Ten Years in Italy, Three Weeks a Human – A Memoir

True to fact stories. 

Bigotry, still a plague in the 21st century. Some of us don’t even know how prejudiced we are.
This memoir is a desperate scream of a human of inferior birth.
A naïve farmer’s daughter, who never saw a computer before the age of 24, goes to Italy, one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
Here, her dreams turn into a perpetual nightmare. Everything and everyone is against her.
Attractive, single, and humble she becomes a target of unfaithful men and an innocent victim of their wives.
Alone, terrified, abused and on the edge of insanity, she contemplates death. But the love for her family stops her.
Slavery at the end of the 20th century, exploitation, tears, solitude, mockery, phobias, are the key points of this poignant story of survival. Many immigrants and emigrants, especially women, will relate to it.
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If you bought this book after16th of July 2017, you don't have to read "The Missing Chapter" published on its own. This second version has this chapter included. 

130 pages

Excerpt 

A broken thumb, a shattered mind

I moved three times after that, the last one to a small village. I needed peace and quiet, and for the first time since I was in Italy, I thought that it would be better to give up to the foolish dream of changing a destiny that was already written and signed. As my mother used to say, “Whatever happens at all happens as it should.” But I couldn’t give up. My parents wanted me home, of course. However, there was nothing for me to do in Romania, except for the land.

It took me a long time to find a house, as soon as I confessed I was Romanian, landlords usually washed the floor with my dignity or simply closed the call. In three months, I lost a considerable amount of money on rentals that didn’t suit me until I found the right one. The landlord told me upfront that he despised my compatriots—all immigrants really without distinction—but he was a business person. I had nothing against that and settled down.

Later, it came up that my landlord had lived in France for four decades and came back to Italy the year before at his wife insistences. It was a paradox the way he felt about the ones like him.

The house was huge but lacked central heating, and the windows were all faulty. The wind was howling everywhere. I tried to tell my landlord that it was a big problem, he said he didn’t care. I spoke with a friend about it, he offered to help me for free. Half of the day we worked and insulated the eight huge windows as best we could.

“I won’t pay for anything you do in the house. But you’ll pay highly if you break a single bulb,” the landlord shouted when he came to inspect the house due to the movement he noticed inside.

I didn’t reply, I knew that already.

Three plastic bottles filled with hot water became my nightly companions.

One evening, I couldn’t breathe. A pain in the right side of my upper body made me think the worst. I drove to the hospital and waited patiently in line. Another pain in my lower abdomen added to the first one. I thought it was the end, but I was upset. ‘Why do I have to suffer this much on my last day on earth? One day you refused to give me, God, a single peaceful day. Even you treat me as an inferior birth.’

Tears of frustration rolled down my face. When a woman doctor called my name, I almost couldn’t stand up and walk. I bit my lip and gave myself a kick.

In her room, without even looking at me, she ordered me to take off my clothes and explain the symptoms.

I did my best to be clear, but my voice trembled and the tears refused to stop falling.

“You useless immigrants, coming to the hospital for every headache to spend our money,” she hissed through her teeth while pressing with force on my abdomen.

I screamed in pain. The look she gave me froze the blood in my veins. I was convinced she’ll kill me with the stethoscope.

“Get up and go pay the ticket. Tell me your name and date of birth,” she shouted.

“Cristina G., 14 November 1975,” I murmured more dead than alive.

“Hmm. Today is your birthday. Instead of celebrating you came here wasting my time.”

In a trance, I took the piece of paper she handed me with wrath, walked out the room and leant against a wall not knowing what had happened and where to go. I was all shaky and felt like fainting. Thousands of tears continued to roll from my eyes. ‘My birthday,’ I murmured. ‘Today is my birthday.’

A middle-aged nurse came to ask me if I was okay. I was afraid to speak, I was afraid to even breathe. “I… I ne..need to pay for..for the visit, but… I do…do..don’t know wh…wh…ere to go,” I startled.

“Come with me, I’ll show you,” she said with kindness. Sustaining my weight, she took the paper from my hand. “It’s your birthday today,” she said with a smile. “Listen, you don’t have to pay right now. You can go home and wait for the bill to get there, okay?”

I nodded “Yes,” and murmured “Thank you,” and walked outside the building swaying dangerously on my feet. I sat in my car and cried until the tears dried out. Then I switched on the engine and made a solemn promise to never walk into a hospital again unless I was dead.

At home, I took a small piece of paper and wrote down in four different languages these words, “If you read this because you found me unconscious, I beg you, don’t call for help. Let me die in peace. God bless.”

Ten years after, I can sincerely tell you that I kept my promise and still carry a request of that sort in my wallet.

I stayed in bed twisting in agony for two days, then the pain disappeared. My savings were long gone, my brother helped me every month, but I couldn’t continue that way. I needed to look for a full-time job.

The next day I was hired in a wood factory, and another chapter of dreadful treatment began. If before my bosses weren’t despicable to me until I refused their advances, in here, my team leader took up on me at first sight.

Every time he passed me by, my name was shouted with rage. I was outraged and couldn’t find any plausible explanation to that extreme behaviour.  

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