Many buildings on the medieval streets of L’Aquila are destroyed – and from them are pulled the dead and the barely living
FOR A small town in the mountains of Abruzzo, L’Aquila is pretty sophisticated. Despite having just 75,000 inhabitants, it manages to host a university, a film school, a fine arts academy and a symphony orchestra.
Every year thousands of tourists come to savour its baroque and renaissance confections. But today the icing sugar churches, the marzipan houses, strung higgledy-piggledy along the medieval streets, look ravaged by an ogre on the rampage from his Apennine lair.
Midst the ochre, azure, terracotta and mimosa, there are jagged black holes from which men, women and children are being pulled: barely alive, barely dead.
Here on Sunday night , just outside Florence, we had a useless hint of what was to come to L’Aquila about two hours away. At about 10.30pm came a deep groan from deeper inside the earth. It went as quickly as it came, but outside in the garden, there was a too-static stillness in the air. We left our children sleeping. Monday is a long day in the school system here. But for the children of L’Aquila that school day would never come.
All day we’ve watched the TV, interrupted only by taking worried phone calls and picking the children up from school. I have to admit to picking them up early: the convent is rickety, set into a bockety hill. Even what the children call the Secret Jesus – a Sacred Heart statue hidden in a rose bush – might not be enough to do the business. After all, He has a lot on His plate the week that’s in it.
On the way home we met our neighbours, old farmers, blue-overalled, behatted in their laddered olive trees. Today they run down to talk. To share with us what was on the radio, on the TV, in the papers, in their hearts. Even with us, the pale stranieri.
As I write there are 92 people dead, thousands injured, 50,000 homeless. The numbers rise with the prayers of a nation. Flags are suddenly at half mast, tricoloured Tibetan prayer flags fluttering over urbi et orbi. Because today, the city of L'Aquila is Italy's world. Perche? Perche noi?Why? Why us? The inexorable answer: why not?
Today, even the saints are bereft. San Salvatore – the hospital – has no water. Anime Sante – the dome is domeless. This very week last year we stayed near L’Aquila at our friends’ home at Castelnuovo di Farfa. We, too, had tremors. In our supposedly earthquake-proof villa, it was simply exciting. In L’Aquila, a year later, it was simply devastating.
All day the news programmes read 3.32am, the moment the quake happened. We see young women, refugees from Pompeii, their soft, black hair hard and plaster-white. Young and not-too-young men wander like Aboriginal tribesmen – skin batwing black, bleached concrete tattooed across their faces as they wander the faultlines of the Songlines that were once their home. We see young Italian stallions, for once senzathe obligatory shades, shifting rubble with their bare, tanned hands. Latin Óisins leaning down to lift the gigantic stones.
We see line after line of international media: BBC, Sky, CNN. But this is the day for the Italian media. They are not just telling the story. Breathless, tearful, exasperated, they are living it. Here, the medium is the message. This is not just L’Aquila’s story, it is the Italian story. And it takes Italians to tell it.
My children watch the images. The ambulances screeching off to hospitals. The mothers hysterical over their missing children. The cries and cell tones from the rubble. The human call every few minutes as work stops and the rescuers listen to sepulchral silence.
Despite the human tragedy my children worry about the animals. “God, I just hope all the cats and dogs were saved. What about guinea pigs? We’re going to join the rescue teams. They want experts. We’re pet experts.”
Remarkably for Italy, there are no bells. Because the village bells have fallen. Silent.
There’s a little British girl missing in the quake. She came all excited on holiday. Like Madeleine McCann. Mothers sit by mounds that hours ago were the homes where they rocked their children. Now they rock manically for them.
Prime minister Berlusconi has declared a state of emergency. President McAleese has sent the thoughts and prayers of the Irish people. They are needed.
L’Aquila wasn’t always a plagued, razed, purgatory. It was a bird owned by Zeus. He sent Aquila to carry Ganymede to the heavens to be his cup bearer. On Monday morning Zeus was bored on Mount Olympus. He sent his terrible thunder to L’Aquila. As yet there is no sign of its rising from the ashes. Nor in this Easter week – La Pasqua – from the tomb.
Miriam O’Callaghan is an Irish writer living in Florence