 That afternoon with Fabrizio
by Teresa Sarti
Gino and Teresa to tell, and Fabrizio and Dori to listen in disbelief. The beginning of a friendship and a shared commitment. That continue.
Emergency and the friendship with Fabrizio were born almost together. A few months ago we started our business to care for civilian victims of war, and tell what happens in the first hospital built by Emergency, in northern Iraq. Recounted above all the victims of a cowardly war, fought by 110 million landmines scattered in about seventy countries. Italy was then the third largest manufacturer in the world of these barbaric weapons, which kill, maim, blind people even decades after the war is over, simply because it doesn't know that the war is over, and continue to do their work death.
One evening one of our volunteers, just used to get excited and even less to be moved, opened the door to my office at the headquarters of Emergency and literally choked voice he stammered: "Teresa, Fabrizio De André is on the phone, I swear is not a joke, a voice as his no one can imitate! "
Fabrizio was, in fact, who had read our interview and was shocked. He wanted to know, wanted to know, and invited us into his home in Milan.
I will always remember that afternoon. Gino and I recounted faces, bodies, stories of kids, playing fields or bringing animals to pasture, had been defeated by an enemy hiding in the grass, which had the appearance of a rock or a butterfly. Fabrizio and Dori mostly silent in disbelief as all good people, painfully reluctant to believe that man can come to that.
Fabrizio a week after began to do its part in the campaign for the banning of the Italian production of landmines. During concerts he spoke simply, with the credibility that resulted from what was and what he thought. And many other people through him, knew the horror.
Thirty million Italianmines
We had turned into a postcard to send to the President of the Republic, the operative registry just one month of the Emergency hospital in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq: 50 people devastated by landmines, mostly of Italian production. We didn't want to add any comments to the bare list of names and surnames, age (almost all young or very young), the activities that were taking place at the time of the accident (collecting firewood, played, sowed ...), type of injuries and amputations.
During the concerts of other artists and Fabrizio stated that the card was available on the table of Emergency, and then there was the assault. We have flooded the Presidency of the Republic with a million postcards, sent mostly by young people.
On 22 October 1997, Parliament finally banned the Italian production of landmines. But 30 million of these cowardly weapons, sent by our country, are now scattered around the world and will continue to kill, maim, make blind in the coming decades. For one day a great victory, for years a painful defeat, every day.
Of this reality and we talked with Fabrizio Dori, when we happened to meet them.
On 29 January 1999, we presented in Milan Gino's book "Green Parrots", which tells the stories that afternoon we made known to our friends in their home. Fabrizio was gone a few days, and we miss him terribly. In a theater that had failed to contain all, we ended the night with "War of Piero." Because the issue was, and why Fabrizio was there with us in disbelief and passionate.
Dori and Chris continued to play their part. Just call them, and are now with us in supporting Emergency.
Twice a day
Then came the funny and moving story of the guitar.
Dori had given us a guitar by Fabrizio to be auctioned, to contribute to the construction of our hospital in Sierra Leone. On line purchase proposals overlap, but there was always a mysterious fan who relaunched. At this point, Genova said very clearly that the guitar was to remain in the Via del Campo and triggered a call for solidarity and race against time to reach the goal.
Difficult to describe the climate of that January 6, 2001 in the workshop of taxes: a crowd excited, happy, emotion, solidarity has cheered until the last second, the one that won the auction of the guitar in Genoa.
Think of the Emergency hospital in Sierra Leone since the door plate "Via del Campo", the sister of one of Genoa. The local personnel was explained to the nice story behind it. One of the attendants has just over twenty years and is alone in the world with two children, after all her family were burned alive inside the house in a village in the north. Her face is said to fall in love with men and ask them for money. Be a coincidence, but Loretta dusting the plate twice a day at the beginning and end of shift.
Teresa Sarti
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Still the cannon thunders
The idea came to Dori Ghezzi. I went to visit seven years ago, to talk about my idea of a new product we, the anarchists, the magazine "A", to remember Fabrizio, always remember to tie the current issues.
The year before (2001) was released on CD and we had beautiful eyes too, with a Roma child on the cover, and the talk of the loneliness Fabrizio, transsexuals, Roma precisely, and then the American Indians, gays, the power and freedom. A nice presentation on a sunny morning in the field of Hydro-nomadic way of Milan, with Don Gallo, Antonio Ricci, Mauro Macario, Giuffrida Romano, Mario Luzzatto Fegiz and Roma field, especially many children hopping here and there.
This time the idea was that of a DVD, then that would be released in 2003 with the title "but the uniform of another color", with 50% of the proceeds intended to be put on Emergency Surgical Centre in Goderich, Sierra Leone.
Why not talk directly with Teresa? - Dori asked me and I went to visit the headquarters of Emergency, then in via Meravigli.
It was the first in a series of talks, during which I informed of the progress of our project. Each time she was also speaking on the other and it was a bit 'as if we were friends for so long. She spoke of the Emergency projects, of the thousand things she wanted to do and those that were actually realized. But she also talked about herself, her physical weakness, her conception of life. She was beautiful, tired, sensitive. During our last conversation - I went to introduce our two DVD on the Nazi extermination of the Roma - was enthusiastic about that project and went with its promise of a big night in Milan sponsored by Emergency in defense of the Roma and their denied rights, with a screening of clips from the tragic pages of history.
But the disease began shortly after it and included hospitalizations. I did not see her again.
Now that his short writings, published in the booklet accompanying the DVD, there is evidence of that warm feeling of community and walk among us of "A" Friends of Emergency, Fabrizioand Dori.
The times are not easy. Then as now, when it came out our DVD, the war looms, "Still the cannon thunders" (Francesco Guccini Auschwitz).
Teresa andFabrizio there are no more. But our common commitment to peace and antiwar continues, even in their memory.
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 rivista anarchica
anno 39 n.8
novembre 2009
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