ARCHIVE ACTIVITY
18 August 2018
Iniziative (EN) -
Federazione Anna Lindh Italia - Onlus (EN)
On the day of the funeral the Fondazione Mediterraneo and the Federation is gathered around the victims of the Morandi Bridge and the city of Genoa that since 1991 has been at the side of the Foundation in many activities for dialogue and peace.
In Genoa, after what was the most serious post-war tragedy, nothing will be as before. Perhaps it is also for this reason that during the funeral of the state many were the Genoese who felt compelled to speak and to appeal to justice.
It was a sacred rite with inevitably profane moments. The overwhelming majority of applause went to the firefighters who crowded the structure with their out-of-service teams - some veterans from 27-hour shifts in the rubble - and the association and civil defense volunteers. In the meantime, three hundred of them continued to dig the collapsed stralls on the shore and around the stumps.
The Head of State Mattarella was the institutional figure greeted with more warmth and affection by the thousands of Genoese who from 8 in the morning queued to enter the pavilion of the Fair. The Genoese who felt compelled to be there were thousands. Many more than those who followed the ceremony in front of two screens, a real crowd that surrounded De Ferrari, the fountain square, the point where Genoa meets every time there is to celebrate or cry.
The words of Bagnasco during the homily were measured and common sense.
At the end of the ceremony with a Catholic ceremony, the microphone was offered to the imams of the very large Arab community of Genoa. One prayed by reciting a few verses of the "Salaam Alaikum" (there were several Muslim victims): the second, Salah Hussein, chose touching words that received a burst of applause ... "We are here together under one God to gather around the victims and families. A bridge has fallen ... a bridge should never fall because it unites and Genoa has always united in its history. We pray for Genoa, the Superb, which will once again stand up ... Zena in Arabic means the beautiful ".
In Genoa the Arab community is one of the oldest, since 1500, as the Armenian: the zeneixe dialect boasts many words in Arabic, almost untranslatable.