Dante on the Move

Tag: books

  • Living Well and ‘Leidenschaft’: From Pieve a Pitiana to Montemignaio

    The way up was steep, but inspiring company and a delicious supper awaited.

    I awoke at 2am to refuel the log burner in the community arts room where we were lodging and there followed a difficult but warm night of sleep. My day started at 7am when I rose to write and check work emails. It felt like breathing a new kind of air to have the time to write as the birds chirruped outside the window. 

    At 9am we were packed and having a breakfast of cereal and yoghurt with Stefano and his youngest son. My placemat read, ‘today is a good day to…love nature’. It felt prescient. 

    Alina and I said our goodbyes to our hosts and headed uphill for what was supposed to be a much easier day of the cammino. 

    The sight of the church slowly disappeared from view as we climbed up the road which hugged sinuous vineyards. After yesterday’s experience and reflection on Dante’s wood of suicides, I found myself noticing each tree and wondering what kind of soul would be trapped within it. This one, here, with its gnarled roots and stubby fingers; and there, an oak with its sturdy frame. 

    Although the path uphill was quite straightforward, we missed a turning and ended up in the small, deserted town of Saltino (the official and much shorter route threads an arch to the side of it.).

    The village appeared post-apocalyptic except for a bar where a lady with bleach blonde hair served us drinks – a cappuccino for Alina and an espresso macchiato for me. Alina introduced me to the song, Espresso Macchiato which is this year’s Estonian Eurovision song context entry.

    ‘Life is like spaghetti, it’s hard until you make it,’ sings Tommy Cash. 

    Eurovision has always been a big part of my life. I love the campness and the way that the heavy burden of nation states and regional strategizing is rendered playful, all accompanied in England by the teasing commentary of TV personalities Graham Norton and the late Terry Wogan. My sister-in-law, Jenny, is Swedish, and, in Sweden, Eurovision means business!

    In recent months, after making a new year’s resolution to spend more time with my niece and nephew in light of the realization that I likely won’t have kids of my own, I’ve been driving the two hours in my blue Mini every month to visit them. This has included joining them in watching the Swedish nationals where viewers vote for this year’s entry. It’s a hyper produced show and luckily you don’t need to speak Swedish to enjoy it. I felt a stab of pride as my 12-year-old niece Louisa fluently translated the commentary for me. Oh, to be raised bilingual.

    The winner of this year’s Swedish nationals who will travel to Basel, Switzerland for the competition in May is the Finnish band, KAJ, whose song, Bara Bada Bastu is about the joys of the sauna. It’s a catchy, extravagant number which will, for sure, give Estonia a run for its money. 

    Now here comes a fun fact I bet you didn’t know. Eurovision song contest entries don’t have to be from the country they represent. In 1988, Canadian artist Celine Dion represented Switzerland and won with the banger, ‘Ne partez pas sans moi’. Check out the video – she sports a tutu and a military jacket, quite the contrast to her sleek performance at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games (yes, I cried at it too). 

    I had the opportunity to travel to Finland myself in November last year during a research project for Save The Children on violence against children at EU borders. Between interviewing refugee children in reception centres, I had the pleasure of indulging in my own sauna experience. After singeing my skin red, I dived from Helsinki’s dock into the ice-cold ocean. Well, I say dive. In reality, I awkwardly and tentatively made my way down the metal steps until my body was under. Then my neck. Then my head. 

    Whoosh. The feeling was intoxicating, something between an orgasm and being burnt at the stake. I can see why the Fins are such a prosperous nation. 

    Saunas are such a big part of Finnish life that even one of the reception centres I visited had a sauna where a 17-year-old Colombian girl who was waiting on the result of her family’s asylum application told me she liked to spend time with her friends. I could imagine the Daily Mail headlines – ‘now SAUNAS for refugees!’ It made sense to me. It was freezing cold and in Finland, sauna equals life.

    On our departure from the town up to Vallombrosa we passed a sign warning cars to slow down for migrating frogs. 

    The expansive abbey loomed over the surrounding landscape which included an empty water feature which was also signaled, ‘no fishing’. Italians in these parts seem to really like their public signs. 

    ‘Sti Italiani!’ repeated Alina with her Roman lilt.

    From there it was a steep climb up what seemed like one thousand stone steps which looked over one of several waterfalls we would cross today. Each corner of the cliff was marked by a little shrine. 

    At the start of Dante’s journey, he meets three beasts in the woods: a leopard, a lion and a female wolf that represent his fears. Readers have argued for centuries about what they signified for him – pride, lust, greed? 

    As we climbed, we distracted ourselves by discussing what our three beasts would be. Mine were fear of dying without realizing one’s talents and potential, perfectionism, and the terror that assails me from time to time that I might not be the good person people think I am. Alina is a Jungian. She reminded me, in a chastising tone, that ‘we all have shadow selves. Me, I can’t get enough of you.’

    We are recording parts of our conversation as we walk for a future podcast since, to add to her already impressive portfolio of creative talents, Alina is currently studying sound design. As I adjusted my bra strap to ease the rub of my backpack, the portable microphone Alina had brought with her nearly went careering over the steep edge. Luckily it just fell a short way into the leaves where is disturbed a dozing lizard. 

    Alina and I have different body temperatures. I was sweating into my t-shirt, a gift from her which read Dante On the Move after our anthology of the same name, while she was wearing two jackets with a yellow jumper the colour of primroses tied around her neck like a scarf. 

    ‘This was meant to be the easy day!’ exclaimed Alina.

    We were rewarded with sweeping views across the surrounding hills. Then came the steep descent. It felt like we were walking down into Dante’s Inferno, each circle lined with ridges from which I could imagine Dante and Virgil looking down at the sinners below. 

    The sound of a stream accompanied our pilgrimage. 

    Animals have been a big part of our trip: we stop to pet every cat and salute every barking dog. But upon entering the town of Montemignaio we were greeted by two friendly sheep.

    ‘Salve!’ cried the owner who was walking them along a small lawn which was dotted with daisies. 

    ‘Buona sera’ we replied.

    ‘Would you like to see where they live?’ asked the friendly lady. We did.

