Childhood burned

Childhood burned

That look! All gagè despise him. But they accept his money, don’t they?
“Via Appia Nuova,” Raul says fixating the taxi driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “I’ll tell you where to stop.”

The driver crams the taxi between the coaches who are pulling up Piazza della Repubblica. They circle round the sparkling fountain. Like ants, tourists emerge from the Underground and commuters arrive marching from Termini. The Eternal City prepares for another barbarian invasion.

Raul takes a fistful of bank notes out of his pocket. He has earned seven hundred forty Euros in one weekend. At fourteen years of age, he makes enough money to stand on his own feet.

When he had left home Friday afternoon, his little brother Franco was asleep. Father and mother were getting water from the nearest fountain. No sound or movement had come from the other four shacks. The neighbours avoid Raul’s family. Their eldest, an arrogant teenage girl, once told him: “We are Romanians, not Roma. We are not like you people.”
To leave the camp, Raul had to unlock the rusty gate. He had then crossed the dump yard where trucks were unloading bursting bags of rubbish. Night and day, the inhabitants of the camp inhale the escaping biogas. He had to jump from one stone to the next on the narrow trail between the rubbish. It had rained the night before and the water that had filtrated through layers of bags was turning the plane into a toxic puddle. On Via Appia Nuova, he had taken the bus to Piazza della Repubblica where he had savoured an ice-cream before starting work.

The taxi is standing still behind a lorry. Raul puts two hundred and ten Euros in the left pocket of his trousers. Every night, he has to make seventy Euros for father. Strange father hasn’t called yet. Usually he is eager to know how much money he’ll have. When Raul puts the remainder back in the right pocket, he catches the driver looking at the bank notes. “What are you looking at? I have money for the trip,” he shouts. The driver shrugs and turns his head.

As the taxi strolls over Via Appia Nuova, Rome’s wall of apartment buildings breaks off. After a series of service stations, open spaces covered with high weeds and solitary rocks appear on both sides of the road. Raul recognises spots his family has squatted. Time after time, the gagè evict the family. Whereas in the large gypsy camp the family lived in a shed of corrugated iron, it now dwells in makeshift shacks of wood and hardboard. Raul rolls the window down. The early spring sun is burning away the chilly night. Plastic bags and wrappings, tissues and sheets of paper cling to holed fences. Empty bottles and packages of cigarettes litter the pavement. The gypsies are pushed ever farther from the wall.

On the crossing with Via di Arco di Travertino, a small gypsy boy is standing at a traffic light. He wears a dirty ITALIA t-shirt and holds a window cleaner. Little Franco also works at the traffic lights. He would do anything for father. He still calls father ‘daddy’.
When the traffic lights turn red, the gypsy boy walks between the cars and attempts to clean the windows. Raul worked at the traffic lights after he dropped out. Franco, however, never even went to school. He can’t read or write. In the large camp, a bus took the gypsy children to a faraway school. They arrived the second hour and had to leave the one-but-last. Roma were to sit in the back row. Yet, at the traffic lights Raul could earn a top-up phone card, a pair of sneakers –he had dozens– or a Big Mac. A driver signs at the boy. The boy walks over. The driver talks to the child. Fai anche altro oltre a lavare i vetri? Qualcosa che guadagna di più?

The lights switch to green. The car in front of the taxi turns right. Raul knows where it is heading to; he has been taken there many times. A small square at the back of a dead-end street. Some drivers dress as a woman: nobody minds when a child gets in the car of a female driver. Raul recalls drivers with/who had a child car seat in the backside: they pick up boys who are hardly older than their own children!

Suddenly, a hyperkinetic tune fills the taxi. Raul takes his mobile phone. The screen says ‘Marco’. What a tosser! Raul left barely an hour ago and the old fart is already calling. Raul had spent he weekend with a fifty year-old. For a seven hundred Euro “affitto”, Raul’s body had been his. Raul had made the man pay for the extras –clients like to take photos and exchange them on their smart phones. Raul particularly enjoys the moments after sex, when the lust is gone. Dai. Ancora cinque minuti, ti prego. Twenty Euros for listening to their whining about how young and beautiful he is and how old and lonely they feel, and about how hard life is in Italy when one is gay. This faggot had picked him up at night at Piazza della Repubblica. Before, clients came to the camps where Raul and his friends would be waiting, their eyes liquid of cocaine.

A gypsy woman and her two daughters walk along the road. The woman, devastated by obesity, is pushing a pram; the girls are dragging a trolley. They are examining waste containers.
Why not marry Zayra? After the authorities had cleared the camp, her family settled in Tor Sapienza. Zayra’s parents will agree. At Raul’s age, father had already married mother. Raul will become father. They will have a child. Raul will show everybody that he is a man, and that his antics at Piazza della Repubblica were just innocent experiments. He will be the leader of the group at the piazza. He knows all the tricks. He’ll pimp the younger boys. They will pay him seventy Euros a night. But will father agree? He’ll only have Franco to work for him.

