The Story of Maryam

Maryam and her son. Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 21 December 2012

THIS IS an old story. Told the first time in December 2012, on a journalistic website that tells the stories of migrants Frontiere News, with whom I have collaborated for many years, writing my articles, my photos, and organizing my very first courses on “Photography as Cultural Mediation”.

This is a tale with a bitter end and, for me, a wound that will never heal in my heart, because it started in the best way, with the hope that, by fighting together, it was possible to create a better future for those who have difficulties, showing how solidarity and love illuminated even in the darkest and dirtiest places. However, life gives severe lessons, and often tells us that things do not always go as we hope.

It's a long story which took place over the years, which has taught me a great deal, first of all, to try to defeat our prejudices. Maryam has taught me a lot: she was the first to give me this important lesson, as only life in hospital had done before her. And, if I am as I am today and I do what I do, it's also thanks to her.

She will always be in my heart, forever, in the wound that still bleeds when I think of her. The story I report here is in a chronological sense, from our first meeting to the last.

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 21 December 2012

IN THESE times of suffering and sacredness, these images bring to mind all art studies, Christian iconography, the dozens and dozens of migrants stories I have heard over these long years. Precariousness and consumerism, love and crisis, and it seems that in their looks all this is summed up, including stories of prejudices and their cruelty. The holiness of the human being reduced to the minimum terms, as perhaps the iconography of Mary must be.

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 21 December 2012

Maryam is a young Rom mother who comes from Calarasi, Romania. She lives in a dilapidated building in Rome, occupied with many other gypsies families and of other nationalities, in difficult conditions. She is only 21 years old, has two children and a very tender husband, Ionut. She will soon return to Romania with her children because it is too difficult to live here. They are of strong Orthodox Christian faith. I believe that during Christmas these stories serve to make us reflect on many of our false problems, now that the crisis has hit our hearts too. And I hope it also serves to bring down some prejudices.

When I went to their room for the first time, the Mom was feeding her two children a single frozen pizza, but she insisted so much that I had to accept a piece too, that I split in half to give it back to the children.

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 21 December 2012

  

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 30 December 2012

   

A year has passed since I met Maryam. Those photographs and her story impressed many people because they told a different story about the Rom gypsies family. But then, who can say it is different? They are simply themselves, in their kindness and dignity. It's not their fault that the stereotype of the Rom family is of a completely different kind in Italy.

After seeing their photographs and reading the article, a young Indonesian mother, Nenti Sandan, moved with tenderness, decided to donate the small clothes of her now grown son to Maryam's family. While a Romanian cultural mediator, Adriana Jugaru, who is responsible for a kindergarten near the building where Ionut lives, wanted to get to know them in person to convince them to send their young children to school. 

Maryam prepares Nicu to go to school. Occupied Metropoliz. Rome 24 January 2013

It's not a kindergarten like all the others: it's an Intercultural Center for minors, “Shishu Bhavan”, which means “The House of the Child” in Bangla language, was inspired by a house founded in Calcutta by Mother Teresa, which came to life in 2001, within a cultural project of the non-profit association called “Zero in Condotta”, established in February 1999. It is a kindergarten that hosts children from two to six years. The users of the school are mostly from foreign families, but also from Italian families or mixed couples. A massive presence is given by newly reunited families.

At school. Rome, 24 January 2013

I went to Maryam to bring her the clothes donated by Nenti Sandan. She was very happy because they were perfect for going to school immediately. Made two new sweatshirts worn by the children, all together we joined Adriana who was waiting for us. Ionut was excited, constantly complaining, along the way, that he had not cut his beard and had dirty hands because he had built stoves all afternoon. 

Sitting around a table, the parents talked for a long time with the managers, while the children played between lego and brushes. Ionut confessed, with downcast eyes, that he and his wife were unable to study in Romania, so he would be happy that their children could have a different future, a culture. In the end, the school gave Nicu his first backpack, and ready to start his school career, made up of letters and drawings; at the moment.

What I’d like to emphasize here, in this simple story, is the network of solidarity that has tightened around this family only through photographs. The sense of social photography should always be to tell those who cannot see them about social realities. Show that things are often different from how they tell us. That Rom families are made up of people like us, with equal dignity and sentiment, are not dark monoliths of wickedness and malice.

As Maryam told me: “When I get on the buses all the Italians get away from me, clutching their bags and looking at my children with pity and with hostility to me, as if I were the worst mother in the world, without knowing me; this is a pain that I always carry within me.”