    There followed an extraordinary evening.

    First, Anna showed us the beautiful paddock in which the sheep resided at night to protect them from local wolves. It was built to specification, she proudly declared, by a shamanic Venetian man who spent three years alone in the virgin forest of Bolivia, where he acquired much of his knowledge and wisdom. Inside the straw was fresh and dry and the circular structure had a domed ceiling crafted with all the care of a Florentine cathedral. Alina and I joked that we could have happily spent the night there instead of continuing to our air b and b. 

    Then came the chickens, equally spoiled in a bountiful enclosure on the hillside, made out of all organic materials.

    Anna had a way with the animals. She hugged them to her chest with a filial warmth. 

    As we were petting the sheep, a handsome stranger wearing an embroidered scarf and long leather boots made his way through the front gate to join us.

    ‘Ciao, Anna!’

    ‘Ciao, Matthias!’

    They embraced.

    Matthias, it turned out, was a fellow German. A writer who had moved to Montemignaio some eight months ago where he now runs a hostel for pilgrims, Frate e Sole. 

    ‘So, you’ve met the wonderful Anna!’ he exclaimed. 

    They clearly had a bond. She traded with him ‘happy chicken’ eggs, fresh vegetables from her garden and her homemade walnut liquor. 

    When asked about what we would be eating tonight, we replied that we hoped to pick something up at the village shop. Anna and Matthias exchanged raised eyebrows. 

    ‘But it’s Wednesday,’ came their response. As if, of course, logically, on Wednesday the shop would be closed.

    ‘Sti Italiani!’ repeated Alina playfully.

    We were contemplating the prospect of dining on unsalted bread and cereal bars when Matthias invited us to spend the evening together. 

    ‘It will be a simple fare, but healthy,’ he counselled. We were in. 

    Matthias bid us farewell for now and Anna invited us in. 

    Next to a beautifully landscaped vegetable garden sat Anna’s home, an old stone building which she’d had renovated. When Covid hit in the year 2020, she had relocated from her native Germany.

    It was simple but spectacular. Every room was full of ornate bespoke wooden furniture that had been made for her great grandfather – a wardrobe, desk, sideboard – all had been shipped over at great expense from Germany. Anna was in no two minds. This was now her home. And she was ‘living well’ here.

    Over the next hour, Anna shared insights from 82 years of life experience as we listened eagerly to her perfect English. Though she was born in the war in 1942, she looked not a day over 60. She radiated peace around her. The secret to being happy, she advised us, is to be grateful and to live in the moment. Her home had a traditional Etruscan metal handrail and organic earthen tiles the colour of doves. 

    In one room there greeted us the sight of marinating eggs and vegetables, in another vegetable seeds sprouted in tiny pots and here, in the bathroom, were a range of tinctures and ointments that she had made by hand. She showed us her traditional copper Florentine bed and her office which consisted of a shelf with an old Nokia mobile phone, an address book and a paper and pen. 

    ‘This is why I look young!’ she chortled, entreating us to follow her into the next room which contained a small library and more budding seeds. 

    It turned out Anna carried the seeds around with her throughout the day to make sure they were always at the optimum temperature,

    ‘This is my little kindergarten’ she explained with glee. ‘Right now, some are sleeping but tomorrow, who knows!’

    Anna shared with us some of her prized possessions. A steel candlestick holder from the war, a signed Zingarelli Italian dictionary and a book she had made herself with thick marbled Tuscan paper containing photographs from her collection – she was an artist too, it seemed. Alongside each photo was a short description which mindfully described the scene. One showed a rag rug made out of old textiles.

    The accompanying text which was tucked into a pocket, sewn into the page of the book, read:

    ‘After

    All those clothes

    Sewn, worn and torn,

    After being woven into this mat,

    After the passage over it

    Of so many feet, big and small…

    Now, finally:

    Loosen the grip,

    Gracefully dissolving

    Into a harmony of fading colours’

    Anna was dressed like a farmer in a pink jumper and dungarees and she had circled her eyes with a turquoise eye liner. It looked magnificent. It reminded me of my late Italian teacher, Andi Oakley, who would line her eyes in a glittering violet hue.

    As we parted ways, Anna gave us a bottle of her homemade walnut liquor and a dozen eggs and hugged us the way I haven’t been hugged in a long time. Her arms, strong with the labour of running her little farm, held me tightly while her calloused fingers caressed my back. 

    Of course, we were late to dinner, but we knocked on the way down and gave Matthias the heads up. 

    ‘We’ve been with Anna,’ we explained, and he immediately understood.

    After a quick turnaround, we arrived at his homely place where he’d lit a roaring fire. We found a table set with plates and crystals that glowed in the throw of his Himalayan salt lamp. The green man watched over us.

    While Anna’s walls had been bare, here art and tapestries occupied the space: Monet, Van Gogh, Kandinsky. I was quite impressed that, between us, Alina and I managed to identify nearly all of them. Next to the fire was a bible. Matthias had moved to the town after doing the St Francis’ Way, or the Via di Francesco, which runs from Florence to Rome and shares some of the same route of the Cammino di Dante, including passing through this magical town. 

    Matthias explained how he sought to integrate the teachings of Saint Francis into his own life: living simply, staying humble, being kind to those in need (and saving hiking strangers from starvation because the bloody shop was closed.) He made his money writing short stories for German magazines. 

    We ate a delicious but humble meal of homemade bread which he’d taken 24 hours to prepare using a local method he’d learnt from Anna with flour from the local mill. The salad contained fresh beetroot and the garlicy local leaf known as ‘erba orsina’, a name that refers to the fact that a bear (orso), awakening in springtime after his winter sleep, goes for this herb in order to get strong and potent again.

    We discussed our mutual love of Erich Maria Remarque (Alina) and Stefan Zweig (me) and Alina read one of the poems from her new collection called, Why Do We Choose To Suffer. We discussed the meaning of leidenschaft – as artists, there is passion in a certain kind of suffering, we agreed.

