Minute 33


Caterina Giacomini
IMACS
Min 33

Letter.

Dear mum,

So far I couldn't give you my news. I'm still alive, but I can't tell you I'm fine, because we are treated like beasts.
We walk on the dead people, like walking on the rocks in a river. This is not humanity. I'm horrified, I don't know who I am, if a man or a dog.
A lot of times we look at each other and we see that we are torn by hunger and sleep. Tears cover our eyes.
From here I can only tell you about war. People from home, reading newspapers about the soldiers' life, think that war is a gym where soldiers train muscles, doing different acrobatics exercises. This is not the reality. The humidity is real, the legs waterlogged and the hospitals full of people. The only thing that is sure is the arrival of a bullet or the explosion of a bomb that keeps a soldier awake or on edge and that makes him think about death all the time.
Dear mum, you don't have to think about me as a person that curses at the human evil, on the contrary, I'm always in a good mood and even if I'm not a hero, I could laugh also when we had to run out from the trench. Here nobody cares about your pain, it doesn't matter if you are grieving. The bullet can hit you even if you are afraid.
Please, don't talk to god, poor him. He is old. A lot of souls depend on him and they ask him to care about their sons. The Austrian mother, like the Italian one, pray the same god of peace and love, asking him to save her own son. Who must god listen to?
I am an heretical traitor and I'm still alive. Many other people that are catholic and faithful died.
Then, a friend of mine, who used to pray god every evening was hit by a bullet and he died.
That bullet was not catholic. It passed through the wallet full of religious symbols and it arrived to his heart. For this reason, please, don't pray for me. Only then I can survive.

Kisses,