Small World

You may have heard the news about the massive earthquake in central Italy last night in the mid-sized town of L’Aquila (translation: the Eagle). A city of just under 70,000 people, L’Aquila is a cosmopolitan center of fashion and style. For such a small town, it was becoming a tourist attraction off the beaten path, a suitable alternative to the larger , better-known cities in Italy. But in a single evening, four-story buildings were quickly compressed to the height of a single story. Whole buildings were completely lost while, unjustly, one standing next door would survive. How sad, you must have thought, and perhaps you wondered how the citizens would make do.

Let me share my own perspective, because it was not too long ago that my wife, Marie, and I walked the streets of L’Aquila, imagining it as a place where we could retire. A place where we met family and made new friends. A place inextricably linked to my ancestry.

And tonight my heart breaks for what was lost, wiped out by the capricious shifts of the earth’s mantle, and stands in fear of what we might learn over the next few days.

My cousin Antoinette called me this morning and asked if I had heard the news. When I said no, there was a seemingly long pause. That is code in most families for, “I have bad family news to share with you,” as opposed to a national tragedy. After we both drew a suitably long breath, she said, “There was a major earthquake in L’Aquila.” And that brief statement prompted the next fearful question: “How is our family?”

After resolving with Toni to try to learn how our families are faring, I went into the kitchen, where I found a note from Marie. It was obvious that she chose not to wake me with the news; better to be depressed with a full night’s rest. “There was a MAJOR earthquake in L’Aquila,” she wrote. “We have to find out how Benedetta, Pasquina, Laura and Rosella are.”

Benedetta, Pasquina and Laura are my second cousins, whom we have come to love dearly from hospitable visits and correspondence. But Rosella… well, she was a story unto herself. She is the aunt of my friend Piero, an American marketer of marine goods. I met her only 18 months ago on a trip to Italy. She had come to the U.S. as a teenager to help care for the newborn Piero, and during that time came to love all things American. Even today, she wishes someone could open a Dunkin’ Donuts in Italy, and Piero regularly sends her Folgers coffee. When I asked her what she remembered from American television (which taught her the English language), she said, “Well, I remember that it takes too hands to handle a Whopper!”

When I knew that we were returning to Italy, I phoned her and emailed her to arrange to meet her in L’Aquila. It didn’t matter that I was a complete stranger to her. I was her Piero’s friend, and that made me family as far as she was concerned. We walked into the family shoe store with cousin Laura in tow, and when she turned to see my face, which she knew only from her computer screen, she threw her arms around me like a long-lost love. Soon she and her husband, Giancarlo, were taking us through the streets of L’Aquila, visiting bars and cafes. When I realized how much money she and Laura’s husband, Marco, were shelling out, I pulled out a large Euro myself, trying to sneak it to the barkeep. You may have thought I had pulled out a Beretta. “Your money’s no good here,” the men croaked in the best English they could muster. “You can pay when we come to Philadelphia!” Rosella explained to me later that it was a matter of honor. “We don’t want you to talk about us when you go home,” she said.” We don’t want you to say, ‘I went all the way to Italy to visit them, and they wouldn’t even give me a drink of water!’”

Soon I met Vincenzo, the local restaurateur, and of course, my money was no good there either. Nor could Laura and Marco pay. By extension, THEY were family, too.

Later, Laura and I walked together, catching up as cousins do. As we passed a local photo shop, she told me that she wanted to visit the proprietor, Mario, a man from her village of Fiugni. We went in, and Laura had a conversation with him in Italian. (It was uncharacteristic of her to exclude me through language, but for some reason, she did this time.) She explained to him in Italian that I was visiting from America, and he asked where I was from, as he had family in America.

I surprised Mario when I asked in Italian, “Where is your family?” We were both surprised when he answered, “Philadelphia.”

“Provengo da Philadelphia. Dove a Philadelphia è la vostra famiglia?” (I come from Philadelphia. Where in Philadelphia is your family,” I asked. He answered “Levick Street.”

“ I vivo una volta vicino alla via di Levick. Che è il vostro family' nome ?” (“I once lived near Levick Street. What was your family’s name?”)

And when he said it was “DiMario,” I responded in Italian, “Were they Eugenio and Marietta DiMario? Because I knew them when I was growing up. They died many years ago, but I know their family.” And based on that chance conversation, I was able to connect Mario DiMario, a photo shop owner in a L’Aquila, with his only remaining relative in America.

Today, I am haunted by these connections. As of this writing, I don’t know where Laura and Marco and my other cousins are. Are they in one of the makeshift tent cities? Another cousin in a different part of Italy informs me that they are probably okay, though they may have suffered damage to their homes. But we have no details, and we have failed to connect with them by phone or email.

I was pleased to learn from Piero that Rosella and her 86-year-old father survived the earthquake, and they are now safely sheltered by family on the Adriatic Coast. The two-hour car ride to L’Aquila was made more dangerous by the fact that the “Superstrada,” the futuristic highway that connects the Adriatic Coast with central Italy, was damaged by the quake. In a similar episode, Marie’s cousin was able to find his daughter who was studying at the University of L’Aquila and take her back home (coincidentally, also to the Adriatic Coast). But I still don’t know for sure about the conditions of Laura, her mother, Benedetta, and her sister, Pasquina.

Nor do I know how this will affect the work of the sisters’ husbands. Or the education of their children. And what must be rebuilt? What storefronts are lost forever? Which artwork will never be replaced? The cupola of the basilica that we admired in L’Aquila’s piazza has been lost. Has faith in the future been lost, too? And what spirits must be repaired as decades of aspirations and achievements have all come tumbling down?

Electrons circle the globe instantaneously, carrying images of far-away events, and we believe that we have empathy with the characters that flicker across our screens of several sorts. We also take for granted that our media will reach out and touch someone, anyone, we so choose. But tonight my faith in our media is shaken, as I can feel their inadequacies. I have walked the streets of L’Aquila myself, and I understand the many qualities that are now irretrievably lost to nature’s power — qualities that are not apparent to the casual viewers of news reports. And until I am assured by the words and the voices of my loved ones, I am unimpressed by the reach of satellites, cell phones and emails. It is the content of our media, not their capacities, that give them their power. For those of us who are communicators, that is our challenge: to bridge that gulf and not be so arrogant as to believe that our media by themselves can do the job. It is a rude lesson, but one worth remembering as we strive to tell so many stories in this era of recession and unemployment, politics and punditry, and diplomacy and war.