This is a true story, and it might begin like this: Once upon a time...
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful dark-haired girl named Sabina who lived happily with her parents and siblings in a large house in a small town: San Benedetto dei Marsi in the province of Aquila. An old photograph shows Sabina at five or six years old, wearing her Sunday dress, serious and attentive as she holds her little sister's hand tightly. Both stand on chairs nearby, looking at the camera, a bit worried about this unusual event: the formal photograph. It is 1922, or perhaps 1923. We must look at this small Sabina carefully, must search her serious, luminous, intense eyes, because we see them here for the last time.
The story continues this way: When she is seven years old, in 1924, Sabina is struck by a grave illness: meningitis. It was Monday of Holy Week, and years later she herself would tell her friends at "Mondo silente" what those days were like: "...on Holy Thursday evening I cast one last look around the room, the next morning I heard the last sound, followed by a door slamming shut: after that, nothing more." She loses consciousness and wakes up, a week after the illness began, alone in a small bed at Policlinic Umberto I in Rome. Sabina is disoriented, unable to understand what is happening to her. She tries to climb out the window to escape, but as her sister recalls: "she was stopped in time by a nurse who 'gently' tied her to the bed so she wouldn't escape, instead of holding her, perhaps, in her arms."
Sabina returns home after two months. She is only seven years old, has abandoned second grade, and her school desk will remain empty. It is Sabina herself who remembers that moment: "...That little bit of distinct light I could still perceive was enough to trick me into thinking I could see, just as the ringing in my ears made me believe I could hear sounds and voices: yet I knew I was not grasping shapes and colors, nor words, but I didn't want to admit it to myself." Neighbors come to visit the sick girl; her brother points them out and asks her to say their names. Sabina recognizes none of them.
Once upon a time, there was a very brave girl who, instead of crying and despairing, said to her little brother:
"Take my school notebook and a pencil and guide my hand while you write down their names." And so it was done. Her brother wrote slowly and clearly, guiding Sabina's hand, and the visitors were identified. "This single means of communication served for what was necessary and helped me delay facing my situation. In the end, though, I had to be honest with myself: I was blind and deaf. But to keep myself from being afraid, I was already armed with hope—hope of returning to Rome: through miraculous cures by science I would regain my sight and hearing. With this comforting idea, despite the harsh treatment (or mistreatment) by doctors and nurses that I had mistaken for torturers, I willingly let myself be taken to Rome again."
While awaiting her return to the great city, life resumed in the San Benedetto home. Her parents strengthened each other, found courage to accept the immense pain that at first had nearly destroyed them. Her mother instinctively understood that nothing her daughter could and wished to do should be forbidden. And so Sabina, surrounded by darkness and silence, sewed and embroidered, washed dishes and clothes, and looked after her younger siblings. Yet Sabina would write: "I found myself shut up inside myself like a hermit in the middle of society; alone with my thoughts and my moods."
It is 1926: Sabina is ten years old when she is admitted to the Regina Margherita di Savoia Institute, where Professor Augusto Romagnoli—the school would later bear his name—had that very year begun to implement his educational method for the blind. Sabina was his first student and received enrollment number one, which she would later embroider in stem stitch onto all her clothes. This is how the celebrated professor, who had gone blind shortly after birth, and the girl from San Benedetto dei Marsi, whose heart was full of hope and courage, met and formed a bond of affection and esteem that would endure forever. Sabina would later write: "...from the very first moment he traced words in cursive on the palm of my hand, making himself perfectly clear, and at once gave me confidence, nor did he ever disappoint me." The professor, for his part, judged Sabina not merely capable of recovery but highly intelligent, alert, and eager to understand all the whys of the world.
First, it was necessary to establish immediate communication with the girl. The professor guided her, together with the teachers, from written words traced on her hand to the use of the Malossi alphabet. Finally, with the Braille writing system, she was able to follow the curriculum. At the same time, the teachers guided her, using the Romagnoli method, toward pronouncing words in correct Italian.
Sabina left the institute for good in 1938. In those twelve years, she had grown physically, intellectually, and morally. She had learned that the "miraculous cures" she had hoped for did not exist and had serenely accepted the idea of remaining blind and deaf for life. But she had also discovered a world of things that were not forbidden to her: she had read, studied, learned to express her thoughts clearly, and deepened her religious knowledge and faith in God. At the same time, she had gained skill and confidence in manual work and mastered a practical system of small strategies and precise rules that would allow her to live her life without depending on others for daily necessities. On the contrary, she made herself useful in countless ways, participating with intelligence and watchful tenderness in family life.
It was a robust girl with long dark braids who returned home in 1938. She and her family had endured other great sorrows: the death of her beloved older brother and her mother. Now she knew how to take her place as an older sister and as a most loving aunt.
Above all, Sabina transformed her childhood courage and determination into a drive to learn, to participate, and to fight for all those who suffer from sensory disabilities. From here began her long battle on behalf of the deaf-blind, so that they would not be abandoned to their "silent night" but helped to live and communicate with others, to gain their share of knowledge and joy, to strengthen their sensory and intellectual capacities.
And so the story continues. Once upon a time, there was a dark-haired girl and later a slender woman with gray hair, who read and studied, who learned foreign languages to correspond with associations and schools in other countries, who attended seminars and conferences accompanied by skilled interpreters, who visited her deaf-blind friends throughout Italy to comfort them and help them, drawing on her experience to overcome the difficulties of integration. Tireless in research and initiative, she founded the "Gold Thread League" (1), conceived, organized, and promoted summer retreats for those with multiple disabilities, and created and directed Italy's first bimonthly magazine in Braille. All this while continuing to provide for herself, to share housework with her sisters, and to care with deep affection for the nieces and nephews who grew up beside her.
Once upon a time, and still today, there is a brave, determined little woman who teaches us that extraordinary things still happen in our time, that miracles are still possible.
- M.T. Mazzarotto, 1997
Freely adapted from the book "La luce dentro" by Loda Santilli, Ed. Caritas dei Marsi - Avezzano - 1988
(1) National Association for the Protection and Assistance of the Non-sighted Deaf. For more information see Ombre e Luci, no. 1 year 1986.