Reality, once again.

I spent the entire morning refreshing news sites. This morning, a bomb exploded in front of a school in Brindisi, a city in Southern Italy. A young girl died, many kids were hurt, everyone is in shock. No one claimed the action yet, but it's almost definitely to blame on the local mafia network, the Sacra Corona Unita, the Sacred Crown. In a few days it'll be the 20th anniversary of the death of judge Falcone, killed by mafia, and the school bears his name, and there's no such thing as coincidence.

Now, the even scarier part is that when we turned on the tv, the computer, the radio this morning, we all felt that a new era of terror is beginning. In Italy we had what we call the Anni Di Piombo, the Lead Years. It's a long period, back when my parents were young, when terrorists of different political views, but who all shared the same goal, put bombs in train stations, art exhibitions, public squares, banks, killing hundreds of innocent persons. Everybody lived knowing that fear. In the early nineties, it was mostly the mafia, to counterattack laws againts them. I was a kid, but I still remember clearly my mom hearing of Judge Borsellino's death, and bursting into tears in the middle of the street, where my sister and I were playing. She tried to explain to us what had happened, but she couldn't stop crying.

So today that fear is back. It's a fear I inherhited from my parents, when my dad wouldn't throw away a kleenex in a garbage bin on the street, but would put it in his pocket so he could throw it away at home, because he couldn't shake the feeling that there could be a bomb inside that bin. Today everything my parents feared has come to life, once again.

Reality, once again.

I spent the entire morning refreshing news sites. This morning, a bomb exploded in front of a school in Brindisi, a city in Southern Italy. A young girl died, many kids were hurt, everyone is in shock. No one claimed the action yet, but it's almost definitely to blame on the local mafia network, the Sacra Corona Unita, the Sacred Crown. In a few days it'll be the 20th anniversary of the death of judge Falcone, killed by mafia, and the school bears his name, and there's no such thing as coincidence.

Now, the even scarier part is that when we turned on the tv, the computer, the radio this morning, we all felt that a new era of terror is beginning. In Italy we had what we call the Anni Di Piombo, the Lead Years. It's a long period, back when my parents were young, when terrorists of different political views, but who all shared the same goal, put bombs in train stations, art exhibitions, public squares, banks, killing hundreds of innocent persons. Everybody lived knowing that fear. In the early nineties, it was mostly the mafia, to counterattack laws againts them. I was a kid, but I still remember clearly my mom hearing of Judge Borsellino's death, and bursting into tears in the middle of the street, where my sister and I were playing. She tried to explain to us what had happened, but she couldn't stop crying.

So today that fear is back. It's a fear I inherhited from my parents, when my dad wouldn't throw away a kleenex in a garbage bin on the street, but would put it in his pocket so he could throw it away at home, because he couldn't shake the feeling that there could be a bomb inside that bin. Today everything my parents feared has come to life, once again.