Only necessity is able to create new behaviors.

Thus wrote the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio in his masterpiece "The Decameron", in which he describes the flight of ten young men to the outskirts of the city of Florence, which was struck by the plague in Italy in the fourteenth century to escape the epidemic. In their safe havens, and until they wash away the scenes of death they watched snatch souls and let the bodies fall in the fragility of the autumn leaves, they began to tell stories.

Today, millions of people living in Italy find themselves in a similar situation. The new Corona virus has turned into an epidemic that "spreads from the sick to the healthy, like an oil-burning fire." It is true that it is not in the seriousness of the plague that killed a third of the European population, but its rapid spread that hit nearly 70,000 people in Italy and killed 7,000 put the health system on the verge of collapse. To slow down the number of injuries, the government has taken strict quarantine measures.

No, the Italians did not move to the outskirts of the country as the Boccaccio heroes did. This is an impractical solution in the twenty-first century. After the action of the embargo to which Italy had preceded.

The necessity of staying at home has created new behaviors and patterns in which the Italians have tried to cope with this situation imposed on them by the virus. In " Maidan ", we had several conversations with Italians and Arabs living in Italy, in which they described to us the form and nature of today's life in isolation, and they told us about their attempts to coexist in the shadow of a crisis that no one knows the extent of.

To read "Harafish" in stone

Most of us today do not have the luxury of the decameron heroes, we cannot leave our concerns and studies and elude anxiety and the burden of time by devoting to tell stories, but the stories remain the first refuge through which many take refuge from this fuzzy reality, and it was through the stories of the novel “Al Harafish” that Mohamed Ezzat found, Egyptian researcher and writer based in Rome, a lot of fun and joy.

The novel follows the "Ashour al-Naji" dynasty, which gained the nickname "survivor" after he was the only one to survive the plague epidemic that struck his lane. After a dream in which he saw what would be the death of everyone, he tried to warn the people of his neighborhood to affect safety and travel to a far place, but they underestimated what he said and continued to live their lives until the epidemic put an emergency end to it.

It seems that most people during different times and countries tend to underestimate the danger, as this was the reaction of Ezzat and his friends, too, at the beginning of the spread of Corona virus in Italy. Izzat tells Maidan : “At the beginning of the virus, my Italian friends and I were saying that it is exaggerated, because Corona does not kill young people of our age. A general climate of neglect prevailed, not everyone neglected, some were serious from the first moment, but most of The youth, as I noticed, did not take the issue seriously enough. We were committed to washing our hands many times throughout the day, but we did not do any further than this. "

The milestone came, according to Ezzat, at which everyone began to feel the gravity of the situation, when Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte imposed the quarantine that pervaded the entire country on March 11, making this - then - the largest comprehensive quarantine in modern history, Ezzat says. : "Everyone began to feel the seriousness of what was going on at that moment. We realized that we are in a catastrophic situation, not only because of the death of thousands, but because of the paralysis that affected life."

Within a few days, the daily pattern of the lives of millions in Italy was transformed. This people, known for their socialism and love for fun, found their members locked up in their homes. Ezzat's life, in turn, was transformed, and his day, which he spent between studying, working, exercising, and going out to meet friends, became restricted to staying at home. Ezzat could not get rid of the feeling of being detained, nor the comparison between his days now, which he spends quietly between the walls of the house and his previous nights in the streets of Rome full of hustle and life.

He says: "I discovered how much I love this city in all its details, both sweet and bad. I would like this epidemic to end as soon as I join my neighbors and my new friends, and tell them how much I love them. I would like to see the street bustling with life when I go down to it to drink my cigarettes, today, they fill me Free from sad people, I realized how much a person’s life abounds in important things that are only important when they are lost.

Until the epidemic ends, Ezzat tries to coexist with the stone, which he sees that, like all the strange things that we find ourselves in life in, he does not succeed in dealing with plans, but with experience, occupying his time now with work, hearing the "biography of the Al-Arajuz" and reading "Al-Harafish".

Dodging boredom with writing

In Rome not far from Izzat, the Italian Valeria Anchi lives, Valeria does not concern herself with reading stories, but rather authoring them. The epidemic paralyzed everything in Valeria's life. Previously, Valeria worked on a program on the natural and artistic history of Italy and presented to local stations. During the preparation stages, Valeria travels to many cities to make preparations, she was now supposed to be on one of those trips, but the virus had another say. Valeria tells Meydan : "We were in the pre-production stage, preparing for the new season and preparing the stories that would appear in it. We were supposed to travel this week to a city for filming, but everything stopped."