    This was something our feet knew all too well as we climbed back up the hill to the welcoming Agriturismo di Mela where we were greeted with milk for our morning coffee, supplies for an emergency dinner – which thankfully we didn’t need – and soft sheets. 

  • In the Distance: Florence to Pieve a Pitiana

    Renaissance paintings line the route, but be wary of getting lost in the wood of suicides.

    Though I remain determined it is what Dante would have wanted, starting my pilgrimage in Florence, Dante’s birthplace, rather than his site of exile and death, Ravenna, had the drawback of beginning with what is said to be the hardest day of the cammino: 30 kilometres with an ascent of 895 metres. Though I’ve been training back in the UK in the Peak District near my home, I was somewhat daunted as to how the day would unfold.

    I woke around 7am to the sound of birds singing and the chiming bells of Santa Spirito, the ‘church across the river’. I left Anna and her family sleeping soundly as I packed up my bag and tried discretely to exit the jewelry studio through the glass double doors that opened onto the quiet street. Succulents a hue of pink and green occupied window boxes along the cobbled passage into which the sun was sneakily smuggling its first rays of the morning. 

    In Santo Spirito square the market sellers were already setting up their stalls: leggings, knickers, pot plants, copper bracelets and beaded earrings the size of oranges. Two dogs – one caramel and fluffy, one white and slick – frolicked by the central fountain while their owners puffed on cigarettes and made casual conversation.

    I took an espresso macchiato and looked across at the church. Among other delights, it contains the Madonna with St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Martin of Tours by Filippino Lippi. The altarpiece is also known as Pala de’ Nerli from the name of the commissioners, Tanai de’ Nerli and his wife Nanna, who are shown in donor portraits at the sides – the Renaissance equivalent of a selfie. 

    The painting was commissioned by the church in 1494, so some 100 years after Dante walked the squares of Florence. Lippi’s style is sensual. Gone are the 2D Giotto era portraits of Jesus looking like an adult squeezed into a baby-sized body. Lippi was a contemporary of Botticelli whose fleshy Madonnas continue to mesmerize visitors to the Uffizi with their delicate features. 

    The Uffizi Gallery literally means ‘offices’. It is named after the seat where the city’s rulers used to conduct their affairs. Once business was conducted in the Bargello, now an art gallery home to dozens of Donatello sculptures where Dante would have served as a member of the political elite. 

    The Bargello is the ideal venue to trace the complex relationship between Dante and his home city. In the Sala dell’Udienza of the then Palazzo del Podestà (today the Salone di Donatello), on 10 March 1302, the poet-politician was condemned to exile. In the adjacent Cappella del Podestà, a few years later, Giotto and his school portrayed Dante’s face for the first time, including him in a fresco among the ranks of the elect in Paradise. It is said to be the first ever portrait of Dante.

    The façade of the Santo Spirito Church is striking in its simplicity. As I passed and continued towards the Ponte Vecchio, runners wove in and out of my path and trucks disembarked cargo to one of Florence’s hundreds of eateries. One box read, ‘Lobsters and fresh mussels.’ 

    An Asian couple were taking wedding photos on the famous bridge which connects the Uffizi Galleries to the Pitti Palace which the Medici once called their home. Her veil glittered in the morning sunlight as the photographer insisted they ‘kiss, kiss, kiss!’

    I took a second coffee when I reached the Piazza del Duomo which, unlike the rest of the still sleepy city was bustling with life. Tour groups followed umbrellas like leaf cutter ants and carriages pulled by horses escorted tourists through the narrow streets. In Venice, the streets are known colloquially as ‘rughette’ or ‘little wrinkles’. I smiled as I recalled this fact, spreading wrinkles across my own face.

    Then came the time for our meeting. 

    Alina arrived, her flaming red hair licking her collarbone and cascading over her shoulders.

    She was wearing a beautiful black coat over sweatpants and a running jacket designed by one of the fashion houses for whom she had previously laboured. She had succeeded in stashing a huge amount into her small backpack.

    ‘That’s what comes with moving around a lot,’ she said. ‘And the coat? Well, if you invite a refugee on a walk, they likely only have one coat, and this is it.’

    We hugged tightly, shedding the first of what would be several tears over the coming days, and reached out and touched the walls of the baptistry where Dante had been immersed in 1265 and to where he had hoped one day to return as a poet post-exile. In Paradiso canto 25 he writes,

    ‘If it should happen . . . If this sacred poem—

    this work so shared by heaven and by earth

    that it has made me lean through these long years—

    can ever overcome the cruelty 

    that bars me from the fair fold where I slept,

    a lamb opposed to wolves that war on it, 

    by then with other voice, with other fleece,

    I shall return as poet and put on,

    at my baptismal font, the laurel crown .’

    ‘Se mai continga che ’l poema sacro

    al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,

    sì che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, 

    vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra

    del bello ovile ov’io dormi’ agnello,

    nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; 

    con altra voce omai, con altro vello

    ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte 

    del mio battesmo prenderò ’l cappello . ‘                        

    It is tradition to depict poets in Italy with laurel crowns, one now adopted by students who port the symbol on graduation day. When we completed our Reading Dante with Refugees course in Rome, I made sure that all of the students received from Stephan, the Director of the Trinity College Rome Campus that hosted us, a laurel crown. 

    Alina, a Ukrainian refugee fashion designer turned feminist activist, was one of the eleven refugee students who took my class. For her final project she imagined her own journey from Inferno to Paradiso through the lens of the Italian bureaucracy. In the short film she made for the course, Paradise of Exiles, she shows herself moving from the dark wood (she literally, set off at 2am to shoot in woods outside of Rome) followed by the Purgatory of refugee status determination and the eventual Paradise of finding peace in Rome’s art scene. She filmed the final scenes at an exclusive shoot at the Galleria Borghese where my friend Stefania Vannini is a curator. She looks resplendent with her red hair against the green walls. I’m there in the background cheering her on.

    Since the course finished two years ago, I have become somewhat of a mentor to Alina, even though she is only five years younger than me. I know the value of mentorship having experienced it first-hand myself so many times over: Julie, Andi, Janey, Joyce – you know who you are.

