It sometimes seemed that Fascist officials decided our fate, using us like pawns on a chessboard. After a long period of calm, two carabinieri knocked at our door and informed us that we had to leave Naples. They would come and take us away the next day. Evidently, our travails hadn’t ended. At daybreak one day in May 1938, the eleven of us hastily boarded a ship that was going to the island of Rhodes, in the Aegean Sea. Mother entrusted our kind neighbours to inform the schools of our absence sine die.
When we got to the island we were sent to a villa with a sprawling garden. The kids were quick to notice a wonderful swing hooked to the highest branch of a soaring walnut tree. It was our consolation, and the fulcrum of our games. The first thing we did was divide parts of the tree between us. Fassil, the only one who could venture up to the topmost branches, took over that section. Those of us who were smaller acquired the more modest lower branches. Upon awakening each morning, we made our way to the gigantic tree and climbed exultant on our own branch and began daydreaming.
So many adventures took place on that venerable tree! We used the swing to see who could launch themselves the highest into the air and who, from that height, could jump the farthest onto the ground. There were so many thrills, and so much laughter that leavened our days! At any rate, nature, as the saying goes, is generous with those who live peacefully with her. The tree rewarded us for lavishing it with attention and distracting it from its loneliness by bearing fruit in abundance. We made huge feasts out of its exquisite walnuts. But Mother was the bulwark that put our hearts at ease. Her inner strength flowed from the faith she had in a divine plan, which was always the fount of her inspiration. Atzede continued believing that the impossible could become real with God’s help.
Mother, who tirelessly advocated for the usefulness of our studies despite the constant movements that rudely interrupted them, enrolled us in new schools wherever we went. This time, however, in Rhodes, she didn’t find religious schools willing to take us in, and so we had to remain at home. “God will provide, don’t be afraid.” She comforted us and never stopped hoping for better days, when we would finally be able to live normal lives. The military surveillance was very discreet in Rhodes. Wherever we went, we never saw them. “Look! They’re hiding in the bushes!” Fassil shouted to get under our skin when we least expected it. Or, “Watch out for our shadows behind those plants!”, and so on. It was torture. Always the prankster, he never hesitated to joke to make us laugh. But when Mother happened to hear him being a smart-aleck, she always cautioned him. “Careful, Fassil, these people don’t play around!”
We could roam around Rhodes feeling something quite like freedom. I have a wonderful recollection of the island, bright and bursting with greenery, where the intense blue of the sea and the white houses mirroring one another created a suggestive contrast, and the streets were paved with natural-coloured mosaics — ochre, burnt sienna, evergreen, grey, black and white — that left magnificent arabesques on the pavement. The islanders were obliging and jocular. Guided by friends from the area, we could admire art and architecture and visit the botteghe of consummate goldsmiths who fashioned ornate, filigreed objects, mostly Maltese crosses, the symbol of the Knights Hospitaller. Our coerced stay, however, lasted only three months. On October 2nd, 1938 we were yet again put on a steamer that brought us back to Naples, where we stayed until July 1939.
It was as if the Fascists were trying to hide us from encroaching spirits. It’s impossible to give a sensible explanation for such paranoid frenzy. We had become cumbersome merchandise and could no longer make sense of our movements. In Italy, however, word was going around that Mussolini no longer wanted “these Abyssinian negroes” in Italian territory. Whether or not that was true, on 19th July 1939 we were once more cast out to sea and making our way to Tripoli. The more I think of it, calendars no longer had any use in our nomadic lives. Only the shifts in climate told us that spring or winter had arrived. We changed schools, teachers, and friends with each move from one country to another, and this went on for who knows how long. We attended a school just in time to learn some geography, the formation of clouds and their names: cumulus, cirrus, cumulonimbus, cirrus stratus, etc… Or the history of Rome: Romulus and Remus, the she-wolf, Numa Pompilius and the other kings. Just when we smiled at one of our classmates, in the hope of finally finding a little friend, we were forced to embark towards a new destination.
Translated from Italian by Aaron Robertson