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 6 December 2012

And that we are better than we believe, that solidarity never leave us if we are able to be moved, even in front of a photograph. So that photograph is no longer a simple photo, but a key, which opens up worlds and possibilities of love. As happened to Adriana and Nenti, whom I thank with all my heart. Because thanks to them, an article with photos has become a better future for a child. Love moves the world.

Since then, many things have happened.

THE MOST beautiful thing was the solidarity that moved by photographs, bringing an Indonesian mother to donate used clothes to Maryam's children, and a Romanian cultural worker to convince the young parents to enroll their two children in her school for foreign children.

But something terrible also happened that summer: Ionut, Maryam's young and strong husband, was struck down by a heart attack when they were in Romania, and his wife was pregnant. Leaving us all annihilated by pain and bewilderment. But Maryam has returned to Rome, and has given birth to a beautiful blue-eyed boy who obviously named Ionut, like her late husband.

“I came back because here, even if I am alone, I can continue to send my children to school,” Maryam told me when I came to see her after the summer. She is strong for her twenty-two years, she mourns (and will do so for a whole year), but hasn't lost her smile, surrounded by her three children. She asks me for the photographs I had taken of her husband, and I realize that in the photographs, at times, existences truly condense and become stamped tickets to continue traveling beyond the disappearance, beyond death.

   

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 25 September 2013

I don't stop publishing her photographs, not because of a speculation of her life, but because it is a way of being close to her; because I deceive myself, naively, that Ionut receives my postcards from Rome; and—the main reason—because I firmly believe that people are good, and that solidarity is a circle in the water, but if there is no hand that throws the stone, there can be no circle.

On 6 December 2013, I came back to them because it was Saint Nicholas Day. Maryam wanted to celebrate the name day of her eldest son, Nicu. But she had no money to buy a cake. So I went to her, but not empty-handed, but loaded with two envelopes full of clothes for all of them, donated by a dear Filipino friend of mine, Ave Vida, and by her friends of the church, who saw my photographs; she is tender – as a mother – and she has collected many clothes for the gypsie family. 

So I went with Maryam to buy drinks, chips, chocolate and cake ingredients, after she had seen all the clothes for her, and then I immersed myself in the festive atmosphere, among the soft lights of the bulbs of the ruined building, of the Rom community that celebrated other Nicu, common name in Romania.

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 6 December 2013

While her relatives helped her prepare the cake, I met Ionut's mother, who had come to Rome to celebrate the young Nicu and then would return to Naples the following day, and slowly she introduced me to her sisters and all her grandchildren, up to give the feeling that each of them was part of a single large family.

I was initially seen with distrust, as an unknown Italian with a camera. But I always had in mind Josef Koudelka's lesson while photographing the gypsies for his masterpiece book; not for the quality of my photos (incomparable to his), but for the absolute respect that he had for them, whose gaze was absolutely free from any judgment, he was simply a man among men, with a camera. And this people warn him. After a while the first women arrived to bring me a plate of cake, a glass of orange juice, the first smiles, the drunken men wanted to be photographed, the gestures of tenderness in front of me.

I left as soon as the cake was ready, I left all of them to celebrate until late in the evening. Two things, I asked Maryam, if she was happy and her face lit up and she replied “Sure!” A simple question and answer, but one that illuminates gardens in the heart. And then Nicu, who while I was wearing the jacket asked me “Where are you going?” “Home,” I said, and he with his sweet smile replied: “This is home."

Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 30 December 2013

It is a simple story, a story of Christmas and solidarity, of great pain and a new life with blue eyes. It's a story of gypsies in Rome (I say gypsies because in my heart there is always the reference to the photographic book by Koudelka which is entitled precisely Gypsies).

And, it's a sweet story, because a year has never been hindered for a second by the usual prejudices, and it's already a lot, and only for this reason is it worth continuing to tell about. 

And also, it's a story of circles in the water.

THE LAST time I saw Maryam was in 2013. After that she returned to Romania, and I lost all her news, and maybe I also lost her last photos. She did not manage to stay alone in Rome, with three young children, without the possibility of working, with the prejudices that stabbed her heart every day. She sacrificed a better life for her children by returning to her poor city where, however, she had a family to help the children. 

I will never forget her...

Prejudice always arises from what cannot be seen. Photography can also serve this purpose. Dedicated to Maryam.

Maryam and Ionut. Occupied Metropoliz. Rome, 30 December 2013

Italian version