Dante on the Move

Tag: literature

  • An Earthly Paradise: From Passo Vico to Ravenna

    The last stretch to Ravenna boasts two magical gardens where I would meet a friend and a soul mate who showed me that Dante’s divine love is at once self-reflective, shared and in harmony with the natural world.

    Kelsey and I had a leisurely breakfast at our lodging, Fattoria Chiocce Romagnole, with the two fellow male Italian pilgrims and our host, Rossella. She explained a bit more about the flooding that had occurred in the region on the 17th of May, 2023, a date that she had tattooed on the inside of her left arm. The water had come in through the windows where we were now eating fresh apple cake made by her mother. 

    ‘The most disturbing thing was the screams of the animals in the night,’ she said.

    She had lost one goat and saved another by giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. A lot of the birds perished. In the morning, the fire service had come in a dinghy to rescue her dogs. 

    ‘At least here the water was clean,’ explained Rossella, ‘further down it became muddy and even more treacherous.’ 

    A green and yellow parrot called Raul clung to her chest as she spoke, dipping its beak occasionally into some milk.

    Rossella recounts her love for her animals in episode 3 of the podcast, Respirano ancora (‘Still they breathe’) which is called The End of Eden.

    There is much of Eden in Rossella’s farm, a place that Dante visits in the last three canti of Purgatorio. 

    Here, atop Mount Purgatory, Dante returns to the prelapsarian perfection of the place from which Adam and Eve were expelled after eating the forbidden fruit.

    In canto 28 he tells us it is the ‘place chosen as the nest for human nature,’ the place given by God to Adam and Eve as a ‘mortgage on their eternal home, until they defaulted on the loan.’ 

    In canto 29, he continues,

    ‘While I moved on, completely rapt, among
    so many first fruits of eternal pleasure,
    and longing for still greater joys, the air

    before us altered underneath the green
    branches, becoming like an ardent fire,
    and now the sweet sound was distinctly song.

    Full of astonishment, I turned to my
    good Virgil; but he only answered me
    with eyes that were no less amazed than mine.

    I halted, and I set my eyes upon
    the farther bank, to look at the abundant
    variety of newly—flowered boughs;

    Here, mankind’s root was innocent; and here
    were every fruit and never—ending spring;
    these streams—the nectar of which poets sing.’

    Rossella’s farm is certainly a place for poets to sing about. The scent of organic lemon trees mingles with jasmine and turkeys and hens roam free across the perfectly mowed lawn. Dogs and cats co-habit with affection and swallows circle out of the barn which they have come to call home. 

    Though she is humble, Rossella is clearly also aware of the magic she has created here, something that is perhaps all the more special because it was almost lost.

    Two peacocks called Dante and Beatrice flirt beside olive trees. This is poignant for it is in the Earthly Paradise in canto 30 at the end of Purgatorio that Dante finally meets his beloved Beatrice. He realizes she has arrived when he ‘recognizes the signs of the ancient flame’.

    ‘a woman showed herself to me; above
    a white veil, she was crowned with olive boughs;
    her cape was green; her dress beneath, flame-red.

    Within her presence, I had once been used
    to feeling—trembling—wonder, dissolution;
    but that was long ago. Still, though my soul,

    now she was veiled, could not see her directly,
    by way of hidden force that she could move,
    I felt the mighty power of old love.’

    The parrot flew over the Kelsey and began nibbling on her long brown hair. 

    We spent the morning catching up with work in the garden surrounded by the four donkeys, Mais, Judith, Quedo and Nerina. They would come over and give us a friendly nudge or nibble here and there. Two rams circled us without menace and there descended a real sense of peace.

    A man called to check whether the five hives of bees had succeeded yet in producing honey. 

    After lunch we set off for the 19 kilmetre walk to Ravenna where we would meet the great man himself, Dante Alighieri. We stopped for a coffee at the restaurant Trattoria da Luciano where some of his cantos were hung up on the wall.

    The path followed the river Montone and the scenery was much like yesterday: agricultural and strikingly flat.

