By Antonio La Cava
The story of Ida Maddalena Festa is the story of a stubborn, obstinate and even brave woman, of one amongst many Italian women that left Italy in the second postwar period to seek their fortune abroad.
These stories are heritage of the Italian history, but often they stay unknown. Stories of men and women who left Italy to live in different countries and continents, whilst keeping their bounds to Italy. Stories of real wars, with their burden of dead men, sufferings and hopes that the youth do not know. Stories that are often known just by the relatives of the storytellers, and that get lost in the memories of the past. For these reasons Ms Festa chose to freeze the time on paper, thus leaving an indelible trace of her memories, of her story of life.
“From Monte Cassino to Maidstone” is the autobiography of Ida Maddalena, where Ms Festa thinks back over her life from her childhood, in the small village of Catailli in Northern Campania, to her new life in Maidstone, England.
The tale can be divided in two parts: the first part with the life in Italy, the years of her childhood in Catailli and of her youth in Rome, and the second where she tells us about the events and the stories in England, first in London and after in Maidstone, where she is still living.
The childhood of the writer is broken off by some events of the Second World War. War and destruction hit the Italians without exception. Ida’s dad will leave for the war and about him his family will not have any news for many years. Bravely, Ida’s mother, will support her family. Like many people, Ida has to hide in caves to escape from bombs. An old man will say to the young Ida that “in war, who really suffer, are the innocent people”. The Liberation time brings to Italy American and British soldiers. One of them will mark in an indelible way little Ida’s life, by rescuing her from the imminent danger of a mine (“You must not touch those things” a voice beside me said “They are death”).
When she is 16 years old only, Ida leaves to Rome to become a nurse, the dream of her life.
At that period, anyway, it was allowed only to the nuns to practise that profession. And for this reason the young Ida first studies in Vatican, working too as a servant for some families and afterwards, aware of the impossibility to work as a nurse in Italy, she chooses to emigrate to England.
During the years in Vatican Ida lives a unique episode, when a day she walks in to the room where the Pope was resting, and fortunately the Superior Mother was there to advise her about her mistake: “Well, not many of us have seen His Holiness in bed, but you have. I expect he was asleep, but if he’d been awake he would have had a laugh”.
Her journey to Albion marks a gulf in her new life. If in the first part of the book the writer gives room to the description of the most personal and private events, in the second part she centres the story to describe her job as a nurse and about ‘Shalom’, the hospice she founded, where she looks after old people with great passion.
The book, easy to read, carries away the reader into the writer’s life with a clear and essential style. The indirect and direct speeches alternate, trying to give strength to the plot. In some case, the direct speech appears artful compared with the indirect one.
An important element in Ida’s story is surely her strong religiousness, her tie with God and her trust towards her neighbour.
The book is also a useful key to analyse the immigration in the United Kingdom, different from the ones into Brazil, Canada and the United States.
“Here we haven’t many famous Italians”, Ida says. “There isn’t a strong community feeling, linking the Italians”.
This aspect, that could be negative, highlights how the Italians are assimilated in the British community, not making a group like it happened for other nationalities.
“But I got married to an Italian, even though I was not in love with him. I got married by proxy. By time I started to love him… my parents wouldn’t have agreed that I got married to a stranger”.
Different times.
And what about the English people?
“The English people treat me well – Festa says – I haven’t had any problems with them. I’ve found many kind people”.
Meanwhile Ida is cultivating her other passion, that is writing, taking the advice that many years ago her teacher gave to her (“Ida, one day you will be a writer”). And she has revealed to us that she is writing another book…
Copyright 2008 GIORGIOSTUDIO Ltd – All rights reserved
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