nor was the idea of equality. Nobody was talking about these
things but a few philosophers of the so-called Enlightenment.
You couldn't find these concepts anywhere except in big
expensive books released in installments and called Encyclopedias. And
apart from the writers or the other intellectuals, apart from the
princes and the lords who had the money to buy the big book or
the books that inspired the big book, who knew anything about the
Enlightenment? The Enlightenment wasn't something you could eat!
Not even the revolutionaries of the French Revolution were
talking about it, seeing how the French Revolution didn't start until
1789, thirteen years after the American Revolution exploded in
1776. (Another detail that the anti-Americans of the
good-it-serves-America-right school ignore or pretend to forget.
Bunch of hypocrites!)
What's more, it's a special country, a country to envy, because
that idea was understood by often illiterate and certainly
uneducated farmers. The farmers of the American colonies. And
because it was materialized by a small group of extraordinary
men. By men of great culture, great quality. The Founding Fathers. Do
you have any idea who the Founding Fathers were, the Benjamin
Franklins and the Thomas Jeffersons and the Thomas Paines and
the John Adamses and the George Washingtons and so on? These
weren't the small-time lawyers ("avvocaticchi" as Vittorio
Alfieri rightly called them) of the French Revolution! These weren't
the brooding and hysterical executioners of the Terror, the Marats and
the Dantons and the Saint Justs and the Robespierres! These were
people, these Founding Fathers, who knew Greek and Latin like
our own Italian teachers of Greek and Latin (assuming there still are
any) will never know them. People who had read Aristotle and Plato
in Greek, who had read Seneca and Cicero in Latin, and who had
studied the principles of Greek democracy like not even the
Marxists of my day studied the theory of surplus value.
(Assuming they really did study it.) Jefferson even knew Italian. (He
called it "Toscano".) He spoke and read in Italian with great fluency.
In 1774 as a matter of fact, along with the two thousand vine plants
and the thousand olive trees and the music paper which was rare in
Virginia, the Florentine Filippo Mazzei brought him multiple
copies of a book written by a certain Cesare Beccaria entitled "Of
Crimes and Punishments." As for the self-taught Franklin, he
was a genius. Scientist, printer, editor, writer, journalist,
politician, inventor. In 1752 he discovered the electric nature of
lightning and invented the lightning rod. Is that enough for you?
And it was with these extraordinary leaders, these men of great
quality, that the often illiterate and certainly uneducated
farmers rebelled against England in 1776. They fought the War of
Independence, the American Revolution.
Well, despite the muskets and the gun powder, despite the death
toll that is the cost of every war, they didn't do it with the
rivers of blood of the future French Revolution. They didn't do
it with the guillotine and massacres at Vandea. They did it with a
piece of paper that, along with the need of the soul, the need to
have a homeland, put into effect the sublime idea of liberty--or
rather of liberty married to quality. The Declaration of
Independence. "We hold these Truths to be self-evident: that all
men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men..." And that piece of
paper that we've all been copying well or badly from the French
Revolution on, or from which we've drawn our inspiration, is still
the backbone of America. The vital lymph of this nation. You know
why? Because it turns the plebes into the People. Because it
invites them, rather orders them, to govern themselves, to express
their own individuality, to pursue their own happiness. All the
opposite of what communism did, prohibiting people to rebel, to
govern themselves, to express themselves, to get rich, and setting
up His Majesty the State in place of the customary kings. My
father used to say, "Communism is a monarchic regime, and it's an
old-school monarchy. Because it cuts off men's balls. And when you
cut off a man's balls, he's no longer a man." He also used to say
that instead of freeing the plebes, communism turned everyone into
plebes. It made everyone starve to death.
Well, in my view America frees the plebes. Everyone is a plebe
there. White, black, yellow, brown, purple, stupid, intelligent,
poor, rich. Actually the rich are the most plebeian of all. Most
of the time they're such boors! Crude, ill-mannered. You can tell
immediately that they've never read Galateo, that they've never
had anything to do with refinement and good taste and
sophistication. In spite of the money they waste on clothes, for
example, they're so inelegant as to make the Queen of England
look chic by comparison. But they are freed, by God. And in this
world there is nothing stronger or more powerful than freed
plebes. You will always get your skull cracked when you go up
against the Freed Plebe. And they all got their skulls cracked by
America: English, Germans, Mexicans, Russians, Nazis, Fascists,
Communists. Even the Vietnamese got theirs cracked in the end,
when they had to come to terms after their victory so that now
when a former president of the United States goes there to visit
they're in seventh heaven. "Bienvenu, Monsieur le President,
bienvenu!" The problem is that the Vietnamese don't pray to Allah.
It's going to be much harder to deal with the sons of Allah. Much
longer and much harder. Unless the rest of the Western world stops
peeing its pants. And starts reasoning a little and gives them a
hand.
I am not speaking, obviously, to the laughing hyenas who enjoy
seeing images of the wreckage and snicker
good-it-serves-the-Americans-right. I am speaking to those who,
though not stupid or evil, are wallowing in prudence and doubt.
And to them I say: "Wake up, people. Wake up!!" Intimidated as you
are by your fear of going against the current--that is, appearing
racist (a word which is entirely inapt as we are speaking not
about a race but about a religion)--you don't understand or don't
want to understand that a reverse-Crusade is in progress.