    A road sign warned of crossing children and Kelsey commented that it reminded her of signs back home in San Diego that warn of immigrants crossing the road from across the border. As two bikes came thundering past, she bent down to rescue a ladybird that had an iridescent beak. A poppy hesitantly rose its head.

    We were in the middle of discussing what the ‘social’ means in social policy research when a fit man with walking poles called Walter passed in the opposite direction and wished us a good day. 

    ‘Are you pilgrims?’ he asked.

    It turned out that Walter was a seasoned walker who had done the cammino di Dante some years before when he’d had to take several long diversions because of landslides. Now he was training for his next adventure. I tried to convince him to head to England to tackle the Pennine Way, while Kelsey advocated for the Pacific Crest and John Muir Trails. 

    Quite to our surprise, right there and then, he whipped out a weighing scale with a hook on the end and insisted on weighing my bag. 

    ‘15 kilos!’ he cried out. ‘What on earth are you thinking, you should have a maximum of 10, how have you made it all the way from Florence?’

    Suddenly the blisters made sense.

    He advised us to stop at the house of Giordano Bezzi, the founder of the cammino which we would pass in about 5 kilometres on our way into Ravenna. He was certain that we could just show up unattended, even though it was Easter weekend. Perhaps we would.

    ‘You’ll recognize the house from the huge Dante sculpture outside,’ he advised.

    We passed some road works and three places where the path had been cordoned off by metal fences and barbed wire. Now seasoned to the trials of Italian walking, I knew to head under, round or over them. I tossed my bag over first, careful not to damage my laptop, and then threaded my body around the wire. Kelsey dexterously followed. 

    We passed a man in a green shirt who was tending to his vegetable garden with a hoe and took a break to eat slices of apples with peanut butter. A random plastic chair that was covered in graffiti was situated in the verge beside the river. 

    Kelsey and I discussed Tuvalu’s climate refugees and the efforts the people are taking to preserve their culture. Our next topic of conversation was where in the afterlife we would locate certain politicians.

    As the path became more substantial, we navigated a traffic jam caused by a tractor which suggested that we were nearing the city. 

    Then, there it was, the face of Dante rendered in metal with one eye looking in and another looking out. 

    As we descended the path to the yellow house, a cockerel skitted past a yellow camper van. Would he be in, this Giordano Bezzi, of whom we’d heard such elevated praise?

    It turned out that he was.

    The next six hours flew by. In one of those encounters that happen rarely in one’s lifetime, time stood still.

    Giordano was everything I could ever have imagined of the founder of the Dante trail: an effervescent, extraordinary man who I can only describe as a creative genius.

    In the time we spent together, he showed us around his spectacular garden and told us something of the origin of the trail. Though he’d worked as a pharmacist, now, in retirement, he was a musician and an installation artist. Much of his work is inspired by Dante’s invitation to look inside ourselves as well as out.

    ‘Life is all about reflections and uncertainties,’ he counselled. 

    As I followed him through his sprawling garden which was on the cusp of bloom, I thought of Purgatorio, canto 28 once more’\|| ,

    ‘Now keen to search within, to search around
    that forest—dense, alive with green, divine—
    which tempered the new day before my eyes,

    without delay, I left behind the rise
    and took the plain, advancing slowly, slowly
    across the ground where every part was fragrant.’

    The peonies had flowered early. They were struggling to keep their heavy heads up on delicate stems. They were verdant, vibrant, huge. 

    Some fruit trees had exploded in a blossom of pink and white. Irises lined the path here, and there we entered into a surfeit of melancholy willows before which sat another piece of art.

    ‘Come back in two weeks and it will be a riot of colour,’ he insisted. 

    Every tree, every flower he had planned and planted with his own hands. I felt like Dante being shown by Mathilda the Earthly Paradise in canto 29 of Purgatorio.

    ‘following her short
    footsteps with my own steps, 

    I matched her pace.’ 

    And then there was the art. 