The taxi passes a golf resort. “Stop over there,” Raul tells the driver, “beside the garage.” He points at the other side of the road, at a field before a Porsche car dealership. Without saying a word or looking at Raul, the driver taps the meter. Raul pays and gets out.
On the four-lane road he watches left and crosses the first part. Then he times his jump over the concrete separation before crossing the second part –the busy road has taken the life of many a gypsy child.
On the car dealership’s drive a fire engine stands next to ambulances and police cars with flickering siren lights. Raul walks past campers with satellite dishes on their rooftops. An old man is ranting in front of a cameraman and his camera: “I told them this was going to happen. I told them a thousand times.” A bit further, a woman says to a camera that is pointing at her: “They shouldn’t use gas cylinders to heat a wooden shack. They really shouldn’t.”

A large crowd stands in a circle. Raul joins the crowd and makes his way through it. In the middle stands an elegant man. He is wearing a long, dark coat. To his right and his left is a policeman standing. He is talking to a dozen of microphones and cameras. “I shall ask the government for special powers. We shall build new authorised camps.” When the man stops talking, the crowd whistles and boos. From the back of the crowd people shout Liar and False promises.

Raul leaves the crowd and hurries to the camp. The iron gate lies torn on the ground. The air smells of burnt wood and plastic. Three pairs of male nurses walk past Raul. Each pair is carrying a stretcher: two with on top a big zipped-up bag; one with a smaller one.
Wisps of smoke arise from the family shack. The trees that held up the shack are charcoal-burnt. A woman wearing white clothes and plastic gloves is standing beside the trees. She keeps a small plastic car in her hand. Franco’s toy!

He runs to the spot. Only the scorched carcass of a bed remains. The bed in which mother gave birth to Franco amid piles of rubbish and criss-crossing rats.
He turns. Firefighters are rolling up a hosepipe. A television crew is installing a camera on a rock. The other shacks are untouched! Police officers are putting a ribbon of yellow-black tape around each shack. The Romanian family stands in front of theirs. But how? Why? The Romanians turn away.

An airplane makes a deafening descent towards Ciampino. The radiating sun stands at its zenith. The wide open sky seems endless. “Excuse me. Excuse me,” someone shouts. It is the woman in white. “Do you live here?” she asks. “You do? Then… then you must be Raul.” She approaches. “Are you? Are you Raul?” She stiffens. “Poor child!”

From the Horn of Africa to the Boot of Europe

From the Horn of Africa to the Boot of Europe:


War refugees are stranded on Rome’s wastelands



ROMA OSTIENSE – As the train slowly entered the station, I spotted laundry at the end of a platform. Are they back? Would he be among them?



I knew the authorities had cleared the station. Though the excited tourists and busy commuters had never minded the lethargic refugees, the police had evicted them. The stakes were high: food chain “Eataly” was to open its flagship store in a terminal. The refugees who were fainting from hunger had to make room for a gourmet store.



I met Haile four years ago, the day I had to get my “codice fiscale”. When I asked him for directions, he was keen to walk me to the tax office. “I know all about paperwork,” he said. Haile, a friendly young Ethiopian with funny dreadlocks, enjoyed asylum status. Italy had become his home country, a railway platform his home.



He advised me to take a ticket for a corporate “codice fiscale”. This way, I would avoid the long queue and the public officer would still help me. Barely half an hour later, we were having coffee. Haile did know about paperwork!

Walking back to the station Haile, wearing a ragged woollen sweater and corduroy trousers, asked me to buy him a meal: “I feel ashamed having to queue at the food bank.”

Although I would meet many immigrants during my further stay in Rome, I would not again get to know a refugee.



I jumped off the train just before the doors closed. Apart from the laundry, the platform was clear. A railwayman told me that the authorities had moved the refugees to a makeshift camp. I knew that Rome counted 6000 homeless refugees. I had noticed homeless immigrants roaming the centre by day and always wondered where they spent the night. What would have become of Haile?



In Via Carlo Tommaso Odelscalschi, a man was sitting on a chair before an entry in the stone wall. He became weary when I enquired about the refugees –the neighbourhood protests against the camp.

I told him I was looking for an old friend. He then informed me that asylum seekers could only spend the night in Rome’s nineteen refugee centres. By day, the centres do not accommodate them. Moreover, the accommodation is only temporary: documented refugees can stay up to thirty days. After that, they are on their own. They squat large buildings in the East of Rome. Best chance I would stand in the biggest of them all, near the Romanina shopping centre.



Riding my bike on the bridge across the orbital road, I could see a massive building complex. It contrasted with the surrounding office buildings: whereas many of its reflecting windows stood open, curtains and newspapers covered the windows that remained closed. Cables hanging from the windows ended in satellite dishes on the lower entry’s rooftop.



On the parking lot, medical units were buzzing. Two men tried to repair the engine of a van. Movers had put up an electronic ladder to the second floor.

All the time, people were entering and leaving the estate. At the gate, everybody greeted "Salam".



Salam Palace takes its name from the Arab word for peace. A thousand Ethiopians and Eritreans, nationalities that quarrel at home, live here in harmony.

Since the city council tried to clear the building and cut off the electricity, the residents are diffident towards strangers. Newcomers need an introduction.

