Fiammetta Borsellino: “The future passes from here”

We republish the interview on Fiammetta Borsellino in the day to which the day of the high school exam was proposed a track that starts from an article published in 1992 on Epoca, the young people, my hope, written by the judge Paolo Borsellino, his father, killed by the mafia in that summer. The sons of the magistrate said they were moved.

At the time when the regions of Italy vine more and more to red, and the total contagues exceeded one million cases, Fiammetta Borsellino leaves the house every morning With the mask to accompany Felicita, 10 years old, and future, 7, at the Steinerian school who “even in a complex reality like Palermo, exists”. It seems almost summer, even if we are in November, in the Kalsa district, a few meters from the house where, on January 19, 1940, his father Paolo was born. Although his life was shocked on July 19, 1992 by the massacre in via D’Amelio, he never thought of abandoning this place. «It was a city that dad loved viscerally. At the beginning he didn’t like it, and that was why he said, then he was in love with it. “

How do you spend your days?
«There are the restrictions for the pandemic, in the evening you don’t get out. The day is completely absorbed by the commitments of the girls, between school, sports activities and music. Now we are reorganizing ourselves. If it is possible, on the weekend with my husband we will continue to go to the house in the middle of the woods in Cefalù, an oasis of well -being ».

Are you afraid of the virus?
«I follow the rules and common sense. We had sick acquaintances, but fortunately no dead. The background serenity I have, derives from the fact that I have lived strong and painful experiences. Each of us has a personal relationship with death ».

She too managed to greet her father, just like the relatives of Covid’s sick people fail to greet them if they can’t do it in the hospital.
«That July 19th I was on vacation in Indonesia with a family of friends, and I always thought that if I had not been there I would probably have died there, because I would also have gone to find the grandmother in via D’Amelio, with dad, after the sea. That he had died I knew it instead from a phone call. For this reason I understand well who sees the parents go away, and he loses them without being able to embrace them. In addition, my father was 52 years old: we didn’t have much time together. Among other things, it is a penalty that I still feel now, I am living it with my sister Lucia, who lives in Rome. He has a serious illness, he is immunosuppressed and I can endanger it, I can’t stay close to her. I saw it in September after many months, today move is even more complicated ».

What relationship do you have with death?
«Since I was a child, she has always been one of the family. Seeing my father with the escort, seeing his friends, colleagues, journalists die … he meant that for me it was an always present thought. At the same time I internalized what my father said, that is, that we must still live. Fear is a human fact, but you have to make strength and go on, because fear does not become an obstacle ».

Don’t fear anything?
“Having lived a climate of perennial loss, I can only say that my father was good at taking things irony, joining us on, to make us live a normality in the anrmality of the 70s and 80s. Today’s fears are mostly concerns about the future of children ».

For some years he has started to shoot schools and universities, to ask for the truth about his father’s death. Isn’t it afraid that, after her, nobody talks about it anymore?
“More than fear is suffering, the pain that can cause me the idea that everything ends in oblivion, in silence. That this can become yet another Italian tragedy that will most likely remain in the mystery. I am obviously referring to the search for truth, because if we talk about memory, the streets and squares that are named after my father, the schools of the schools, that is and is very alive. But that’s not enough. The search for justice must be next to memory, and justice passes through truth. If there is no truth, it is like making Paolo Borsellino die twice, a state that cannot shed light on these wounds has no future and have no future even our children. It has no possibility of progress, which passes above all to shed light on serious facts that have marked all the Italian people ».

His life, after that 1992, had two phases. A first part of which not much is known about her, then 25 years after the massacre became more visible, to ask, in fact, the truth.
«I did my duty, what my father always said to do. At 19, my duty was to study, because through culture the mafia is fought. And to create the foundations to grow, to be mature men and women. I didn’t get stuck at that event, like my brothers. “

His sister Lucia gave a university exam a few hours after his father’s death.
“It was precisely the best way to put my father’s teachings into practice.”

After studying, what did he do?
«After graduating in law, I worked 17 years of the Municipality of Palermo as an official of educational services. With the birth of my first daughter, however, I chose to change my life and dedicate myself totally to her. Now that instead the girls are older I have changed life again. And now that I am more aware, after years to follow the hearings and study the processes, I decided to commit myself to ask what really happened. I couldn’t have done it at 19 ».