    We took our time winding through the bustling morning streets before passing to the river, beside which we hiked a good few kilometres before turning up a road that led us outside of the city. For the entire morning, the Florentine landscape peaked out behind us like a jester egging us on. Each time we turned around she was more distant. I thought of Dante and how close he would have come in his exile. While we know, as this trek honours, that he dwelled at several lodgings by the river Arno, did he get close enough to see the cityscape which then would have been teaming with medieval towers and devoid of today’s famous domed landscape curated by Brunelleschi and Giotto?

    Swallows sprung from under bridges and inside cemeteries, disturbing the air with the gentle flap of wings. Street corners were embellished with Madonna and child.

    Alina and I chatted fluently in our colloquial mix of Italian-English as we followed the path up, up, up and left the gilded city in our trail. At 11.30 on the dot we stopped at a bench overlooking the city for her to join a call with two interns working for her holistic creative agency, Sensi, who were running an event on refugee wellbeing. I took the time to check our route and enjoy the delicate scent of crocuses that filled the spring air. 

    Despite her small bag, Alina had packed in an impressive amount of food including ‘unsalted bread’ from her local Bangladeshi deli. I was relieved to find that I was able to stomach dates again after a traumatic incident in Syria where I spent a 12-hour bus journey to Jordan munching on a bag-full only to find, upon sunrise, that it was also filled with ants. Oh well, protein is protein.

    Alina shared her news and I caught her up with my life. We’d both spent depressive winters hiding beneath the sheets of our beds and were grateful, like the crocuses, to be coming back to life. I had nominated Alina to be part of the Nobel Women’s Initiative Sister to Sister mentorship programme in 2023 and now she’d been invited to participate in a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine. It’s a funny kind of pride I felt as both a teacher and a friend. 

    ‘It’s about time women got some coverage in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict in Britain,’ I commented. ‘Too true,’ she observed.

    Once we had taken in the last glimpse of the Duomo it was after lunch. We ate schiacchiata sandwiches, a Florentine delicacy which literally means ‘squashed together’.

    The day was hot.

    In the town of Bombone we stopped to refill our water bottles and I marveled at the fact that the town council had voted to put in a well that featured not just purified still, but fizzy water. I made the mistake of filling my camel drinking pouch with it, only for it later to explode inside my bag. Luckily though my bum got soaked, my laptop survived.

    We met a kind faced 80-year-old lady who Alina showed how to use the fountain,

    ‘In all these years, I’ve never known,’ she said. ‘Buon cammino!’

    A lot of Alina’s utterances start with the phrase ‘before the war’, just as mine do with ‘before my divorce’. Before long we were completing each other’s sentences. 

    ‘Before the war, I got my eyebrows done.’ 

    ‘Before the war, I worked for Alexander McQueen.’

    ‘Before my divorce, I worked for openDemocracy’

    ‘Before my divorce, I thought that by simply loving people I could change the world.’ 

    Perhaps something of the latter is still true.

    Mum dropped me a text asking how it was going, addressing me as ‘her Marco Polo’. 

    ‘Benissimo,’ I replied.

    I was so happy to see Alina. 

    Despite her slender Ashtanga yoga and capoeira molded frame and my own body, bloated with anti-depressants, she was less trained for the hike than I was. She pushed on honorably in her sneakers rarely complaining or even stopping to drink water. Layers were taken off and on as we moved in and out of the sun. 

    ‘I can’t get over the fact someone has gone to all this effort to mark this trail!’ I kept repeating, euphoric that someone out there might be more obsessed by Dante than me. Each sign post for the Dante trail had been marked with a red sticker on a lamppost or a wooden sign with the letters CD singed into it by hand by the trail’s father, Oliviero Resta, who I hope to meet in person in Ravenna.

    I would say it was hard to get lost if it were not for the half an hour detour we took tumbling down a dark forest following the GPS and ignoring the very clear ‘no trespassing’ sign. It turned out we were right, but the forest spooked us both. As we crossed the barbed wire and our feet became trapped in brambles, I thought of the documentary, Green Border, I recently watched about refugees seeking to cross the Belarussian-Polish frontier at the edge of Europe.

    ‘You can imagine Dante feeling a little shitty here, eh?’ we remarked. 

    Finally, arms shredded with brambles we were back on solid ground.

    We passed fields of tortured vines that provided a rich supply of local wine and stopped at a vineyard called Fattoria Pagnana to taste the local fare and buy a bottle for tonight’s hosts, a family of six who look after the local church. While much of today consisted of being barked at by aggressive guard dogs, at the winery the two brown dogs approached us tails wagging and tongues lolling out of their mouths, desperate for a touch. Alina like me is an animal lover. 

    ‘Don’t lick my face!’ She squealed.

    They licked her face.

    At 5pm, our host, Stefano offered to pick us up in the neighbouring village but we were insistent that we would carry on. We resisted the temptation to stay in Rignano sull’Arno for a Palestine solidarity music night and arrived at Pieve a Pitiana at around 8 in the evening with the sun setting behind us. 

    We had both been spooked by getting lost in the forest earlier in the day and now as the sun set, the sun kissed vines metamorphosed into Dante’s wood of suicides.

    In Canto 13 of Inferno, Dante encounters those who have taken their own lives, following on from Canto 12 where he depicts those who have been violent towards others or their possessions. The canto is heavy with negativity:

    ‘No green leaves in that forest, only black;  

    no branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled;  

    no fruits were there, but briers bearing poison.’  


    ‘Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco;

    non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti;

    non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco.’

    Dante is remarkably kind to the souls, much to Virgil’s chastisement, asking after them and their stories. Virgil encourages him to snap a branch off one of the oaks from which blood drains and the soul within orates. This is how he meets Pier della Vigna, an advisor to Frederick II who killed himself when his reputation was ruined by false rumors. Frederick asks for Dante to heal his reputation on earth, because this is the only part of him that survives outside of Hell. Though encouraged by Virgil to interrogate the tree like an asylum seeker on trial, Dante is so stirred by pity that he says he cannot think of anything more to ask the soul.