I passed the gate.



Lately, the EU human rights commissioner visited Salam Palace and wrote a report. He points out Italy’s “serious shortcomings” in the integration of refugees. Compared to Northern European countries, Italy hardly provides welfare benefits such as housing, training or employment.

Italy approves thirty percent of all asylum requests, but provides only three thousand beds. The Arab Spring, however, turned Italy into Europe’s main gateway, and Rome in its waiting room. The numbers exploded: from 10,050 requests in 2010 to 34,120 in 2011. The government immediately declared a North Africa Emergency period and provided an extra thousand beds.

Because the homeless and squatters do not have a valid address, they cannot claim the benefits their papers entitle them to. The commissioner mentions “lives below minimal subsistence standards.”



The Salam Palace organisation keeps a register. There were many Haile’s. I did not know Haile’s last name or his birth date but none of them was in his age category. If he is Ethiopian, the responsible suggested, than I might try an older squat, Natnet.



On Via Emilio Longoni, I was pedalling on the narrow bicycle lane. Almost too late, I noticed two young men walking towards me. I pulled my breaks a few inches short of them. We nearly bumped into each other.

“Sorry,” one of them said in English.

I told them not to worry and asked whether they were all right.

They asked me where I am from. The men, apparently African refugees, seemed eager to speak English.

“Belgium,” I said. “Up north.”

“The North,” they sighed. “Norway, the UK, Denmark. That’s where we would like to be. But we can’t. Because of Dublin, you know.”

“Dublin?”

In the following ten minutes, I learnt about the Dublin Regulation. This law obliges European countries to deport refugees to the country where they first applied for asylum. The border police fingerprint upon arrival in Europe. Refugees compare the Dublin fingerprint identification system with a virus: “Dublin is AIDS.”



I turned into Via Collatina. On the court of a service station, Blacks were offering to clean cars for money. A large worn-out building was looming across the street –a fortress, its gate closed and its reflecting windows impenetrable.



Over seven hundred Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees are squatting this building which they baptised “natnet”, freedom. The building, however, is unstable: built on a water slope, it risks to collapse.



Satellite dishes seem to be the only connection to the outside world. Some of the squatters live here since a decade and still do not speak Italian. Families with children cohabit with former child soldiers suffering from severe psychological disorders.



If I would enter the building, the two men had told me, I would discover an interior city: a Pentecostal church, two restaurants and a supermarket. The door numbers act as house numbers.



Will Natnet share the same faith as Pantanella? Early nineties, 2500 squatters turned the abandoned Pantanella pastry mill into Europe’s largest squat. Starting as a modern Tower of Babel, the various ethnicities gradually organised themselves and rearranged the building. It housed a mosque, an Italian language school, restaurants and a food market.

The authorities eventually evicted the squatters. Many of them dispersed over Rome’s periphery.



Up the road, on the terrace of bar Valery, all day refugees kill time drinking beer. Many use Natnet as a base to try their chance in Northern Europe. Some manage to settle abroad. But when their fingerprints are run against the database, the authorities deport them to Italy. Some families end up living in two different countries. It takes an asylum seeker 15 years to acquire Italian citizenship and hence freedom of movement. In order to bypass the Dublin Regulation some refugees burn their fingertips.



Haile might be anywhere. I could try Rome’s other squats: 200 persons occupy an old factory in Via Prenestina, 120 families a former rest home in Casal Boccone,…

I last time saw Haile in San Lorenzo, near the Salvation Army. Most refugees do not remain in large squats, but move to micro sediments or survive on their own on the streets. Near Ponte Mammolo lives a commune of Eritrean and Ethiopian men.



Palmiro Togliatti Avenue shoots over Ponte Mammolo station. Noisy cars and lorries rush over the avenue, below it lies a settlement. In 2003, five Peruvian families settled here. Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees soon joined them and founded the Peace Community.



Under a drizzle, young men were sitting idly on the parking lot facing the settlement. Suddenly, one of them crossed the road. First, he looked left and right as to ensure nobody saw him, and then he sneaked in the camp. I followed him at a distance.



The camp’s entrance is a breach between two rusty corrugated iron sheets, one carrying a No Entry sign.

The Peace Community breaths a peculiar silence. Elementary brick constructions, shacks of corrugated iron, wooden sheds and tents alternate. Shaky garden screens separate the units. Dozens of shopping trolleys cling together. Rats cross the dusty paths. Although I did not pass anybody, I could feel eyes on me.



The Peace Community is hardly organised. It lacks electricity, heating and running water.

The refugees, who started a new life in Rome, do not receive any medical care. Ironically, the camp borders a research centre of the San Gallicano hospital. This hospital initially treated pilgrims; now it provides health care to Italy’s immigrant populations.



When I walked through a stretch that separates the camp from cosy cottages, three hounds of Baskerville broke the silence. No sign of the inhabitants behind the barricaded windows and high steel fencing. Perhaps they fear another Rosarno? After the infamous shootings, many refugees who worked the plains of Rosarno bought a one-way ticket to Rome.

