Coincidences continue to astonish me. We were working through articles for this issue dedicated to people who are deaf. One August day, I found a book on the editorial desk—green and black cover, *A Day in My Life: The Story of a Deaf Teacher*, by Renato Pigliacampo, published by Claudiana in Turin. The letter accompanying it asked us to review it in Ombre e Luci.
I read it in one sitting. I held in my hands a testimony written in the first person by someone living an experience that nearly all of us hearing people have not the faintest idea about.
I entered fully into these pages, which speak directly to us of what it means to "not hear," to live in silence, to be without this greatest gift—words, and the ability to listen and communicate with those around us.
I was seized by the writer's words. He is a learned man, married, with two children. I tried to put myself in his position as he opened windows onto his life—one of struggle, of love, of passion, above all of a desire to communicate his message: "I have always fought for as normal a life as possible, but at the height of every achievement, at the moment of reaching my goal, Silence has destroyed, or destroys, with its raw presence, the struggles I have fought so tenaciously to win."
I finished the book certain that his words must take the place of mine. So I leave to him, with gratitude, the task of helping us reflect on this precious gift that thousands of people lack, and which we possess without ever marveling at it: hearing.
The few passages we offer here, I hope, will awaken in many a desire to know more—and above all the awareness that much depends on us, on our willingness to make communication easier for deaf people, and on our attention to them as an expression of our solidarity.
* * *
"Not understanding what is happening is often the deaf person's tragedy. How many times have I been called crazy or neurotic, reacting badly to situations I misunderstood, reading only a third of the words I needed on someone's lips to judge or to speak. Yet I reacted with fury, with uncontrollable rage, shouting with all the air my lungs could pump. It is hard to calm an angry deaf person: he is a force of nature unleashed, and every hearing person becomes an obstacle to be swept aside—because, after all, they hear, and they do nothing to make communication easier for the profoundly deaf."
* * *
"The person fortunate enough to hear cannot imagine the constant effort that the profoundly deaf person endures every day, in a verbal society like ours."
* * *
"Of course, with specific gestures we are able to convey the meaning of 'I love you' or 'I care for you.' Usually it goes like this: you bring your right hand to your chest, touching your pectoral muscles. The gesture must show submission to the other person. Then, with an open hand, fingers spread, you move your hand away from your chest and bring it forward toward the person you love (tracing an invisible circle between yourself and them). The whole expression of your face works to show the loved one that you are giving them the most important thing: your heart, the center of life. Many hearing young people, with an aptitude for mime and cultural curiosity, joke with friends using similar gestures. But whoever has heard, whoever has communicated affection and ideas with words whispered to the ear of the person they love, will discover themselves helpless in expressing the most secret feelings of the soul through gesture—which remains only a substitute for the spoken word, for the poetry that lives in a voice when it says 'I love you.'"
* * *
"Luca insists on telling me about the morning he spent at nursery school. He has a wonderful teacher. He is proud of her. He talks between mouthfuls, and as he speaks, he lowers his head to bring food to his mouth—a movement that prevents me from reading his lips, from understanding him. Some of his words are lost. Every effort I make to intuit what he means fails. Luca, thinking I'm doing it on purpose, grows angry, shouting (or so it seems): 'Dad, the teacher! The teacher!'
I look to Delphine for help, hoping she can tell me what my boy is saying. But she doesn't hear us—she's busy with the food on the stove. 'The teacher, the teacher!' the little one insists. He's on the verge of tears, his small face scowling, reproaching me for not understanding his words. Luca makes one last, admirable effort to speak clearly, syllable by syllable—but it's no use.
Forgive me, my son. He understands. He looks at me in long silence. Then he begins to speak with his brother in a language known only to them. Until then Marco had watched the whole scene thoughtfully, puzzled, as if sensing a threat looming over his future too. I must say that the exclusion I experience with my hearing wife and children does not pain me in itself. What crushes me is the inconvenience that deafness creates within our family. It is my own sorrow!"
— Mariangela Bertolini, 1989