Manuela Fine
Thanks to the help of voluntary workers of the Community of Sant' Egidio, we have been able to visit some zones of Trastevere where the carefreeness and euphoria of those who live there co-exists with the loneliness and bitterness of unfortunate people forced to be homeless .The places of emargination, however, remain to be discovered.
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It is a very cold night and as I look out of the car window, Danilo Mercanti explains to us the activities of the Community of Sant'Egidio to relieve the distress of the homeless. Continuing to look around, I suddenly realise what the situation is, in its truth and simplicity. It is no longer a question of opinions, judgments, and statistics, but of faces, blankets, cartons and freezing cold.
This is what marginalisation is! Not an abstract concept, but men and women that life has made fragile and wary at the same time.
There is material, there is life, and we wish to describe our impressions and not just through stern condemnations of social conditions.
So I let myself be involved totally by the words I listened to and the images that appear one after the other while we travel. And I understand suddenly that this evening will be above all a meeting of looks: ours, curious and attentive, and those of faces that we meet, stupified by our interest.
While the voluntary workers go round to distribute bread rolls, Danilo introduces Ruggero, a man who after a succession of problems, ended up living on park benches, then, thanks to Sant'Egidio, in a caravan.
Danilo suggests that he chat with us and he accepts. As we shall see, he loves talking and being with people.
We enter his caravan. I am amazed how tidy it is. It is not easy to keep such a small space in order, but he even has a small library and posters on the walls.
Ruggero in fact loves reading and passes the time among his books, walks and conversations with friends.
I listen to him talk about "my mistakes" and the thing that strikes me most is his wish to take us into his confidence, without not really knowing who we are.
Is it surprising that a person behaves in such a friendly way with strangers. I would not know how to explain this, but that is what I thought when entering in the place where he lives.
Meanwhile Ruggero continues to talk with enthusiasm; he does not have an air of resignation which we expected to find in a man who has to live in eight square metres. But, pointing to his books he tells us in his splendid Romanesque dialect: "Que robbe là te risorveno i problemi" ( This stuff here solves your problems); and he explains that it is from books that he has learned a lot about life. Then he shows us a beautiful edition of the Divine Comedy and like an actor he declaims the first lines: "Nel Mezzo del cammin di nostra vita ." (Halfway on the journey through life) laughing with satisfaction.
He confides that the best description of hunger is that of Dante Alighieri.
Then to know more of his story, we ask him to describe to us how he came to be living in the park and he tells us of the day of separation from his wife.
He recalls the great suffering but also the unexpected sensation of liberty. He tells us he was left on his own, without anyone, yet in certain ways he felt reborn. That tie was broken which obiliged him to live within a family in which he did not feel any more the presence of love. Or, better, Ruggero remembered, what Dante, called "calor vitale" (vital warmth).
Then he discussed Calor vitale, for him enthusiasm, the feeling that, in the course of the years, had weakened more and more till it disappeared almost completely. He had lost the sense of his own existence, and gradually he had rediscovered it; as he put it: "Ho ritrovato me stesso perché nun c'ero proprio" (I rediscovered myself because I no longer existed).
He Tells us that he had managed, thanks to the friendship of those close to him in his darkest moments. He was lucky because "friendship and affection are the things that people in such situations most lack". Then he adds that now material things have taken on a different meaning. He lives for the day and his needs are reduced. Now that he can go where he wishes he feels free and has rediscovred happiness.
We ask him how he stays in his "little house" and he replies that, inspite of everything, he feels a king. I observe him while he is speaking and see that the Calor vitale is really there, in his eyes, especially when his look meets that of Danilo, who for Ruggero is one of his "nì" (little boys) of theCommunity of Sant'Egidio. A man who together with other voluntary workers has helped him when he most needed help.
Thanks to the meeting with Ruggero I have found some answers as to what it means to be a drop out and received, at the same time, lessons in life that I would not have had talking only with those who live "inside society". Now I dwell with more attention on faces that fill the streets of Rome that I frequent but do not really know.
