Today my newspaper asked me to talk about the Anguillara tragedy, giving voice to the child who, within this immense torment, still has his whole life ahead of him. These are the words I think he would say to us. I’ll give them to you. I feel responsible for it. I hope you too.
Today all of you are talking about my family. For days we have been the first piece of news on many news programs and many television programmes. There are men and women who talk about us, about our history in millions of comments that are sometimes caresses and sometimes stones. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. Life happens and it’s clear that everything had to be there to keep it from happening so, he passed away. If everything about our history of the last few weeks could be changed, if a director could rewind the tape and decide that all we need to do is change the script and we will change the whole story, I would like that director to act immediately. Immediately. But that director isn’t there. And I’m writing to tell you that there is another film that no one is seeing. And I’m in that film. I am the son of the femicide. I am the orphan of my mother, killed by femicide. That’s what you call it. I called him dad. I am the grandson of my grandparents who decided to take their own lives, together, holding hands in that one tragic final gesture, that if I could have been the director of that scene I would have said to them: “Grandparents, no, please, I’m here and I’ll be there for the rest of your life. I’m worth it.”
“I am worth it”: unfortunately my grandparents were not able to hear these four words. Because there were so many other words that were being said. Those of those who spoke about them, about their grandfather’s complicity, about the paradox of the political role of my grandmother, who here, right here in my city, was Security Councilor.
There are pains that no one imagines how thick they are. Pains that don’t crumble even if you run over them with a tractor. Pains that you need to be mountain giants to be able to carry on your shoulders. But if, when you go through those pains, they start telling you that you are an accomplice, that you should be ashamed, that you…, that you…, that you… so if inside the greatest pain in the world, the one that lands you with a sense of total impotence and unmanageable overwhelm, there is also the shame and pillory of people who know nothing about that pain, because they think about it but don’t feel it, because they talk about it, but don’t have it inside their body or inside their heart, then surviving becomes practically impossible.
Pasquale Carlomagno and Maria Messenio, the parents of Claudio Carlomagno, found hanged together on 24 January
(HANDLE)
This is why my family has become a cemetery today. Almost all of them died. But I’m staying here. I’m alive. For psychology I call myself a “special orphan”, a term that serves to indicate that a child of femicide loses not one but two parents, in just one second. He becomes an orphan even though his father is alive. But today I am even more special than special orphans. I have lost much more than the special organs lose. I didn’t choose this condition of mine. It happened. No director can change the script of what has been. But each of you can write a new script from this point forward. Every time you have to talk about my family, the one that is still there and the one that is no longer there, think of me. I’m here. I see you. I listen to you. And the script of my life is still to be written. Please, let’s write it together. But let’s write it right.
