Glad at this time I won’t talk too
much about my immigration issues: I got my work permit, and for a couple of
years I should be ok.
I need a work permit for the obvious
reason I’m not Canadian. It doesn’t happen often to me to think of myself as an
Italian in Canada: I just live my life in Vancouver, mixed with thousands of
other people who do the same and that probably come from somewhere else. That’s
actually something it’s always fascinated me: the number of accents and
languages you can spot when for example you go to a supermarket.
Yet, something that happened some
weeks ago drove me to think what it means to be Italian.
Not to me, but to others.
I was with some colleague at an
Ethiopian restaurant: chats, laughs, food of course, whatever you can expect
from a lunch with colleagues.
I had paid my bill and I was about
to get out when my attention was caught by a paper hanged on the wall, close to restaurant entrance.
I didn’t read much, but the title
was meaningful: “Graziani, the butcher of Ethiopia”.
Graziani was the commander in chief
of the Italian army that invaded Ethiopia in 1936 and used toxic gasses against
Ethiopian troops.
Italians therefore, at least to
some, are not just the people with love for stylish clothes who always waive
their hands when talking, messy, noisy and unreliable, but funny after all.
What has recently happened in my
home country, with the 4th Prime Minister in the last 3 years can
just confirm Italians are messy and unreliable, at least when they have to stay
together.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that
from a badly managed country thousands of people are fleeing (in few hours the
2000 places available for the WHV in Canada got finished).
Being Italian abroad, especially
nowadays, I think it means somehow to love and hate your own country at the
same time, because when you look at it you probably look at yourself, what you
actually are and what you don’t want to be.
It’s probably a mixture of pride
towards a concept of quality and way of enjoying the life unknown to Canadians
and rage for the absolute lack of cohesion and civic-mindedness that afflicts
Italy.
It’s love and hate, good and evil
all together, with a result that’s not always a masterpiece like a monument or
a square in an Italian city, not always tasty and healthy like a real pizza
(where you do NOT put ketchup on), not always a dolce vita, rather than a
difficult situation that has brought many to leave the country.
I wouldn’t be in Canada otherwise,
would I?
I just discover your blog. I will read it all. Meanwhile, about Graziani, some days ago i was reading that Italy and UK refused to incriminate him, as requested by Ethiopia after the war. As a refund, ethiopia was allowed to take Eritrea. Graziani died in his bed, and, in 2012, with public money, a big mausoleo was built in his hometown. Italian former president, Sandro Pertini, was right when he said that if Mussolini was not killed, he would have been senator of the repubblic. World is not a fair place.
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