GROSSETO. “Mom, I’m fine, don’t worry.” The phone call from New York to Magliano in Tuscany (province of Grosseto) is worth two lives: that of Sandra, a 43-year-old Deutsche Bank manager who until a few minutes before was inside one of the skyscrapers, and her mother Rossella. She tells us herself, now in her nineties, asking us the courtesy: “No last names, out of respect for those who didn’t make it: I am just the mother of a good girl.”
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What was she doing that day?
“I was returning to the living room from the kitchen and out of the corner of my eye I saw Emilio Fede on TV, he was always in a double-breasted suit but that day he wore a suede jacket: I understood that something serious had happened. I sat down and saw a plane cutting through the tower like a slice of butter. I knew my daughter was there and I went out of my mind, my husband ran inside fearing I had hurt myself.”
What did your daughter tell you?
“She told me that everyone was running towards the river with the police telling them not to look back, that on the other bank they were welcomed in a fire station where she could wash and they gave her a uniform to change into; and that although it was a poor neighborhood there was a continuous coming and going of ordinary people bringing aid and essential goods. We spoke again around midnight, Italian time. My son-in-law gave me the number of the hotel where they had lodged her, I don’t speak English but I managed to make myself understood at the reception and they put her on the line. They had given her a room on the 35th floor but she had refused it: she couldn’t sleep so high up, not that day, and had herself moved. She didn’t say much else, almost out of respect for those who couldn’t save themselves: she has never spoken about it willingly, I discovered many things later.”
For example?
“That she first let everyone else out, she was the last, that she then went back in to get her bag and phone (I asked her many times why but it was providential, because then the lines went down), that seeking help she banged a 100-dollar bill against shop windows but no one opened because in those first moments it was feared a war had broken out. That she was convinced the dead were many more than reported. That once back in Manhattan she wanted a psychologist for her employees, who were almost all reservists and soon had to leave, and that every time they heard a noise everyone jumped to alert. And that once, sitting on a bench in a park, she was approached by a man: he was the father of one of her employees who had recognized her and wanted to thank her for saving his son’s life. Even today this fills me with pride.”
When did you see each other again?
“She managed to return to London the following Sunday, she lived in Frankfurt. We hugged again for the first time here some time later, and she started tending the garden.”
Then what happened?
“I will never understand how but a ‘headhunter’ (a researcher and selector of qualified personnel, ed.) managed to find her and she left again. She had always been like that, she told me: life in the countryside was not for her, she knew she was destined for something else. She worked until she retired two years ago. But she often returns to spend some time here away from everything.”
What remains of that day a quarter of a century later?
“The people of the town may not remember what that day meant for our family and the new generations may not know what it’s about. But she still keeps that firefighter uniform inside a nylon bag. I, instead, have a drawer full of newspapers from that time. A drawer that today must be emptied, I told her but she doesn’t feel ready yet.”
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