Orianna Fallaci. I think I'm in love. She knows:
It's when she gets down to local basics I'm totally captivated. I expect this is what really drove the French PCers and their islamist allies mad:
"However, I want to give you the conclusion of my argument. A conclusion that will not please many, seeing that to defend one?s own culture is becoming a mortal sin in Italy. And seeing that intimidated by the improper word ?racist?, everyone is keeping quiet like rabbits.
I don?t go and put up tents in Mecca. I don?t go to sing Our Father or Hail Marys before the tomb of Mohamed. I don?t go and pee on the marble walls of their Mosques, I don?t do cacca at the feet of their minaret. When I find myself in their countries (something from which I have never derived any pleasure) I never forget that I am a guest and a foreigner. I am careful to not offend them with my dress or my gestures or the way I act which for us is normal and for them inadmissible. I treat them with due respect, with due courtesy. I apologize if by some absent mindedness or ignorance I break one of their rules or superstitions. I wrote this scream of pain and disdain while having in my mind's eye scenes which did not always give me apocalyptic fits. Sometimes I would see the image, for me symbolic (therefore infuriating), of the big tent with which one summer ago the Somali Muslims disfigured, smeared with shit and profaned for three months piazza Del Duomo in Florence. My city.
A tent raised to curse and condemn and insult the Italian government that was hosting them but would not give them the necessary documents to run around Europe and would not let them bring into Italy their hordes of their relatives. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, pregnant in-laws and even the relatives of their relatives. A tent raised next to the beautiful building of the Archbishop?s residence on whose sidewalk they kept their shoes and slippers which in their countries they line up outside of their Mosques. And with their shoes and slippers, the bottles of water with which they wash their feet before prayer. A tent raised in front of Brunelleschi?s cupola and next to the Baptistery with Ghiberti?s doors of paradise. A tent, furnished like a primitive apartment: chairs, tables, chaise-lounges, mattresses to sleep on and to copulate, ranges to cook the food and stench up the piazza with the smoke and smell. Thanks to the usual unconscionable Enel who cares about our works of art as much as it cares for our countryside, the tent was furnished with electricity. Thanks to a tape recorder, enriched by the coarse ugly voice of a muezzin who punctually exhorted the faithful, deafening the infidels, and suffocated the sound of the bells. To add to this, the yellow lines of urine that profaned the marble of the Baptistery. (By gosh! They have a long "spray" these sons of Allah! How did they manage to hit their objective, which is separated from the street by a protective fence, hence almost two meters distant from their urinary apparatus?) With the yellow lines of urine, and the stench of the excrements the huge door of San Salvatore was blocked and the Bishop unable to use it. The exquisite romanic styled church (built in the year one thousand) which is right behind Piazza del Duomo and that the sons of Allah had transformed into a shit-hole. You know it well.
You know it well, because I was the one who called you about it, begged you to speak to your editors, remember? I called the mayor too. I will concede that he came to my house, politely listened to me, agreed with me, said ?you?re right, absolutely right? but did not take the tent down. He either forgot about it, or was unable to. I even called the Minister of the Foreign Affairs, who was a Florentine, in fact one of those Florentines who speak with a heavy accent, even though he was not involved in the matter. I concede he was also very polite and kind. He listened and let me finish. He agreed with me and told me I was right. But he did not lift a finger to remove the tent. As to the sons of Allah that urinated on the Baptistery and defecated in San Salvatore al Vescovo, he quickly gave in to their demands. (The results as I have ascertained them are that the fathers and the mothers and the brothers and the sisters and uncles and aunts and cousins and pregnant sister-in-laws now live where they wanted to live). That is in Florence and other European cities. Therefore I changed my methods. I telephoned a likable policeman that is in charge of the office of internal security and I told him: ?Dear officer, I am not a politician. When I say I will do something, I do it. Further, I am acquainted with war and I am knowledgeable of certain things. If by tomorrow the fucking tent is not down, I will burn it. I swear on my honor that I will burn it, not even a regiment of cops would be able to stop me, and for this I want to be arrested. Brought to jail in handcuffs. This will ensure that I end up on the front page of all the papers?. Well, being more intelligent than all the others, in a few hours he had the tent taken down. In place of the tent all that was left was an immense and disgusting stain of filth. However it was a hollow victory. It was hollow because it had no effect or influence on all the other acts of desecration and destruction with which for many years they have been humiliating and wounding what had been the capital of art, beauty and culture. I am not discouraged at all.