    Dante describes the tortured woodland as infested with harpies who abuse the souls by ripping off their branches. In an act of symbolic retribution, it is said that when each of the blessed and damned will return with their body from the Last Judgment, those damned for suicide will not re-inhabit their bodies but instead hang them on their branches, both because they denied them in their final act of life and as a reminder of what they denied themselves. Salvador Dalí depicted this starkly in one of his many paintings of the Commedia.

    As I mentioned above, Alina and I had spoken over the course of the day frankly about our own very difficult winters. Previous experiences of depression and suicidal thoughts had also weaved their way into our casual conversation, as they had many times before. It felt concrete and somewhat scary to see this fictitious scene brought to life. 

    We arrived at the church of Pieve a Pitiana to a roaring fire and an equally warm welcome from our host Stefano, his wife Giorgia, Stefano’s mother and their three bubbly kids. Anna, the middle girl-child was excited to practice her English, asking us about our favourite sports, meanwhile the youngest boy was keen to discuss all things Pokémon, later gifting us each a precious Pokémon card (I got Chansey, super power level 80. Get in!)

    He had been off school sick and held his arm in a sling made from a shredded blanket. 

    ‘You look like a Roman wearing a toga!’ I commented, at which he giggled. His dimples pitted his face like someone had imprinted it with little olive pips. 

    We ate a simple meal of pasta al pomodoro with eggs from the three happy free-range hens that were the family pets and aubergine marinated by Stefano’s mother. Stefano and Giorgia talked to us about the 600-year-old house and the church that had even longer foundations. They had met in Peru. Their oldest son Michael was a bit timider but cited to us the first verse of the Divine Comedy after remarking, 

    ‘Wow, you guys are like really, really into Dante!’

    I think they were glad to have someone to talk to.

    After dinner there followed a private tour of the church where we were able to marvel at the paintings of Ghirlandaio, an early Renaissance painter of the Florentine school noted for his detailed narrative frescoes. One had been stolen, Stefano explained, and a replacement had been installed. He was careful to put on the alarm before we left. Alina said a short prayer. 

    The house sits beside an NGO that works with local migrant children and the two stories Alina and I shared were strewn with half-finished craft projects and colourful drawings on the walls. Since we both work with refugee children, it was a sight familiar to us both. They marked a stark and stunning contrast with the 14th century stonework which peaked out at points from beneath the pastel plaster. 

    With full tummies, Alina and I headed to our bunks in the arts room, sleeping beside loo roll easter bunnies and papier mâché masks. A warm shower was most welcome. My inner heels had developed thick blisters while Alina’s little toes looked like they had come down with plague sores.

    An open fire kept us warm and dried our soap rinsed socks and knickers as we snuggled into our blankets and rested our weary limbs. 

    Apparently, I screamed out at one point in the night but this I don’t recall.

    Recommended watching (turn on subtitles): Paradise of exiles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o-lUZq_71E

    Recommended watching: Green Border: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27722543/

    Recommended reading: openDemocracy 50.50: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/jennifer-allsopp/

  • My Florence, the anti-Milton Keynes

    Florence feels like my home, though the city I grew up in couldn’t be more different.

    Coming to Florence has always felt like coming home to me. It’s peculiar since I grew up in Milton Keynes which is known as England’s ‘best new city’. It’s a capitalist paradise with grid roads based on San Francisco and dozens of roundabouts. It has a city centre founded on a shopping centre and an indoor ski slope that looks like a slug.

    It’s quite the contrast to Brunelleschi’s famous Duomo, but then I suppose Florence was also built on the accumulation of new capital. Somehow I find the aesthetic of the latter more appealing.

    I cried as I spent a Christmas mass there overwhelmed by how at home I felt. Duomo does not mean dome as many might suppose. Rather it stems from the Latin Domus, for home. In one of my favourite Italian books, La luna e I falò (The Moon and the Bonfires) Pavese writes, ‘we all need a home town, if not only for the chance to leave it’ (Un paese ci vuole, non fosse che per il gusto di andarsene via.)  

    I got the tram into the city centre from the airport as I have so many times before, living in Florence as a Visiting Professor at the University and returning a number of times to give talks about my work reading Dante with refugees in the last two years.

    I smiled at the little ‘tss tss’ of my ticket at it registered in the little yellow machine. I’d had to wait about an hour at arrivals listening to banal conversation in the non-EU passport queue – thanks Brexit! I got chatting to one family visiting Florence for the first time.

    ‘You’re going to be blown away,’ I assured them.

    When they asked me what I did I told them, and as usual I was greeted with an opinionated diatribe about what the UK needs to do to solve it’s ‘refugee problem’ and stop the scourge of ‘boat people’. 

    ‘If we are a country that had a navy that could colonize the world we have the capacity to save refugees from drowning in a stretch of water the size of Scotland,’ came my reply. ‘It’s a question of political will’.

    Sometimes I lie and say that I’m a hairdresser, but I felt like the fight.

    By the time we had passed the 20 minutes to Santa Maria Novella I’d made some headway in talking them down from a Reform stance, but in my experience it takes about 45 minutes or a long taxi ride to genuinely ‘change hearts and minds’. I felt a little less guilty about taking this time as work leave – as academics who care about the subject of our endeavors we are in some ways always working. 

    On arrival in the centre, I was greeted with the familiar sites of the Yamamay lingerie shop where I’ve spent way too much money in recent years and groups of black faces sitting on the steps outside the train station. 

    ‘Kenya, Senegal?’ I asked one friendly face. He carried over his arm a brocade of African bracelets and under his other arm some books in Italian and English about slavery. It’s a smart business I’ve observed across Italy. When I was living in Rome it was rare to leave a bookshop without encountering an African face who sought to sell you something of their violent history.

    ‘Senegal!’ Came the reply. And we continued to discuss in French how his life was progressing in Florence; how business had been that day.

    I asked him about the war in Casamance providence, the longest running conflict in Africa, where I’d worked with women peace activists as a journalist at openDemocracy 50.50.

    ‘It’s hard,’ he said, ‘but in Italy life is a little easier’.

