men clinging to the ropes, with the intention of getting on a ship already overloaded humans.
Every now and then a thud: it could happen that a rope would break and they, humans are thrown into the sea for not crashing on the walls of the rusty ship.
A trench in the sea, boarded a pit, a pit on the roof of the port. People yelling at people, people who greet other people, people crying for people about to leave for one where you do not know.
Among the clusters of humans, monkeys as close to those strings, fixed his eye on a man who climbs with his hands and feet, wearing only a pair of electric blue slip. Would arrive in Italy in his underwear. So it would be presented to the new world, new life.
signs of hunger on the faces, on the verge of stripping the bodies.
A pregnant woman hanging from a rope from a pile to bring the cart: she tries. It is the image more desperate.
"In taking these photos - tells Luke - I do not know how to set foot on a small platform, a raft at one point broke away from the dock."
Luke snaps, shooting rolls of film on film. Some arrive in Italy, a week later, while the newspapers have already told of this burden of despair, then locked in the stadium in Bari news becomes history.
The story, private story.
(Thanks to Luke for letting me 'steal' this story)
I look out the bars, hotels on one of the intersections of the center of my city, and I seem to be a tourist. There is the sun. It rained early in the morning rain and perhaps even later. Yet there is a beautiful light, which articulates the details of that architecture that I know how my pocket and now it seems to me to see for the first time. The green sign of an antique shop, there until I was a child and now replaced by a fashion label. The tables in the bar. The floor of cobblestones, the red walls of the buildings. Bikes. Even people I do not think that my city. For once I do not know anyone. Finally. I feel suddenly distant. On holiday or even in another world.
lunch time and see, out of the bar, the loops that come and go with the waterproof temporarily strung on colorful jackets, cameras, his nose in the air to track down the bows of medieval buildings.
The girl at the bar asks us what we want to eat. It has a foreign accent.
"E 'slave," he says Luca.
Just to stay in theme with his story.
The girl is tall and thin, beautiful and young. But the angular face, the skin of the cheeks marked by just a bit 'of rosacea and eyes with the shadow of some folk who will soon be turning them off a bit', as a whole are already guess how it will be in thirty years, from elderly.
Luke has the same face of the boy's picture in Albania. Eighteen years more, however, and less curly gray hair, but still long to focus their backs.
Open your computer and displays photos of Durres. From that day on which the first or perhaps the second vessel carrying packed with Albanians left for the Adriatic coast of Italy.
I listen and I guess the landing of those illegal immigrants at the beginning of a hot August of 1991.
Once you finally put foot in Albania, Luca heading straight towards Tirana. The room at the Hotel Central in the capital cost more than he imagined. The hotel was still used by the regime in its heyday, to accommodate the nomenklatura and diplomats who came from outside, to give an illusion of well being, comfort and out of there would not be traced in any other part of the city, between the common people. That story was also told over the yellowed walls of the room assigned to this unexpected visitor, the only guest. Then he told the solevate carpet edges, light bulbs missing in abundance from the large crystal chandeliers, the uniforms of the staff remained greyed, grumpy and listless.
arrived at the hotel that was almost evening, Luke asked to eat a sandwich, whatever. He was told that everything was over, that the kitchens were closed for months: first had to empty the cupboards, then the staff was also fired. Needless to those days charged for services that no one would take.
Luca decided they still sit at the bar, a beer in some way remedy and drinking it to him the idea would come. After a while, 'who was there to point the rim of the glass, he noticed that in that room exterminated, delusions of grandeur of a regime that thought forever, a group of Albanian boys sat on the other side of the counter, drinking beer and eating toast. Luke came over to ask if I could get one.
Slavic She brings us our meals. Luke leaves the computer access is a photo from the air a bit 'crumpled: he's there, thin and younger. It is on the roof of a house and takes his arm around the shoulders of a man down, his face marked: it looks older, but then maybe it is not that much. He'll start it one morning in haste from Tirana to Durres, on a train overloaded with people; Luca to look around to try to understand where will all these people, because in a country that seems to have remained static for centuries as if everyone, one day, suddenly, had woken same time.
The next day, early, Luke would be able to convince his new friend in Montenegro
deportation. His host father took the van to go with the guy who is stubborn with the idea of \u200b\u200bcrossing the border. The two set out, again the same way they did the day before and Mirak Luca left a few feet from the bar that marked the limit with that unknown land, but so mystified, just steps from his house. The two boys greeted with a handshake, pat on the back and a broad smile on both sides.
"If one day you'll be in Italy ...."," if one day return to these parts .....": had somehow made to understand as we do in these cases, all parts of the world. To show gratitude to the events: Luca for the hospitality, Mirak told him to his world.
Luke got out of his knapsack colored shoulder, back the military the day before.
He put his hand in his pocket, where the previous afternoon had brought in - he was sure to have done - the letter with the permission to enter Albania. He was ready to resume his battle. But the letter was gone. He turned and there was even Mirak. He had not even heard the noise of the vehicle back into gear and sped behind him, he was so focused on the new battle that was willing to fight even that morning just to reach its goal. Perhaps, he was surprised to think Luke was Mirak, or his mother to secretly steal a visa to the land of their hated neighbors, hoping in this way to save him from a world they believed was dangerous, dark, no interest .
The military, however, recognized Italian; how he could not recognize him? It was the only one to show up that day and maybe it would have been for weeks to come, as for many of the past. He did not fuss this time, while Luke tried to explain, searching in every pocket of his clothes and his backpack, which had lost the letter.
