Stories and News

A strange girl By Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher She’s crazy. This is what most people think, at first sight. They could stop there, in many, because this is the most fashionable style, nowadays, in the realm of digital hurriedness. A glance is just enough to decide one's destiny and even more. Then someone approaches the still girl who has long since been indefinite, concentrated as absent, kidnapped by something indecipherable with a quick eye, as it has been said. The bravest one tries to get her attention calling her, but it's all useless. Almost everything is, when what is left is all for you, she seems to say with the far and vague body. Is she on the phone? Asks someone else just coming. A collective kidding laugh covers the latter. Do you really believe you're the first to have thought it? Where do you think you've lived, so far? Among people so fearless to prefer surprise instead of public acceptance? Speaking of courage, that is alleged one...

Stories and News No. 1099 The Orbán government has proposed a series of laws to the Hungarian parliament that will justify the detention of individuals and organizations deemed to be in favour of illegal immigration, being accountable for providing legal, medical or any kind of support to people without citizenship. Dear Hungarian patriots, And all of you too, inhabitants of the world, who boldly defend the sacred borders from pure blood’s polluters . The mathematics of the unlikely theorems is enriched with a further fundamental axiom. That is a new subject, in fact, and it therefore needs continuous paradoxical updates. As you all well know, the old, as well as radical chic, science of numbers , based its formulas on a now overrated scheme: the good-hearted hypothesis, demonstration and thesis sequence. On the contrary, thanks to the diligent assiduousness of social networks, the arithmetic of delirium writes its principles through popular approval. In fact, as the fi...

Stories and News No. 1098 According to a grotesquely contingency the most intolerant governments on the issue of immigration used to declare themselves as the most religious ones, including the nascent Italian administration and its possible prime minister . A few days ago, I entered the Sanctuary of Rivotorto , in Umbria, and inside the so-called Hovel of Saint Francis of Assisi , despite knowing it, I found myself reading again the Canticle of the Creatures , but with my present eyes. I am not a believer, I say it immediately, but those words seemed to me further holy, when adapted to the need of many, that is, too many systematically forgotten human beings... Be praised, my Lord, and likewise all human creatures, especially the stranger , who is our brother in the light of the day as the night, and through him you may enrich us. So, he is precious and bearer of a great gift: it symbolizes the value of not being the only favorites of an extraordinarily unjust father. Praised...

Michelle's confession By Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher Here, I am. Soon, you’ll have to go, Michelle, very soon, you must be honest, now. Okay, I'm a potential killer, but I luckily survived the death penalty, and maybe, for a pinch of typically feminine stubbornness. Well done, I said it, I'm happy, now. But that's not enough, isn’t it? I have to say it all, I have to do it, I need to remember and confess everything. I wanted to kill you, I admit, I tried many times to do it and I was just a whisker from getting you out of my life. You look at me with that absent face, with your head elsewhere, your heart on the other side, and every single cell of your body on its own business, as if being there, at that precise moment was not the priority. How much you made me suffer, you have no idea, you do not have it. How many disappointments I have had to endure, because of you, and your absolute inability to obtain true results, those that make the family happy...

Stories and News No. 1097 Remember Savita Halappanavar . Remember, out there, in Ireland, when you’ll be able and have to write the end for the inhuman, unjust and paradoxical parable that pretends to put the nascent future before the one who made it with absolute trust and uncontrollable love. Above all, robbing her of the maternal - but you may also read as sacrosanct , right to choose... Remember, also the meaning of the words that issued the cruel sentence: We cannot make an abortion - that is, dear woman, you will die in pain , because that’s what our belief imposes on us . This is the law, this is the principle. Tomorrow must be protected in any case, at the cost of torturing and even slaughtering the past. Even when that fateful, awaited day will never see light. Remember all that, dear Ireland, and while you're listening, join us, interested spectator. Nonetheless, don’t stop at this, so that it is not only the present at stake. Because this rooted violence,...

New shoes By Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher "Steve..." the girl calls him after turning around, no longer finding her boyfriend next to her. ”Come here, it's raining..." The young man - telling the truth no longer so, is motionless on the sidewalk, a step away from the specially tended porch on the glittering window of a jewelry store. "Do you hear me?" Mary insists, wearing her jacket reluctantly, as many betrayed that afternoon by a deceptive illusion of spring. ”Come here, you stupid. What are you doing, still there?” Still, yes it is. Steve is still, with his bowed head, indifferent to the raindrops that gradually crowd around his neck, decided to slide down his back and lay the foundations for a sturdy cold. "What are you staring at?" Asks the worried girlfriend. Steve raises his head and looks her, drawing a complex smile on his face. "Are you laughing?" No, he seems to reply. I remember. I remember those comrade...

Stories and News No. 1096 Where nothing is. Where there is nothing , fourteen years old Wesal Sheikh Khalil has died. She was one of over sixty victims in Gaza last Monday while Israeli snipers fired tens of thousands of protesters along the perimeter fence. Where there is still now a whole nothingness , a young girl had already made plans for her funeral: "If they were to shoot me during the protests at the border, Mom, bury me in the exact spot where I died, or maybe, next to my grandfather's grave." Because where there is nothing , Wesal thought death was better than her life, that’s what her mother said the day after her youngest daughter’s disappearance. This happens where nothing was and still is. Because where there is only emptiness , with an unprecedented ease, you could give love. Almost as much as that which allows you to sell hatred and resentment, masking them for the latter. In fact, the power of nothing in the hands of others is immense. Eve...