    We parted ways after our brief chat – I didn’t want to distract him from his business – and he gave me one of dozens of friendship bracelets I’ve accumulated in my discussions with the African street sellers.

    I knew from experience to take it and that, unlike in many situations with migrant sellers, my receipt of the gift wouldn’t be followed by a request for money. A relationship – however fleeting – not a transaction had been established.

    ‘Au revoir, Madi, bonne chance!’ I offered as I heaved my backpack back onto my shoulders and made my way to the Santa Maria Novella Square. Maybe I should put in a funding application to do an ethnography of African street sellers, I mused. 

    In Santa Maria Novella I headed straight to the church where I wanted to pay my respects to one of my favourite paintings in the city, the Trinità by Masaccio. It’s known as the first painting in Western art that uses the principles of perspective. I’d need that if I was to spend 20 days hiking the 235 miles of the Cammino di Dante through central Italy.

    I remember first seeing it when I came to Florence as an eager 15-year-old art lover. I’d studied it in school and even done some sketches from a post on Wikipedia before Google was a font of unlimited images. I think back then I’d asked Yahoo or Jeeves. 

    ‘Can you see mum, all the lines point backwards into an invisible vanishing point. This is no ordinary depiction of Christ’.  

    She was suitably impressed and then, as now, a chance to process the monument of Masaccio’s revolution in European painting was proceeded in the form of a strong coffee in one of the colourful cafes that line the square like lace.

    I knew that even though I had hardly slept that at 2pm, I would be chastised for ordering a cappuccino – this is a breakfast drink in Italy not to be taken after midday. I took a double espresso macchiato and turned my face into the Spring sun awhile.

    The term cappuccino comes from the capuchin monks who resemble in their brown habits and shaved heads the caramel colouring of the cup’s rim and the dollop of foamed milk in the middle. You don’t get a sprinkle of chocolate or nutmeg here in Italy unless you ask for it, this is a foreign invention.

    From Santa Maria Novella I spent the afternoon trotting happily through the narrow streets, observing the signs detailing which famous figures had occupied said building. Galileo. Leonardo da Vinci. There were all the greats, it was enough to look up. And on the street corners, known as cantos, like the sections that make up Dante’s Divine Comedy, there appeared the all too familiar Medici crest.

    The six balls that make up the shield are disputed as to their origin. Some say they represent medical compresses – pills were yet to be discovered in the Renaissance – harking back to the Medici name which means doctors in Italian. Still others claim they depict oranges – also good for your health and a frequent feature in frescos depicting the family. 

    From Santa Croce the colossal statue of Dante constructed by Enrico Pazzi to mark the 600th anniversary of Dante’s birth glared down at me. Though I knew better than to seek to procure a ticket last minute in tourist season, I knew that inside the walls of the church sat the tomb of Dante erected by Stefano Ricci in 1830.

    In it, he appears topless and macho, symbolic of the newly unified Italy and all things nationalism. Though he dreamed of and wrote at length about a unified Italy and glorified the Holy Roman Empire, Dante’s own stance on nationalism was more nuanced and I felt he’d be somewhat miffed to see himself depicted in that rather uncouth way, tits out, topless without his classic red cape, hood and white ear flaps. 

    More to the point, unlike the tombs of Galileo and Machiavelli, his was empty.

    And here comes the whole point of my pilgrimage, his bones lie in Ravenna, my destination, where he died in exile.

    His grave in Florence is a reminder of the vicious battle that still continues between the two cities about where Dante’s remains and his legacy should reside.

    On a fieldtrip with a group of refugee students back in Spring 2023 responses were mixed. Some felt it was desperately sad that Dante hadn’t been able to return to Florence but that as the place that has hosted him, Ravenna was entitled and duty bound to be the custodian of his remains. Others felt that Dante would have wanted his bones to be returned to his beloved home town in recognition of the fact that he had, as he had prophesied in the Divine Comedy, ‘returned as a poet’.

    There’s no mistaking the fact the Florence and Ravenna tourist boards seek to cash in on his legacy. In Florence many streets bare engravings from the Divine Comedy and there is now the Dante House Museum on a site estimated to be near his home, though the exact location remains unclear.

    Opposite the museum is the Church of Dante which belonged to the Portinari family where his unrequited love, Beatrice, was married to another man.

    Today, lovers tie love locks and tuck heartfelt pleas and into the folds of the doorway wishing for a love that would take them to the stars and back, as Dante’s did.

    As I trace Dante’s steps to Ravenna this question of the location of his remains will be in my mind.

    I avoided the busy central Piazza del Duomo because I wanted to preserve my impressions for when I would meet Alina, my former Ukrainian student, tomorrow to start the Dante trail.

    At a bar by Ponte Vecchio I got chatting to a charismatic English woman who had also travelled to Florence on her own for a get away between jobs. We quickly struck up a rapport and discussed all things ‘being in our 30’s and not having kids’, the wave of our friends who had bought up town houses in Tottenham to start their families while we indulged in our freedom to sip on a glass of something bubbly at 4pm in the sun and contemplate the relative physiological merits of the stream of tourists who passed.

    ‘Oh if you’re looking for Italian men you’re on the wrong spot.’ The waitress informed us as she used her tea towel to chase away the pigeons. One, she informed us, was called ‘stumpy’ because he’d lost his feet perching on one of the many anti-pidgeon contraptions that line the city’s window ledges. The real Florentines live across the river, she continued. 

    It was across the river I proceeded to the British Institute in Florence. It was Monday night and I knew instinctively upon my arrival that I was to spend the evening indulging in a familiar past time of life drawing at Sotto Il British. The class is lead by Tom J. Byrne, a friendly Irish man with a walking stick. He remarked that I looked familiar.

    ‘I used to come here all the time when I lived in Florence,’ I reminded him.

    The British Institute is a magnificent building that houses a speculator Oxfordian library with comfy chairs that point out towards the river. 

    The model was a beautiful young woman who took to the various 5 minute and 15-minute poses with ease. A well-dressed lady of middle age – you know the type, flowing fabrics and a well sized pendant on an embellished chain –  sat opposite me with her small brown dog at her feet using watercolour and ink to capture the model’s Rubenesque curves.