The military raised the bar and Luke found himself facing a road identical to what was about to leave behind. Yet it was finally entered into a new world, in Albania.
Luke arrived at the border on foot. Montenegro and Albania. End of July. 1991. From a distance, as he approached with a small knapsack on his back, the border guard looked at him without seeing docks. He stared at the dusty footsteps of the boy-faced teenager, her hair with their tails stretched on his back and curls on his head. The legs of one of them, a Slav, he would also have to say. If it were not for those jeans, that shirt with the words: no, it was clear that was not one of them, who was a tourist. A tourist: it was not a common figure in these parts. Of tourists there do not see it. The dot Luca Luca was getting closer and more detailed. A few steps from the bar and inside the hut where he stood guard to protect the boy took out of his crumpled the envelope with the invitation of the Embassy of Albania that would allow him to enter the country. Handed it to the military and somehow tried to make himself understood. That began to speak his language without that Luke, of course, could understand a single word. Only by shaking of the head of that man with the rough face and lips tight sensed that something was wrong, it would not be so simple to set foot over the bar. The man made it clear to him that that paper was worth nothing. Luke had a lot to point the finger on the stamp of the embassy, \u200b\u200bthe signature below, the few lines that he did not understand but he knew that it was written down on paper his passport to that country that a few months, in theory, had opened its borders. Nothing. The boy-man showed another tourist package: the woman's name was written Embassy in Tirana with whom he had contracted the invitation to Albania. If that deaf and stubborn military had convinced him to call her by phone, she would have explained it to him in his language, which could enter the Italian boy, who was a tourist, as odd was that his feet to present a border forgotten by men, in the mountains in the heart of a very boring summer afternoon there. Nothing to do. The soldier's face to understand that today you could not call. He wanted to move it. Maybe, if she made the difficult thing, that boy would withdraw, would be turned back, retreating quickly from his capricious adventure. Perhaps pointing to a beach in his country, one that occasionally the Slav had seen on television. What was needed then go for the young Italian conceited in Albania? Luca for that day was sure there was nothing else to do. Then, for the first time since he arrived at the border, rolled his eyes, only one behind him, had walked along the road to get there, and was convinced to find a way to reach the last country he had left behind. None. Not a machine. She resigned herself to turn on his heels and walked. Departed from a dozen steps, however, turned back toward the man who from his sentry pretended not watch it. "See you tomorrow!" Shouted points against the index. Without two curves, somehow, from somewhere, a guy came up with a beat-up scooter that black smoke and explosions erupted syncopated. The boy who was driving did not wait to stop the gesture with which Luke was for help. "Where to go? Where to go?" He asked. Perhaps he had seen in secret to long scene at the border and he knew that Luke was Italian. So he introduced himself immediately with the name of Mirak, drew those two or three words of Italian who had learned to repeat the power to hear the Italian television channel that reaches there in Montenegro, and which was almost always tuned to the small screen black and white the only bar-restaurant-hotel in his village. Luke made it clear to the boy, who had to have more or less his age, but his face marked, dark teeth and hands like those of a gnarled old man, who needed a room for the night. "Hotel. Hotel. Hotel. Hotel," he kept repeating. Mirak had understood perfectly what he was looking for Luca but pretended not to understand. And he lied, trying to make him understand that in those parts a hotel just was not there. Then he gestured to Luke to pick him up riding his scooter. Would go to his house, understood the Italian, would have housed them for the night. so it was. And Luke found himself at the table, in a country house in Montenegro, the Albanian border. The father and mother were farmers Mirak and this gave them a degree of prosperity, though the house was just a large room on the ground floor: kitchen with a long rectangular table where the family dinner staged by Mirak Mars for that came from a place that, as the crow flies, was not so far - thought Luke - but over time it seemed far away dozens of years. From the kitchen you went out on a porch where the family kept his tools, the son's scooter, a wooden bench with cushions faded flowers, a cart and several old pieces of junk. On one corner there was a staircase leading to two rooms on the first floor, one inserted inside the other. The first was the room where they slept Mirak and his sister, who - told the family - she married a year ago and now lived in cities. From there he went into the bedroom of the parents, the only one with the glass windows protected by tendon terital ready to give the shock as soon as he touched. What was going on Luke in Albania? asked at the end of dinner, pulling out of the pantry homemade grappa. A glass, another and another and Luke began to turn heads and melt the gab. The Italian explained to the family of Montenegro, which had three weeks of vacation from work, he wanted to see a country that did not know, referred to his house then you start talking about the world, after 89, it was expanded to include places that previously existed only in stories of a few. He wanted to see with his own eyes, meeting people. He showed his camera. He tried to tell them that car had visited many other countries. In Europe, of course, then many times the great African continent, illustrated by sliding your finger on a travel atlas that always accompanied him in his adventures. Lights, Luke, in telling that he had brought home the portraits of people who had shaken hands, which had a piece of road. The images of the forests that had crossed the villages where he had set foot, sometimes only white man, of the women had crossed eyes, children who had followed him and they smile to his goal. But the Albanians are bad people, he wanted to convince the mother of Mirak, a spokesman for a hatred that has always separated the two peoples. "No go! No go!", It was the interpreter of the anguish of the family's son. After hours of memories and discoveries, paid off by stories of hatred, fear and prejudice, Luke asked to go to sleep. That day, the discussion with the stupid customs officer, then dinner, the mixture of tongues between them and universal gestures, grappa, had suddenly taken away his strength.