Like many people working in the film and television industry around the world, Valeria lost her job after the studios closed, and the ban prevented her from returning to her normal life: "Before isolation, my daily life was calm, I meet my friends from time to time before I disappear and travel on business trips, and attend meetings In the channel's office in Rome to prepare for the new season. "

But it all stopped: “I used to go to the gym but closed its doors, and I used to run in a beautiful square outside my house, but it was also closed. Today, I read that walking in the streets is not forbidden, but it is absolutely not desirable.” Until you walk on the street, you must To carry a paper with the reason for leaving the house, and if you are not abroad for the utmost necessity, you will be subjected to a heavy fine.

At home without work and nothing necessary to do, Valeria decided to devote herself to her postponed plans, and to start writing a book, she is also a writer: “I realized that this is the best opportunity to start with all those things that I have prolonged and did not do. I set myself a strict and distributed schedule. Between work and study, I also devoted some time to cleaning the house, and to practicing hobbies such as breakage. Many of the people I know are now more busy than they were before the ban. " But, in Valeria's view, the most important thing is to stay away from the news: “The first days that I kept following the escalation of numbers were the worst ever!”

Sun and air fun

To date, the spread of the disease in Rome in the south has not reached the alarming numbers reached in the north of the country, as it was in the northern region of Lombardy that Coruna began to spread. Therefore, the quarantine first applied to the cities of the North - before it was subsequently generalized to include Italy as a whole - and the measures that were taken there were strict from the first moment.

In Milan, the capital of Lombardy, Ahmed Hassan told " Maidan ," an Egyptian working for an insurance company in Italy, about these measures: "No one is walking on the streets now, forbidden to go out absolutely unless absolutely necessary. While walking on the street, you must provide a permit Shows why you left the house. "

There are only four reasons in which she is allowed out: "go to the pharmacy, to the store, to the hospital, or work." If you go to work, you must provide proof of this, and in all cases, you have to show the police which route to take and the exact address of your destination. If you leave your home for any other reason, you will be subject to a large fine, and in some cases, you may face prosecution and imprisonment.

In this atmosphere, even the trip to buy food becomes difficult, Hassan tells Maidan : “A few days ago, I went out to the store and had to stand outside for a long time. Only a few people are allowed at a time, and the rest is lined up outside. In a long line, each person should leave a distance of one and a half meters between him and the others. "

In light of the rapid spread of the epidemic in Lombardy, the people of the region are testing the disease closely. For them, it is no longer limited to hearing news from far from the virus, but rather striking some of those close to them. This was the case with Hassan, who infected the Corona virus, the father of one of his friends. He told Maidan : "It started with him with a rise in temperature that did not go down within three days. On the fourth day, they took him to the hospital where they discovered that he was infected with the Corona virus." Today, his friend's father is unable to breathe alone, he must remain on all the time breathing apparatus, and sleep on his stomach until he can inhale the oxygen.

In this difficult situation, his family is unable to know anything about him, as he is isolated from everyone in Al-Hajar Hospital. Doctors call his children every day at 1 pm to tell them about the latest developments of the situation. In the last call, they told them that he "is now able to urinate on his own".

In this atmosphere of sadness and tension, a good appreciation for the simple pleasures increases: "My life has completely changed. Today I am at home all the time, and in isolation, I find nothing more to please me than sitting on the balcony in the sun, I breathe fresh air."

No unit in cyberspace

Unlike many, Yahya Hussein, an Egyptian master student living in Milan, did not possess the luxury of indifference, because his illness with asthma makes the severity of the virus double on him, and for this, as he told us laughing: "I was the first person in my opinion to take the issue seriously in Italy."

About a month ago, before even the quarantine was imposed, while he was committed to his home, he went out only a few times to buy food, and in one early morning during his trip to the store at the beginning of the spread of Corona, he found "all Italy on the street." The Italian people, he says, are "unable to stay at home".

"Two weeks ago, it was customary to find people going out to nightclubs and staying up outside. Until one week, many people went out to run in the street and walk their dogs," Yahya told Maidan. But after the numbers went up and everyone started realizing how dangerous the situation was, everything changed, "Now, the streets are completely empty, police cars float and recommend people to stay at home."

But this situation, if it is inevitable now, has created major problems: "Many depend on their salary from work to pay the rent for the house, and now that they have stopped working, they do not know how to get their affairs done." Yahya, who can still save his expenses, found himself in a different dilemma: "I need my medications and prescriptions, and I don't know if I get sick, what will I do?" Now, according to Yahya, most people avoid going to hospitals or even requesting an emergency for fear of infection.

In isolation, everyone tries to circumvent the unit through cyberspace: "We seek Alouns to communicate on the Internet. Meet with my friends, share cooking on the air, and play together on Instagram. Next week, I arranged with six of my friends a meeting on the Zoom app, four of them In Milan, one in Azerbaijan, and another in Jordan. " Otherwise, Yahya stresses the importance of everyone who finds himself isolated in his home preoccupied with something he is working on: "Without the master’s thesis, I would have gone mad."

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Noticeable:

* Some of the names were changed based on the request of the participants in the dialogue.