Accustomed as you are to the double-cross, blinded as you are by
myopia, you don't understand or don't want to understand that a
war of religion is in progress. Desired and declared by a fringe
of that religion, perhaps, but a war of religion nonetheless. A
war which they call Jihad. Holy War. A war that might not seek to
conquer our territory, but that certainly seeks to conquer our
souls. That seeks the disappearance of our freedom and our
civilization. That seeks to annihilate our way of living and
dying, our way of praying or not praying, our way of eating and
drinking and dressing and entertaining and informing ourselves.
You don't understand or don't want to understand that if we don't
oppose them, if we don't defend ourselves, if we don't fight, the
Jihad will win. And it will destroy the world that for better or
worse we've managed to build, to change, to improve, to render a
little more intelligent, that is to say, less bigotted--or even
not bigotted at all. And with that it will destroy our culture,
our art, our science, our morals, our values, our pleasures...
Christ! Don't you realize that the Osama Bin Ladens feel
authorized to kill you and your children because you drink wine or
beer, because you don't wear your beard long or a chador, because
you go to the theater or the movies, because you listen to music
and sing pop songs, because you dance in discos or at home,
because you watch TV, wear miniskirts or short-shorts, because you
go naked or half naked to the beach or the pool, because you fuck
when you want and where you want and who you want? Don't you even
care about that, you fools? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have
no intention of letting myself be killed for it.
For twenty years I've been saying it. For twenty years. With a
certain meekness, not with this passion, twenty years ago I wrote
an editorial on this subject for the Corriere. It was an article
by a person used to being with all races and all creeds, a citizen
used to fighting all forms of fascism and intolerance, a layperson
without taboos. But it was also an article by a person indignant
at those who failed to smell the stench of a coming Holy War and
who were letting the the sons of Allah get away with a little too
much. I made an argument that went more or less like this, twenty
years ago: "What sense is there in respecting those who don't
respect us? What sense is there in defending their culture or
presumed culture when they scorn ours? I want to defend ours and I
am informing you that I prefer Dante to Omar Khayan." The sky came
crashing down. They crucified me: "Racist! Racist!" It was these
same progressives (who at the time called themselves communists)
who crucified me. I got the same treatment when the Soviets
invaded Afghanistan. Do you remember those bearded men with the
gowns and the turbans who, before firing their mortars-or rather
with each shot--shouted God's praises? "Allah akbar! Allah akbar!"
I remember them very well. And I used to shiver hearing the
word God coupled with the shot of a mortar. I thought I was back
in the Middle Ages and I said: "The Soviets are what they are. But
we have to admit that by waging that war they are protecting us,
too. And I for one thank them." Again the sky came crashing down.
"Racist! Racist!" In their blindness they didn't even want me to
speak of the monstrosities that the sons of Allah were committing
on their POWs (they would cut off their legs and arms, remember? A
little vice in which they'd already indulged in Lebanon with their
Christian and Jewish prisoners.) They didn't want me to say it,
no. And just to be progressive they would applaud the Americans
who, having lost their marbles in fear of the Soviet Union, were
arming the heroic-Afghan-people. They trained those bearded men,
and among them the most-bearded-one-of-all, Osama Bin Laden.
Away-with-the-Russians-in-Afghanistaaaaan!
The-Russians-must-go-from-Afghanistaaaan! Well, the Russians left
Afghanistan. Happy? And from Afghanistan the bearded men of the
most-bearded Osama Bin Laden arrived in New York with the
unbearded Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Saudis who
made up the band of the identified nineteen kamikaze. Happy?
Worse: now people here speak of the next attack that will hit us
with chemical weapons, or biological, or radioactive, or nuclear.
People are saying the next massacre is inevitable because Iraq
provides them with materials. People are talking of vaccinations,
of gas masks, of plague. People are wondering when it will happen.
Happy?
Some are neither happy nor unhappy. They couldn't care less.
America's far away anyhow, there's an ocean between America and
Europe... Oh, no, my dear friends. There's a mere thread of water.
Because when the destiny of the West, the survival of our
civilization is at stake, we are New York. We are America. We
Italians, we French, we English, we Germans, we Austrians, we
Hungarians, we Slovaks, we Polish, we Scandinavians, we Belgians,
we Spaniards, we Greeks, we Portuguese. If America falls, Europe
falls. The West falls, we fall. And not just in a financial sense,
which seems to be what worries you the most. (Once when I was
young and naive, I said to Arthur Miller: "Americans measure
everything with money, they only think of money." And Arthur
Miller replied: "You don't?") We fall in every sense, my friend.
And we'll find muezzin instead of church bells, chador instead of
miniskirts, camel's milk instead of the old shot of cognac.
Don't you grasp even this? Do you refuse to understand even
this?!? Blair understood it. He came here and brought the
solidarity of the English people. Renewed it, rather. Not a
solidarity expressed with chattering and whining: a solidarity
based on hunting down the terrorists and on military alliance.
Chirac, on the other hand, didn't. As you know, last week he was
here for an offical visit.
A visit scheduled a long time ago, not prompted by events. He saw
the wreckage of the two towers; he learned that the death toll is
incalculable and unspeakable, but he sure didn't overextend
himself. During the interview with CNN, my friend Cristiana
Amanpour asked as many as four times in what way and to what
degree he intended to take a stand against this Jihad, and four
times Chirac avoided giving an answer. He slipped away like an
eel. One wanted to scream at him: "Monsieur le President! Remember
the landing at Normandy? Do you know how many Americans croaked
at Normandy to kick the Nazis out of France?" Not that I see any
Richard Lionhearts among the other Europeans either, apart from
Blair. Certainly not in Italy where the government has yet to
single out, let alone arrest, a single accomplice or suspected
accomplice of Osama Bin Laden. For God's sake, Mr.
