Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

It seems like a film you’ve already seen, a story you’ve already heard. You’ve read the story of a young man with almost the same name, Attilio Romanò, killed in the cell phone store where he worked. You’ve seen how they deal coke inside the “Vele” apartment complex in Scampia, how they kill without the least drama, how they betray one another. The scene from Gomorrah in which the kids are trained to be shot at really upset you. Those kids are no longer ten, twelve years old, though. Now they’re the ones doing the shooting, and the dying.

But you’re done with it, you can live with yourself. And I’m done with it too. I wrote a book; they made a film from it. It’s my fault if I keep screaming now, if it feels to me as if no one is willing to listen anymore. My fault if the articles I keep writing about the blood spilled in the cocaine markets fall on deaf ears. People can’t keep their attention trained on the same scene for so many years; there are other things that are more important, or simply new. My fault if permission is denied to film the fictional TV show based on my first book, Gomorrah, on site, with a big protest banner that plays on the name of the town: “SCAMPIAmoci da Saviano,” “Let’s flee from Saviano.” And posters all over the place that shout: “He who takes advantage of Naples is guilty of everything!” I bathed the ears of the world in Naples’s blood, but in Scampia nothing has changed. So I’m guilty. Guilty of the new killers whose bodies, brimming with the savagery of youth bolstered by cocaine, go out and murder the umpteenth relative of some affiliate from a rival group. Guilty of the millions in profit for which all those lives continue to be erased. Guilty even of victims like Lino and Andrea.

The entire neighborhood, and even a wider swath of the city, gathered around them. Thousands screamed their innocence; they didn’t abandon them — they accompanied them in their final voyage, which followed the final injustice. It’s not true that mafia wars only generate fear, cynicism, omertà, and indifference. They also generate a special, primitive empathy, because you’re forced to see yourself in Lino, in Andrea, in Rosanna, in their parents, siblings, friends, and colleagues. Maybe you too have a cousin who is a cousin of one of the “scissionisti,” or secessionists, or to one of Girati, as one of the groups that broke away from the winning cartel in the feud against the Di Lauro clan is called. Your turn could be next. It could have been your son or daughter that December 5, 2012, when Luigi Lucenti, known as ’ o Cinese , the Chinese, tried to escape an ambush by holing up in the courtyard of the Eugenio Montale nursery school in Scampia, while the children were rehearsing a Christmas play. He was supposed to reopen the Cianfa di Cavallo open-air drug market on via Ghisleri, and they killed him. If it had happened just a little later, when the children who don’t stay for lunch are picked up by their mothers or grandmothers, a few nursery schoolchildren very likely would have been killed. You could have lost a child, a wife, a mother. It went okay for you that time; now you just have to worry about your child’s nightmares, or maybe his wetting the bed just when you’d managed to potty train him. Thank heavens, you keep telling yourself, nothing happened. But it’s not enough. So when the occasion arises you find the energy to react, to join forces, to shout along with the others that the blood that flowed was of someone who deserved to live, not to die.

Those screams are about Naples, for Naples. The body of Naples that closes over the wound. Despite everything I’m relieved to know that this happens too, a flow of vital energy that pours from the flood of rage and fear and not just from the spastic contraction with which the intrusive element that went down the wrong way is spit out. Yet the logic by which I am guilty is not all that different from the logic that drives the people in the street to rebel. It’s the logic of who’s in and who’s out. In and out is not determined merely by a certificate of residency. It is determined by the experience of the feud. Only those who live through it can understand; only those who go through it are included, are in.

I tried to find a way to live with the knowledge that, on the one hand, what I have to say about Naples echoes less and less no matter how loudly I scream, and the more painful knowledge that my words are rejected as illegitimate by Naples itself. And so I have spent years studying and chasing the trail that leads out from Scampia and Casal di Principe, to broaden my horizons, to let my investigation take in the whole world. This seems the only escape route available to me, the only way forward.

What are those Scampia area murders compared to those in Ciudad Juárez? How much is the only open-air drug supermarket in Europe worth in comparison with the trafficking managed by the Calabrian families? An ’ndranghetista might not even bother to respond. Wiretappings reveal that the Calabrians despise the Neapolitans. They butcher each other too often and for too little. I hear a laugh coming from Aspromonte. Carried on the wind toward the Tyrrhenian, it reaches Mount Vesuvius and it descends from there.

The Neapolitans despise me more than the Calabrians despise them. But I’ve never really left Naples. I am always there. To speak about Naples is to betray it a little, but it is in this betrayal that I find my home. The only home, at least for now, that is allowed me.

For me, the pain of the blood that fills the piazzas, the pain of the names that make the lists of the dead grow longer is a sting that doesn’t go away, even if I blow on it as hard as I can. A pain that doesn’t heal even if I put iodine tincture on it, even if I have it stitched up. This pain has to do with me, for all things that cause us the deepest pain have to do with ourselves, like our flesh, our children, the most untouchable parts of ourselves. All I can do, until someone or something kills me, is to keep betting on my number.

A Neapolitan doctor I know finally gave in to his son’s pleading and gave the boy a dog. A small dog, relentlessly friendly, with a sweet face. One day he asked his son to go out onto the balcony with him, he had a surprise for him, and in the meantime he went over the little speech he’d prepared in his head. A dog is a delicate creature, you have to respect him, train him, you have to be patient but severe, and above all you have to make him understand that you are the leader of the pack. Liberty, sure, but with hard and fast rules. Necessary preconditions, especially as we’re talking about a Jack Russell terrier, a breed that hunters use even today to flush out foxes. Dealing with the dog’s daring and explosive temperament would prove to be an important undertaking for his son; it would force him to face one of the basic challenges for a human puppy: to go beyond appearances. Behind those puppy eyes and silly demands to be pet and played with is an unpredictable character that needs to be disciplined.

“Do you understand?”

“Sure, Papà.”

Things worked out well. The boy cleaned up after the dog, walked him, played with him, taught him some basic commands: “Stay!” “Sit!” “Heel!” His father swelled with pride, even though his son was sneezing too much and his eyes were always red. He’s a doctor, he knows what those symptoms mean: allergy to dog fur. They had no choice. The dog, who had already become a full member of the family, had to go. But for the son the separation would be excruciatingly painful, and it risked undoing everything that they had achieved together: the education of a young boy through the education of a young animal. From now on the child could either fill the emptiness by clinging to his grief and the memory of shattered happiness, or he could overcome the wrenching loss, thus undergoing the most difficult test a human puppy must face: getting used to loss.