Micro (one-minute stories)

Sometimes what we remember from our childhood is confused with the stories other people tell us. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTI remember exactly the day Kennedy was shot. My mother was wearing a black twin-set of jumpers, it was probably spring, or autumn, and we were watching television, and my mother was crying. I wasn’t even born the day that Kennedy was shot, but this memory is so vivid in my mind, that I really believe it to be true. Now I know, it wasn’t Kennedy my mother was crying for, it was my uncle Franco, her younger brother who migrated at a young age into to the mainland, killed in an industrial accident, crushed to death by a piece of machinery. The two identities, that of Kennedy and of my uncle, they remain forever connected in my memory, and I still can’t think of one, without having to see the other with the eyes of my mind.

You loved each other for a month, then he had to fly back to Melbourne. In days when you could only write letters and, very very rarely, place extra-continental phone calls, finally seeing each other was scary. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTThe flight to Melbourne has been very long. She knew it in advance, but still, she feels exhausted and overwhelmed with fears, sensations and curiosity. It has been three months since she last saw him. It’s early nineties, there is no internet yet and she is not so sure any more about that wild passion, frantic letter-writing and desperate long-distance calls. She left Berlin and winter behind. When the customer gives her the passport back, she feels a warm river running along the legs. Blood in the new continent. The immigration formalities are dealt with - much too fast, she doesn’t even know whether she’ll recognise his face. That’s why she ignores her luggage, once more when it approaches on the carousel.

When she travels alone on a tram, sometimes she is taken by a sudden notion.A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTI envy all those women sitting together on trams, mothers and daughters, pushing prams and carrying bags, laughing and talking secrets. We never shared secrets, my mother and I, but I am living abroad and I miss her nevertheless. I see her in her best dress, walking beside me, the handbag crossed over her chest, silver hair and wrinkles. I think my mother is proud of me, somehow, but she’s never told me - feelings are not a merchandise easy to exchange in my family. She didn’t go to school, but I remember her sitting with me at the kitchen table, asking a student who lived next door to teach her how to solve equations, to be able to help us with the homework. She is always hiding her hands, ashamed of them, deformed by arthritis.

When I moved from Melbourne to Italy I was faced with a difficult decision: take my cat Ombra with me, submitting her to a gruelling 26-hour flight and forcing her to live in a flat, or entrust her to my dear friends who offered to give Ombra love, care and a huge garden with trees and sheds and bush. It was one of the most difficult decisions I had to make, but I knew that it was right to put aside my selfish love and to allow Ombra to live her feline life. (I will never thank you enough for welcoming her)A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPT:I want to go back. I want to be in the garden, winter and summer; I miss running outside, and the constant excitement of my senses, even when asleep. Those smells, the sound of the creatures crawling in the grass, and the tiny birds, I really enjoyed watching them being scared of me, and bringing them home, for her, as a present, she always screamed with pride by seeing them. I want to climb up trees, on the roof, I want to surprise her, hiding behind the gate and jumping out when she comes home from work. Not any more, not since she moved into a flat. Now I spend my days underneath the table, contemplating some peculiar games of light, reflected on the red brick wall.

I met Amelia at an Italian feminist group in Berlin: young Italian women having the time of their lives free from families and judgments. Amelia came from Rome and arrived without a word of German but with a huge belly that she flaunted like a flag. We met once a week and laughed, run, danced, smoked and drank until the early hours. We had known each other just for a few months when Amelia asked me to accompany her to the clinic to help her with the language. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTAmelia, nine hours of labour, stretched in the bed, with all the cables and wires attached to her belly. She is crying and screaming, and I try to console her, holding her hand and translating what the nurse is asking her to do: push now, now stop, push, stop... Me, nine hours later, coffee after coffee, I wouldn’t mind some drugs myself. Amelia, I remember the first time I saw you, in this foreign town, pushing your belly to the world like a flag. Oh Amelia, in a moment I will tell you that she’s got blue eyes, but what words will I use to tell you that your baby was born with too many chromosomes?

The word 'expat' brings to mind lattes, laptops and wi-fi. But that's not the full story. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTWhite, western, educated, privileged people. I mean, as a woman I am a little less privileged, but still – I cannot complain. There is a name to describe people like me, we are not migrants, we are expats. Sounds so much better, don’t you agree? By saying ‘expat’ you do not envisage war, famine, political unrest. No, you imagine us in suburban cafes, laptop and mobile close by, searching for the best wifi connection. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. And yet, there are moments in which the enormity of my decision – to leave home and to go and leave so far away – hits me, and takes my breath away. Like when my son, aged 6, asks me what the word ‘cousin’ means. Because we might be ‘expat’ but we are certainly alone, we don’t have the luxury of an extended family.

Walking through East Berlin was never just a stroll, before the Wall came down. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTBack then I only had this... feeling, something was different but I didn’t know what. It was the colours, a lack of colours on the streets like you only see in a black and white movie. I know it now, crossing Alexander Platz and squinting my eyes and trying to remember how it was before, I mean, it is still kind of sad, the roads are always too wide, well, of course I don’t fear anymore just for having a camera in my hand, and I do not need a 24hour visa to enter. Still, something has gone. Lost, forever. They got their freedom allright but, while we were singing with joy as the wall came down, really no one realised that a passport doesn’t mean anything, unless you’ve got money to travel...

There are unwritten rules that people are supposed to know without anyone ever telling them what they are and how they work. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTI’m sorry. I am really sorry. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know, it would be great if there were an instruction manual that they give you when you migrate to a new country, you know, just a page, something, with all the rules that you are supposed to know when you arrive to a new place. Not the official stuff, but the unwritten rules, those that locals don’t even realise that they are rules because that’s what they have been doing since forever, that’s all they know. Like fish that don’t have the concept of water. But they are the most important rules, those that they expect you to know from day one, and everybody gets really upset if you do not follow them, and you cannot follow them because no one ever told you. I am sorry, I really am, but how was I supposed to know that it is forbidden to touch the bread at the bread shop?

I arrived at Braunau that I had just graduated with a thesis on German exile literature during the twelve years of the dictatorship, so you can appreciate my curiosity. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTIt’s raining. It must be around 11am. I’m hiding inside the sleeping bag, inside the tent, listening. It has been raining since I arrived here, last night, and I still haven’t been able to go outside to look around. I am in Braunau. I have been thinking about it all night, wondering what people look like here, his birthplace, whether there will be a statue in his name. I hope not. But then, I mean, you never know. I kind of believe that I will be able to find his face in those of the people of the village. I know, it’s crazy to think so, I bet that here ‘Hitler’ is just another name, like Schmidt.

Sometimes an object out of place becomes the only thing in place. A very small narration, hardly a story. A micro narration in a minute or so.TRANSCRIPTThere is an old amplifier in my grandmother’s backyard. I’ve asked, but nobody knows how it ended up there. My grandmother’s backyard is not a place where you would expect to find an amplifier. Hens live inside it. In the backyard. I spent part of my childhood contemplating the dark object. In my memory, it has always been there. I realize now that in the Seventies when I was a child, amplifiers were precious, not something you throw in the backyard. My grandmother died last Tuesday. It feels odd to ask if I can have the amplifier. But that’s really the only thing wish I had.