    As always, the talent of the artists was at once intimidating and deeply compelling and I took pleasure in sketching my own humble contribution. Drawing together it felt like we were part of an orchestra.

    The model rewrapped herself in a pastel blue robe and I took leave of the nibbles and wines and headed back to Santo Spirito where I was to spend the night with Anna, a Finnish-British jewelry maker who has made her home in Florence for most of her adult life.

    I had met her when I was living in Florence at the Santo Spirito market where she was selling her stunning range of goddess themed amulets and earrings. Citronella, garnets, emeralds, all crafted into a range of designs in bronze and silver. Mermaids, the sun goddess, Durga. I immediately fell in love with her work and also her friendly demeanor.

    Anna had that beauty about her that many women in their 60’s do – natural hair tied loosely into a bun and a velvet shawl. She introduced me to her daughter Elena who was wearing a stunning lapis lazuli pendant her mother had made for her in the same way my mum makes quilts for me.

    The goddess’ sinuous body was curved round into a circle with her breasts gilded in silver. Elena was a beautiful as the necklace. Long blonde hair to her waist and bright blue eyes to match the pendant.

    Lapis lazuli has been my favourite stone since I went to India at the age of 15 and purchased my first piece with my pocket money. I was mesmerized by the deep sea blue and iridescent gold mottled together in a divine harmony –  to gaze into a piece of lapis lazuli is akin to gazing into the night sky. It is infinite. 

    Lapis lazuli comes largely from Afghanistan. An Afghan friend once told me that there is a piece of Afghanistan in every Renaissance painting in the veil of the virgin Mary who is often depicted in blue pigment – the most expensive at the time. For my part I carry a stone on my finger gifted to me during lockdown by my dear friend, Xiren. It’s a big as my thumb and dominates my hand. I enjoy watching it sparkle as I type. 

    I dined that evening with Anna, her husband and daughter, a simple but delicious fare of broccoli pasta with chilli and pink salt from Bhutan from where Anna and Elena had recently returned impressed by the state of calm afforded by the Buddhist majority. I was a bit late due to my art class so I ate at a beautiful table set up by Anna in their jewelry workshop with a candle and a table cloth – in Italy all meals must be enjoyed with a table cloth. 

    We discussed all things alternative medicine – Anna has recently published a book which I edited on the divine herb Artemisia which has healing properties and is revered around the world. 

    We slept together in the small studio which was decorated with lapis blue walls and depictions of goddesses in various states of trance, Anna, her husband and daughter on sleeping mats and me on the sofa. Anna slept in a stunning Moroccan jellaba the colour of the deep green sea. 

    Recommended Reading: The Divine Artemisia by Anna Lord: https://www.amazon.co.uk/divina-artemisia-Anna-Lord/dp/B0D329DQJV

    Recommended Watching: Reading Dante with Refugees: An Introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHOeh2w9FdI

    Recommended Reading: OpenDemocracy 50.50 Our Africa: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/tagged/5050-our-africa/

  • Who will Guide Me on the Dante Trail? 

    Though it is my most prized possession, here’s why I will be leaving my copy of the Divine Comedy behind.

    On my training walk today, I experimented with carrying in my rucksack the contents I’ve been carefully curating for the Cammino di Dante. 

    It includes: a fistful of Compeed blister plasters, a bamboo toothbrush with the end sawed off (thanks Jess for that top tip), two changes of clothes, four pairs of socks and knickers, a solar powered power pack and my laptop. My indulgences include some Ayurvedic balm from Sri Lanka and a collapsible hairbrush. 

    I always fancied that if I was invited onto the BBC programme Desert Island Discs, I’d take some essential oils with me as my luxury item because smell has a huge Proustian impact on my disposition. It’s enough to sniff some Rose Herbal Essences shampoo and I’m back in Calcutta showering away a difficult day spent with street children at the age of 18. 

    The Ayurvedic balm, meanwhile, reminds me of turquoise waters and golden sands and the month I spent training to be a yoga teacher in Sri Lanka last year. The sense of peace that comes with the inhale and exhale of a perfectly realized ‘cat-cow’. I figure I’ll need some of that as I walk, not to mention the healing properties it will grant to aching limbs.

    When one of my favourite journalists, Lyse Doucet, the BBC Middle East war correspondent, featured on Desert Island Discs she also took essential oils as her luxury item. ‘Cool,’ I thought. I have something in common with Lyse Doucet. 

    But I’m avoiding a major dilemma. 

    I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing about whether to take with me on my hike my much thumbed and much annotated copy of the Divine Comedy.

    It sits pride of place in my office in three heavy tomes. 2kg of magic. That’s  a lot for a pilgrimage of 235 miles through the mountains of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. 

    On my travels, I’ve almost always taken these three books with me: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. While many people are fixated on Inferno – see the Dante’s Inferno video game which perversely sees Dante rescue Beatrice from Hell –  for me, Dante’s journey is definitively a comedy in three parts that traces a journey from darkness and stagnation to light and unfettered mobility.  

    When the pandemic hit, I got stuck in Guatemala for five months and luckily, I had the books to keep me company. I was living in the US at the time and had gone for a one week writing retreat. When Trump closed the border to foreigners like me, rather than return to England, I was invited to stay with the writer, Joyce Maynard, and pianist, Xiren Wang in a lakeside house. 

    One evening as the sun set I performed for them the canto of Ulysses with a volcano in the background for added dramatic effect. 

    ‘You were not made to live like beasts, but to follow virtue and knowledge!’ I decried, embodying all of Ulysses’ pride. 

    One of my annotations reads, ‘Ulysses is Dante’s alter-ego? Am I Ulysses!?’ 

    His tale of defiantly leading his sailors on past the straights of Gibraltar in the face of danger is a warning to all of us who seek to travel to stretch ourselves. I’m sure during my walk I will turn to this passage to push me on but also to ground and console myself when I reach my limits. 

    Dante writes of Ulysses:

    ‘neither the sweetness of a son, nor compassion for 

    my old father, nor the love owed to Penelope, which

    should have made her glad, 

    could conquer within me the ardor that I had 

    to gain experience of the world and of human vices and virtues’.

