Anywhere and everywhere
There are spaces where democracies lose their founding principles based on respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
In Italy, the Trieste's Silos is one of these. Like the entire city, it’s the perfect place to recognize the traces of the tragedies that shocked the 20th century. From here, in December 1943, the first train left Italy for Auschwitz. After the war, it was one of the buildings where people fleeing Istria and Dalmatia used to live.
Today, refugees who survived the Game — this is the name mockingly given by migrants to the dangerous attempt to cross the borders along the Balkan route — live in that place. The Silos' grand arches were built to let the icy Bora wind pass through; the roof was burned to let the rain drip down; the brambles in the vast yard are there to protect the rats.
While in the Silos some Afghan asylum seekers prepare a “Qorma” — a spicy chicken stew — beside, in the “World Square”, Lorena Fornasir — who, together with her husband, founded the "Linea d'ombra" NGO — with some volunteers take care of the wounds, sprains, trauma and hunger of the last ones who, often after dozens of failures, have made it across the border.
Those bodies, mostly Afghans, are the visible aftermath of two decades of war in their land. 2 trillion dollars to expel the Talibans from the country and, twenty years later, hand it back to them. Seventy thousand civilians killed, nine million refugees, and ninety-two percent of inhabitants undernourished are embodied in those suffering people who left Greece to reach Italy across the Balkans on foot.
The atmosphere is lively in the “World Square”: some citizens help the volunteers, others play volleyball with refugees, some offer food. However, the “World Square” does not exist anywhere. It is a name given by the activists, like many places absent from official cartographies but present everywhere, reminding us that humanity never ceases to witness absurd, intolerable violence and, at the same time, indestructible, resilient solidarity.