After the rain

Crane Beach (Jun 26, 2005)

When the thunderstorm ended, a few families that waited patiently in their cars for the deluge to stop came back to the beach. Apart for the imprints left by the heavy drops in the wet sand, it was as if nothing had happened. Pink sky, as the sun was setting behind the last clouds left behind by the storm. A placid ocean retiring with the approaching low tide, whose color was gradually acquiring some of the new shades of the sky. The seagulls minding their usual business, looking for something to scavenge. It is heartwarming to witness how nature recovers after the storm.

I wonder sometimes what happened to all the people escaping from Yugoslavia that I met in Trieste. I know life was going on even during the war, as the human spirit is stronger that the human folly. There is another important movie of the period, Underground by Emir Kusturica. Another serbian director pondering about the wars in the Balcans. In the midst of World War II a group of the resistance is sealed in Sarajevo’s underground tunnels to escape the Nazis occupation. Their only contact with the external world doesn’t tell them of the end of the war, and of Germany defeat, preferring to keep them in the dark to manufacture arms he sells on the black market. This situation continues for fifty years, with these people living in the underground of the city sealed off from the real world, until they break-out to find their city involved in yet another war. The film is surreal, because even with this dark theme there is always a light atmosphere, and a brass band playing joyous songs all along. People making love, fighting, eating, living. The world may be crazy, but life continue.

The most optimist person I know is Rigoberta Menchu. Nobel prize for Peace in 1992 for her life struggle in favor of the human rights of the indigenous population in Guatemala during the civil war. Her family had been massacred in the struggle for the life and identity of the maya descendants in Guatemala. Her father died by the hands of the police that set on fire the building he was occupying with other union leaders fighting for the rights the indigenous workers. Her little brother was executed in front of the eyes of her mother. Her mother was left to die, eaten by the ants, tied by a tree in the Guatemalan forest. She herself was an exile in France and then Mexico, to escape an unwritten death sentence from an oppressive government, after having experienced slavery as a young girl in the banana plantations owned by a multinational corporation. Still, she is the most optimistic person I know, ready to see the beauty of life and the hope for the future even in the most bleak situation. She was once coming to Turin, my home city, for a public event we had organized in the preparation of the international year of the indigenous populations. She was traveling by train from Switzerland, where she has participated to a session of the UN Human Right group. We went to the station anxious to receive her, waiting patiently for the only women in traditional mayan costumes among all the train passengers. Our anxiety turned to terror, when we realized that she wasn’t on the train, having disappeared between Geneva (where she was accompanied on the train) and Turin. She arrived with the next train. What happened is that at a stop along the way, she saw some beautiful flowers in the garden of a station. She just decided to go down the train, to fully appreciate the beauty of these flowers that she never saw in her native land, without warning anybody. She had some rest under the sun of the Switzerland Alps, and then leisurely took the next train.

We are humans because we know that even after the most destructive storm the sky will be serene again, and we can look forward and appreciate the beauty of the world despite anything that happened to us and the clouds still looming on the horizon.