Knight-of-Labor, for God's sake!! In spite of their fear of war,
every country in Europe has found and arrested some accomplice of
Osama Bin Laden. In France, in Germany, in England, in Spain. But
in Italy, where the mosques of Milan, Turin and Rome overflow with
scoundrels singing hymns to Osama Bin Laden and terrorists waiting
to blow up Saint Peter's cupola, not a one. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Please explain, Sir Knight: are your policemen and carabinieri
that inept? Your secret services that idiotic? Your civil servants
that stupid? And are the sons of Allah we host all saints, all
unaware of what happened and is happening? Or is it that if you
make the right inquiries, if you single out and arrest those
you haven't singled out and arrested so far, you're afraid of
being tagged with the old racist-racist label? I, as you can see,
am not. posted by Chris Newman at 2:28 PM
Christ! I don't deny anyone the right to be afraid. Anyone who's
not afraid of war is an idiot. And as I've written a thousand
times before, anyone who acts as though he's not afraid of war is
both an idiot and a liar. But in Life and in History there are
times when one is not permitted to be afraid. Times when being
afraid is immoral and uncivilized. And those who evade this
tragedy out of weakness or lack of courage or habitual
fence-straddling strike me as masochists.
Masochists, yes, masochists. Why? Do you want to talk about what
you call the Contrast-between-the-Two-Cultures? Well, if you
really must know, it bothers me to even talk about two cultures:
to put them on the same plane as though they were two parallel
realities of equal weight and equal measure. Because behind our
civilization we have Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Phydias,
for God's sake. We have ancient Greece with its Parthenon and its
discovery of Democracy. We have ancient Rome with its greatness,
its laws, its concept of Law. Its sculptures, its literature,
its architecture. Its buildings, its amphitheaters, its
acqueducts, its bridges and its roads. We have a revolutionary,
that Christ who died on the cross, who taught us (too bad if we
didn't learn it) the concept of love and of justice. Yes, I know,
there's also a Church that gave me the Inquisition. That tortured
me and burned me a thousand times at the stake. That oppressed me
for centuries, that for centuries forced me to sculpt and paint
only Christs and Madonnas, that almost killed Galileo Galilei.
Humiliated him, shut him up. But it also made a great contribution
to the History of Thought: Yes or no? And then behind our
civilization we also have the Renaissance. We have Leonardo Da
Vinci, we have Michaelangelo, we have Raphael, we have the music
of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven. And on and on through Rossini
and Donizetti and Verdi and Company. That music without which we
could not live and which is prohibited in their culture or
supposed culture. God forbid you should whistle a tune or hum the
chorus of Nabucco. And finally we have Science, for God's sake. A
science that has understood a lot of diseases and that cures them.
I am still alive, for now, thanks to our science. Not Mohammed's.
A science that has invented marvellous machines. The train, the
car, the airplane, the spaceships with which we've gone to the
Moon and Mars and soon will go who knows where. A science that has
changed the face of this planet with electricity, the radio, the
telephone, the TV, and by the way: is it true that the gurus of
the left don't want to say what I have just said?!? God, what
pricks! They will never change. And now the fatal question: what
is behind the other culture?
Damned if I know. I search and search and find only Mohammed with
his Koran and Averroe with his scholarly merits (The Commentaries
on Aristotle, et cetera.) Arafat also finds numbers and math.
Again yelling in my face, again covering me with spit, he told me
in 1972 that his culture was superior to mine, far superior to
mine, because his grandparents had invented numbers and math. But
Arafat has a short memory. That's why he changes his mind and
contradicts himself every five minutes. His grandparents did not
invent numbers and math. They invented the graphic symbols for
numbers that we infidels use as well. Math was conceived almost
simultaneously by all ancient civilizations. In Mesopotamia, in
Greece, in India, in China, in Egypt, among the Mayans... Your
grandparents, my illustrious Mr. Arafat, left us nothing but a few
beautiful mosques and a book they've been breaking my balls with
for the past thousand four hundred years like not even the
Christians do with their Bible or the Jews with their Torah. And
now let's see just what are the positive features that distinguish
this Koran. Positive, really? Ever since the sons of Allah
half-destroyed New York, the scholars of Islam have done nothing
but sing the praises of Mohammed, explain how the Koran preaches
peace, brotherhood and justice. (Even Bush has been chiming in.
Poor Bush. It goes without saying that Bush has to keep on good
terms with the twenty-four million Muslim-Americans, convince them
to squeal what they know about the relatives, friends or
acquaintances who might turn out to be devoted to Osama Bin
Laden). So what do we do with the whole
Eye-for-an-Eye-Tooth-for-a-Tooth business? What do we do with the
chador, or better with the veil that covers the faces of Muslim
women so that in order to glance at the person next to them the
poor wretches have to peer through a close-meshed net at
eye-level? What do we do with polygamy and the principle that
women count less than camels, that they can't go to school, they
can't go to the doctor, they can't have their pictures taken,
etc.? What do we do with the veto on alcohol and the death penalty
for those who drink it? This is in the Koran, too. And it doesn't
seem all that just, all that brotherly, all that peaceful.
So here's my answer to your question on the
Contrast-between-the-Two-Cultures: I say in this world there's
room for everyone. In your own home you can do whatever you want.