The other arrogant guests of the city: the Albanians, Sudanese, Bengalis, Tunisians, Algerians, Pakistani, Nigerians who with much fervor contribute to the commerce of drugs and prostitution, which apparently is not prohibited by the Koran. Oh, yes, they are all where they were before my policeman took down the tent. Inside the piazzale of the Uffizi, at the foot of Giotto?s Tower. In front of the Loggia of the Orcagna, around the Logge of the Porcellino, in front of the national Library, at the entrance of the museums. On Ponte Vecchio where every so often they knife or shoot each other. They are on the Lugarni where they demanded and obtained municipal financing (yes sir, they finance them). In the churchyard of Saint Lawrence where they get drunk with wine and beer and other alcoholics, mass of hypocrites, and where they yell obscenities at women. (Last summer in that churchyard they even shouted obscenities at me, an elderly woman. It goes without saying that it went badly for them. It went very badly. One of them is still lying there simpering over his genitals). In the historic streets where they camp with the pretext of selling their wares. For wares, understand counterfeit pocketbooks and luggage which have registered trademarks, therefore illegal goods. They also have photo murals, pencils, African statues that ignorant tourists believe were sculptured by Bernini, and things to sniff. (I know my rights, hissed one of them that I saw selling sniffing products on Ponte Vecchio). If the citizen dares protest, or say to them ?go exercise those rights in your own home?, then the dreaded cry ?Racist, Racist? is heard. If a police officer dares to say to them ?Mr. Allah?s son, your excellency, would you mind moving over a an inch so that people can get by?? They eat him up alive. They assault him with knives. At the very least, they insult his mother and his ancestors, along with the cry ?Racist! Racist!). The people put up with this, resigned. They don?t react not even if I shout at them what my father used to scream during the time of Fascism: ?Don?t you care anything about dignity? Don?t you have a little pride? You mass of sheeps?.
It happens in other cities too, I know. In Turin, for example. That Turin that made Italy and that now doesn?t even look like an Italian city. It looks like Algeria, Dacca, Nairobi, Damascus, Beirut. In Venice, where the pigeons of St. Mark?s square have been replaced by carpets with wares, even Othello would feel out of place there. In Genova, that Genova where the marvelous buildings that Rubens admired so much, have been seized by them and they are wasting away like beautiful women that have been raped. In Rome, that Rome where the cynicism of politics lies, protects every color in the hope of obtaining their future vote and where the Pope is protecting them. (Your Holiness, why in the name of the only God, don?t you take them into the Vatican? On the condition that they don?t smear with shit the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo?s sculptures, Raffael?s frescos, of course). Now I?m the one that does not understand. Instead of sons of Allah, in Italy they call them ?foreign workers?. Or else, ?needed laborers?. I have no doubt that in fact some of them do work. The Italians have become such a leisure class. They go vacationing in the Seychelles, they come to New York to shop at Bloomingdales, they are ashamed to be laborers or farmers, and you can no longer associate them with the proletariat. But those whom I?m talking about, what kind of laborers are they? What work do they do? How do they supplement an fill the labor shortage in those areas where the ex-proletariat Italian refuses to labor? Camping in the city pretending to sell their knick-knacks. Loitering about and raping our monuments? Praying five times a day? Further there?s one more thing I don?t understand. If they really are so poor, where do they get the money to travel to Italy? Where do they get the ten million liras per head (minimum ten million) necessary to purchase a ticket? Is it by any chance Osama Bin Laden with the motive of launching a conquest not only of souls, but also one of territory?
Well, even if he does not finance them, I am not at ease with the present situation. Even if our guests are absolutely innocent, even if among them there isn?t a single individual who want to destroy the Tower of Pisa or the Tower of Giotto, not one that wants to impose a dress code on me, not a single one that wants me burned at the stake of a new inquisition, their presence still alarms me. It fills me with foreboding and ill ease. Those who react to this situation with optimism or taking it lightly are wrong. Above all, those who compare this migratory wave to the one that took place at the end of the eighteenth century the beginning of the nineteenth, are especially mistaken. I will now tell you why they are wrong."
....
"I am saying that in our country there is no room for the muezzin, for the minarets, for the false abstainers, for their fucking Middle Ages, for their fucking chador. And if there were, I would not give it to them. Because it would be the same as throwing away Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raffaello, the Renaissance, the Risorgimento, the freedom that for better or for worse we have achieved, our Mother Land. It would mean giving them Italy gift wrapped. I will not give it to them."
No wonder this is selling like fresh brioche. |