Stories and News No. 1095 Dear Earth, here is Jalousie , Haitian slums. Beyond the boundaries of world’s madness, we live by vocation, we survive by necessity. We write true stories, for the sake of those waiting for us, outside the horizon that will have the good luck to see the new dawn. After the earthquake, after the evil face that the cruel dice called fate showed us, we are here, together. So, while in your countries your governments cannot even agree on the power gained over hatred and lies, we try to learn how to change the game’s rules. When it will happen, because it will do, don’t thank us. Help us now. We are eighty thousand, in crumbling and fragile houses that are hardly held up, a bit like the empathy that still binds you each other. The hygiene of places intended for living is lacking, and rivers of plastic indifferently flow, accompanying our going as if it were normal. The rooms are emptied of everything except hope. Yet, despite your latitudes you fee...

When my son opened his eyes By Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher Yes, I know, it's wrong. A mother shouldn’t do that to another mother. She should understand. I apologize, I beg her pardon here, on this page, hoping she’ll read it, I can’t do more of that, but it was stronger than me. When she told her daughter loudly that the teacher had complimented her beautiful blue eyes, I couldn’t control myself. I shouldn’t say those dirty words, I know. I say again, I am mortified, but... Is it possible that I always have to understand others? Is there a moment, like a sort of day dedicated to us, mothers of different families, in which the rest of the world must understand us? Let's do that now, then, inside this short story, which has got its favorable outcome the moment I entered the doctor's office to take my Matthew and I found the man standing on the desk trying to do the juggler with his pens. I thought my child had problems… And what problems... What's up...

Stories and News No. 1094 What are nuclear weapons? You have no idea. They are very dangerous stuff, capable of destroying everything and everyone , the fearful souls say. They are the truly no return way, an eternal falling, between dust and darkness , the weakness professionals add. They are naive chemistry’s cursed children, imagined by a servant and deaf science before the only nobility that might give meaning to it, in short, to preserve. This is the only reason to exploit brains and techniques: to safeguard the free gifts discarded upon arrival on this poor planet . That’s what the prophets with soft skin around the heart used to claim. Good words, yes they are, but life is an unprecedented cruel editor that imposes merciless review of our poetic interpretation of the world. You need bigger and firmer hands, that have known the lightness of a lucky birth, but who have also shown a clear temper to become iron in front of the enemy. That's why we offer cold eyes and...

Stories and News No. 1093 The nationalist’s paradox... He says, I'm a rightist , and he yells as well. I’m for everyone in his country , he remarks immediately afterwards. Defending the local product , he adds with renewed vigor, given the results of recent elections. Our values and our culture come first of all , he explains with emphasis. Maybe sheltered by a reassuring keyboard and the convenience of an Ikea armchair, as the table in the kitchen, the bedside ones in the bedroom and all the new shelves that are so nice to put on the pretty little things. Never books, never. Ikea is also Swedish , he observes, Nordic, Aryan and blonde like us... and so on. But they lied, it is pointed out, the meatballs that they have sold until today as a typical dish are Turkish ... He remains banned, with a hanging expression, so his brain, like the laptop hourglass where the user's request imposes a surplus of work. Thus, according to the dialectical rules of modern right-h...

She’s too beautiful By Alessandro Ghebreigziabiher A story on the contrary in quite another universe, where in an overturned world the imperfect reigns, to the detriment of the exceptions... "Catherine, stop crying, come on..." "No, Mom, I can’t..." "Yes, you can, clean your nose and wash your face..." The girl, a step away from eighteen, is sitting on the floor in the bathroom. She raises her head and shows red eyes and mascara’s tears on her face. So, she pulls up and obeys her mother. After drying her face, she starts to stare at the image reflected in the mirror. "It's better, right?" "No, Mom, it's no better at all... I have been hours here trying lots of makeups for tomorrow's party, after spending months studying those damned Youtube video tutorials. I need some special effects... or maybe something magical..." "You're too hard on yourself, Catherine, you have to appreciate yourself more, y...

Stories and News No. 1092 It’s an inevitable phenomenon as not negligible, being angry , you know? Like glaciation and sunset , it concerns everyone, human beings and us, living creatures and each underrated fragment of mother earth, which hosts and tolerates everything. Nevertheless, there is a congenital limit, a boiling point for an iron patience too. Indeed, don’t say that we - ambiguously called beasts , have not had any so far. It was often confused by trivial submissiveness, as it happens to our common propensity to respect the natural constitution’s harmony. A perfect source code which, until proven otherwise, you are also a part of. We don’t hide behind a claw, here and now, and we do confess to begin having serious doubts about it. We haven't yet made public claims, because it would be nothing but a resounding assistance to those conspiracy theorists of the hamsters , who are among the most fervent supporters of the sadist biped ’s alien origins. That's rig...