    Here was a sculpture of Don Quixote’s horse made out of tin cans, forks and kettles. When he had presented it, he had ridden it forwards towards a fan that sprayed out pieces of newspaper. This was the windmill, the ‘fake news’, he explained.

    And there, a rendering of Monet’s Giverny emerged from the grass complete with the bridge. 

    He had previously installed mirrors to reflect the water.

    The sunset lit up the sky and, as Dante puts it, ‘little birds upon the branches were in the practice of their arts’.

    I felt like I was witness to the spectacular procession Dante observes in the Earthly Paradise, a forest full of life. Introduced by heavenly songs and blazing lights, Dante sees a burning seven-armed candelabra approaching. Each of the seven candles gives the sky one of the colors of the rainbow. Then a procession follows: 24 elders, four beasts with each six wings covered with eyes, one of them a griffon drawing a two-wheeled chariot, at its left wheel there are three ladies, at its right four, then there follow two men, four humble men and finally an old sleeping man.

    But Giordano, at seventy one, was full of life.

    As Dante describes Eden,

    ‘a sudden radiance swept across
    the mighty forest on all sides—and I
    was wondering if lightning had not struck.

    But since, when lightning strikes, it stops at once,
    while that light, lingering, increased its force,
    within my mind I asked: “What thing is this?”

    And through the incandescent air there ran
    sweet melody.’

    Suddenly, it was 9pm and we hadn’t thought to eat. 

    ‘Fear not,’ said Giordano, I have peas. ‘And let’s put in some laurel to give it the taste of Dante.’

    Thus, we ate a delicious supper together of peas marinated in freshly harvested onions, stock and laurel leaves. Kelsey and I contributed a spinach and cheese crescione and a great deal of gratitude. Her and Giordano also ate some rabbit that was reheated from the night before. 

    The conversation flowed like water. 

    Giordano was as enthusiastic to share his own passions, which comprised jazz – including Kelsey’s favourite, Charlie Parker’s album, Bird –, Pirandello and women’s liberation, as he was to hear about mine. I gifted him a copy of our Dante on the Move anthology and a T-shirt with the front page logo that had been designed by Alina. He was thrilled.

    At 10.30pm we called the hotel in Ravenna to say that we were running late and, after a few more episodes of precious conversation, Giordano gave us a lift into the city in his van. 

    In the van, we still couldn’t stop talking. In a frenzy of new friendship, we were finishing one another’s sentences. This was unreal. 

    He was intense but so was I. And, for once, that was ok! In fact, it was more than ok, it was appreciated, cherished even.

    When was the last time I had felt so seen?

    Giordano dropped us by our lodging, Hotel Centrale Byron, and we dumped our bags before making the short walk around the corner to Dante’s grave. It was nearly midnight, and we had the whole place to ourselves. We sat before the great poet on the cold cobbled floor.

    I read Kelsey the blog I had written ready to publish in the morning and, as I did so, tears filled my eyes. It felt so special to be reading my work out loud here to her, before the bones of Dante. I had made it to him and now all that was left was to return to Florence in his honour.

    We purchased some red roses from a Bangladeshi street seller called Mashalim which means ‘to be safe, secure, at peace.’ 

    Two of them we threaded through the bronze gates of his mausoleum; the other one I gifted Kelsey and the fourth I would carry with me to Florence to place outside his cherished San Giovanni where Dante had so desired to return to be ‘crowned a poet’.

    We returned to the hotel, slightly disappointed with the filthy carpet and 80’s bathroom décor after what had been such a jubilant day. 

    I was contemplating how on earth I could show my appreciation for Giordano when there appeared a message on my phone.

    It read:

    ‘Flowers are not only in gardens,

    but they also walk with a backpack,

    the scent of intelligence that you leave

    is inebriating and indelible.

    Your garden is the work with those

    young refugees, you manage to sow

    flowerbeds with smiles, you work like

    a bee, you build bridges of

    looks, you gamble with

    invisible things.

    Your pen becomes the sting

    for stupidities and blindness,

    I will certainly eat your honey.’

