Anche grazie a quel giorno, a quell’esperienza, mesi dopo, a Roma, lo ho abbracciato forte forte. Dopo anni, finalmente, sono riuscita a partire.

Oggi è il nono anniversario da quel giorno devastante del 2011, in cui lo tsunami si abbattè sul nord-est del Giappone, rastrellando migliaia e migliaia e migliaia di singole vite.
Il Telefono del Vento (風の電話)  ha aiutato tantissimi, distribuiti in ogni parte del mondo, a riprendere un dialogo sospeso con chi amavano ed è rimasto indietro.

Scrivere “Quel che affidiamo al vento” è stato bellissimo e straziante. Mi è sembrato di restituire dignità alle vittime di questo giorno, di rimetterle in mezzo, sotto le luci di scena, dopo che Fukushima – sui giornali del mondo – pareva aver ingoiato ogni loro rilevanza. Ed è stato per me soprattutto un regalo, perchè non c’è giorno che qualcuno di voi non mi scriva, non mi racconti del proprio lutto, di una lettura che li ha presi per mano e li ha aiutati ad uscirne. Grazie, grazie di tutte le vostre parole.

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(Translation by Lucy Rand)

I stood in there some months ago, collecting words like seashells on the beach.

I was trying to say something to my father, who is still alive, but in shaky health. The distance, in my heart, sometimes feels close to death.

Yet among the feelings I had in there, there was salvation, actually, it was mostly that. And opportunity. “There’s still time, Laura” I told myself. “Go!”

Thanks to that day, to that experience, months later, in Rome, I hugged him with all my strength. After years, finally, I managed to get back to Italy.

Today is the ninth anniversary of that devastating day in 2011, when the tsunami struck the north-east of Japan, sweeping up thousands and thousands and thousands of individual lives.
The Wind Phone (風の電話) has helped so many people, from all over the world, to pick up an interrupted conversation with the people they loved and who left them behind.

Writing The Phone Box at the Edge of the World was both beautiful and devastating. It felt like a way to restore dignity to the victims of the tsunami, to put them back in the centre, under the stage lights, after Fukushima – according the world’s newspapers – seemed to have swallowed them whole. But it was a gift for me too, because now not a day goes by that one of my readers doesn’t write to me telling me about their grief and how this book took them by the hand and helped them step out of it. I am so grateful for all those words.

A thought for the victims of 11/03/2011.

An embrace for all those who today – for reasons that are different for each person – find themselves in difficulty