Mediterranean: one day Afana said: “Do you remember saving me?”: the words of a book against the globalization of indifference

ROME – In the end, it all happens in the Mediterranean. The cradle of our civilization, the wind that caresses the olive trees, the enemy sea. “Our paradise is their hell,” says Regina Catrambone. The story of an enlightenment: during a yacht crossing she sees a beige jacket floating. And her life and that of her husband changes. Ten years later, this book was born “Collect the sea with a teaspoon” (ed.Città Nuova), which would be the phrase that a powerful man said in a low voice to Regina during a public ceremony.

“Not to be accomplices of rejections”. Together with Chris, you founded the international NGO MOA extension (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), based in Malta. Entrepreneurs in the insurance field, one day they buy a ship to adapt it to the recovery of migrants. In order not to become accomplices in the rejections, they then choose other emergency areas for their interventions: Yemen, Bangla Desh, now Ukraine. Among the few to have intervened in solidarity with the Rohingya outcasts, a Muslim minority who cannot find peace or shelter, persecuted by the military dictatorship of Myanmar.

A journey back in time. The book is a journey back in time: in the choices of each of us there is the memory of what we have been. Chris Catrambone leaves New Orleans and retraces his great-grandfather’s journey in reverse. At work he meets Regina Egle Liotta, a Calabrian woman who knows English well. At a certain point they decide to fight together “the globalization of indifference” the one mentioned by Francis. We have all been migrants – writes Regina – we have only removed our pain”. In all our families there are people who have left, grandparents who have never returned, we too have been victims of racism. We passed by Ellis Island and they called us mozzarellanigger.

How did we forget that? All the people who risk their lives to get to Europe do it for one reason only: they know that on the other side of the sea there is water, education for their children, a job: even the humblest one. They come from lands plundered by us, there is no doubt that those tons of electronic waste in Accra’s poisoned landfills are our sin. And that it is not the whim of two rich people, we understand from the ferocious and happy stories that Regina Catrambone tells, the encounters that change lives. Fatima, Aisha, Samira: existences that seem without a future: rapes, massacres. And we pretend not to know. People who leave with hope, but find despair in Italy. But one day Regina arrives at a school to talk to the kids, and there’s one with pigtails who gets up and says: “Do you remember me?”. Eight years earlier he was saved: now Afana is writing his doctoral thesis on emigration. He dedicates it “to the fallen along the way”. And the story of Lamin? Gambia-Senegal-Mali-Burkina Faso-Nigeria. Incredible vicissitudes, undeclared work, a thousand lives.

That life jacket given to Pope Francis. One day, thanks to Moas, Lamin gets to give a life jacket to the Pope. People’s stories explain better than editorials. The jungle of international law, for example. Incomprehensible to us, imagine them. And also the cultural resistances. Mohamed, welcomed and loved by a matriarchal family, doesn’t understand the model, rejects it, until he leaves. The book is a good guide to the meaning of words. For example, the port was once the safe place, the place of welcome, today it becomes a detention center. The border can even be hgood, remittances follow the opposite path to people. The passport makes us different, and it is the greatest of injustices: an Italian can enter 173 countries, an Afghan in 38, a Rohingya in none, because he is stateless. Hyperinformation hides these little big truths “You can’t pretend nothing happened” concludes Regina. And we must recognize the fear of others.