I am not a foreigner because I haven’t been praying to return safely home, I haven’t wasted my time imagining my house, my desk, my side of the bed. I am not a foreigner because we are all traveling, we are all full of the same questions, the same tiredness, the same fears, the same selfishness and the same generosity. I am not a foreigner because, when I asked, I received. When I knocked, the door opened. When I looked, I found.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by Marily Frye, from her work, “Oppression”:

“Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire anytime it wanted to go somewhere. Furthermore, even if, one day at a time, you myopically inspect each wire, you still could not see why a bird could have trouble going past the wires to get anywhere. There is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny could discover, that would reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relation to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.”

Such is the situation that so many of us face on a daily basis—such is the dungeon we either fall into or are thrown into by those around us who seek to shape us in their own image. Indeed it may not be a prison visible to the naked eye, a dungeon with walls of stone and chains of iron. More commonly it is, as you say, “una prigione senza muri ma per sempre una prigione” (a prison without walls, but a prison just the same.) For this reason, it is so very important “che si celebri, sempre la liberta, la responsibilita, l’importancia di lottare per questa” (that one always celebrate one’s liberty, one’s responsibility, and recognize the importance of fighting for this.)

And to that, I might add, it is equally important for us all, as readers, to stay aware of and lend our support to writers throughout the world who are being persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and even executed for attempting to freely express their beliefs and opinions. So, if you get a chance, please visit the PEN WiPC website link below to find out what you can do to help: http://www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/aboutthewipc/

Thank you, again, Paulo!
Savita Vega

Regards.