Farewell Gaetano di Vaio, it’s been a true pleasure and a Honour to work with you.... From behind the gates of Naples’ main prison complex ‘Poggioreale’ I could hear cries and loud shouting, I couldn’t understand anything, one can only guess that it was mayhem.
I smile, imagining that the world outside protests for my release, the gangster Gaetano Di Vaio, aka lil’Star. They don’t know I’ve changed yet.
I look around me: there are quite a lot of us being released today, it... Read more
Farewell Gaetano di Vaio, it’s been a true pleasure and a Honour to work with you.
... From behind the gates of Naples’ main prison complex ‘Poggioreale’ I could hear cries and loud shouting, I couldn’t understand anything, one can only guess that it was mayhem.
I smile, imagining that the world outside protests for my release, the gangster Gaetano Di Vaio, aka lil’Star. They don’t know I’ve changed yet.
I look around me: there are quite a lot of us being released today, it looks almost like an amnesty. I recognise six of them, but the other thirty or so I’ve never met before.
They don’t have the faces of old jail birds, they look mostly like bricklayers, carpenters, factory workers. Surely from the ‘Genoa’ wing, where they put those jailed for the very first time.
“You, you...and you...”
The guard points at me and the other six that I more or less know.
He’s chosen the ones that look like crooks, that’s enough to recognise us.
“You come and wait on this side, the others go out first.”
As soon as they open the gate and the first ‘worker’ puts their face outside the door, there’s a cry like at the stadium. Me and the other six, tight in a corner, watch them parade out one by one.
Every time one gets out you can hear the same loud cry.
Once the workers or whatever they are, have all gone out, it’s our turn, the real crooks.
There’s a guy before me, then I’m finally out.
FREEDOM FOR THE WORKERS!!!
It’s written with red spray paint on a massive banner outside the prison entry.
There was a sea of people, hugging the ones that just got out, their comrades, tears streaming from their eyes. By their conversations I understand that they were arrested three days before, during the March protest.
To wait for me there’s only my wife, my son and my mother. While they hug me I look around me: These guys who have done three days inside just because they’ve taken to the streets to ask for work, simply for the right to work, have faces different from mine. The faces of their family and friends are different from those that are now hugging me.
They cry and shout in happiness like those who have gone through a bad time and know that it’s now over.
My wife and mother are silent in their joy. With no tears.
I too am happy: it’s over, I’m out. Yet, one thought overshadows the happiness of the moment:
My face will still be the one of a crook.
... From behind the gates of Naples’ main prison complex ‘Poggioreale’ I could hear cries and loud shouting, I couldn’t understand anything, one can only guess that it was mayhem.
I smile, imagining that the world outside protests for my release, the gangster Gaetano Di Vaio, aka lil’Star. They don’t know I’ve changed yet.
I look around me: there are quite a lot of us being released today, it looks almost like an amnesty. I recognise six of them, but the other thirty or so I’ve never met before.
They don’t have the faces of old jail birds, they look mostly like bricklayers, carpenters, factory workers. Surely from the ‘Genoa’ wing, where they put those jailed for the very first time.
“You, you...and you...”
The guard points at me and the other six that I more or less know.
He’s chosen the ones that look like crooks, that’s enough to recognise us.
“You come and wait on this side, the others go out first.”
As soon as they open the gate and the first ‘worker’ puts their face outside the door, there’s a cry like at the stadium. Me and the other six, tight in a corner, watch them parade out one by one.
Every time one gets out you can hear the same loud cry.
Once the workers or whatever they are, have all gone out, it’s our turn, the real crooks.
There’s a guy before me, then I’m finally out.
FREEDOM FOR THE WORKERS!!!
It’s written with red spray paint on a massive banner outside the prison entry.
There was a sea of people, hugging the ones that just got out, their comrades, tears streaming from their eyes. By their conversations I understand that they were arrested three days before, during the March protest.
To wait for me there’s only my wife, my son and my mother. While they hug me I look around me: These guys who have done three days inside just because they’ve taken to the streets to ask for work, simply for the right to work, have faces different from mine. The faces of their family and friends are different from those that are now hugging me.
They cry and shout in happiness like those who have gone through a bad time and know that it’s now over.
My wife and mother are silent in their joy. With no tears.
I too am happy: it’s over, I’m out. Yet, one thought overshadows the happiness of the moment:
My face will still be the one of a crook.