If he had the certainty that the truth replied, what question would he do?
«The sentences tell us who was the armed hand of the massacre, who materially, belonging to the criminal organization called the mafia or Cosa Nostra, killed. What is not known today is the truth about that fact, what were the minds that wanted this to happen and therefore made a fundamental contribution to the implementation of the massacre. So if I had to ask a question, this would presuppose a contribution of honesty from the institutions. I would ask that these were clear and not reticent, because it was painful to see policemen and magistrates in court defending their position without making any contribution to the reconstruction of the facts ».

Many are now saying to the processes “I don’t remember”, “I wasn’t there”, “28 years have passed”. Is there still those who know?
«Yes, there is absolutely. They are not all dead, and in any case people do not act alone, the high top could not fail to know. Of course, the more the weather passes the more the truth moves away, every day that passes the tests are crumbled ».

After the four trials on the massacre, she denounced the sidetrack at every location. Has something changed?
“The” Borsellino Quater “ended in 2017 with a sentence that sanctioned the sidetrack. A new trial has opened against some policemen who had taken a good pace, but the pandemic slowed everything. For the magistrates, however, the storage was requested, we have appealed and we are waiting for ».

What is courage for you?
«I think it is the ability to go on despite the obstacles that can be a brake on ideals or projects. Courage is to go against the current, the ability to tell about stories other than those circulating ».

Do you feel similar to your father?
«We had a special relationship, I was the little girl at home, even if we then had our disagreements. I remember in particular a bestial quarrel and a tension that lasted several weeks because he did not let me go to a concert by Duran Duran for which they had given me tickets. Of the character of dad came to me a lot, especially the serenity of talking about painful things, of knowing how to share them. He was also a little frivolous, he loved irony, beauty, playing with children, provoking them, teaching him for playing the swear words, making the child himself, being goliardic, arrogant. He was a dog who had no masters, I always said. My brother Manfredi has more that way of doing, playful. I don’t think we wanted to emulate him, but I believe that we absorbed a lot of him, the few years that we lived together were very intense, and are equivalent to a whole life ».

What did his father tell his daughters to his daughters?
“I don’t need to tell, since they were born they grew up with” bread and grandfather Paolo “. We talk about it so much, we tell how if it were next to us, there are photos, books that refer to the grandparents. My daughters have always known everything, both the happy and painful part. They are serene, even if they have the sadness for not having been able to know him, and they are above all proud to have had a grandfather who was also an example ».

Why did you call them happiness and future?
“Felicita is a name linked to my father, who, being a lover of literature – loved Dante who quoted by heart, was self -taught of the German language -, among the many he also loved Guido Gozzano. In particular, poetry La Signorina Felicita, or happiness. He had made me learn it by heart and also made me show me, in front of the others, he liked it as I recited it. When I discovered, at childbirth, which was a female, this was one of the chosen names. Futura, on the other hand, is called this because it is the name of a song by Lucio Dalla that we particularly love ».

Liliana Segre, at 90, decided to end her public testimony. Have you ever thought about stopping?
«For now I have not given myself a deadline, I don’t know how I will be in five or six years, you have to stop if you are no longer good. I had difficult and tired moments. I had gone from being a hyperpressant mother to an absent, I was always away from home, I turned around Italy, I always had the suitcase in hand and I was always at an airport. I looked for a balance. It is not easy to tell your personal and painful facts in front of an audience. On the one hand it gives you infinite well -being, on the other a huge effort ».

Can you hold back tears?
«It happened that I cried, but in 90 percent of cases I find myself managing the tears of others and I can maintain calm. It is as if a determination came out, as if you understand that you have to talk about it with a smile, only in this way can you breach, to transmit the strength of this story. If you take it for what it is, it generates despair. Instead placed in a decisive way, with energy, it is better, it generates the will to go on. And perhaps also because he was crying him as a defeat. I am convinced that we, in the end, with our questions, we go out winners. They are others who have died. They are still alive, but they have died inside ».