    ‘I fiori non sono solo nei giardini , 

    ma camminano anche con lo zaino, 

    il profumo di intelligenza che lasci 

    è inebriante e indelebile.



    Il tuo giardino è  il lavoro con quei 

    ragazzi, tu riesci a seminare delle 

    aiuole con i sorrisi, lavori come 

    un’ape, costruisci ponti degli 

    sguardi, giochi d’azzardo con le 

    cose invisibili.



    La tua penna diventa il pungiglione 

    per le stupidità e le cecità, 

    Certamente mangerò il tuo miele.’


    I stroked the necklace Alina had gifted me of the almond plant which flowers before it bears fruit.

    Perhaps my honey was also in the process of production on this cammino. 

  • Snow on the Mountaintop: From Passo della Calla to Premilcuore

    The unrelenting rain made the path treacherous, and I got lost, only to re-find myself again with new friends eating pecorino.

    It wasn’t easy to leave the luxurious round bed this morning, but the weather forecast predicted rain from about midday. The earlier I left, the less chance I’d have of repeating yesterday’s wipe out. 

    To leave early and avoid the rain or stay in bed and walk for a while beneath the drizzle, that was the question. 

    I took the middle ground. 

    I took my breakfast of a rather disappointing raspberry tart at around 8.30am – my one disillusionment with an otherwise exceptional hotel – and was on the road by 9am. 

    I’m a savory breakfast kind of girl and one of my only gripes with Italy is the madness of calling a cornetto or croissant a morning meal. Oh no. I’m a vegetarian but I need sustenance – cheese, bread, eggs. 

    I thought back to the yearly hiking trips I would do in the Lake District with my folks and two other families: the Halsteads and the Milns. Well, the men would go hiking and the women would go to Lakeland Plastics to buy kitchenware. The exception was Barbara. She was, and remains, a badass. 

    At the Red Lion hotel in the morning before we set off, we’d all have a full English. When I’d ask for the ‘Walker’s Breakfast but without the sausage and black pudding the heavily mustached waiter would respond, 

    ‘But then it’s not a walker’s breakfast, is it?’ 

    Everyone around the table would guffaw. It was an annual joke, and I took pleasure in the familiarity of the routine.

    I was dreading the prospect of the 3.5 kilometre hike up the winding road back to the path and had been told the shuttle bus wasn’t running out of season. Still, when I exited the hotel I met Giovanni, the grandfather of six-year-old the Desire with whom I’d exchanged conversation and giggles the evening prior. 

    ‘I don’t suppose if I give you 10 Euros, you’d be willing to give me a lift back up to the trailhead?’ I cheekily proposed.

    ‘But of course!’ came his reply. ‘And don’t be daft about the money.’

    On the way up in his cream leather upholstered 4-by-4, Giovanni pointed out the landslide to one side of the road where men were working to resecure the road. Temporary traffic lights had been installed to aid their toil. 

    He also remarked on the high number of trees that had been damaged or toppled over.

    ‘It’s the weight of the snow,’ he explained, ‘the trees have been here for centuries, but they’re not used to these new extreme climate conditions.’ 

    Climate change is an issue that increasingly surfaces in my research with refugees. In my work in Guatemala and Mexico, I found that failing crops are a significant reason alongside poverty and natural disasters why some Indigenous families migrate upwards in search of better opportunities. It’s like the Grapes of Wrath but tipped sidewards on a diagonal axis. 

    Landslides were nevertheless also a feature of Dante’s time. In fact, he was pretty into Geology. In the Divine Comedy he mentions earthquakes, rivers, the shape of mountains and landslides, a desert of hot sand and some types of rocks (like the marble of Carrara).

    The circles that make up Dante’s Hell gradually become smaller with less circumference, as Inferno is depicted like an inverted cone in a sphere, protruding towards Earth’s core. This image is based on calculations of Greek philosophers.