And if in some countries the women are so stupid as to accept the
chador, or rather the veil you peer out of through a close-meshed
net at eye level, that's their problem. If they are such
birdbrains as to accept not going to school, not going to the
doctor, not having their pictures taken, that's their problem. If
they are such idiots as to marry some asshole who wants four
wives, that's their problem. If their men are so silly as not to
drink beer or wine, ditto. Far be it from me to stand in their
way. I was raised with the concept of liberty, I was, and my
mother used to say: "Variety is what makes the world beautiful."
But if they presume to impose the same things on me, in my home...
And they do presume it. Osama Bin Laden says that the entire
planet Earth must become Muslim, that we must convert to Islam,
that he will convert us by fair means or foul, that this is why he
massacres us and will continue to do so. And this can't be
pleasing to us. It can't help but make us itch to turn the tables
and kill him. But this thing won't end, won't die out with the
death of Osama Bin Laden. Because there are tens of thousands of
Osama Bin Ladens by now, and they're not only in Afghanistan or in
other Arabic countries. They're everywhere, and the most hardened
ones are right in the Western world. In our cities, in our roads,
in our universities, in the ganglions of technology. That
technology that any dolt can handle. The Crusade has been in
progress for some time. It works like a Swiss watch, sustained by
a faith and a malice comparable only to the faith and malice of
Torquemada when he led the Inquisition. The fact is that dealing
with them is impossible. Reasoning, unthinkable. Treating them
with indulgence, tolerance or hope, suicide. Whoever thinks
differently is deluded.
This is coming from one who has known this type of fanaticism
rather well in Iran, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Saudia Arabia,
in Kuwait, in Libya, in Jordan, in Lebanon, and at home. That is,
in Italy. Known it, and had it chillingly confirmed through a
number of trivial episodes--or rather, grotesque ones. I'll never
forget what happened to me at the Iranian Embassy in Rome when I
asked for a visa to go to Teheran, to interview Khomeini, and I
showed up wearing red nail polish. To them, this is a sign of
immorality. They treated me like a whore to be burned at the
stake. They ordered me to take off that red immediately. And if I
hadn't told them, or rather screamed at them, what I really felt
like taking off--or better yet, cutting off of them... Nor can I
forget what happened in Qom, Khomeini's holy city where as a woman
I was turned away from all the hotels. To interview Khomeini I had
to wear chador, to put on the chador I had to take off my jeans,
to take off my jeans I had to find a secluded place. Naturally, I
could have performed the operation in the car in which I had
arrived from Teheran. But the interpreter wouldn't let me.
You're-crazy, you're-crazy,
you-get-shot-in-Qom-for-doing-something-like-that. He preferred to
bring me to the former Royal Palace where a merciful custodian
took us in and let us use the former Throne Room. I actually felt
like the Virgin Mary who has to take refuge with Joseph in the
barn heated by the donkey and the ox to give birth to Baby Jesus.
But the Koran forbids a man and a woman not married to each other
to be alone behind a closed door, and alas, all of a sudden the
door opened. The mullah in charge of Morality Control barged in
screaming shame-shame, sin-sin, and there was only one way not to
wind up being shot: get married. Sign the temporary (four months)
marriage certificate the mullah was fanning in our faces. The
problem was that the interpreter had a Spanish wife, a woman by
the name of Consuelo who was not at all disposed to accept
polygamy, and I didn't want to marry anyone. Least of all an
Iranian with a Spanish wife not at all disposed to accept
polygamy. At the same time I didn't want to be shot, that is, miss
my interview with Khomeni. As I was debating what to do in this
dilemma
You're laughing, I'm sure. These seem like jokes to you. In that
case, I won't tell you the rest of this episode. To make you cry
I'll tell you about the twelve young impure men I saw executed at
Dacca at the end of the Bangladesh war. They executed them on the
field of Dacca stadium, with bayonet blows to the torso or
abdomen, in the presence of twenty thousand faithful who applauded
in the name of God from the bleachers. They thundered "Allah
akbar, Allah akbar." Yes, I know: the ancient Romans, those
ancient Romans of whom my culture is so proud, entertained
themselves in the Colisseum by watching the deaths of Christians
fed to the lions. I know, I know: in every country of Europe the
Christians, those Christians whose contribution to the History of
Thought I recognize despite my atheism, entertained themselves by
watching the burning of heretics. But a lot of time has passed
since then, we have become a little more civilized, and even the
sons of Allah ought to have figured out by now that certain things
are just not done. After the twelve impure young men they killed a
little boy who had thrown himself at the executioners to save his
brother who had been condemned to death. They smashed his head
with their combat boots. And if you don't believe it, well, reread
my report or the reports of the French and German journalists who,
horrified as I was, were there with me. Or better: look at the
photographs that one of them took. Anyway this isn't even what I
want to underline. It's that, at the conclusion of the slaughter,
the twenty thousand faithful (many of whom were women) left the
bleachers and went down on the field. Not as a disorganized mob,
no. In an orderly manner, with solemnity. They slowly formed a
line and, again in the name of God, walked over the cadavers. All
the while thundering Allah-akbar, Allah-akbar. They destroyed them
like the Twin Towers of New York. They reduced them to a bleeding
carpet of smashed bones.
