Some of them helped the ones who couldn’t write some became friends and everything mixed together, the boy from Oslo and the girl from Eastern Europe and the boy from Africa-who-knows-where. The problem was that they asked too many questions: they came from foreign universities and they wanted to know the whys and the hows, why that ending was like that and how you used that saying and in what context. They wanted to supplement their courses at the university and so they showed up at the center. In certain classes, at a certain point, there were also study-abroad students who had just arrived in Italy. Others knew how to write, and of course they understood more quickly. The first issue was how to pronounce it, this language of salvation: “mi chiamo” (my name is), “vengo da” (I’m from), “ho bisogno di” (I need), “non mi sento bene” (I don’t feel well), “mi fa male qui” (it hurts here), “quanto costa” (how much for), “pane” (bread), “sto cercando” (I’m looking for), “mi può dare indicazioni per” (can you give me directions to), “lavoro” (work), “grazie” (thank you), “per favore” (please), “prego” (you’re welcome). But that turned out to be a secondary problem. We called them “migrants.” Some of them didn’t know how to write, so the problem was using a pen or pencil, making some symbols and giving those symbols a meaning. It’s an undefined them, because I don’t know anything about them-I met them in a classroom where, as I said, I taught Italian. But I don’t want to talk about me I want to talk about them. Years ago I taught Italian to foreigners. It doesn’t really matter how much you’ve suffered: you’ll still always be luckier than someone else, and no matter who you are you’ll still feel the subtle relief and twinge of guilt at having avoided misfortune. When you know someone much worse off than you, when you see a bomb go off on TV on the other side of the world, everything that you’ve been through is no longer proportionally relevant on the scale of human suffering and you tell yourself I am, for the moment, lucky. Involuntarily, in life, we think proportionally. Okay, let’s take a coffee break and then we’ll get back to the virtual machine. Do you all know what a virtual machine is? You all know? Yes? No? Yes? On the count of three: one two three? (they laugh). So, if you’re using a Mac or the latest version of Windows, take this flash drive and install the Virtual Machine I’ve prepared for you. Just a moment please (they all look at me: they’re recent graduates, twenty-four, twenty-seven years old), then you can try out the program and do what you have to do, but before you download it be aware that it isn’t compatible with Macs or the latest version of Windows.

Cosi e la vita imobile