    Virgil explains to Dante that the cone in the planet’s surface into which they descend formed when Lucifer, the fallen angel, fell to Earth. Indeed, the impact was so great that it shaped Earth’s surface, with continents formed on the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere covered by the sea (Dante didn’t know of the existence of the southern continents of Australia and Antarctica). 

    In the south, Dante depicted only the mountain of Purgatory. Purgatory, together with the holy city of Jerusalem, forms an axis passing Earth, where Lucifer’s belly sits at the centre. It’s an allegoric image, since Lucifer is damned as far as possible away from the sun and divine light.

    In Canto 12 of Inferno, the travelers face a difficult climb down a steep and mountainous rock face. The terrain is passable, albeit tortuous, as if the travelers were making their way in the wake of an alpine landslide. They must climb down a rockslide in order to access the first ring of the seventh circle.

    Virgil calls this rocky mass questa ruina (this ruin) and explains to Dante that the ruins of Hell were caused by Christ’s Harrowing of Hell: they are places where the infernal infrastructure was destroyed by the earthquake that preceded Christ’s arrival. Thus, the ruins are a continual witness to Hell’s defeat, its impotence in the face of an all-powerful divinity.

    ‘The place that we had reached for our descent
    along the bank was alpine; what reclined
    upon that bank would, too, repel all eyes.

    Just like the toppled mass of rock that struck—
    because of earthquake or eroded props—
    the Adige on its flank, this side of Trent,

    where from the mountain top from which it thrust
    down to the plain, the rock is shattered so
    that it permits a path for those above:

    such was the passage down to that ravine.
    And at the edge above the cracked abyss,
    there lay outstretched the infamy of Crete.’

    And with that, Dante and Virgil encounter the minotaur.

    It is hypothesized, David Bressan relates, that the landslide is based on the a 3,000 year old landslide near the Italian city of Trento. Dante maybe visited this site, as he lived for a time in the nearby city of Verona. 

    After thanking Giovanni, I made the steep climb upwards to Mount Falco, passing a Madonna of the Forest. 

    Angel fibre was draped over the distant trees that peeked out between trunks. And higher still were more rounded clouds like those in Renaissance paintings. For a moment I imagined that I was in the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, like you could just jump and land on one of them to reach a new level.

    The path expanded into a big field strewn with tiny blue wild flowers and animal droppings the size of olives. An army base sat to my left. I nearly took wrong path but I double checked after yesterday’s 3-kilometre detour.

    The moss, like socks, covered the trees’ stems in a vibrant green. 

    And then I suddenly found myself in a snowy landscape. 

    Using the compass on my phone I decided to head back down to where I’d come from and just walk off piste in the direct of Fiumicello. I would give it 30 minutes and if I hadn’t re-found the path, I would have to give up and face the unappealing four hour hike back up the path I’d made back to Passo della Callo and call today a write off. Tears pricked at my eyes. I hated the thought of defeat. 

    With a foot of snow beneath me, I dug my heels in to keep my balance as I descended. Crocuses pushed up through snow, determined to mark the Spring.

    The snow made it hard to make out the path, obscuring the tracks of pilgrims prior. Moreover, the rain in the night had formed a thin skin of ice over the terrain. Now I really was skiing – reliant on my sticks not to fall forward. 

    I followed the signs that looked like the polish flag, red and white, and proceeded tentatively to the sound of birdsong. 

    The snow soon soaked through my boots and there began seven hours of squelching forward with saturated socks and shoes. The water in my boots bubbled through the top of the canvas, reminding me of the jacuzzi I’d luxuriated in last night which now felt a world away.

    In these treacherous conditions, it took me nearly 2 hours to descend 5 kilometers.

    I wasn’t cold until the rain came at around 10.30am. My hood up, I reflected on the epicentre of Dante’s Hell where we meet Satan writhing in a lake of ice. Unlike many popular depictions of the time, Dante’s Hell was not all fire and brimstone. Rather, while we encounter fire in the higher spheres, the more serious crimes are punished by a frozen sense of total immobility.

