A requirement also to make a deposition to the commissariat of police to ascertain that whoever writes doesn't have penal precedents in his background.

To resolve the situation,  arrived an appeal sent from the same Baraldini to the director of the jail in which she is held to insert a list of  friends with acquired laws in the Americans jails. And permission for a personal interview, while despite the official application made in advance from Il Manifesto, despite many "promises," she still doesn't have this list at Rebibbia.

I arrive with the subway and then taking the 311, a bus that spends for avenues entitled to Marx, Hegel, Spinoza, Galvani, Kant.  The wall up of surrounded of the jail almost they confine with those of the residences- for the small [palazzine] to two plain with the spread out cloths to the windows and any seedling to the windowsill- of this district of the Roman outskirts. On the walls of surrounded from jail, close to the [gabbiotto] of entrance, they  have posted four big apparent with photo to colors of Silvia. The district, the houses, it all composes a picture that strikes with force anyone having become accustomed to meeting Silvia in the Americans jails- Lexington, Kentucky; Marianna, Florida; Danbury, Connecticut. Their antiseptic character,   the violence of the total isolation,  the triple line of threadbare cages and  the daily control from warders that do not have anything of what is human: all the prisoners  also provoke the maximum in anguish in the visitors.

An anguish that now when arriving at the office for authorizing the  interviews: will they will stamp also here ( as in the States) the back of the hand like they brand a wild animal? Surprise!  Here it is sufficient to present a document of identity and deposit purses and personal objects in a numbered cassette.

From this point one enters, through doors that come open like dams with ordinary keys and not through technological devices maneuvered from a  distance from the employed personnel from a  central control- and it opens,  and everything are closed again to yours shoulders. Perhaps all these is only superficial impressions but this also derived from astonishment corresponding to anything one has experienced -- so as to  measure to the regime of detention: hard, punitive but deprived of the brutal element and almost vengeful of a system like that American.  This one grants the prisoner the hope of rehabilitation the other not.

I meet with Silvia Baraldini- an hour in all, Saturday 2 October- we only offer questions and intend to point out any of the incongruities in her Italian detention. The contained conditions in the bilateral accord between United States and Italy for the transfer in Italy are hard: only four interviews per month, of an hour in duration, for the mother and the families narrower; no access on the telephone like she  had  in the 17 years and nine months of jail in the United States.

You ask for Baraldini and  the agent is there arranges a room in which there is a table and two chairs. As soon she enters Silvia smiles me, happy to see me.  She has been in isolation for over a month and I represent a friend but also a part of that external world that she knew  all those years in America. She doesn't wear the much detested uniform, kaki in color, of fiber synthetic fiber imposed at Danbury but rather a green clear shirt and black pants: clothes that she freely can choose from among her private garments. A possibility that she didn't have  in the United States.

"You see I begin to grow thin, but not yet as I want." I have many things about which I would like to ask, but Silvia anticipates almost all my questions. "I am treated here as a  political person, before I arrived they  have emptied the section and they have transferred all the others to another jail.  I am in the section "maximum security" while at Danbury at the end they had me  classified as "lowest security."  Another eleven prisoners are held in this special section along with me.  They are here for crimes of mafia, sequestration, and international trafficking in  drugs. And then there me for terrorism. But everybody is kind with me, they try to do to ease my anxiety level which, as a result of the transfer, is very high. After the first three days of isolation I began to suffer of real attacks of anxiety and a floating (reoccurring) sense of trauma"

Are you forced to stay in a small cell? "No, my cell here is really very big, my problem is the  isolation. You know, they in the meanwhile close on me the door to my cell for twelve hours- from the eight of at night at eight o'clock of the morning. In the daytime, lone is told in language [carcerario], I am kept in "isolation to open cell" but I am not allowed to exercise or communicate with prisoners outside the section. I have been accustomed (in the States) to be able to communicate with other prisoners.  Unexpectedly I now find myself   without anybody for days and days." Her eyes redden, the strong emotion betrays the control.

"The first days I was allowed to walk with guards in front and behind. They followed me whenever I took a  footstep. Fortunately this decision was dropped after 3 days. But I have gotten out of the special section only three times and only to go for a medical checkup: finally they have taken care of a tendonitis problem that I dragged along from Danbury. But I still want to understand the Italian system and the differences with the American one. " Give me one good example," I interrupt. 

"Washing ones clothes by hand with soap and a sink of water...this is now an ancient way to do this ...especially in a prison," as Silvia struggles with accommodating herself to the Italian prison system.  discover the differences with the American one, adapt to a so much different mentality from that of the country in which she has lived- from free first, imprisoned then- from when it was fourteen years old.

"I at night try to cook something for myself in the cell.  The only give you cheese to eat and there are too much lipids as regards the diet that I must follow. I do all with a small [fornellino] with an only fire and little by little... is learning like
behavior. I am able to buy salad and the allowed foods which I keep hold in the refrigerator of the section. For all she has received so far she has had to write a formal request.  "For each thing you need you must write a letter".   And what about the Italian mozzarella that you dreamed when were you in America?

"That no. In jail you need permission receive a package with food. Grapes, for example, are not permitted. My mother had carried these to me but had to take them back."  You told me that you were  in "isolation to open cell" from the eight of the morning at eight o'clock at night"...so how is your day organized?  "We are allowed to go outside two hours in the morning and two at night in the space reserved to the special section. I see the sky. I can exercise but not as would want. I try to answer to the avalanche of mail that has arrive me from all the Italian prisoners. They have assigned me a job: I could not teach but I could do clerical work that consists of compiling all the appeals of the prisoners of my section. " I have learned in hurry."  It is almost like a tune:  "you the undersigned asks the dominion to respect this appeal."

We burst into a laugh or  two, we thought that this bureaucratic rhetoric was by now forgotten. "  At night  I like to read but I am only given a few weak light bulbs. In the cell I  have a television, I look at the films, the sports. I follow the news-bulletins of Raitre."

The hour of interview is about to expire. The agent that for all this time waiting outside the door, comes in and says "Baraldini! Interview over!"  We greet and Silvia does me a last recommendation: "Write me, and use the priority mail." Is it working (to receive mail)? "Its working,  its working!"  And we both laugh.