MY VOICE: It’s the smell of naphtha, motor oil, it permeates my father’s work clothes.
Some nights, when he comes home from his shift... It must be well past bedtime because his shift ends at 10 pm, and I don’t remember whether he already had a car back then, or whether he walked the 10 Ks from the factory... Well, anyway, I’m watching a movie with my Mum, late at night, well past my bedtime. Mum is sitting on a chair (we didn’t have a sofa back then) and I am sitting next to her, on a lower chair, so that I can rest my head on her lap if I get too tired, and when I go back to an upright position, I grab onto her leg (sometimes just a piece of fabric from her dress) because in the dark I fear that she could, she might suddenly disappear – adults always do inexplicable things that don’t make any sense to me, so she could well disappear, like by magic... But then my father comes home from his shift, and the house is suddenly alive, despite it being late at night, and Dad pretends to be a little bit cross because I am not already sleeping, unlike my older brother, then he starts chatting with my Mum, and while he tells my Mum about his working day, always full of adventures, he takes me absentmindedly into his arms, and I am surrounded by the smell of oil: never mind that the rigid fabric of his blue overalls stings, and that the pungent smell of naphtha submerges my senses: in my memory this smell – naphtha, motor oil – is forever linked to my Dad.
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS:
Ah, eccoci qua. Pozzo Sella, Miniera di Monteponi. [Ah, here we are. Pozzo Sella [Sella Pit], Monteponi Mine.]
Eh che meraviglia! L’odore... questo è l’odore che aveva mio papa quando tornava dal lavoro, l’odore della tuta sua... [How beautiful! The smell… this is the smell of my Dad when he came back from work, the smell of his overalls…]
MY VOICE: Hang on! Where are we? Who are we? And why are we here?
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS:
Ma secondo me abbiamo fatto almeno 8 [I guess we have already walked at least 8 Km]
Dici? Con 9 chili di roba a testa? [You reckon? Carrying 9 Kg each?]
Ma tutto questo stai registrando? [But, have you been recording everything?]
Certo! [Of course!]
Devo capire come funziona questo geolocalizzatore, lo stiamo testando… [I need to understand how this GPS works, we are testing it…]
MY VOICE: It’s me and my namesake friend, also Cristina Marras, we are meeting at dawn to go on a four-day hike along the Mining Trail of St Barbara.
Eccola che arriva, all’orizzonte, eccola che arriva! Macché ritardo! Ho dormito malissimo… [There she is, arriving at the horizon, arriving! You are not late! I couldn’t sleep last night…]
MY VOICE: I only slept a few hours, a sleep crowded with nightmares, constantly looking at the clock to check the time, fearing to oversleep. And now we are here, darkness all around, excited like two school kids on a field trip.
ROMEO: St. Barbara is the patron saint of firefighters, artillery, armourers, military engineers, gunsmiths and anyone else who works with explosives, therefore, following the adoption of gunpowder for mining in the 1600s, she is also the patron saint of miners, tunnellers and all underground workers.
MY VOICE: The Mining Trail of St Barbara is a 500 Ks itinerary across the Sulcis mining area of Sardinia, gruelling isolated goat trails swept by the ubiquitous mistral wind, but also breath-taking glimpses of views and beaches with water so crystalline that it always reminds me of stained-glass windows in churches.
MY VOICE: But before being able to start our hike, we must receive the Pilgrims’ credentials that will grant us welcome and hospitality in the various destinations along the journey. Being this a trail dedicated to a saint, it is only logical that it should start from a church.
CLOISTERED NUNS SINGING: “Oh Gesu di noi...”
Priest:
Nel nome del padre, del figlio e dello spirito santo. Amen, il signore sia con voi, e con il tuo spirito [In the name of the father, of the son and of the holy spirit, Amen. May the lord be with you. And with your spirit]
MY VOICE: I love it, because no one like the catholic church is good at transforming the stamping of a piece of paper into a grandiose event.
We have to drive an hour to attend the first mass at the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Good Path, in the town of Iglesias, from where the first leg of our journey starts. Santuario della Vergine del Buon Cammino - the words swell inside my mouth and populate my mind with mythological creatures, quests, dragon-slayers, and princesses kept captive inside unreachable towers...
CLOISTERED NUNS SINGING: “Alleluja, alleluja…”
MY VOICE: and aren’t the young cloistered nuns who sing hymns to the lord, aren’t they just as unreachable as princesses kept captive inside a tower? We are informed that our journey will start after one of these invisible young nuns...
ROMEO: So young! Oh so Young!
MY VOICE: affixes the first stamp on a pilgrim pass, to certify our status as pilgrims on the trail.
There are too many questions that come to mind envisaging the mysterious nuns, hidden behind the grates, angelic voices praising the glory of the lord.
CLOISTERED NUNS SINGING: “Dio dell’universo…”
MY VOICE: After mass, we are sent to wait inside the refectory, and we wait, excited, our heavy backpacks neatly lined at our feet, waiting to get dirty but clean and brand new for the moment.
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS:
Permesso… Buon giorno, buon anno! Buon anno, anche a lei [Can we…? Good morning, happy new year! Happy new year to you too!]