    (Canto 26, Inferno)

    I can relate to this desperate thirst for knowledge, this desire to ‘trapassar del segno’ – to push beyond the boundary. It’s a blessing and a curse. 

    There are at least six different rounds of annotations that I’ve made as I’ve read the Divine Comedy at various stages of my life which are revealed in different fonts and coloured inks.

    My first galloping foray through the pages was at the age of 15 when much was inaccessible to me. Still, I swooned at the love story between Paulo and Francesca who were banished to forever spin in a whirlwind of lust in Hell. Their crime: an illicit kiss inspired by their reading of the story of Guinevere and Lancelot. My pencil scrawl reads: ‘love and literature – you lose yourself if you read for pleasure’. 

    Next are the meticulously crafted notes and highlighted sections from lectures at Oxford where I studied Dante under the expert guidance of Manuele Gragnolati. In a recent article he writes, ‘what does my Europe look like? Like Dante’s: the dream of a more just world’. He speaks about the nomadism that captured him, much like it did me, and inspired an academic career that traversed the world. I had just enough time to lock up my bicycle and dash the steps of the grand Taylorian Library on my first day of lectures to hear him boldly state: 

    ‘Get ready because Dante is a whirlwind!’

    He wasn’t wrong.

    The next round of annotations, in purple pen, comes from reading Dante in Harvard Yard with Ambrogio Camozzi Pistoja. Autumn leaves swept up in the wind would settle at our feet as we read cantos aloud together as tourists circled the Widener Library. ‘It was founded by a woman who lost her son on the Titanic’, the student guides would repeat as their cotton Harvard scarves flapped in the breeze. 

    I was based at Harvard to set up a new Immigration Initiative, but on Thursday afternoons I would sneak out of my office to audit seminars on the Divine Comedy. Ambrogio, like me, showed particular sensitivity to the plight of Virgil, Dante’s guide through Hell.

    You see, Virgil is swiftly abandoned as Dante moves through Purgatory. Dante is willed to continue his journey to Heaven, but as a non-Christian, Virgil is condemned to return to Limbo. 

    ‘But Virgil had left us deprived of himself –

    Virgil, most sweet father, Virgil, to whom I gave

    Myself for my salvation’

    (Purgatorio, canto 30)

    This reading made me sensitive to Dante’s liberal use of guides throughout his journey. The iconic literary figure of Virgil is to Dante as Dante is to me. But ought I not open myself up also to be led by other guides?

    In the poem, the pilgrim Dante is accompanied by three guides: Virgil, who represents human reason, and who guides him for all of Inferno and most of Purgatorio; Beatrice, who represents divine revelation in addition to theology, grace, and faith; and guides him from the end of Purgatorio onwards; and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who represents contemplative mysticism and devotion to Mary the Mother, guiding him in the final cantos of Paradiso.

    My annotations as Dante abandons his first guide, in no particular order, read, 

    1. ‘WHAT? What about Virgil?’
    2. ‘Dante cries as Virgil leaves – and he’s not the only one!’
    3. ‘The paternal authority of Virgil is replaced by the maternal authority of Beatrice. Dante feels intense emotions.’

    Dante’s intensity of emotions is just one of the reasons his text so resonates with me.

    I felt angry at Dante the author for abandoning his guide. Why could Virgil not have found the same repentance he does?

    In Purgatory, Dante works miracles so that Cato can be saved, arguing that the Roman political figure of the first century B.C.E. who committed suicide was a proto-Christian who wasn’t held accountable to Christian beliefs against suicide. While many who committed suicide are condemned to an eternity as gnarled trees in Hell, Cato gets a get out of jail free card. Why? Because Dante could. It was his narrative, just as this blog is mine.

    And thus, Virgil is condemned to return to Hell as Dante continues his journey under the tutelage of a new guide. 

    What can all of this tell me about my own reliance on guides as I walk in Dante’s footsteps? Who will guide me on the Dante trail?

    For one, though I am embarking on this journey largely alone, I will be joined at the start by a Ukrainian friend and former student Alina. Halfway through I will be briefly joined by an American marine biologist, Kelsey, who will meet me in Forli. So, I guess, I too, will dabble in the dealings of disposable guides. And who knows who else I will meet on my journey. I penned a list of ‘things I am scared of’ for my therapist Hugh, and among them was ‘I will meet someone annoying who insists on accompanying me’. 

    ‘But that’s great stuff,’ came Hugh’s mirthful reply. ‘well, I mean, it will make for compelling reading…’

    But the real guide for my pilgrimage is my text of the Divine Comedy itself. With 20 years of insight into both Dante and my developing mind in the form of annotations it is among my most prized possessions. 

    Once, in Florence, I had my bag stolen with my copy of Inferno inside. I cried my way through Florence’s multiple police stations until my bag finally emerged with the text still inside. Forget the 200 euros taken with my wallet. I heaved a huge sigh of relief that my copy of Inferno was found. The police were somewhat baffled as I hugged it to my chest. 

    ‘Dante means the world to me,’ I said. 

    One was amused and gave me a piece of apricot tart. 

    ‘Yes, Dante is pretty special. It’s unusual for a foreigner to realize it.’ 

    The reaction of most Italians to my obsession with Dante is bewildered appreciation and curiosity. 

    But alas. I have returned with aching shoulders from my hike today – cue Ayurvedic balm – and made the difficult decision that I will not be taking my precious copy of the Divine Comedy with me on Monday when I set off.

    The reason? Primarily, it is simply too heavy to carry 235 miles.

    And secondly, while I am curious about my annotations over the years, I want to re-discover Dante afresh now, as a 37-year-old woman who is in the ‘middle of the journey’ of her life.

    As I set off like Ulysses ‘to gain experience of the world and of human vices and virtues’, may I be open to be guided by something or someone new. 

    Recommended listening, Lyse Doucet, Desert Island Discs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013yzs

    Recommended viewing, Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop | 8 Women in Lockdown in Guatemala: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gfnZNnlvdk