"You are Calabrese, now apologise!": learning about yourself and the "onorata" in Australia (part one)

Dear you, 

yes, you. I want to talk to you about the honoured society. Have you heard about it? Are you and your family "in" it? Are you "it"?

What I know about you is a lot. You grew up in a rural area in New South Wales, but there was never a less "Aussie" boy than you. Even if you wanted to be, you couldn't be. 

You were Italian, you were Calabrian, and you could not forget it at any stage of your growing up. 

Your mum and dad had arrived on a ship a while back, they are from a small village in the Aspromonte. They came here with other 50 or so people from the same village. 

You know them all, as for most of your life you all lived in the same streets, one near the other, a duplication of the village back home. You spoke the dialect with the elders, you went to the funerals, you saw all their photos from "home", the houses they had left behind, their relatives' children, their ancestors. 

You played with their children and also with them and also used the language - both a barrier and an opportunity - a barrier for outsiders, an opportunity for identity-building.

Growing up, English became your new mother tongue, and you couldn't wrap your head around the fact that your parents still could not properly speak it. Your Australian friends - once you managed to make some - made fun of your folks, yet they loved coming to your house to taste your mum's merenda. 

You were a wog, whether they said it to your face or not, you were one, you even behaved like one. After all, growing up it was comforting to have a pre-construed identity right there for you to use. You acted catholic, for once. You tried, you pretended to be, you had to go to mass when you were little, you went to a catholic school, like all the Italians, and you had to do the whole rituality of it, baptism, communion, confirmation. It never mattered really, but even today when you feel like cursing, Gesù Cristo or La Madonna, you feel ashamed and you hear your grandmother shouting: "You are Calabrese, now apologise!". 

Linking forever being Calabrian, and being ashamed, for you. It wasn't really intended like that but then again, your childish mind and the firm voice of your grandma were quite a lethal mix. You are Calabrese, now apologise, meant you had to apologise for being Calabrian, somehow. Sorry, for your mum misspelling this or that word. Sorry, for your cousins coming over from the motherland and looking cringe. Sorry, for your father being illiterate. Sorry, because in summer your olive skin would get darker and darker and you didn't look Australian.

The weirder part of all of this was that you didn't know who to apologise to. And so, your initially imprecise audience, became wider and wider until you were already an adult and you realised that you will forever feel somewhat in need to apologise and that makes you mad. 

Inferior and ashamed as they made you feel, you chose to rise above, cause they don't know you feel actually superior. For all your life you watched your father and your mother coming from nothing and surviving no matter the shame. And you are proud. Proud to be Calabrian - even if you are not just Calabrian, but that doesn't matter. You grow up and you can choose, where your identity aligns.

You think that Australians don't know how a true Calabrese survives: keep your head down, work hard, be loyal, don't trust anyone but family, fatti furbo - wise up - be cunning or they'll see right through you. Don't show too much of your intentions, but always be polite, always be respectful, always have a faccia pulita, a clean face.

When you were a child, you had to be ready to apologise, apologise, apologise, as a good Calabrian knows how to behave. But as an adult, and as a Calabrian man, you don't apologise, they have to apologise to you.

Why would you apologise, when it's for you - and not them - that something has always been missing? 

You were supposed to grow up elsewhere and be among people like you, and yet here you are, the different one, a wog. You felt almost illegitimate all your life. Just because your parents moved and you, you had to endure their choices. They said they did it for you and your siblings, but really you wonder what would you have been back home, all the time. If it was so great at home as they say, why did they leave anyway. You see your doppelgänger - the other you who could have been, back home, in Calabria - and you try to live up to his expectations of you. 

You were supposed to get to know the villages that your parents and all the other village folks talk about, know the stories, know the people, know the reason why the 'ngiuria, the nickname, for each family came about. Why is Zu Frank called u Jancu, why is zu Luca called u Versu?

And more importantly, among the traditional singing to the Madonna, and the cooking of grandma, and all the rules of behaviours you religiously followed all your life, just like it would have been if you were home, why is l'onorata the only thing you thought would protect you all? 

They taught you that structure and discipline only work when there is respect. A man without respect is invisible, and being invisible accelerates death and the fear of death. 

They taught you that respect is honour and honour is worth fighting for. For honour, even revenge is justified, as a dead man wanders the earth if he dies dishonoured. Honour is the only thing that does not cost money, it's the treasure of the poor and the rich alike. This they have taught you. That if a poor man is honourable, then he will be respected as the king.

They have taught you that you are Calabrese, and you know how to apologise if you need to. But to those who made you feel inferior, they'll know your blood is your strength. Your blood makes you a man. Your blood contains traditions and rituals and strength you can't even imagine. 

They have taught you that you can defend yourself, and that your honoured society is as old as honour. They taught that people don't know anything about you and will try and undermine your identity at every turn; they won't understand how you feel when you are part of this, when you are protected by it, when everything else is far and untouchable and unreachable but this, this is here and close and makes you feel like a true version of yourself. 

They have taught you that you are Calabrese and Calabrians don't take orders from anyone, but their own kind. 

And now that you are an adult all you want is to connect the dots. You look in the mirror, your doppelgänger of the life you didn't have, has come out and talked to you about a land you felt you always knew in a language you have always spoken. 

You are still a wog, but you are in control. 

Dear you, 

yes you. Are you in control?

(Continues...)

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Copyright text and photos (New South Wales) Anna Sergi

This text is not about anyone in particular, but is inspired by two different men. 

And you reader, does any of this made an impact? Feel free, as always, to comment, even anonymously (and politely, if so!) below!