    In the belly of Hell are Judas, Brutus and Cassius who each writhe in one of Satan’s three mouths. 

    For Dante, the very worst sin was to betray one’s hosts like they did – perhaps something informed by his refugee experience.

    I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but the commonly cited proverb attributed to Dante that ‘the deepest parts of Hell are reserved for those who stay neutral in times of conflict’ is simply not true. 

    I stuck to the side of the path where the snow was thinner and, without phone signal, I blindly carried on. The fog was now so thick that anything more than five metres away was obscured. 

    I eyed a footprint which appeared to be fox, or a wolf perhaps, and another that looked like a deer. 

    When I came to a steel barrier in the path with barbed wire either side, I shimmied my body around the side of it, clinging to the metal frame. I was back in a videogame.

    Without peering down at the precipitous drop, I carried on. There is no public right of way in Italy as in England, but I’d learnt in my six days of the cammino that to make progress, ‘no entry’ signs on this trail are largly to be ignored.

    I soon came to doubt this fact and felt foolish as I followed signs into a huge prairie where the straight path was well and truly lost.

    Still with no phone signal and with my hard copy map of little use for its sparse detail, I spent about an hour circumventing the huge stretch of grass looking out for a red and white sign. There was nothing to be found. I heaved my body and rucksack up to the top of the hill to see if the advantage point would reveal the path but alas, there was nothing. I was well and truly fucked. 

    The anti-anxiety drugs I am currently taking helped me resist the temptation to panic, though my heartbeat was still racing at twice its normal speed. I could see tracks running here and there, but the mud and pools of water made the animal and human tracks indistinguishable.

    Worried about water getting into my phone again, I used my chest as a ledge to protect it, walking forwards like a hunchback one step at a time. I found myself crossing my fingers and suddenly, out of the mist, there is appeared! A red and white lick of paint on a tree.

    Hallelujah!

    A few metres after that I saw a Cammino di Dante sign and, by God, I have never been more relieved to see a little block of wood – thank you Oliviero for your toils!

    I took a deep breath but couldn’t stop to process recent events since the rain was now pouring and there was absolutely nothing in the way of shelter at any point today on the route. I had told my therapist Hugh that one of my fears for the walk was that an annoying fellow hiker might attach themselves to me, but in that moment, I would have given anything for a companion. I felt utterly and completely alone to face my fears. I had a first aid kit and a tinfoil blanket, but I hadn’t even thought to bring emergency flares with me. What was I thinking?

    The path for the next three hours was literally just like sliding down a waterfall. I slipped about five times and banged by arm on a rock but the damage was superficial. The bank was so steep that with one proper fall you would go hurtling down the mountain side.

    I had to balance pulling out my iPhone from my bra for directions with the risk of water damage and, since the charge had run out, I also had to plug it into my power bank which I tucked into my pocket. The cable caught up in the necklace Alina had gifted me and now I thought of her words of encouragement as I navigated the puddles and the precipitous edge. Forza, Jenny, forza! ‘You are destined to complete this trail.’

    I’d gone from digging my heels into the snow this morning to walking sideways in a snowplow to try and defeat the soggy leaves which collected at the bottom of my poles like I was a garbage collector. My fingers had become like prunes and my boots thudded on the rocks for the extra weight of the water they had accumulated. 

    As I descended into Fiumicello – literally meaning little river – the muddy banks of the stream on my right side had given in so that to walk through the path was to walk through water. 

    I finally found some shelter under the porch of a house in the tiny hamlet of Fiumicello and untangled my iPhone cable which had stopped charging from the power pack. I had noted that the plastic was coming loose yesterday and now, though I’d applied an ample amount of the cellotape Alina had left me from her Mary Poppins style bag this morning, it was doggedly refusing to function. 

    Hopefully I’d have enough battery to make it the further 5 kilometers to Premilcuore, then I didn’t know what I’d do about the charger. Perhaps tomorrow would be a write off. I’d have to spend it getting a bus to the nearest supermarket in a larger town? I felt defeated.

