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Author
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Topic: Book : 1 Year After ... (Read 1352 times)
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Klaus
Sr. Member
Posts: 483
let's bring the paradise back to dahab ...
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from Sonia Serravalli
Hi Mahmud and all of my friends of my beloved community of Dahab.
Following our "reading evenings" at the Lighthouse, when I was there, I started to translate in English some of my recent articles to have the possibility to exchange... with some staff of mine, finally. So here it is (below), nothing that claims to condamn my own culture (as I would not condamn any culture), just its mistakes and its derailments... (the translation is mine so not perfect, and of course in Italian it was and it sounded much better... :-) ).
I wish you a pleasant reading, and send you my sincere hug,
The colours die - Sonia Serravalli
Dedicated to Ahmed Ali
The area is that of Milan's train station. Just come back from the "Middle East", I observe the dozens of faces with their different colours and their different tones of fear that we all gather under the name of "extracomunitari".
I still have the breath of Sinai on me and the dark eyes of the strong Arabian personalities on my forehead. But here I do not see strength. In this innumerable silent population, that here only learnt not to become familiar with anybody, I see the dejection of emigration and exile, and the lost expression of the one who lost confidence. Something that, in a jarring way, brings a veil of paleness, of opalescent white, on the one who was born with a dark face and obsidian eyes - of which I guess the lost vigour.
I have always been in favour of ethnic and cultural crossings, in whatever field they might take place. But the landscapes I go through today in the streets of Milan (under a sky that, so as our men, seems to lose its true colour in step with the "progress"), I only taste the bitter flavour of our world that unaware went off the road.
It has been only some days since I said goodbye to my friends in Egypt. Their human warmth, their hospitality, that particular way of them to make a family out of a street, to make a home out of any place where somebody needs a help, will not fade from my memory. The jarring between the welcoming and generous attitude they showed me and taught me in their land and the skeptical and evasive looks of the people with their same features here in Milan, produces a sense of cloudy all around me, a fog that limits colours and breath. Paleness, it is paleness what I glimpsed in their looks, even if they are dark and deep-set inside a familiar face of leather. The only recurrent element that sews today's pieces together, popping out of my mind repeatedly in this journey, is the sentence "the colours die".
Walking among them, with the smell of their deserts still in my nostrils, – still feeling more part of them than of my people, even if they cannot imagine it – I observe unarmed, with no chance of cheating myself, the grafting of our worst defects on their heads, the importation of our grossest mistakes inside their arms. It is late - I think.
Of their fierce identities and of those looks, that on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea spring fire and magnetisms, here is left only the spark of surviving and the elemental strength of the stronger against the weaker. I see them idle on a pavement, as if they were trying to remember a name they have lost, or working like slaves, in the 3 x 3 square meters boxes that they have swapped with their coral beaches, in order to chase a number and some paper, in a city with the sky in coma. I wonder if the level of stupidity of the human being does not by chance become deeper in a directly proportional way to that of its technological and scientific development. My look crosses the sad one of an Indian in the middle of the cars and I feel like closing my eyes and catch hold of the images of an island that I, maybe so as he, left behind. I think of the fresh fish, of hotels of wood and lamps of paper, of a world that allows itself to fly away without any worries if the Monsoon blows. But in the meantime, Milan besieges me: in the stores I am under observation because I travel with a heavy rucksack and I might hide the intention of stealing. While on the street I have to stay wary at every step, for the tendency to the bag-snatching for which these streets are popular and for the trams and cars that threatens me from all sides. Above, the sky seems to pant like a fish thrown on the floor and forgotten.
