The eyes, green like the leaves of the AGAVE, express the whole range of emotions and the desire for life stubborn of certain desert plants that, in Sicily, emerge, unlikely, from the cracks of the sunny walls. It seems impossible, yet they resist. Margherita Asta It’s like them. He was 10 years old on April 2, 1985. He was supposed to be on the car that brought his 6 -year -old mother and twins to school. He took a transition from his friend’s mother. It was saved like this. Barbara Rizzo, Giuseppe and Salvatore skipped in the air on the road between Trapani and Pizzolungo. A mistake of Cosa Nostra, who aimed to judge Carlo Palermowhile his car overtook them. They died in his place, he lives in their place and Margherita survived everything, in the tangle of crossed destinies.
It took thirty years, to elaborate the story, to give it a written form in the book, beautiful, Alone with you in the future April. The trust in a friend, that of Michela Gargiulo, was wanted: “She managed to transform my memories into storytelling, setting the story of Barbara, Giuseppe and Salvatore in the history of Italy of those years, with a great research work”. Telling Costa: «Emotionally it is tiring, it is to relive every time. But it was also a way of finding memories that I had closed in an inner casket, for fear of losing even those: the only thing I had left of my mother and brothers. Everything has come out into pieces, pieces that, if I look at me today, make me think of the ancient technique that the Japanese use to restore the broken vases by welding them with gold ».
Nothing is more as before, the pieces remain, they see each other, but the pieces return vases, more precious than before. “My husband,” Sant’enrico calls him, laughing, “You know what patience it takes with a testa like me, he gets angry if I hear me tell that I am alive to remember, but I feel this duty. If I don’t do it, who does it? Whatever victims remember much less than institutional ones. But it is true that, on the pieces and the gold of love, that despite everything I did not miss around, I built the person who are».
A person who emanates great strength, even if he does not deny from the eyes, who are venerated every now and then, the effort of silenced the basic fragility: «I don’t know where this character comes from, but I imagine that without that April 2 I would not be what they are. A little bit I looked for the strength, looking for the truth thoroughly until you want to see the photos of the nothing that remained of those three innocent ones. I was bad for a week later ». It seems impossible, but the story that Margherita tells is imbued with gratitude for life, even more than anger for death. There is anger of having lived unjust violence, to know only a partial truth, but it is a healthy anger that does not blind, that has not reset the trust in people: «It was not easy to return to love. I missed me a little never really talked to my father than it had happened to us, but I felt that it was not a lack, only the too great effort of meeting our rubble, his and mine together together. I was immediately grateful to him to have put a normal and a family very soon. He was very criticized, vulgarly, for marrying Antonina just a year later. I have never shared those criticisms, Antonina entered my life with grace and never tried to replace anything, has only added a selfless love. And so it was for Giuseppe Salvatore, the little brother who gave me, which I immediately loved ».
Margherita tells in her home in Parma, where she lives with Enrico, married in 2011, “a gift from my mother, I would not have met her without the commitment with Libera”. A house made solar by the golden walls: «I miss the Sicily sun, the walls are not enough. But I’m fine here ». The memories, however, are there, in the Pizzolungo house.
But that of Margherita is half of the story. The other half concerns judge Carlo Palermo and is, for her, the story of a long -seek encounter: “At the beginning, in my child I considered him guilty of my pain. But from the clippings of the newspapers, in which I was looking for answers, I soon understood that we were victims of the same violence. It took years and attempts because I managed to meet him, when it happened, recently, with the help of Don Ciotti (who accompanied Margherita also at the altar on the wedding day instead of the Father missing in 1993, ed.), I warned his enormous solitude. I hope that having found the strength to tell my part – which is the story of my family as much as the story of this country – can help Carlo Palermo in some way, that that April 2 has lost the work of the time, the family, the health, to feel the weight of its part lighter ». Only in this way, perhaps, the last earthenware of soul, of life, of truth, will be able to return to its place.
FC · in Italy and in the world n ° 26 · 2015