    As I walked along the road from Fiumicello to Premilcuore I passed the stations of the cross and towering cliffs in which the rocks had been confined to cages to avoid damage to the path. 

    Finally, I descended into the charming little town of Primilcuore – meaning squeeze heart – and was somewhat surprised that the first person I’d seen all day was wearing a hijab. 

    I easily found my B&B, la Rosa della Rabbia, where my hostess Nadia could not have been more welcoming. When I asked about the iPhone charger she calmy replied,

    ‘No worries! You can use mine or else they sell hem in that tiny Tobacco shop just down the street.’

    I could not believe my luck. I headed straight there and purchased a golden thread of cable that was labelled as ‘extra resilient.’ I breathed a huge sigh of relief. An older lady in the shop was playing lotto. 

    ‘Long day?’ she asked me.

    ‘Just a bit,’ came my reply.

    Back in my room I peeled off my shoes and socks to reveal heels turned white from eight hours of soggy walking. They were cratered with little marks like the surface of the moon. 

    Eyeing up the bin I was disappointed that it looked more akin to the size of a mug so there would be no foot bath for me today. Instead, I bundled myself into the shower and held the nozzle up close against my toes, spraying them, one-by-one, back to life. Then, at my mum’s advice I wrapped my feet in a warm towel with Nardo oil.  

    Emptying the contents of my rucksack, the coffee I had packed had exploded and the dried spaghetti was now moist in the bottom of my bag. I threw on my spare pair of clothes that had only got partially wet and went next-door for an onion and cheese Piadina, an Italian sandwich made with soft flat bread.

    As I ate, I got talking to a friendly local man, Alim, of Moroccan origin, who was sipping on a white Russian – ‘like coffee, but a cocktail’ – he informed me. He was wearing a fashionable adidas tracksuit and fixed eye contact as he spoke to me. 

    I told him I had been surprised to see the lady with the hijab on my entrance into the village.

    ‘Oh yes, we’re quite a few here,’ he replied. ‘The first Arabs came in 1989.’

    We exchanged some conversation in Arabic, at which he seemed at once delighted and surprised. Alim had five kids and was a social worker who supported the elderly and people suffering from poor mental health. 

    ‘You have to speak to old people and poor people if you want to understand life,’ he said.

    On his neck were three tattoos of stars which increased in size as they reached his earlobe. 

    I told him I had visited Morocco and had good friend, Fatima-Zohra, in Fez, where there exists one of the oldest universities in the world. 

    There followed a heated discussion between myself, Alim and Nadia about whether social sciences were worth studying at all – Nadia had an undergraduate and masters in Sociology and Criminology, the specialism of the department where I teach at the University of Birmingham. Alim also sought to convert me to religion.

    ‘You cannot read Dante or any philosophy for that matter and not be religious,’ he insisted, ‘we never have an original thought, we just receive it.’

    His speech was strewn with adages and beautiful words,

    ‘Poetry,’ he remarked, ‘is the skin of a language that you cannot graft or translate…sorry, when I drink, I become a philosopher.’

    We discussed all things abolishing the police – or not, and Nadia told me about her thesis on the mafia in the region we were now in, Emilia Romana, and dreams of pursuing further studies in psychology. Her boyfriend listened in but did not engage in the conversation. 

    As I munched on rosemary flavoured crisps, Alim chastised me and bought me a plate of local pecorino – ‘much healthier,’ he said. ‘Do you like tequila?’

    It was 10pm when I left the restaurant. I’m not sure I managed to convert Alim to the delights of social sciences, just as he made little headway in converting to me religion, but the next day I received a text from Nadia,

    ‘Thanks for everything, and especially for giving me hope in pursuing my passion,’ it read. 

    Recommended reading: KNOW Your Rights: A Critical Rights Literacy Framework Based on Indigenous Migrant Practices across Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States (available in English and Spanish): http://collections.unu.edu/view/UNU:9673#viewAttachments

    Recommended reading: The Grapes of Wrath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath

  • 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