A dark tent, a feeble light of a rechargeable lamp, a two-year-old child sitting on the floor while eating with a thousand coloured face into the plate.
The colour of his story, the colour of his genealogy, the colour of the refugee camp dust, the colour of non-existent tissues, the colour of the greasy, which first reaches the nose and then the mouth.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such an overflowing violence.
Feet without socks running over sharp stones, trousers too large and underwear that are too expensive to be seen here, while outside it’s raining and the frozen air’s blowing from snow-clad mountains.
May a law exist for returning the toys, the fold-back blankets, the kiss taken before entering school, the bow on the smock, the bedtime stories and all the tenderness needed when you are a child?
Who’s going to compensate with a caress for each slap in the face?
What kind of man will become the one who has never been a child?
While I’m wondering about it, I think to the empty space of that tent; the answers to these questions take my breath away.
The road taken by these young ladies and men with big eyes, completely dirty, that hug you, scream and sing “bella ciao” passing our tent. A minute before they are playing and a minute later they are crying because of the blows; the road I see takes my sleep away.
In this night, that tent, that face in the plate, all the ongoing or breaking-in wars, all the emigrating people, the jails full of forgotten persons, the tortures, all the closed borders, all the commentators seated chatting, everything is stronger than the thunder of this rain that falls incessantly on this tent.
A dark tent, a feeble light of a rechargeable lamp, a two-year-old child raises his face up from the plate where he was eating and, in spite of the stink, I can smell the bright wonder of childhood. I wish the world to stop right now so that such unaware smile could remain there forever.
OPERAZIONE COLOMBA
