Chapters (17)
For the government, the solution for getting the garbage off the streets is always the landfill: open another landfill, a second one in Vesuvius National Park. At one time it had been a beautiful place, where the Roman emperors spent their summer holidays. Now it’s covered with trash. The residents of Terzigno will no longer stand for the so-called solution to getting the garbage off the streets: namely, dumping it in the landfill, with no controls, as has been done up till now, further contaminating the land. Their land has already been contaminated. That’s why they don’t trust the promises, that’s why they make such a racket. Sixteen years of ‘emergency’ can demoralize and destroy the soul of an entire people. Sixteen years of the garbage crisis have driven out Naples’ capital, have led Neapolitans to be identified with garbage and even caused them to lose all hope of seeing their city change.
It reminds me of a piece by Eduardo De Filippo, from his TV series called Peppino Girella, set in a poor household in Naples:
‘Andrea, what can you do? It’s nothing serious.’
‘This too is nothing, right? It’s always nothing. It’s always nothing serious, that’s how we’ve resolved every situation: it’s nothing. We have no food, it’s nothing; we’re in need, it’s nothing; the boss dies and I lose my job, so what, it’s nothing; they deny us the right to live, it’s nothing; they take away our air, what can you do? It’s nothing serious. It’s always nothing … How beautiful you are, how beautiful you were, and look at what I’ve become. By always saying “it’s nothing”, we’ve become two nothings, you and I.’
These words are seared into our consciousness, especially if we are Neapolitan. They deny us the right to live, they take away our air: ‘It’s nothing.’ It’s that way every time we stand for it, every time we believe the promises and welcome the politicians as liberators. Yet by standing for it, by considering it all normal, by saying ‘it’s nothing’ to everything, we risk becoming ‘nothings’ ourselves.
