By Roberta Giaconi
“I was 9 years old and my brother Fosco was 11 when my father registered us at a Chinese communist school”. We were thrown in a completely different environment, without knowing a word of Chinese. Nevertheless I still remember that was quite an experience”. It is Saskia talking, Tiziano Terzani’s daughter. She appeared tall and slight wearing a light jumper, her hair combed back on her fresh and natural face. On Thursday 25th January, in the crowded Mahatma Gandhi Hall in Fitzroy Square, Saskia took part, with Ettore Mo – reporter of the Italian newspaper “Il Corriere della Sera” – in a meeting organized by the Italian Nights Association in memory of Tiziano Terzani, one of the most important Italian war correspondents and a charming and powerful writer.
Carlo Imperato, adviser of the Italian Nights Association, made the opening speech followed by the brief presentation about the Association itself given by the president Roberto Maranca. Afterward four videos about Terzani’s opinions and experiences were played. Saskia commented on them obtaining a touching mixture between her father’s voice – frank, sharp and passionate – preserved on videos, and the daughter’s one, shier and faltering. “Travelling is my way to react to everything” Terzani used to say. Nevertheless Saskia revealed how her father had never gave up his family: his wife and his two children were an essential element to take on his journeys, as well as his always-ready baggage. “He obviously never took us to the front line, but we have always been with him” she said. In Saigon they waited for their father who was close to the battles, then they went with him around Asia; they lived in China attending the local schools and, at the end, they left when Terzani was exiled in 1984, accused of anti-revolutionary activities by the communist government.
“Terzani was considered an exemplary war correspondent. – Ettore Mo explained – He was able to throw himself into the events without losing the capacity of being surprised”. In Anam, a beautiful interview recorded for the Italian television a few months before dying and partially played during the meeting, Terzani said he was astonished by the fact that Asians feed ants, and that Cambodians were frightened by children, after the communist occupation. “The government took them away from their families to train them as soldiers and spies. Eventually children were so ideologised to be capable of anything”. Terzani’s point of view has always been clear: he went to China charmed by communism, and supported the communist occupation in Cambodia. “My father trusted in China, as an alternative to the capitalism ideology”. He believed in it so much that, as his son Fosco was born, Tiziano Terzani went to the New York registry office, applying to call him Fosco Mao. “Fortunately in the US a name like this was not allowed and my father had to resign himself to calling his son just Fosco” Saskia said.
Afterward disappointments came, caused by the exile from China and the severe self-criticism matured among the dead in Cambodia. “My father was able to go beyond his dreams and wishes, condemning what he saw”. And he acted as a reporter and a free thinker until his last days, when cancer was worming into his body. “In India people never talk about death, but they speak about the end of the life as a mean for abandoning the human body” Saskia explained, remembering the last years of her father, marked by the disease. In this part of the meeting Saskia’s voice was often broken, even though her father had finally been able to accept death, to wait for it with curiosity and with a lightness learned throughout a lifetime travelling. “Once, in Asia, I noticed an odd custom. In the mornings people went out, walked on the streets and then, all of a sudden, stopped, lifted up their arms and burst into laughter. Is there anything better than starting a new day with a loud laugh, especially when you are going to spend hours breathing conditioned air in an office?”.
That was Tiziano Terzani, as his daughter witnessed: a man of deep morality who has always compelled his children to reflect on every choice. “My father was a strong man and often very severe, but he believed in the strength of mankind and peace” Saskia concluded. At last, some questions from the audience aimed at investigating deep down a man whose courage and severity strikes his readers who are witnesses, thanks to his books, to the intense journey of a man on the road.
The photos and a video of the event are available on our website.
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