It was August 5, 2015, when Andrea Soldi, 45 suffering from schizophrenia, was picked up from a bench in Piazza Umbria, in Turin, where he liked to spend his days. Three policemen forcibly took him, causing a lateral compression on his neck that caused his brain to lack oxygen. Andrea died of hypoxia. What happened next was explained in the news, but Andrea’s life, his vision of the world, his illness were told in a book written by Matteo Spicuglia, RAI journalist and tutor of the master in Journalism of Turin.
«The two of us are one», Published by Add Editore, has been in bookstores since yesterday.
Spicuglia had followed the case as a reporter: he went to hearings, followed the investigations, spoke with Renato, Andrea’s father, and with Cristina, his sister. “In one of these hearings I hear Cristina talking to her father about her brother’s diary: there the light bulb went on, it was a story that deserved to be deepened”, he explains to Futura.news.
“Out of curiosity, I asked Renato and Cristina for information about this diary, but they didn’t want to tell me anything, also because the trial was still in progress, and I preferred not to insist. In one of the last hearings I ask them to see us at home and I ask again to be able to see the diary, initially with the idea of making us a report for the news. They replied that they would think about it, and after two weeks they give me the diary, which impressed me enormously and inspired me to write a book ».
In his diary, Andrea Soldi told about himself from the first crises, felt when, in 1990, at the age of twenty, he was doing military service, he described the relationship with his family and his hallucinations, reported the letters he had written to friends and relatives. Twenty years of life, until the disease, which became more serious, prevented him from continuing to write.
“In these letters all his sweetness comes out, the meaning of life and spiritual depth”, adds Spicuglia. “His father finally understands that his son did not hate him at all, indeed he loved him, but he could only express it through writing. Behind the image of a boy who spent his days on a bench talking to himself in an excited way was hiding a person capable of expressing beauty in fragility, with a depth of thought and feelings, of vision on the value of life, family and friendship. It was like putting together the pieces that 25 years of illness had upset ”.
In addition to Andrea’s diary, Spicuglia drew inspiration from conversations with his family and from court documents to write the book: a job that lasted three years. “The hope is that this story will serve to ensure that this experience becomes everyone’s heritage and that what happened to Andrea does not happen again never again”.
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