The North Africa Emergency period will end this year and the extra beds will disappear. In the Lazio region, another 2700 refugees will become homeless.



I noticed an iron gate with a nice bell on top of it. The letterboxes next to it carried Spanish names. The gate leads to the section of the original residents. Over time, they have raised brick houses. Children were playing on the stone parking lot. A car arrived. The residents were having visitors, just like an Italian family.



I went to the local supermarket to buy food. A tall Ethiopian security guard was watching the entry. When I greeted him, he looked puzzled for a moment, but then he smiled and greeted me back. “Salam”.



These people have crossed oceans and deserts. They do not want to be pampered in prison-like centres operating a schedule. Among them, there are qualified doctors and engineers. When the Association of Small & Medium Enterprises lately complained that it could not find the right people to fill thirty thousand vacancies, an aid agency remarked that many refugees would easily qualify.



By the time I left the supermarket, the drizzle had turned into a downpour. I went to Ponte Mammolo station to look for shelter. Passing under the avenue, I distinguished blankets and sheets of cardboard.



On the bus platform, a Rumanian man was shouting to a bus driver. The driver had told him to get off the bus. It clearly was a misunderstanding: the driver had finished his shift. As if to prove something, the man waved with his papers. When he finally gave up and walked away, he swirled a beer can towards the bus, leaving a trail of white foam on the pavement. Nobody paid the slightest attention.



Meanwhile, vendors were selling cheap clothes and electronics in front of the station. They gesticulated heavily. Among them were Ethiopians wearing the Brazil outfit. The commuters halted to inspect the wares. Italian women tried to bargain. The vendors flattered them the Italian way: “E’ buona come te!”



I did not find Haile that day. Nor have I run into him again in Ostiense or San Lorenzo.

Haile, clever as he is and having a good command of Italian, must have broken that vicious circle of refugee centres and illegal squats. A volunteer organisation most likely got him a job.

He might even be abroad –some European courts now refuse to send asylum seekers back to Italy.

I am quite sure that, sooner or later, he would cross that bridge between immigrants and natives. In San Lorenzo, he had become the mascot of two alternative female students. Maybe he has already settled and raised a family!

Beauty is Pain

Beauty is Pain:

Transsexuals do not go gentle into that good night

ROME, April 2009 – An ambulance arrives with screaming siren at the San Pietro hospital. The medical staff rush the patient to casualty. Overdosing on cocaine, he is about to exchange the temporal for the eternal. When the patient finally recovers, he rages: “It’s Marrazzo’s fault. It’s Marrazzo’s fault.” Nobody pays attention to the allegations against the president of Lazio –just another ranting transsexual.

Six months later, the Marrazzo scandal explodes. Collateral damage includes the carbonised corpse of a transsexual prostitute and a drug dealer who overdosed after a police officer had given him a lethal mixture of heroin and cocaine. Rome’s mayor announces he is planning a unit for transsexuals in Ponte Galeria, Italy’s largest detention centre.

July 2010, city councillor Pier Paolo Zaccai is standing naked on an apartment terrace in Via Manlio Torquato. Like a madman he shouts that two Brazilian transsexuals are holding him hostage. When the police take Zaccai to hospital, it appears he is high on cocaine. Falsely accused of kidnapping, the Brazilians remark: “That’s how Romans are: gay and malicious”.

***

"Sei operata? Sei dotata? Quanto costa?" Four youngsters in a sports car are hassling all prostitutes on the square in front of the abattoir. Valeria, an elegant mulatta, turns her head away and scans the square for clients. She has to make hundred fifty Euros tonight.

The youngsters look like students; the car is obviously daddy’s. Earlier this night, they tried their luck with tourist girls, now they are on a “puttan tour” –Via Salaria, the abattoir, Viale Guglielmo Marconi, EUR ... They are Valeria’s age. Later on this night, they will score drugs before going back to hotel Mum and Dad.

Valeria had to leave home when she was fifteen.

Her father had gone berserk when he discovered that his son Valerio liked dressing up as a girl, to become Valeria. Whereas her classmates were going through puberty, Valeria was thrown straight into adulthood. No holding hands, no romantic strolls, but impersonal paid sex: thirty reais for a blowjob, fifty for the full menu.

Unlike her peers, Valeria never used drugs. Violence became part of everyday life. She carried a razorblade to cut her forearms in case the police would arrest her –in Brazil it was safer ending up in hospital than in a police station. In Europe, however, life would be better.

Hot air twirls the smell of meat, excrements and waste around the abattoir. Shattered glass, empty perfume sprays and used toilet paper clutter the pavement along the graffiti wall. Valeria tries to balance herself in high heels. Cars are jamming the square. Motorcycles roar through. The students turn around the corner. Almost midnight and it is like rush hour!

Neither clients nor prostitutes care about the camera surveillance. When the previous city council installed CCTV, the Casale Rosso neighbourhood hoped that recording licence plates would deter clients.

Below the windows of the apartment buildings, clients and prostitutes are having sex. Valeria knows that the residents, mainly young families, are trying to sleep. Her gaze slides over the playground and its iron fencing. She would never want to live in a place like this, let alone raise a child.

