DAY 5: NOT JUST THE TWO OF US

MIRIAM 5 – 13th of March. Dear Andre, writing to you tonight has a completely different taste. I know that, for the first time, it’s not just you and me reading our conversations. It feels like, all around us and without any safety distance (but all close to each other), there were a lot of friends from all over Italy that from now on will share with us and our blog their everyday life.

So understand me, but today I won’t share my day. Today I want to tell the story of Federica, a young girl from Calabria who meets with her boyfriend at the supermarket, just to able to look into each other’s eyes for a few minutes. And Cristian, who lives a short distance from the Niguarda hospital and holds tight to his wife and son. I think of Martina, who came to Naples from Bolzano just to take an exam at university and now won’t be able to go back home for who knows how long. And Fabio, who wonders what would happen if the internet stopped working, now that being virtually connected is more important than ever, and who has spent time making a video for his loved ones, because right now, the people we love are our greatest fortune.

What I want to tell today, dear Andre, it’s the story of each one of them. Just reading their testimonies moves me and touches me, and gives me a glimmer of awareness: together, we really are going to make it.

ANDREA 5 – Now more than ever I am convinced that this red line is something that has brought Italy together, rather than divide it. The evidence of that is the music coming out of our homes today at 6 pm. The last time I remember such a celebration from the Italian balconies is in 2006, when we won the world cup because we had been “a team, the strongest”. Coronavirus brought us together just like then. It has brought together all the Italians living abroad as well, like Mark, who sent a message from the UK asking for stricter measures, or like my friend Andrea, professor in Sheffield, who asks the same from his Facebook page.

I came back to Torino the 20^th of January, after two years spent in London. I recall coming back to Italy almost every weekend for two years, just to see my girlfriend and these days I have been thinking a lot about how I would have reacted if something like that had happened a few months ago.

This is why I can fully understand the feeling of insecurity of those living there, forced to listen, every time they go around, the “mind the gap” of the overcrowded London tube.

Our story today is the story of those we are reading, listening to, texting. Those who are having drinks with friends via video calls, those who were protesting in the streets and now are dancing on the terraces, those who are in quarantine and those who wish that other countries as well were in quarantine.

It’s not just the two of us telling this story anymore.