David Smith-Ferri wrote the following poem from the perspective of the Italian mourners of Nicola Calipari. Nicola Calipari was a respected chief of Italian intelligence in Iraq. Calipari had just recovered the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena from kidnappers who had held her hostage. Sgrena was also wounded in the shooting.

Giuliana Sgrena has said, “In the first days of the kidnapping, I did not shed a single tear. I was simply enraged. I used to tell my kidnappers in the face, “But how! You kidnap me, [the very person] who is against the war?!” Znet, This is the truth, by Giulian Sgrena

While the release of Giuliana Sgrena should have been a celebration, the shooting and death of Nicola Calipari by US forces has turned this story into tragedy. The US military searchlight turned on just as the firing upon the car commenced. Giuliana Sgrena was in Baghdad as a searchlight against the war, and now it is the Italian people’s mourning, like a dove calling, that is the new spotlight of a people fed up with a senseless and bloody war of which the overwhelming majority never wanted in the first place. Regime change in Iraq. Regime change in Spain. Is it time for regime change in Italy and here in the US?

About 10,000 Italians paid their respects Sunday to an intelligence agent killed by U.S. troops in Iraq last week while driving with a hostage he had helped free. The hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist who was wounded in the incident, suggested that the shooting might have been deliberate. The body of Nicola Calipari lay in state at a large marble memorial called the Vittoriano in central Rome. Mourners filed past a flag-draped coffin, and many praised the slain agent as a hero. Calipari’s wife and two children flanked the coffin. A state funeral was planned for Monday. Washington Post, March 6, 2005

The unprovoked attack killed Nicola Calipari, the Italian military intelligence agent who had negotiated the journalist’s release. He had thrown himself on top of Ms Sgrena to shield her and was killed by a bullet through his temple. The bizarre and bloody end to what should have been a day of joyful celebration occurred at around 9pm as the unmarked car with local plates carrying Ms Sgrena and her liberators approached Baghdad airport. A plane was waiting to take her home. But while the car was still some 600 metres from the terminal, American troops opened fire, unleashing a volley of 300 to 400 shots, killing Mr Calipari. His death has aroused a wave of reaction nationwide. At football matches and other sporting events across the country, spectators were observing a minute’s silence, while in his home town of Reggio Calabria, in the south, the teams were turning out wearing black armbands in tribute. There has also been a flood of requests to rename streets and piazzas after the agent. The Independent, March 6, 2005

Continue to read the poem
Lines Written in Footprints on the Piazza Stones

the mourners speak

How we longed to celebrate,
to be launched into the blue, lambent pool of the sky,
and like goddesses or gods to bathe in that light.
Every cell in our bodies had hungered for Giuliana’s release,
for her disinterment,
and every day that she lay under ground, buried alive,
stretched the taut and frayed bowstring of our longing.

A little light, we said to each other. A little joy.
In the smothering darkness of war, a chance to breathe again.

Then Nicola found the spot – our hearts raced! –
and broke open the ground above her…Still breathing!
And pulling her out, he embraced her.
Like a skull around a brain, a rib cage around lungs,
he wrapped her.
Then, like the primordial mind of a sperm whale carrying its precious oil,
the car swam for the surface,
through the darkness toward the lights of Baghdad Airport.
Up finally from unknown depths,
safe now, safe.

And in our own minds
we too felt the pressure of all those fathoms falling away.
We saw the layers of liquid darkness thinning,
the turquoise light diffuse above us.
And when the US sharpshooters fired their weapons,
eclipsing the sun,
drowning us again in darkness,
it was our temple the bullet shattered,
our blood that spattered Giuliana’s camera.

David Smith-Ferri