Oh, I could go on ad infinitum. Tell you things never told, things
to make your hair stand on end. About that dotard Khomeni, for
example, who after our interview held an assembly at Qom to
declare that I had accused him of cutting off women's breasts. He
extracted a video from this assembly that was shown for months on
Teheran television so that, when I returned to Teheran the next
year, I was arrested as soon as I got off the plane. It looked bad
for me, you know, very bad. This was the period of the American
hostages
I could tell you about Mujib Rahman, who, again at
Dacca, had ordered his guerillas to eliminate me as a dangerous
European, and lucky for me an English colonel saved me at the risk
of his life. Or about that Palestinian named Habash who held me
for twenty minutes with a machine gun pointed at my head. God,
what people! The only ones I've had a civil relationship with
remain poor Ali Bhutto, the first prime minister of Pakistan, who
was hanged because he was too friendly to the West, and the
most excellent king of Jordan: King Hussein. But those two were as
Muslim as I am Catholic. Anyway I want to get to the point of my
argument. A point that will not please many, given that defending
one's own culture, in Italy, is becoming a mortal sin. And given
that, intimidated by the inapt term "racist," everyone shuts up
like rabbits.
I don't go pitching tents at Mecca. I don't go singing Our Fathers
and Hail Marys in front of Mohammed's tomb. I don't go peeing on
the marble of their mosques; I don't go shitting at the feet of
their minarets. When I find myself in their countries (something
from which I never derive pleasure), I never forget that I am a
guest and a foreigner. I am careful not to offend them with
clothing or gestures or behavior that are normal for us but
impermissible to them. I treat them with dutiful respect, dutiful
courtesy, and I excuse myself when through mistake or ignorance I
infringe some rule or superstition of theirs. And the images I've
had before my eyes while writing this scream of pain and
indignation haven't always been those of the apocalyptic scenes I
started with. Sometimes I see another image instead, a symbolic
(and therefore infuriating) one: the huge tent with which the
Somalian Muslims disfigured and befouled and profaned the Piazza
del Duomo at Florence for three months last summer. My city.
A tent put up in order to beg-condemn-insult the Italian
government that hosted them but wouldn't give them the papers
necessary to rove about Europe and wouldn't let them bring the
hordes of their relatives to Italy. Mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, pregnant sisters-in-law, and if
they had their way, their relatives' relatives as well. A tent
situated next to the beautiful palazzo of the Archbishop on
whose sidewalk they kept the shoes or sandals that are lined up
outside the mosques in their countries. And along with the shoes
or sandals, the empty bottles of water they'd used to wash their
feet before praying. A tent placed in front of the cathedral with
Brunelleschi's cupola and by the side of the Baptistery with
Ghiberti's golden doors. A tent, finally, furnished like a sleazy
little apartment: seats, tables, chaise-lounges, mattresses for
sleeping and for fucking, ovens for cooking food and plaguing the
piazza with smoke and stench. And, thanks to the customary
irresponsibility of ENEL, which cares about our works of art about
as much as it cares about our landscape, furnished with electric
light. Thanks to a radio tape player, enriched by the uncouth
wailing of a muezzin who punctually exorted the faithful, deafened
the infidels, and smothered the sound of the church bells. Add to
all this the yellow streaks of urine that profaned the marble of
the Baptistry. (My, these sons of Allah sure have a long range!
However did they manage to hit the target when they were held back
by a protective railing that kept it nearly two whole meters away
from their urinary equipment?) And along with the yellow streaks
of urine, the stench of the excrement that blocked the door of San
Salvatore al Vescovo: that exquisite Romanesque church (year 1000)
that stands at the rear of the Piazza del Duomo and that the sons
of Allah transformed into a shithouse. You're well aware of this.
You're well aware because I'm the one who called you, begged you
to talk about it in the Corriere, remember? I also called the
mayor, who, I admit, came politely to my house. He listened to me,
he agreed with me: "You're right. You're quite right." But he
didn't remove the tent. He forgot or he wasn't able. I also called
the Foreign Minister, who was a Florentine, indeed one of those
Florentines who speaks with a very Florentine accent, not to
mention being involved in the whole affair. And he too, I admit,
listened to me. He agreed with me: "Oh, yes. You're right, yes."
But he didn't lift a finger to remove that tent, and as for the
sons of Allah who urinated on the Baptistery and shat all over San
Salvatore al Vescovo, he moved quickly to appease them. (I
understand that the fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters
and uncles and aunts and cousins and pregnant sisters-in-law are
now where they wanted to be. That is in Florence and in other
cities of Europe.) So I changed tactics. I called a nice police
officer who directs the security office and said to him: "My dear
officer, I am not a politician. When I say I'm going to do
something, I do it. I also know something about war and have
certain skills. If by tomorrow you don't get that fucking tent out
of here, I will burn it. I swear on my honor that I will burn it,
that not even a regiment of carabinieri could stop me, and I want
to be arrested for it. Taken to jail in handcuffs. That way I'll
get into all the newspapers." Well, being more intelligent than
the others, in the space of a few hours he got rid of it. In place
of the tent there remained only an immense and disgusting stain of
filth. It was a Pyrrhic victory, though. Because it had no effect
on the other atrocities that for years have wounded and humiliated
what used to be the capital of art and culture and beauty. It did
nothing to discourage the other arrogant guests of the city: the
Albanians, the Sudanese, the Bengalese, the Tunisians, the
Algerians, the Pakistani, the Nigerians who contribute with so
much fervor to the drug trade and prostitution which, it appears,
are not prohibited by the Koran. Oh yes: they're all right where
they were before my policeman took away the tent. In the courtyard
of the Uffizi Galleries, at the foot of Giotto's tower. In front
of the Loggia dell' Orcagna, around the Loggie del Porcellino.