When the Arabian dealer does not welcome me as if I was his sister, I almost feel disappointed. My thought runs to Maghreb, to Egypt, and in the mistrustful and furtive attitude that Arabs have taken on among these streets I almost lose the sense of direction. And it is not over: however much I may take care of myself and preserve the colours of my thoughts out of this gray and agonizing world, I cannot hide to myself the awareness that this is the only image that the non-traveler Italian has of the immigrants. This clot of paleness generated by fear, dismay, homesickness and uprooting mixed with the dream of a Europe that betrays, in its distortion, when - at the cost of everything - you finally get to touch it. And here you have the Arab, the Pakistani, the Bengali, the South American, the Easter European. So as the Italian claims to know him. The same Italian who believes he is living in one of the most advanced societies, and does not even realize that they have taken him the sky away and that even water is no longer drinkable. The capacity of human mind to only see what it wants to see and of telling itself fairy-tales is terrifying. I think back to how many friends of mine on the Red Sea dream about Italy and have been trying for years all ways to reach it, with no success. I would like to stop the world, I would like to tell them: "Stop yourself and look at what you have around, because we broke it...". The one who follows the derailed train, and plus with that dash and eagerness, he himself will derail... But now I would only like to close my eyes and, when I re-open them, find myself again between a Bedouin bar and a fishing-rod in the sea, spinning armlets with the children on the street, in order to give a small contribution to the modesty and simplicity of the world, under a sky of real, true blue.
Sonia Serravalli
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Sonia - سونيا
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« Last Edit: March 28, 2007, 10:24:55 AM by Klaus »
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***happy are those who dream dreams
and are ready to pay the price
to make them come true ***
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Klaus
Sr. Member
Posts: 483
let's bring the paradise back to dahab ...
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 Sonia Serravalli
L'ORO DI DAHAB
L'Oro di Dahab (= The Gold Of Dahab)
A public event that becomes private. The intimacy of a moment that becomes universal. Witness of a violent terrorist attack in the heart of Egypt - the attack in Dahab on the 24th of April 2006 - Sonia Serravalli opens her heart and her memories in an intense and moving story, harsh and realistic at the same time. Reconstructing the facts carefully, concentrating most of all on the feelings, the author relives the blasts of the explosions and the endless moments that followed them, the fear and the sense of powerlessness, the desire to forge ahead , to bear witness to what happened. The courage to survive in a world already out of control. The beginning of a relationship, the difficult building of a bridge between Islam and the West, between a man and a woman who love each other and fear each other at the same time. But also the constant striving to listen, to understand.
sonia.rangers@gmail.com
http://www.ilfiloonline.it/Albatros/2007/lorodidahab.asp
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« Last Edit: April 07, 2007, 11:20:08 AM by Klaus »
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***happy are those who dream dreams
and are ready to pay the price
to make them come true ***
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Klaus
Sr. Member
Posts: 483
let's bring the paradise back to dahab ...
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Sonia's example of an interview
Did the attack change your relationship with Egypt? And did it change the life of Dahab's people?
It changed my relationship towards Egypt and Dahab in the sense that before I was only a temporary traveller/worker, then suddenly I found myself catapulted into the reality of the people around me, of the local people who in the meantime had become my colleagues, friends and confidants.
If it changed the life of Dahab's people, I don't think so: I was surprised in front of their speed of reaction. As if with resignation they were somehow already used to things like this, or as if they had expected it (of course, these are only my impressions). But their attention doesn't linger willingly over the past, specially over such dramatic events, and in my opinion here also resides part of their strength: the pride for the achieved results is stronger than bad memories, and it's more worth their concentration. It is as if all those present in that event were mysteriously struck by a strange common disease: we don't mention that day anymore.
What has taught to you the experience with the Arabic world?
Not to judge. I learnt that when we judge we restrict the possibilities of the person (or the culture, or the situation) that we have in front of us. Judging means to confine a person inside a section. Perhaps because the entire context is too big to face it, this is justifiable: we can digest only the corner that we decided to cut out of if. But this will never lead to real comprehension. There is a lot of patience, tolerance and listening missing from both sides (our two cultures).
What did Fares (fake name of the co-protagonist) taught to you?
Fares was maybe never really able to put himself into somebody else's shoes. But if he taught me something, it was the strength of character, the conviction in his own ideas, that passion for his own ideals that presupposes also big sacrifices, and that yes, ideally can even bring to self-sacrifice (ideally talking, an physically in extreme historical situations – and I'm not thinking of kamikazes: I'm thinking of Jesus…for instance). I don't care than that, due to mine and the occidental point of view, he might be on the wrong way. What I care for is that we have lost that abnegation, that passion and that availability to (peacefully) fight for the things we believe in.