Yet, Valeria has to make a living. She will have to earn the money by dawn. Since her visa expired, every public space is off-limits by day. Especially in August, when the city is near empty, a tall mulatta does not go unnoticed. “Every morning I pay a private cab to go home,” she says. “Unemployed and retired Italians make fortunes driving us girls.”

Right next to the square a sandwich van radiates like a beacon in the night. A client drops Valeria off. She spots Paula standing at the van. Paula is Argentinean. Valeria and Paula occasionally chat in between tricks. At first, they communicated in a mix of Spanish, Portuguese and Roman dialect they picked up from clients. Still, they are not close. In this square nobody is. Here, everybody is either a client or a competitor.

“Look at them,” Paula kicks off. “Office workers, civil servants, builders: ordinary men longing for adventure. Europeans chasing tropical fantasies.” Turning to the row of cars, she yells “How does it feel, shagging the Third World at home?”

“Well Paula, the client I just had treated me really nice. He said I am very feminine. Maybe one day he’ll invite me for dinner.”

“No, my dear! Stop dreaming. Italians would rather be caught dead than being seen in public with a transsexual.”

Valeria knows. She once got involved with a client. She hoped that he would be her ticket out. But as soon as fresh meat had hit the abattoir, her beloved traded her in for the latest South-American plaything.

It is 2 a.m. A police car patrols the square. Instantly, clients stop examining the girls, accelerate their cars and leave the square hoping the police will not make them pull over. Valeria removes her high heels and runs off barefoot. In fifteen months’ time, the police have detained five hundred eighty transgendered prostitutes on this square.

She hides in the high grass on the hills. The neighbourhood committee periodically asks the municipal services to burn it. Crouched between used condoms and rubbish, Valeria considers working in an apartment. She could rent a room in a side street of Via Condotti. The authorities do not control this apartment: the owner is an ex-carabiniere.

The police car is gone. One by one, the girls resume their places. Despite the risk of being sent to a detention centre, Valeria enjoys working the streets. She likes being in the open.

All day she hides in a “monolocale” that is tucked away in a Pigneto backstreet –Italian women call the police right away when they spot a transsexual in their building. An aged Brazilian transsexual with Italian citizenship owns the studio flat. The previous generation still succeeded in sham marriages. These naturalized transsexuals buy property and set up businesses in Italy and Brazil. They pass customs and do not worry about police controls when driving –they even took their driving licence in Italy.

Meanwhile, the Mario Mieli volunteers are on their weekly tour. The organisation has been helping foreign transsexuals since Rome replaced Paris as the world’s capital of transgender prostitution. While some volunteers distribute condoms, others follow up on girls taking medication –half the girls have hepatitis, more than one in ten has syphilis and two-third of the older ones have HIV. The organisation helped Valeria to take a course. Valeria would like to become a hairdresser. But apart from the hair salon a Brazilian transsexual owns near Porta Maggiore, only one other salon in Rome, the one in Via Urbana, employs a transsexual hairdresser.

Hence, the beat goes on. “Sei operata? Sei dotata? Quanto costa?” Again and again. How much rudeness can a person take? Valeria is saving up for that last operation; she wants to become a woman. “But how then would I make a living?” she sighs. “I would lose all my clients!”

Around 4 a.m. loud and rasp voices fill the square. The girls, strung out on alcohol, drugs and hormones, are giving come-ons to the drivers and the passengers. Cars are speeding. One driver twirls his car in the middle of the square, making the tires squeal.

Albanian gangs encircle the square. At this time of the night, many girls carry in their purse a night’s takings. They leave the square in small groups. Empty spots appear. Valeria wants to leave but she still needs hundred Euros to send a remittance.

Valeria sends money home to help her mother out. Last time she called even her father spoke to her. They had not spoken since she had to leave home. He told her that he was sorry and that she was always welcome. He used the remittances to buy himself a car.

A 4X4 pulls over beside Valeria. The stereo is pumping electronic dance music. The passengers, a middle-aged couple, are visibly under the influence.

“Hey,” the woman shrieks. “Are you trans… gressive?” Her husband bursts out laughing. He clearly enjoys that his wife is doing the talking. At night, these women are more masculine, and these men more feminine than Valeria. By day, of course, they are beyond suspicion. “We’ll pay you a hundred Euros.”

“I don’t mind the two of you snorting cocaine,” Valeria says, “but I won’t. I don’t do drugs.”

“I see,” the woman says, turning a superior smile to Valeria. “Fifty Euros then. Take it or leave it.”

Valeria gets in the car.

Oh dear. They have dropped her on a desolate stretch of Via Emilio Longoni, two blocks east of the abattoir. Veteran transsexuals –women actually, since they are operated– are skulking the scarcely lit pavement. A motorist cruises down the street. Two parked cars have their headlights left on. Valeria distinguishes wooden shacks between the trees and the rubbish. Each time a client comes up, a woman walks him to the shacks.

The women live a hand-to-mouth existence. They also dwell in the shacks. Hardly a month after Gianni Alemanno had become mayor of Rome, and announced an anti-prostitution decree, the Tor Sapienza neighbourhood took to the streets to protest against the prostitutes. Ordinary family men raided the shacks. The prostitutes recognised several clients among them!