Opposite the National Library, at the entrances to the museums. On
Ponte Vecchio where every so often they kill each other with
knives or revolvers. Along the banks of the Arno where they asked
for and received municipal funding. (That's right, ladies and
gentlemen: municipal funding.) In the churchyard of San Lorenzo
where they get drunk on wine and beer and liquor, bunch of
hypocrites, and where they utter obscenities at women. (Last
summer in that churchyard they even tried it with me, an old lady.
Needless to say they lived to regret it. Oooh, did they regret it!
One of them's still there whimpering over his genitals.) In the
historic streets where they camp out on the pretext of selling
merchandise. By "merchandise" I mean purses and bags illegally
copied from patented models, photo murals, pencils, African
statuettes that ignorant tourists take for Bernini sculptures,
stuff-to-sniff. ("Je connais mes droits, I know my rights" one
of them hissed at me on Ponte Vecchio, one who I'd seen selling
stuff-to-sniff). And God forbid that a citizen protest, God forbid
that someone tell him to
take-those-rights-of-yours-and-go-exercise-them-at-home. "Racist,
racist!" God forbid that a pedestrian brush up against a presumed
Bernini sculpture while trying to walk through the merchandise
that blocks the way. "Racist, racist!" God forbid that a metro cop
should walk up to him and dare to say, "Signor son of Allah, Your
Excellence, would you mind moving over a hairsbreadth to let
people get by?" They'd eat him alive. They'd go after him with
knives. At the very least, they'd insult his mother and progeny.
"Racist, racist!" And people just take it, resigned. They don't
react even if you yell what my old man used to yell during
fascism: "Don't you care at all about dignity? Don't you have even
a little pride, you big sheep?"
The same thing happens in other cities, I know. At Turin, for
example. That Turin that created Italy and now doesn't even seem
like an Italian city. It seems like Algiers, Dacca, Nairobi,
Damascus, Beirut. At Venice. That Venice where the pigeons of
Piazza San Marco have been replaced by little rugs with
"merchandise" and even Othello would feel ill at ease. At Genoa.
That Genoa where the marvellous palazzi that Rubens so admired
have been seized by them and are now perishing like beautiful
women who have been raped. At Rome. That Rome where the cynicism
of a politics of every falsehood and every color courts them in
the hope of obtaining their future votes, and where the Pope
himself protects them. (Your Holiness, why in the name of the One
God don't you take them into the Vatican? Strictly on condition,
of course, that they refrain from shitting on the Sistine Chapel
and the paintings of Raphael.) And here's something I really don't
understand. Instead of sons of Allah, in Italy they call them
"foreign laborers." Or else
"manual-labor-for-which-there-is-demand." And I don't doubt that
some of them work. The Italians have become such little lords.
They vacation in Seychelles, come to New York to buy sheets at
Bloomingdale's. They're ashamed to be laborers and farmers, and
won't be associated with the proletariat. But those of whom I
speak, what kind of laborers are they? What work do they do? In
what way do they satisfy the demand for manual labor that the
Italian ex-proletariat no longer supplies? Camping out in the city
on the pretext of selling merchandise? Loitering and defacing our
monuments? Praying five times a day? And then there's something
else I don't understand. If they're really so poor, who's giving
them the money for the voyage by ship or rubber dinghy that
brings them to Italy? Who gives them the ten million lira a head
(at least ten million) necessary to buy the ticket? It's not by
any chance Osama Bin Laden looking to launch a conquest not only
of souls, but of real estate?
Well, even if he's not the one giving them money, the situation
bothers me. Even if our guests are absolutely innocent, even if
there's no-one among them who wants to destroy the Tower of Pisa
or the Tower of Giotto, wants to put me in chador, wants to burn
me at the stake of a new Inquisition, their presence alarms me. It
makes me uncomfortable. And whoever takes this situation lightly
or optimistically is wrong. And even more wrong is the person
who
compares the wave of migration hitting Italy and Europe to that
which spilled into America in the second half of the 1800's or
rather at the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 1900's.
Now I'll tell you why.
***
Not long ago I happened to catch a phrase uttered by one of the
thousand prime ministers that have honored Italy with their
presence over these past few decades. "Well, my uncle was an
immigrant too! I can remember him leaving for America with his
little cardboard suitcase." Or something along those lines. No,
my
friend. No. It's not the same thing at all. And it's not for two
rather simple reasons. The first is that the wave of migration
to
America that took place in the latter half of the 1800's was
not clandestine and was not carried out by bullying on the part
of
those who effected it. It was the Americans themselves who
wanted
it, urged it, and by a specific act of Congress. "Come, come, we
need you. If you come, we'll give you a nice piece of land." The
Americans even made a movie about it. That one with Tom Cruise
and
Nicole Kidman, and what struck me about it was the ending. The
scene with the poor souls running to plant a little white flag
on
the piece of land they want to claim as theirs, so that only the
youngest and strongest are able to make it. The rest wind up
with diddly squat and some of them die in the process. To my
knowledge, there was never any act of Parliament in Italy
inviting
or rather urging our present guests to leave their countries.
Come-come-we-really-need-you,
if-you-come-we'll-give-you-a-little-farm-in-Chianti. They came
to
us on their own initiative, with their accursed dinghies and in
the teeth of the customs officers who tried to send them back.
What occurred was not an immigration, it was more of an invasion
conducted under an emblem of secrecy. A secrecy that's
disturbing
because it's not meek and dolorous but arrogant and protected by
the cynicism of politicians who close an eye or maybe even both.
