Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

Skins

July 22, 2012, Portugal: The Portuguese police arrest a businessman from Vicenza who works in the tanning industry. The investigators find 120 kilos of cocaine in the container of skins sent from Brazil.

Cocoa

August 23, 2012, port of Anversa: Belgian authorities discover just over two tons of cocaine in jute sacks filled with cocoa seeds onboard a container ship from Ecuador. The cocaine, worth €100 million, was on its way to a warehouse in Amsterdam.

Parquet

August 23, 2012, port of Caacupe-mí, Paraguay: Hidden among irregularly cut pieces of wood for parquet floors are 330 kilos of cocaine; they are seized on a container ship ready to set sail from the private port in Caacupe-mí, on the Paraguay River. A corrupt customs officer is arrested.

Roast chicken

September 3, 2012, Lagos, Nigeria, airport: A Nigerian engineer returning from São Paulo, Brazil, where he had worked for the past five years, is detained at customs. The police find 2.5 kilos of cocaine hidden among the leftover roast chicken he brought to eat during the flight.

Hair

September 26, 2012, JFK airport, New York: Kiana Howell and Makeeba Graham, two girls who have just arrived from Guyana, a former British colony between Venezuela and Brazil, arouse the customs officials’ suspicion. When they are searched, each is found to have a block of cocaine, weighing about 1 kilo, hidden in her hairdo.

Chickpeas

October 12, 2012, port of Gioia Tauro: 100 kilos of cocaine sent from Mexico on the ship Bellavia are intercepted. The drug was hidden in sacks of chickpeas, officially destined for Turkey.

Balloons

October 14, 2012, port of Limón, Costa Rica: During routine checks of a cargo ship anchored in the port of Limón, which leads into the Caribbean, antidrug agents discover 119 kilos of cocaine hidden among multicolored balloons usually used for children’s birthday parties.

Shrimp and bananas

October 18, 2012, Milan: The Milan DDA arrests about fifty people tied to a huge cocaine network importing into Italy, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and Germany. The loads, hidden among frozen shrimp and cartons of bananas, arrived from Colombia and Ecuador, either in ships that docked at the Hamburg and Anversa ports or in planes that landed at the Vienna airport. The trafficking was managed by the Lombard branches of the most powerful Calabrian families: the Pelles of San Luca, the Morabitos of Africo, the Molès of Gioia Tauro.

Sweet potatoes

October 19, 2012, Paramaribo, Suriname, airport: Customs officials, whose suspicion was aroused by the excessive weight of six sacks of sweet potatoes leaving the Johan Adolf Pengel airport, the main airport in this former Dutch colony in South America, discover 60 kilos of cocaine inside the tubers.

Carpets

November 27, 2012, Milan: The Carabinieri of the province of Milan arrest fifty-three Italian and Colombian citizens, accusing them of drug trafficking, unlawful possession of weapons, receiving stolen goods, and money laundering. The network, based in Cesano Boscone, was impregnating imported carpets with liquid cocaine. Once the carpets arrived in Milan they were washed with special products to release the drug from the wool fibers, which was then dried.

You’re dreaming. Another life, more profoundly yours. Money or sex. You dream about your children and your dead, who come back to life. You dream you’re falling forever. That you’re being strangled. That someone is trying to get in the door, or has already come in. You dream of being trapped, no one comes to free you, you can’t get out. You dream that they want to arrest you, but you haven’t done anything wrong.

There’s nothing uniquely yours about your dreams and nightmares. They’re so much like everyone else’s that in Naples you use them to play Lotto, the Italian lottery, with the numbers from the Smorfia Napoletana: ’ E Gguardie, the police, 24; ’ E ccancelle, prison, 44; ’ O mariuolo, the thief, 79; ’ A fune nganno, the noose around your neck, 39; ’ A caduta, the fall, 56; ’ O muorto, the dead man, 47; ’ O muorto che parla, the dead man talking, 48; ’ A figliolanza, offspring 9; ’ E denare, money, 46. For sex, you’re spoiled for choice. For example: Chella ca guarda ’nterra, she who looks at the ground, which means cunt, 6; ’ O pate d”e criature, the father of babies, or penis, 29; ’ O totaro dint’ ’a chitarra, a fish inside a guitar, which means intercourse, 67.

I have them too, those dreams. When they start off well, they turn into nightmares. When they’re nightmares right from the start, there’s little that is dreamlike about them. My days invade my nights, the more or less 3,196 days as of this writing since I’ve been living under police protection. I’ve learned to forget my dreams. When they wake me, at most I get up and drink a glass of water. I have trouble falling back to sleep, but at least I’ve chased away my nightmares with a few sips. All but one nightmare.

I’m screaming, I can’t stop screaming, louder and louder. No one seems to hear me. It’s a variation on the nightmare in which you want to scream but no sound comes out. Do you know that one? I wouldn’t know what number to tell you to play, though. There’s 65 for cry, 60 for lament, and 90 for fear. But there’s no number for screams in the cabala of the city where everyone screams all the time. Maybe try betting on the mouth, 80. I’m not betting anything.

I write about Naples. But Naples plugs her ears. Who am I to draw attention to things I’ve not experienced firsthand in some time? I can’t possibly understand; I have no right to speak. I’m no longer part of the body of that mother city who welcomes you with her gentle, resplendent warmth. Naples has to be lived, that’s all. Either you’re in Naples or you’re not. And if you’re not, you’re no longer from Naples. Like some African or South American cities, Naples offers you citizenship right away. A citizenship that you lose, however, when you leave, when you put some distance between your skin and your judgment. At that point, you can’t talk about Naples anymore. It’s prohibited. You have to stay in Naples, stay inside Naples; if not, you’ll always get the same response: “What do you know?”

I know that in Naples the surest number to bet is 62, ’ o muort’ acciso, death by murder. I know that Naples treats those murder victims almost as if they were the number 48—the dead man talking — which is what I feel I have become to her. Naples cuts them out, expels them. They’re people on the outside, people from Scampia, Secondigliano, or other towns to the north of Naples that have been hit by the feud that exploded after years of steady homicides. Like Andrea Nollino, killed instantly by the burst of gunfire from a motorcycle as he was opening his café in Casoria. June 26, 2012, 7:30 A.M. Or Lino Romano, who on October 15, 2012, goes to the station to pick up his girlfriend, Rosanna, who’s on her way back from the wedding of a cousin in Modena, from the same kind of celebration that he hoped to be able to offer her soon. He takes her home and goes in to say hi to Rosanna’s parents. Right after he leaves they hear the roar of gunfire, very close, out front in the street. Lino dies while starting up his car, on his way to play soccer with his friends. 9:30 P.M.: It’s dark, it’s raining, his black Clio looks like all the other black Clios around. Maybe you drive one too, but you didn’t get engaged to a girl from Marianella, that clump of apartment complexes in the line of fire between Secondigliano and Scampia.