“Don’t yell at me, your father’s to blame!” “A private club is still a public place!” He went to his tennis club, but it was closed.” What can we do? We still need food and the supermarkets are open.
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The shoppers form orderly lines snaking out of doors, standing a meter apart on the pavement in accordance with the latest government advice, only four allowed inside the shop at any one time. Just one religion, my mother’s, refuses to be cowed. Muslims can’t pray together (the mosques are closed). The same day I spoke to her by phone, the Pope gave his Sunday blessing via livestream-so as not to gather crowds-and the most holy ritual of all, football, suspended its own Sunday Mass. Photo: Maurizio Fiorino.Ī few decades ago, my mom replaced church with ritual shopping. And other stuff.”Īn empty shopping mall in Rome amid the coronavirus outbreak, March 2020. “I can’t see my friends, I can’t see my grandchildren! I only leave the house for very urgent stuff.” “I survived three bouts of cancer, I’m a miracle myself!” She says she needs to drive to the supermarket and other stuff. She is talking to me on the phone since we’re not allowed to visit each other. “I can’t stay home, I have important things to do.” I’m trying to convince my mom, as stubborn as a seventy-eight-year-old can be, not to go out. My cousins, whom I love dearly, are in Milan, but still I thought, “Oh, it’s Milan! We’re hundreds of miles to the south.”Īnd now it’s here. Then that same red pulsing image appeared at the top of my boot-shaped country and took hold. I did, as much as you do when something bad befalls someone else. “Come on! China! So far away!” Not that I didn’t care. The news showed a pulsing red dot somewhere on the planet. Don’t talk to anyone? I’m still in denial. When was the last time I had nothing to do? Stay at home? Fine.
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I’m as happy as Columbus reaching America and I rest. It's the first time my lying on the couch counts as a contribution to society. Alone in my empty apartment, I plop down on the sofa. Too young and strong and beautiful to succumb. My children are at their father’s place-infecting each other, fighting each other. This Rome, when all’s said and done.īut I’m safe, for now. “No, you can’t,” you repeat for the umpteenth time while teaching the littler ones a new way to sneeze: “into your elbow, darling.” Could this novel behavior also be a way of hiding our shame? I can’t help thinking we’ll need to unteach all this later. This is the first fight with your teenagers in quarantine, who have an “emergency”: the need to meet their friends.
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Haven’t you heard? Schools are closed indefinitely. The Fontana di Trevi in Rome, March 2020. The Colosseum dozes, a newborn cradled by seven gentle hills and lulled by the music of a past that sings ever louder today. The chapel closed to visitors the next day.Įternal Rome basks in her glory. In the Sistine Chapel, God silently overpowered the few humans left on earth in His Last Judgment. The Vatican was empty when I visited last Saturday. Once it meant “pasta,” now it means “coronavirus.”Ī war with no bombs and no pizza-not even in Naples.
#I am not human i am roman sci fi movie movie#
It’s a strange movie and the popcorn tastes of hand sanitizer. This is Italy. We’re just further along in the plot than you are. A man buys food in a market in some little-known spot in China and Rome becomes a ghost town. I’m living in a sci-fi movie. In fact, you are too.
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A pedestrian crosses a street in a quarantined Rome, March 2020.