I'll never forget the way these stow-aways filled the piazzas of
Italy with assemblies last year to clamor for visas. Those
distorted, savage faces. Those raised fists, threatening. Those
baleful voices that took me back to the Teheran of Khomeni. I'll
never forget it because I felt offended by their bullying in my
home, and because I felt made fun of by the ministers who told us:
"We'd like to deport them but we don't know where they're hiding."
Bastards! There were thousands of them in those piazzas and they
sure as hell weren't hiding. To deport them all they had to do was
put them in line, please-right-this-way-sir, and escort them to a
port or airport.
The second reason, my dear nephew of the uncle with the little
cardboard suitcase, is one even a schoolboy could understand. It
requires only two elements to expound. One: America is a
continent. And in the latter half of the 1800's when the American
Congress gave the green light to immigration, this continent was
practically unpopulated. Most of the population was massed in the
eastern states, in other words those on the side of the Atlantic,
and there were even fewer people in the Midwest. California was
practically empty. Well, Italy isn't a continent. It's a very
small country, and far from unpopulated. Two: America is a very
young country. If you recall that the War of Independence took
place at the end of the 1700's, you can deduce that it's only two
hundred years old and you understand why its cultural identity is
not yet well defined. Italy, on the other hand, is a very old
country. Its history goes back at least three thousand years. Its
cultural identity is thus very precise--and let's not beat around
the bush: that identity has quite a bit to do with a religion
called Christian religion and a church called the Catholic Church.
People like me have a nice little saying:
the-Catholic-church-has-nothing-to-do-with-me. But boy does it
have to do with me. Whether I like it or not, it has to do with
me. And how could it not? I was born into a landscape of churches,
convents, Christs, Madonnas, Saints. The first music I heard
coming into the world was the music of church bells. Those bells
of Santa Maria del Fiore that were smothered by the uncouth voice
of the muezzin during the Tent Age. And I grew up in that music,
in that landscape. And it was through that music and that
landscape that I learned what architecture is, what sculpture is,
what painting is, what art is. It was through that church (which I
later rejected) that I began to ask myself what is Good, what is
Evil, and by God...
There: you see? I wrote "by God" again. With all my secularism,
all my atheism, I am so imbued with Catholic culture that it's
even part of my way of expressing myself. Oh God, my God, thank
God, by God, sweet Jesus, good God, Mother Mary, here a Christ,
there a Christ. These words come so spontaneously to me that I
don't even realize I'm speaking or writing them. And you want me
to lay it all out? Even if I've never pardoned Catholicism for the
infamies it inflicted on me for centuries, starting with the
Inquisition that burned even my grandmother--poor
grandmother!--even if I've never gotten along well with priests
and have no use for their prayers, all the same I really love the
music of church bells. It caresses my heart. I also love those
painted or sculpted Christs and Madonnas and Saints. In fact I
have a thing for icons. I also love monasteries and convents. They
give me a sense of peace, and sometimes I envy those inside. And
then let's admit it: our cathedrals are more beautiful than
mosques and synagogues. Yes or no? They're also more beautiful
than Protestant churches. Look, my family's cemetery is
Protestant. It accepts the dead of all religions but it's
Protestant. And one of my great-grandmothers was Walensian. One of
my great-aunts, Evangelist. I never knew my Walensian
great-grandmother. But I did know the Evangelist great-aunt. When
I was a little girl she would always take me to her church
functions in Via de' Benci at Florence, and... God, how bored I
was! I felt so alone with those faithful who did nothing but sing
psalms, that priest who wasn't a priest and did nothing but read
the Bible, that church that didn't seem like a church and apart
from a little pulpit had nothing but a big crucifix. No angels, no
Madonnas, no incense. I even missed the smell of incense, and
would rather have been in the nearby Basilica di Santa Croce where
they had these things. The things I was used to. And I'll say
more: in my country house, in Tuscany, there is a tiny little
chapel. It's always closed. No one goes there since my mother
died. But I go there sometimes, to dust, to make sure the mice
haven't made a nest, and despite my secular upbringing I feel
comfortable there. Despite my priest-hating tendencies, I move
there with casual ease. And I believe that the vast majority of
Italians would confess the same thing. (Even Berlinguer, the head
of the Italian Communist Party, confessed as much to me.)
Good God! (Here we go again.) I'm telling you that we Italians are
not in the same position as the Americans: mosaic of ethnic and
religious groups, hodgepodge of a thousand cultures, at once open
to every invasion and able to stave it off. I'm telling you that,
for the very reason that our cultural identity is so precise and
defined by so many centuries, it cannot sustain a wave of
immigration composed of people who in one way or another want to
change our way of life. Our values. I'm telling you that we have
no room for muezzins, for minarets, for false teetotalers, for
their fucking Middle Ages, for their fucking chador. And if we had
room, I wouldn't give it to them. Because it would be the
equivalent of throwing away Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Raphael, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento, the
liberty that for better or worse we fought for and won, our
Patria. It would mean giving them Italy. And I won't give them
Italy.