Valeria notices the women’s plastic surgery is unravelling. Clients solicit them “cabrio”, unprotected sex. Valeria shivers. These old women are at death’s door!

Valeria rushes up the road to where the lights are. In front of the American Hospital, barely thirty metres from the shacks, Rome’s most stunning transsexuals parade. Their silhouettes turn the pavement into an open-air catwalk.

Amid young colleagues and frenzied clients, Valeria looks back into the darkness, towards the shacks: “Ordinary people confine us to the pavement, night-time, and youth. Not beauty –dresses, hormones or a sex operation– but money will secure me a place in this world.”

Almost dawn. The early train passes the Palmiro Togliatti station. Heavy traffic is picking up on the Via Prenestina. The square in front of the abattoir looks desolate. Valeria is still short of eighty Euros.

An exclusive BMW approaches. It slows to a stop. Valeria sashays to the car. The driver is a distinguished forty-something wearing a suit. Valeria notices his wedding ring.

“Hi honey. Got lost? Next door, they do meat. Here, we trade in flesh.”

“Davvero? You must be Brazilian,” he says.

“No. Colombian, actually.”

“I see. So, you can get the best coke in the world, can’t you?”

“Of course I can.”

Sensing blood, the hunter moves in for the kill: "Let’s walk on the wild side!”

“Do you have eighty Euros?”

"Eighty? Vabbè. Tell me,” he pauses, “are you into kinky sex?"

"Yes my dear,” Valeria says, forcing a smile. “Sono come mi vuoi.*"

(* I am as you want me to be.)

Roma senza codice fiscale: a note from the underground

Roma senza codice fiscale:
a note from the underground

The sun sets on the Eternal City. While richly-decorated triumphal arches testify to the former empire’s greed, exotic obelisks remind of its vastness. The Capitoline hill casts its shadow on the remains of an “insula”. On the Tiber isle, a cheerful crowd enjoys the evening attractions. Nearby, in Trastevere, a gentle hum arises from the terraces.

Rome welcomes about twenty million tourists a year. Middle-aged couples book romantic city trips. Retirees visit the city on a package tour. Youngsters improvise trips flying low-cost and staying in bed and breakfasts. Business travellers sojourn in four-star hotels. Exchange students party hard all year long. Life is sweet in the Eternal City, isn’t it?

Amid the crowd, ambulant vendors routinely demonstrate the most useless of toys. In restaurants, young men apathetically sell flowers while others –tucked away in the kitchen– frenetically prepare meals. Inside hotels, hasty cleaners try to be as invisible as possible.
Who are these people? Where do they go to after work? Where do they live?

Via Cassia, “chilometro zero”: from Ponte Milvio the road meanders up hill and down dale. On both sides of the road, posh villas and luxury condos alternate. The balconies are lavishly decorated with flowers and tropical plants. Many offer a splendid view on the natural reserve park. As expensive cars drive in and out of gates, trimmed gardens and neat swimming pools appear. CCTV cameras monitor every movement.
The sister of the president of the nation lives here. A senator and leader of a political party used to live here. In the local supermarket, one can spot television celebrities, famous actors and models.

Hidden in private or dead-end streets, isolated blocks of flats contrast with the villas. The buildings carry names like “residence” and “fabbricato”. The peeling paint reveals concrete that is exfoliating. Here, the balconies are packed with furniture and other belongings.
The squares in front of the buildings are covered with shattered bottles of beer. People are cooking in the open. The smell of exotic food is pervasive.
Innumerable satellite dishes indicate the presence of overseas immigrants. Almost every letter box carries a foreign name. A dozen of languages sound from the open doors and windows. At any time of the day, loud music is playing. Latin rhythms clash with oriental melodies.

Italian flags mark the few apartments that are still occupied by locals. With its harsh stance on immigration, Gianni Alemanno’s right-wing party collected more than half of the votes of this locality during the latest municipal elections.

On the parking lot, there is the charred carcass of a motorcycle. Used heroin needles are littering the pavement. An improvised path reveals construction debris. The parking lot turns out to be built on top of a former garbage belt!

Here lives Rome’s Lumpenproletariat. Bengalese cooks, Philippine maids, Senegalese gardeners, Sri Lankan hotel porters, Rumanian butchers, … Whereas Marx’s poor lived in the shadow of heavy industry, Rome’s poor work in the leisure industry.

Inside the buildings there is a Hidden City: a labyrinth of stairs and dark, narrow corridors. Cave storage rooms have been transformed into tiny basement apartments.
In order to pay the exorbitant rent, up to four people share a room as small as thirteen and a half square metres. Entire families have to live in one room. Mattresses are laid one next to the other. Furniture and laundry are put in the corridor. To increase the habitable surface the lodgers cobble together mezzanines.

The dwellings do not comply with any of the building regulations and safety requirements. Tapped electric wires run through the corridors. Black stains on the walls indicate high levels of mould. There have been cases of tuberculosis in the area.
Many lodgings do not count a single window. Those inside the building are right on top of the garage forcing their residents to inhale car emissions. Lodgers living in the exterior basements only get to inhale the return air of the air-conditioning.