MY VOICE: Once the hand of the nun finally appears between the grates to collect our pass, we cannot resist, and with one simple question we manage to blunder it all, because you shouldn’t ask a cloistered nun to take a picture, but we do, and the young cloistered nun shields herself coy and says no, sorry, I am not familiar with such things, and only now we realise our faux pas, and apologise profusely but we also cringe inside at our lack of tact, because despite all our anthropological and philosophical readings, despite the books about customs and habits and new colonialism and choice, despite all that, here we are, giddily extending a mobile phone to a cloistered nun, for her to take a picture to embellish our timeline.
Women unable to understand other women’s choices.
MY VOICE: I’m pretty sure that my mother hated it, the smell of naphtha in my father’s work clothes; at least, she would forever complain because the smell seemed to saturate the fabric, no matter the amount of soap, or washing or hard graft she would submit it to: a faint trace of smell always lingering, even in the cleanest of clothes. Dad’s smell.
And, mind you, my dad loved to exaggerate with aftershave and cologne, and when he wore his Sunday best, when we went to church as a family, he left a trail of scented cologne behind, but that, I cannot remember, unlike the pungent smell of motor oil.
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS: Allora, buon cammino! [OK then, have a good journey!]
MY VOICE: Here, look: here he is, standing at the top of a very high scaffolding, you have to know that he is there, and to squint to see him. In another one, he is kneeling on the ground, at the front of a dozen or so of other workers, dusty, so much dust that I can smell it across the half a century that divides me from the time when the photo was taken.
In another one, my father is very young and yet he looks exactly the way I remember him, because when I think of you Dad, you are young and funny, hilarious actually, full of tricks and stories and adventures and riddles and games and all the best things that a child could wish for...
MY VOICE: We’ve just been walking for four hours or so, we have already learnt how to pace ourselves to the weight of the backpack, to the wind, to the ups and downs of the trail.
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS: Allora, adesso io guarderò un’altra cosa. Cioè? La Google map. Google map cerca qui, la mia posizione [OK then, now I’m going to check something else. What do you mean? Google maps. Google maps find my position]
MY VOICE: It’s cold, it’s winter, but I’m sweating, climbing a hill of which I cannot see the end. We haven’t met anyone, and if it weren’t for the signs marking the path, we could be in the middle of nowhere. We are in the middle of nowhere.
This is all mining land, you can tell by the scars left in the rock, by the chunks of mountains, by the mounds of stone debris piled up. Leftovers of a great future that never was. You see how sad and beautiful is the land. And the name feels like a lolly in your mouth: Monteponi.
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS: Comunque adesso Cri dove stiamo andando, verso il Pozzo Sella? [Anyway Cri, where are we going now, to Pozzo Sella?]
MY VOICE: On the last descend before arriving at Pozzo Sella we pass a magnificent example of industrial architecture, from the late 1800s, when factories were given merlons and ornate mullioned windows.
ROMEO: Oh, you see that? That is a large construction, really a magnificent infrastructure aimed really at solving the problem of the drainage of groundwater and of the metalliferous basin which really did prevent the excavation and extraction of minerals from really, developing in-depth. And also this external structures of the Pozzo Sella, which have like a really particular architectural value as you can see, are the housing of the eduction pumps and of the various steam machines with boilers and mechanical workshops, as well as forge and carpentry.
MY VOICE: We are almost there. Step. By step. By step. But first, we pass this round structure, what is it? It reminds me of a blind Colosseum, without windows. A Colosseum where instead of lions and gladiators you have workplace injuries and deaths or retirement, followed by silicosis and emphysema.
ME AND MY HOMONYMOUS CRISTINA MARRAS: Dentro il Pozzo Sella, io quando entro in questi posti sento l’odore che aveva la tuta di mio padre quando tornava dal lavoro: nafta, cherosene, non lo so... [Inside the Pozzo Sella, when I enter in places like this I smell the smell of my father when he came back from work: naphtha, motor oil, I don’t know…]
MY VOICE: When we finally enter Pozzo Sella, the smell of naphtha is so overwhelming that I can almost see my Dad, in his work overalls, or with a dusty singlet. But he is not here, as he died over 15 years ago, drowned by the same dust that used to bring his daily bread, our daily bread
ROMEO: …give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us… but deliver us from evil
MY VOICE: And barium, bentonite, barite, bario, bentonite - How and why did I learn how to pronounce these words as a small child, listening to my father’s phantasmagorical adventures?
I do not know whether you ever set foot inside Pozzo Sella dad, I doubt it, as by the time the works to restructure and open it again started, you had already been retired for a long time, you were probably already bedridden, linked to the inseparable oxygen tank. But while I’m here, visiting Pozzo Sella in Monteponi, and this name and this smell, the smell of oil, trigger memories of you, of late nights when you came home from your work shift, when all your magnificent future was still all ahead of you, and mother and I forgot to watch the late-night movie to welcome you home, dust and oil and all. And while I’m here, and while I’m happy and I am enjoying this walk, this path of discovery, I feel that something is missing, and that something Dad is you.