I am Italian. The fools who think I'm an American by now are
wrong. I've never asked for American citizenship. Years ago an
American ambassador offered it to me on Celebrity Status, and
after thanking him I replied: "Sir, I'm very tied to America. I'm
always arguing with it, always telling it off, but I'm still
profoundly tied to it. For me America is a lover--no, a
husband--to whom I will always be faithful. Assuming he doesn't
sleep around on me. I care about this husband of mine. And I never
forget that if he hadn't troubled himself to wage war on Hitler
and Mussolini, today I'd speak German. I never forget that if he
hadn't kept an eye on the Soviet Union, today I'd speak Russian. I
care about him and I like him. I like for example that when I come
back to New York and hand over my passport and green card, the
customs agent gives me a big smile and says "Welcome home." The
gesture seems so generous, so affectionate. I also remember that
America has always been the Refugium Peccatorum for people without
a homeland. But I already have a homeland, sir. Italy is my
Patria, and Italy is my mamma. I love Italy, sir. And it would
seem like renouncing my mamma to take American citizenship." I
also told him that my language is Italian, that I write in
Italian, whereas I only translate myself in English. Just as I
translate myself in French, feeling it to be a foreign language.
And then I told him that when I listen to Mameli's anthem I get
emotional. That when I hear that "Fratelli-d'Italia,
l'Italia-s'è-desta, parapà-parapà-parapà", I get a lump in my
throat. I don't even notice that as anthems go, it's pretty ugly.
I only think: that's the anthem of my Patria. I also get a lump in
my throat when I see the white red and green flag waving. Apart
from the stadium hooligans, that is. I have a white red and green
flag from the 1800s. It's full of stains, stains of blood, all
pink from mice. And despite the fact that it has the coat of arms
of the House of Savoy in the center (though without Cavour and
without Victor Emmanuel II and without Garibaldi who bowed to
that coat of arms we would never have unified Italy), I hold onto
it like gold. I treasure it as a jewel. Christ! We died for that
flag! Hanged, shot, decapitated. Killed by the Austrians, by the
Pope, by the Duke of Modena, by the Bourbons. We carried out the
Risorgimento with that flag. And the unification of Italy, and the
war in Carso, and the Resistance. My maternal
great-great-grandfather Giobatta fought for that flag at Curtatone
and Montanara and was horribly disfigured by an Austrian rocket.
My paternal uncles endured every kind of pain for that flag in the
trenches of Carso. My father was arrested and tortured for that
flag by the nazi-fascists at Villa Triste. My whole family fought
for that flag in the Resistance, and I did too. In the ranks of
Justice and Liberty, with the battle name Emilia. I was fourteen.
The next year when they discharged me from the Volunteer Italian
Army Corps of Liberty, I felt so proud. Jesus and Mary, I had been
an Italian soldier! And when I found out that along with the
discharge went 14,450 lire, I didn't know whether to accept
it or not. It seemed wrong to accept it for doing my duty to the
Patria. Then I did accept it. None of us had shoes at home. And
with that money I bought shoes for myself and my little sisters.
Obvioiusly my homeland, my Italy, is not the Italy of today. The
scheming, vulgar, fat-dumb-and-happy Italy of Italians whose only
concern is getting their pensions by 50 and whose only passions
are foreign vacations and soccer matches. The rotten, stupid,
cowardly Italy, of little hyenas who would sell their daughter to
a Beirut whorehouse in order to shake the hand of a Hollywood divo
or diva but if Osama Bin Laden's kamikazes reduce thousands of New
Yorkers to a mountain of ashes that seem like ground coffee they
snigger contentedly good-it-serves-America-right. The squalid,
faint-hearted, soulless Italy, of presumptuous and incompetent
political parties that don't know how to win or lose but know how
to glue the fat posteriors of their representatives into the seat
of a deputy or minister or mayor. The still-Mussolinesque Italy of
black and red fascists that make you think of Ennio Flaiano's
terrible joke: "In Italy there are two kinds of fascists: fascists
and anti-fascists." Nor is it the Italy of the magistrates and
politicians who in their ignorance of proper verb tense commit
monstrous errors of syntax while pontificating on television
screens. (You don't say, "If it was," you animals! You say "If it
were.") Nor is it the Italy of young people who, having similar
teachers, are drowning in the most scanadlous ignorance, the most
excruciating superficiality, drowning in emptiness. So that they
add errors of spelling to errors of syntax and if you ask them who
the Carbonari were, who the liberals were, who Silvio Pellico was,
who Mazzini was, who Massimo D'Azeglio was, who Cavour was, who
Victor Emmanuel II was, they look at you with dulled pupils and
dangling tongues. They know nothing or at most they know how to
play the comfortable role of aspiring terrorists in a time of
peace and democracy, how to wave black flags, hide their faces
behind ski masks, the little fools. Inept fools. And even less is
it the Italy of the chattering insects who after reading this will
hate me for having written the truth. Between one bowl of
spaghetti and another they'll curse me and hope I get killed by
one of those whom they protect, that is by Osama Bin Laden. No,
no: my Italy is an ideal Italy. It's an Italy that I dreamed of as
a young girl, when I was discharged from the Italian Volunteer
Army Corps of Liberty, and I was full of illusions. An
intelligent, dignified, courageous Italy, and therefore worthy of
respect. And this Italy, an Italy that exists even if it is
silenced or ridiculed or insulted--woe to anyone who lays a finger
on it. Woe to anyone who robs it from me or invades it. Because
whether the invaders are Napoleon's French or Francis Joseph's
Austrians or Hitler's Germans or Osama Bin Ladin's comrades, it's
all the same to me. Whether they invade it using cannons or rubber
dinghies, ditto. And with that I bid you an affectionate farewell,
by dear Ferruccio, and I warn you: ask nothing further of me.
Least of all, to get involved in disputes or pointless polemics.
I've said what I had to say. Anger and pride ordered me to. Age
and a clean conscience allowed me to. But now I have to get back
to work; I don't want to be disturbed. End of story.
Oriana Fallaci