With a rather morbid sense of humour, Italians call these lodgings “loculi”, i.e. Columbarium niches. The lodgers use gas cylinders for cooking and heating, thereby turning the rooms into time bombs waiting to go off. People have been buried alive in these rooms following gas explosions and fires.

The lodgers try to improve their situation. However, differences in ethnical background, legal status, time schedule and a complex system of subletting make brotherhood rather difficult. These blocks of flats are modern Towers of Babel.

The buildings are conveniently close to the villas. This way, the upper class has its servants within arm’s reach. While most immigrants sell their skills, some sell drugs, others just sell their body. Italians that visit these buildings wear sunglasses so as to not be recognised. They anxiously look for a particular door. In the cave apartments exotic prostitutes work 24/7.

However, there is protest from native inhabitants. Italians who do pay taxes and who do not exploit foreigners. They form committees. For decades they have been addressing the issue to the local community council. Apparently, they are barking up the wrong tree.

Ownership of the dwellings can be traced back to Rome’s cream of the crop, “la Roma bene”. Property advertisements promise excellent returns. “Ottimo use investimento.” The square foot price even tops that of posh Parioli!
A couple of buildings belong to an “ingegnere”. His grandson seats in the local community council. In one of the buildings –in which the engineer managed to transform twenty apartments into two hundred “loculi”– gas explosions and fires have caused casualties.
An apartment that was centre to a blackmail scandal involving the left-wing president of the region and a Brazilian prostitute turned out to be owned by two politicians linked to mayor Alemanno. One of both heads Roma Entrate, the entity that is responsible for investigating tax evasion. Like all landlords in the area, he insisted on rent paid cash in hand. Alemanno’s party talks the talk, but does it walk the walk?
In the same building, several apartments belong to three board members of the real estate branch of the Vatican bank!

From time to time, the official forces inspect these buildings. They draw up a report. Whereas the lodgers become homeless, the owners are hardly ever prosecuted. Does it come as a surprise that a late police commander owned a number of properties in the area?
When the protest attracts too much media coverage, the slum landlords simply move the scene to another part of the city.

A theory on the fall of the Roman Empire states that towards the end of the empire nobody was willing to defend it any longer. The élite kept on importing foreigners from all over the empire in order to keep wages low and rents high. In Rome, while the happy few lived in splendour, life was a nightmare to the majority of the inhabitants.
Once a vast construction site where slaves erected monuments, mass tourism has turned the centre of Rome into an immense sweatshop in which illegal immigrants are serving well-off citizens and tourists. “Nihil nove sub sole”?

Mike Dilien

A Rough Guide: Rome

A Rough Guide: Rome

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TERMINI – Bright franchise outlets make the station’s entrance hall look rather like a department store. While dressed-up twenty-somethings try to sell you all sorts of useless things, you try to make your way through herds of tourists. A large advertisement promotes a coach trip: three millennia of civilisation in thirty minutes sharp. An irritating tune is played over and over. “Emporio Armani… Emporio Armani… Emporio Armani”. The smell of pastry and grease makes you feel nauseous. Hold on! Take a deep breath. A city trip is not what you want. You want to get your shoes dirty. Why not throw away your travel guide and buy a newspaper? It’s the modern Rome you are after, isn’t it? Indulge. Off you go.

Walk through Rome’s Chinatown until you arrive at Piazza Vittorio. Don’t let looks fool you: the minimum wage doesn't pay the rent of a tiny room in one of these run-down apartments. Tour guides will tell you that only one insula remains but contemporary Rome is stacked with it. After all, this is the Eternal City.

Further down the street is Porta Maggiore. This monument marks the Pigneto district, the place where “Rome, Open City” was shot. Check out the homeless immigrants that are asleep between the access ramps of the highway. Notice how the area is covered with used condoms: at night, under-aged East European prostitutes claim their space.

Catch tram 14 on the Via Prenestina. Observe the passengers and get the idea of how apartheid must have looked like. The only thing that seems to be missing is the “Italians only” sign. As you go along the Via Prenestina, you will notice less and less natives.
Take a look at the premises of the city's public transport company, ATAC. Read your newspaper. Page four. Over six hundred employees –relatives and mistresses of local politicians– have been hired without any procedure: a quick phone call was enough. Italians call this privilegio. Whilst the majority of Italy’s university graduates barely make seven hundred Euros a month, ATAC’s managing director earns seven hundred thousand Euros a year.

Get off at Viale Palmiro Togliatti and start exploring the periphery. Bleak open spaces separate solitary apartment blocks. In between spots of burnt grass there is litter everywhere. Hot air carries the smell of excrements. You notice tiny footpaths and wonder where they might lead to. Behind the hill you distinguish improvised shelters. Little gypsy girls are carrying junk. Hold on! Retrace your steps. Do not look back.
Once, this used to be Pasolini’s playground. The main achievement of Italy’s economic miracle is that, now, the “ragazzi di vita” are immigrants and the clients locals. You guess this must the Italian idea of moving up.
If you want to see the World’s Best Lovers in action, than come back here at night. You will be amazed about the traffic jams. Cars, all bar none with an Italian licence plate, queue for Brazilian transsexuals. The word says that there is a peculiar difference between Italian clients and clients elsewhere in the world. It is this difference that makes the “girls” love to work in Italy.

