In Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul journalist Sabrina Passos says that no one is well. Nor is anyone who is safe, neither is anyone who lost everything, neither is anyone who is on a roof begging for water – in this part here, a shiver takes over my body. My dry apartment hurts me. No one is well anywhere, but there are people who are worse off, thirsty. And there are also people looting houses, demanding ransom, preventing volunteers from reaching the most affected places, in a type of pirate toll on small boats. “Dystopia”, my brother says via Whatsapp. He has bodies beneath the greed floating in the mud and fake news in the family group.
I look away from Globonews, without sound, a brown screen with roofs. I think about my colleagues covering the tragedy on site in the South, in those working remotely in the rest of Brazil, in children being rescued from flooded schools. Cry. There really is no God to send some sunshine, to dry some things… the government needs to act.
Floating books: can we save history?
The owner of a bookstore in Porto Alegre also cries when he shows his flooded business, his losses, the recklessness of public authorities, and climate denialism. Rotten dikes with rusty screws and not a penny for it. Who got rich for everything else to collapse?
In the square of Santa Croce, in Florence, there is a sign on the walls that informs the level of the water that invaded the city: “On November 4, 1966, the water reached this height”. A few years ago, I spent a few moments there imagining the River Arno overflowing, the church under water, the secular buildings invaded. In the Uffizi Gallery, the floor of the Vasariano corridor (the one that Dan Brown made popular) was shaking. People rushing to make a pile of paintings and save art history. The National Library, with important manuscripts from world history, turned into mud. The streets of the historic center were invaded by a violent current that took 45 days to clean up. How long will Rio Grande do Sul need to get back on track? Are “mud angels”, like the Italians, enough?
Today, Florence is standing with the works of art that were saved and its gelatos. I think of the young man who owns the bookstore in Rio Grande do Sul with a millimeter of hope. But until then, what do we deal with the pain?
