Written on a Sunday, September 17, 2006.
Published here on September 15, 2023, seventeen years after her death.
My story with Oriana Fallaci began 30 years ago. At that time (1976), Portugal was a turmoil of emotions and experiences; the PREC (Processo Revolucionário Em Curso) had left deep marks on Portuguese society. Death threats arrived at my home by phone, anonymously, cowardly. My father, a union leader in a textile factory (which had belonged until shortly before April 25, 1974, to a communist industrialist who risked his life for his beliefs and had always treated the men and women working for him fairly), tried to convince his fellow workers that they couldn't become "rich" in just a few days. An enlightened prick (who is now a member of the European Parliament, by the way) declared my father a "lackey of capitalist interests", and self-management began joyfully, with everyone becoming "boss" in the few months the factory lasted after that.
When bankruptcy was declared, my father had already found a new job, as he immediately realized that the happily self-managed factory wouldn't last long (my mother, who also worked there as an accountant, fell into depression and was already at home by that time). Seeing the goose dead and the golden eggs gone, the ephemeral "bosses" directed their anger at the "capitalist lackey" who had "escaped" the fate they had so happily embraced, carried away by the revolutionary rhetoric of that prick I mentioned, who is now dining in Brussels at our expense (and at the expense of those she deceived, one day).
Amidst all of this, at the age of 12, I became profoundly anti-communist. The process was similar to what those who had family members persecuted by the regime before 1974 went through, but in the opposite direction. Time would take care of shaping and transforming me politically, but one of the primary and initial people responsible for my political formation was Oriana Fallaci. She was a kind of tutor to me. On November 25, 1975, my parents celebrated their 13th wedding anniversary. On November 26, 1975, my father turned 39. On November 28, 1975, surrounded by my entire family, I blew out the twelve candles on my birthday cake. November 1975, the PREC was dead (in English, Revolutionary Process Underway), and the Círculo de Leitores (Readers' Circle) published "Entrevista com a História" (Interview with History) by Oriana Fallaci.
The following year, I discovered this book on the shelves of my aunt and uncle's house, where I used to spend long periods of time. On the cover, there was a reproduction of the famous and controversial interview by Oriana Fallaci with Álvaro Cunhal, published in the Italian magazine Europeo on June 6, 1975, and reproduced in full in Portugal by Jornal do Caso República (The Republic Case Newspaper) almost three weeks after its publication in Italy. At the time, I didn't read that particular and obscure Portuguese newspaper (let alone the Italian one), but I heard family comments on the matter. Curious, I searched for the interview within the book but couldn't find it in the index. So, I began skimming through the various chapters diagonally, but found nothing. It was then that I glanced at the interview with Golda Meir (the events of Munich were still fresh in my memory) and later, at the one with Yasser Arafat. I remember sitting on a sofa in my aunt and uncle's house and reading both interviews in one breath. Then, the familiar names (Kissinger, Willy Brandt, Indira Gandhi), and the others, who were they? George Habash, Nguyen Van Thieu, Ali Bhutto... Names that led me to other names, to other words, to other realities, and other perspectives. It was my baptism by fire.
And no, I didn't find the interview with Álvaro Cunhal in the pages of this specific book. Until I found the complete text, all I read were the lines printed on the cover of the Círculo de Leitores edition. I don't know how many times I read this book. I think, for a long time, I would always pick it up whenever I was at my aunt and uncle's house. Today, with both of them deceased, the book is here in my office, between Bertrand Russell's "Crimes de Guerra no Vietname" (War Crimes in Vietnam) and the 1968 edition of "Dossier do Conflito Israelo-Árabe" (Dossier of the Israeli-Arab Conflict), published by Inova (then Editorial Inova Limitada), with a cover by Armando Alves.
Oriana Fallaci, to me, was a goddess. Moreover, she was a beautiful (and Italian!) woman and a leftist, which imbued her with even more charm from my young teenage perspective, as I mentioned above. And then, so many years later, I knew she lived in New York, but on that morning of September 2001, the last thing that crossed my mind was that fact. I write; I write a lot (rarely does a day go by without writing), but on September 11, 2001, I didn't write anything. I simply couldn't. A few days ago, a friend who knows my views on 9/11 told me, after reading one of the entries in the 5/911 series on my blog, "Who you were after the attacks and who you are you now!" Indeed, the shock caused by the images and news of that day removed my ability to see beyond that, the obvious in them hidden from view. However, the house of cards didn't take long to fall. All it took was removing the trump card. I admit that at that time, however, all I felt was pure anger. Even so, I didn't write a single line that day.
Oriana Fallaci, however, wrote a lot of lines. She wrote her anger against Islam and her pride of being Western while watching one tower and then another fall near her home in Manhattan. I still don't know why she did it. I know that the ideas she conveys did not originate from that day. I can imagine why they were born. I recall the first two interviews I read in "Entrevista com a História." I don't know what led Fallaci to interview Fallaci, to switch sides, turning the narrative into action and the interviewer into the interviewed, a builder of history. An actress. I haven't read "La Rabia e l’Orgoglio" ("The Rage and the Pride", by then her first work after 10 years of pause), I've only read excerpts and her own words about it, but I will have it one day. And maybe I won't be able to read it, not because it's uncomfortable or another type of inconvenient feeling, but because it was written by her. Addio, Oriana. Ti mancherò...
Photo taken in 1963, the year I was born.
"La Fallaci é morta."
Oriana Fallaci returned to Florence, Italy,
where she was born July 29, 1929, to die
September 15, 2006. She was 77 years old.
[finis]
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