From Tor Sapienza station take the train to Lunghezza. Lunghezza is a vast no-man’s-land, a desolate landscape marked by a total lack of urban planning. Remember the ambulant vendors who try to sell you all sorts of things? The ones who sell umbrellas when it rains (and sunglasses when the sun shines)? Well, Lunghezza is where they live, ten of them cramped in a tiny room. There are two shifts: those who work by day sleep here at night and vice versa. It keeps the beds warm, you see.

Take the train back to Tiburtina station. Try a sandwich from the Rumanian supermarket. The sign “Roma – Bucaresti: 1500 km” makes you reflect upon history, etymology and nowadays racism from the people of Rome towards the people from “the land of Rome”. After all, most of the construction workers who build those cosy 500,000 Euro apartments are Rumanian. They sleep in the open, near the beach, close to the railway track and water fountains. In the morning they await to be picked up by local middle men to do a job, any job.

Stroll into the historic centre and admire the stunning landmarks and the impressive palazzi. Your newspaper turns out to be a real treasure. Page six. A spider web of dodgy entrepreneurs and bent politicians serves as a Who’s Who of the Anemone scandal. For years an entrepreneur has been bribing government officials in order to win tenders for restoring public buildings. Because the works have not been carried out properly, or not at all, Rome’s monuments are near crumbling. Now, the city council has to turn to corporate sponsoring for preserving the patrimony, its main source of income! What’s next? The McDonald’s Coliseum (as a 21st century “panem et circensis”)? The Capitol turned into the head office of Disneyland Roma spA?
There’s more news about public money turning private. Page eight details on the so-called Affittopoli scandal: whereas ordinary citizens have to indebt themselves massively in order to afford a dwelling in the suburbs, politicians, businessmen, fashion models and designers are being offered top-notch properties at ridiculously low prices. You start discovering that there is a dark side to La Dolce Vita.

When the sun sets it is time to head for Campo dei Fiori. In this square, a Sociology student could write a thesis overnight. Every evening, legions of Italian males are chatting up blondes. All great art takes practice, doesn’t it?
"Ciao. Come ti chiami?”
(whatever)
“Che bello nome. Di dove sei?"
(wherever)
"Interessante. Ma… parli bene italiano!"
The smooth operators will then inevitably take the conversation to the subject of Italy (rule number 1: Establish common ground). Italian males and Northern females… From your courses in Economics you remember this is called the double coincidence of wants: she came to Italy and wants to taste the local dish; he is from Italy and needs a free lunch.

Take the last bus down south. It is packed with dead-beaten Pakistanis who did the late shift. Until they can prove that they have been living in Italy for at least ten years, and are entitled to Italian citizenship, they have to fear police razzias in the centre, where they work. Once Italian citizens, they still have to fear raids by gangs of neo-Nazis in the suburbs, where they live. But they do make your authentic Italian pizza!

Why not check out the San Lorenzo night life? This neighbourhood once resisted the fascists. The walls are decorated with politically inspired graffiti. Students are singing and playing the guitar.
You overhear a discussion between an Italian and a foreigner. You become thrilled. Is this really happening? Tue, it’s an Italian male talking to a foreign female –again– but exceptions confirm the rule, don’t they? After all, this is supposed to be the alternative scene. If there is one place in Italy where there are Italians whose minds aren’t corrupted by Mediaset and centuries of mafia, Catholicism and mass tourism, San Lorenzo is it. You start listening.
"Ciao. Come ti chiami?" "Di dove sei?" “Ma... parli bene l’italiano!”
AIUTO!
Try to dig deeper. Mind you are moving into post graduate territory. You are already familiar with the invisible wall between Italian girls and foreign males but close observation tells you there is a second wall. And it is barb-wired! No Trespassing. It’s the wall between Italian girls and East European girls. You start wondering why. Is it because of a conflict of interest?

By now you are quite fed up with this city. Throw away that newspaper! Go back to Termini.
All of a sudden, you find yourself standing in front of the façade of the university. You remember having read an article about the dean of the faculty of Medicine whose wife, son, daughter and son-in-law all lecture at this faculty. Turn 180 degrees. A giant eagle is staring at you. It turns out to be the air force military school. How peculiar: both buildings are in the same, genuine fascist style.
Out of the blue it dawns on you. The university, EUR, the Olympic Village, the imperial forum, the Mussolini calendars… It all fits! Even the ghetto does. Fascism: it has always been there, shouting at you, right in your face!

Dawn. Termini. All you need is a strong coffee. Take breakfast amongst a fresh load of excited tourists. A female, obviously Anglo-Saxon, sighs: “I like the Italian lifestyle. It’s so relaxed and stylish, so unlike home. And, God, Italian men are so romantic.” Please, restrain. Do not throw up.