We complain because we are losing our identity. Paradoxically, I see in the one whom we believe "the other" or the "enemy" precious aspects to gather and to make ours as an antidote for this loss or dissolution. But not then to lead a war against each other, but to go further and finally create a flag which is just human. Often it's just the one that we believe is bringing threat that, if we are able to listen carefully, is offering us part of the solution. And I think it's true that the cure for every sickness is contained inside us, and that every question already contains in embryo its answer. It is the same dynamics.
What do "the others" think of us and of this possible interaction and how do you see a possible solution to the problem of the cultural incomprehension?
To me the only key to defeat closeness and the lack of understanding is discrediting the commonplaces. When you live a long time inside another culture you get often surprised by comments that undermine your long-term prejudices in few seconds. It is not the first time that I discover abroad interesting reversed prejudices that clash with ours. Only recently for instance I discovered that, while we usually think of Arabs as "hot-headed", this is exactly the idea they have about Italians! It is in moments like these that you feel victim of a trick, and you discover the "other" much more similar to yourself, and fundamentally human.
Clichés are our slavery. They decide for us and restrict our freedom of thought and action. Being all human beings – that means no aliens among us – I really cannot give up the idea of a possible channel or bridge where we can meet. I guess I have been looking for a common denominator my whole life.
Can love create a bridge, overcome the misunderstanding and incomprehension between the 2 cultures?
Maybe the higher love can, the non egoistic one, available to a 360-degrees-tolerance, to listening, the one in the Ghandi-style and, to be clearer, the one exemplified for us by Christ. The passion/romantic love existing between two common people – as ungovernable – might be misleading. And perhaps for us it was: for this reason I wouldn't take a couple as an example of the alliance that might be created between two nations or two different societies.
Anyway, thinking of the contrasts between cultures, we often reason due to the big systems, without thinking that in daily life people interact among them in a much more natural and fluid way, creating collaborations, friendships and also loves. During the Second World War my grandmother used to give shelter to young German soldiers, sharing with them her meals, while Italy and Germany were fighting against each other. Today people keep on falling in love beyond racial, religious and political categories. The one who hinders them is always the society or somebody ruling from above.
The experience I lived was my extreme attempt to prove to myself that the biggest and most ungovernable feeling of the world overcomes, after all the rest, even the greatest taboo: the divine one. And I think there is where God really reveals Himself, after all the risks we ran to get to love - because not even under torture I could ever admit to believe that God can be against love, in any of its forms.
Your relationship wasn't a simple love-story: what you tell here was always lived as an exchange that for all the time mirrors the external situation of your Country, isn't it true?
Yes, it is always important to me to stress that I didn't want to tell a sugary and private love-story. That for all the time of my relationship with a Muslim (showing himself in the beginning as a very open-minded person, then revealed himself to be an extremist) I have been constantly living this doubling between the private dimension and the global one, bigger, that my country was living in parallel in front of the so-called "Middle-East". It is the story of an exchange, with the participation and the maximal mutual commitment. All what we in Fares could contest in our occidental mentality has been done with love, and never for dictation or malevolence, not even for a single second. And here is where I do perceive a possible key for the resolution of intercultural conflicts and incomprehension. If a certain kind of behaviour is to Muslims their mission on this world, if to them that is the way to teach and to bring to the world, then it's obvious that what we read directly as an attempt of dictation is to them the sharing of what they believe right. Christians did the same, and many more. I lived it deeply on myself. I can disagree with a person like Fares, but I cannot say for a single second that he was not led by a wish of love and goodness for me.
What is the meaning of the title, "The Gold Of Dahab" (subtitle "Creating Bridges")?
