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Marisa Parker
a book bubble about
Goodbye to Italia
Biographies & Memoirs
Author Insight
Just the Same, Same!
For some of us, our life has been changed irrevocably by these strict orders to isolate. For others, it’s a chance to get on with the ‘doing’ of things and not be fettered by interaction with others. ‘Fettered,' I hear you ask? Well, for introverts, who are happy in their own company, contact with others can trigger a whole lot of things … but, let’s not go there. Rather, what has resulted in these changed times and appears to be the answer from many when they are asked, ‘How are things?’ is that they give a shrug or a sigh, saying, ‘Pretty much the same, same … you know?’ And that unchanged situation and enforced ennui, unless we are determined to overcome that emotion, can chip away at positive energy. For my father, in a South African POW camp for most of WW2, it was the same. A feeling of missing out; of being stuck in a place you don’t want to be; of unbidden and unwanted thoughts taking you down a road that could become shadowed if you let it …
Book Excerpt
Goodbye to Italia
I miss home so much. I miss the joy of being a jaunty Italian man; of having my Mamma and sister to talk to. I even fondly recall our intermittent spats. I have been away from home for so long. There is nothing familiar here. We are at the mercy of British or Afrikaans’ orders that are inconsistently carried out, dependent on whom is in charge for the day or what mood they are in.
When you are fighting in a battle there isn’t time to think of anything but surviving. Even when blood splatters your jacket and sometimes your face, as your comrade is hit by a bullet next to you and goes down, you are in the thick of a battle; there is no time for thinking. But here, we are subject to the caprice of these foreigners, who seem to have no joy in life and use us like slave labour. Of late, my thoughts wander erratically. I begin to worry that I will lose my mind.
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