now visit daily blogoclasse, watering my flowers, I sometimes raises questions and issues to think about who may start to my usual stream of cosciousness.
Tonight it is.
Sensations had at times and in different places they took me with more force than usual, wondering why it is so difficult to realize the desired.
case, I would answer, but not all.
Luckily, otherwise I should shoot me.
"I'm not always want to determine the fate and mission of a man: there may be something else, predestined" . Hermann Hesse
Taking a cue from the post of Irene ( Irros'blog ) on the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of Emergency transcribe an excerpt from "Green Parrots" by Gino road, which I hope you've read: I can only think about it con una forte ammirazione unita a un senso di infinita piccolezza.
E'un medico anche lui, come, forse, lo saremo in tanti, ma certamente un po'diverso da molti di quelli che girano nei nostri ospedali con il camice bianco immacolato.
Avremo noi almeno un pizzico della sua forza per CREARE e per CREDERCI ?
La lettura del suddetto libro/insieme di ricordi mette di fronte a una realtà inumana.
Nel mio piccolo penso: mi alzo e vado.
Ma quanta forza ci vuole a estendere quella coscia.
"Un vecchio afgano con i sandali rotti e infangati, e il turbante con la coda che scendeva fino alla cintura, stava accanto al figlio di sei anni nel pronto soccorso dell’ospedale di Quetta.
Il bambino si chiamava Khalil e aveva il volto e le mani, o quel che ne restava, coperti da abbondanti fasciature.
Stava sdraiato, immobile, la camicia annerita dall’esplosione.
Qualcuno aveva strappato una manica e ne aveva fatto un laccio, legato stretto sul braccio destro per fermare l’emorragia.
“È stato ferito da una mina giocattolo, quelle che i russi tirano sui nostri villaggi” disse Mubarak, l’infermiere che faceva anche da interprete, avvicinandosi con un catino di acqua e una spugna.
Non ci credo, è solo propaganda, ho pensato, osservando Mubarak che tagliava i vestiti e iniziava a lavare il torace del bambino, sfregando energicamente come se stesse strigliando un cavallo.
Non si è neanche mosso, il bambino, non un lamento.
In sala operatoria ho tolto le bende: la mano destra non c’era più, sostituita da un’orrenda poltiglia simile a un cavolfiore bruciacchiato, tre dita della sinistra completamente spappolate.
Avrà preso in mano una granata, mi sono detto.
Sarebbero passati solo tre giorni, prima di ricevere in ospedale un caso analogo, ancora un bambino. All’uscita dalla sala operatoria Mubarak mi mostra un frammento di plastica verde dark, scorched by the explosion.
"Look, this toy is a piece of mine, 's were collected on the site of the explosion. Our old people call them green parrots ... "and begins to draw the shape of the mine, ten inches in all, two wings with a small cylinder at the center. It looks like a butterfly than a parrot, now I can put like a puzzle piece of plastic in my hand, is the wing tip.
"... They are down to thousands, launched from helicopters at low altitude.
Ask Abdullah, the driver of the hospital, one of the children of his brother he has a collection last year, lost two fingers and was blinded. "
Mine toy, designed to maim children.
I had to believe, but still I have difficulty understanding ...
Three years later I was in Peru.
When I went to Ayacucho, after months to organize the department of surgery, a Peruvian friend, artist and poet, gave me a retablo, a kind of plaster crib.
A scene of violence and struggle for land rights.
Around figurines of peasants chained, dragged away by soldiers in balaclavas, many ears of corn, very high, gilded.
flocks of loros Above the ears, green parrots with a hooked beak and eyes of prey.
"For the farmers here - Nestor said, explaining the altarpiece - the parrots symbolize the violence of the military, have the same color of their uniforms.
arrive, take the harvest, often kill, and they go away. "
Nestor told me about the miserable life of the people of the Andean region, the suffering and resignation, and the systematic violence.
Then I told him of any green parrots, which had met in Afghanistan.
Russian-made anti-personnel Mine (reverse engineering of an object widely dispersed U.S. in Vietnam in the early '70s), Model PFM-1.
I explained to him that the shed on the villages, as if they were flyers inviting you to not miss the spectacle of the circus Sunday.
And I saw her eyes in disbelief, as they were mine, and her lips slightly open in surprise.
The shape of the mine, with two wings, is to twirl it better. In other words, do not fall to peak when they are released from helicopters, they behave just like the leaflets, are scattered here and there over a territory more wide.
are made so for purely technical reasons - say the military - is not correct to call mine toy.
But it never happened to me, including the unfortunate injured by these mines that I happened to work, to find an adult.
Not one in over ten years, all strictly children.
The mine does not explode right away, often not active if stepped on. It takes a little 'time - it works, as they say the manual, following the accumulation of pressure.
must take it, handle it again, pull the wings. Who picks it up in short, can take it home, show it to friends in the courtyard of curiosity, that if passed from hand to hand, we play.
then explode.
And somebody else will go the way of Khalil.
traumatic amputation of one or both hands, a searing blaze across the chest and, very often, blindness.
unbearable.
I have seen too often children who wake up after surgery and find themselves without a leg, or without an arm.
have moments of despair, then, incredibly, they recover.
But nothing is unbearable for them, like waking up in the dark.
The green parrots drag them in the dark forever.
these things I said to Nestor, sitting in his studio full of paintings and sculptures, figurines and plaster to paint.
talking about war and violence, repression and freedom, of human rights.
What drives the human mind to imagine, to plan violence?
As I spoke of the tragedies of his homeland, the massacre of peasants Huanta asking only that their children could go to school, I sensed in his words, mixed with an atavistic pessimism, anger stifled, the desire for rebellion.
But then, inevitably, his thoughts went back to green parrots, to those who descended from heaven in faraway Afghanistan.
Then Nestor shook his head, and anger gave way to sadness, one that fills the mind when there is the possibility to understand, when reason is gone and it's just madness.
So we thought - knowing that it was all terribly real - an efficient and creative engineer, sitting at his desk doing sketches, drawing the shape of the PFM-1.
And then a chemist, to decide the technical details of the mechanism explosive, and finally a general welcomed the project, and a politician who approves it, and workers in a workshop that produced by the thousand each day.
are no ghosts, unfortunately, human beings have a face like ours, we have a family like us, children.
And probably accompany them to school in the morning, take them by the hand while crossing the street, which should not be in danger, warn them not to get closer to strangers, not to accept candy from strangers ... or toys.
Then they go to the office, to resume their work diligently to make sure that the mine will operate safely, that other people are not aware of the trick, that collect in so many.
More mutilated children, preferably also blind, and the enemy will suffer, is terrified, condemned to feed those unhappy for the rest of the year.
More children maimed and blind, the enemy is defeated, punished, humiliated.
And all this happens in our country in the civilized world, including banks and skyscrapers. Also face the loros, green parrots that infest the Andes, they seem less fierce, one might say more human.
I have not heard about Mubarak, for seven years.
I met many Khalil around the world, the last is called Thassim.
is not Afghanistan, is a Kurdish boy of fifteen, is blind and without hands. I worked two weeks ago, a strange surgery which transforms the forearms and makes them like the claws of a crab, or chopsticks, so she can grab objects, eating alone, smoking a cigarette. The
we are teaching to adapt to the new shape of your body, your best use of what is left.
Thassim raised his mine, his bloody parrot green, near Mawat, a mountain village surrounded by forests of oak, made even more impressive the first snow of November.
I look at him as he tries, so far unsuccessfully, to bring a spoon to the mouth without spilling the soup.
is tired and a little frustrated, for now does not want to learn to do exercises. "
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