Dahab means "gold" in Arabic. But to me the game of words doesn't stop here: there is also a little bit of irony/sarcasm in mentioning gold in a book that speaks of an attack and also of poverty. The irony of having questioned my scale of values. And, after this and other previous experiences in other countries, of being no longer sure of who is "wealthy" and who is not… I would say that it's about time to start measuring the wealth of a person and of a people from the quantity of smiles they dispense every day, and from the quality of their happiness, non measurable materially in any way.
Sonia - سونيا
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***happy are those who dream dreams
and are ready to pay the price
to make them come true ***
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Sonia
Newbie
Posts: 23
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Hi everybody, I'm happy to announce you that my book (The Gold Of Dahab - L'Oro Di Dahab) won the National Price Rhegium Julii, but it's still in Italian... :-) Hope it'll get translated soon, kisses and hugs from hot Italy (40 degrees and fires in the whole south!),
Sonia Serravalli
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Sonia
Newbie
Posts: 23
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I know, it's still in Italian and it's pretty new, but I'm proud of it: my blog! :-)
Check it out if you want:
BLOG: http://creandoponti.splinder.com
it means, "creating bridges"
Greetings to everybody from the crazy writer ;-) and see you in Dahab in 8 days! :-)
Sonia S.
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Sonia
Newbie
Posts: 23
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Dear all, that's my last article about Dahab to be published in the on-board travel magazine I work with (Racconti Per Un Viaggio). For you all.... So happy to be here... :-) Sonia S.
THE COMMUNITY FOUNDED ON DREAM
Visiting Dahab means strolling among the pillars of a community built by dreamers. The usual tourist might need a small clue to point their sensitivity onto the extraordinary people that hide behind any activity and behind any welcoming beach, terrace or angle. It might be interesting to look in the crowd for the German man, who because of his roaming through Sinai for years even assumed Arabic features and dresses like a sufi. Or to look for the northern pensioner who for a decade has been delighted choosing with love the right music for the small restaurant on the beach, or for the Brazilian woman, composing bags with sequins to survive in the oasis of her dreams, the Danish woman painting on any material, transforming the small town year by year under her own style, the dark lady recruited from the desert to draw henna tattoos on the bodies of the visitors. And still the Austrian man, who turns every door on the streets or at home into a picture, the African rasta-man who brings here his self manufactured wares and drum leathers, the Chinese woman who sells you Egyptian cakes and the Russian woman who exports the dishes of her country towards the palate of the ones who still don’t know them. The small Bulgarian family that silently has opened a nice hotel towards the lighthouse. The Portuguese woman who uninterruptedly smiles infecting everybody, as if she was to say: here we have given a start to the epidemic of joy. The pride that follows shows on the faces of all these people that more or less in the shadow met here from all over the world, since about fifteen years ago, to constitute this family as a surprise, all joined by an undeniable poem in their heart. Here they have found the true incarnation of the country of their dreams, the promised land of every child, the Caribbean section of every exotic dream. For this reason Dahab makes every passer-by feel at home, as if they already knew it. Because in a subliminal way Dahab pulls the dream from its hair, waking up the child, the poet and the painter, the nomad and the dreamer of every curious tourist.
Perhaps, after some time, the return to our cities and to the civility we find in them will make that these elements of us fall asleep again. But the germ of the epidemic of joy cannot be forgotten, the woodworm of eternal smile stays on inside the memory of the ones who breathed this wind of Sinai and this breath of corporeal and creative freedom. And perhaps, after months or years, surprisingly the abstract instant of the Bedouin child, sit braiding bracelets on the low tide, will emerge like a flash. The evasive shadow of the French professor here turned into a modest and satisfied fisherman. Or the interweaving of the sacred chants from the old stores smelling like fruit in the sleepy morning. In that moment you will know with certitude that Dahab remains inside, and that the footprint we thought to have left on the coppery sand of the lagoon is instead the footprint that Dahab left in us, inside the deepest fibers of the freed body, where the spontaneity of walking with bear feet confines with a flight of the spirit, irremediably set free from the schemes of our civilization. On the frontier of dust. On the edge of the impudence of colors.
Sonia Serravalli
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