"Forse li avete visti in televisione. Di sfuggita, per alcuni istanti, tra le dichiarazioni del premier di turno e un servizio sulle sfilate di moda. Dal vivo, da vivo, è un'altra cosa...Ne ho visti a centinaia. Morti per fame, guerre, malattie. Eppure dovremmo sapere che nel mondo globalizzato i nostri destini s'incrociano. Che le economie dell'Asia, dell'Europa e delle Americhe sono interdipendenti. Che le variazioni dei corsi dell'euro, del petrolio e delle materie prime si ripercuotono sui nostri stili di vita. Che i flussi migratori causati dai conflitti, dalle carestie e dallo sviluppo disuguale stanno trasformando le società in cui viviamo".

A tutt'oggi, un miliardo di esseri umani vive con un dollaro al giorno. Più di 3 miliardi con meno di 2,5 dollari. Un miliardo di persone non sa né leggere né scrivere. Sono stati questi sconcertanti dati a indurre Giovanni Porzio a creare un racconto in presa diretta, la cronaca di un viaggio al termine della notte lungo l'Asia, l'Africa, il Medio Oriente e l'America Latina. Obiettivo, concentrare almeno una volta i riflettori su quella parte di umanità che i mezzi di informazione e la superficie delle coscienze del Primo Mondo eludono: i bambini di Gaza senza sogni, i drogati che dormono nei contrafforti di pietra del fiume Kabul, le schiave del sesso di Dharamganj. Testimoniare che cosa significhi lo sviluppo ineguale del pianeta per tante vite dimenticate. Ma soprattutto, aiutare a comprendere i meccanismi che producono i drammi del presente, l'aumento dei costi energetici e dei prezzi dei generi alimentari, la crisi finanziaria internazionale e lo sviluppo squilibrato dell'economia globalizzata. Perché intelligenza e solidarietà possono e devono ancora prevalere, provocando un cambio di rotta radicale in un futuro improntato a una condivisione più equa dei beni primari come acqua, cibo ed energia.

• Brossura: 235 pagine
• Editore: Tropea (febbraio 2012)
• Collana: I Narratori
• Lingua: Italiano
• ISBN: 978-88-558-0201-7

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The mood is sober in the square. It’s Friday and the people gather for the prayer as usual. There are crying fathers and mourning mothers carrying the pictures of their lost children: 42 were killed in the riots which forced the government to resign. There are flags and banners and tea stalls by the tents. The thieves from the suburbs came to scrape a living among the crowd of bystanders, party activists, journalists, preachers, students, bloggers, vendors, unemployed and plain clothes policemen waiting for the results of the polls.

In the first round (Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Assiut) of the first free elections in Egypt’s history, the Muslim Brotherhood new Freedom and Justice Party is set to win about 40 per cent of the seats in the Lower House, while the ultra-conservative Salafist groups are expected to pick up 20 per cent. The Arab spring is now an Islamic spring. In Egypt as it is in Morocco, Tunisia and possibly in Lybia.

A young teacher tells me she voted for the Brotherhood. “I am not religious” she says “but I have two kids and I am fed up with all this. We need peace, we need stability, we want to have back our lives. This square is now rotten, without a purpose. The Brothers, at least, are well organized: they know what they want”.

They want to oust the military junta, and they demand jobs, democracy and social justice. Who wouldn’t? For now, as the sun sets over the minarets and the housing blocks, more people flock to the square. The turnout at the polls was 62 per cent, “the highest since the time of the pharaohs” boasts the official on the tv screen. And at 8 p.m. he starts reading the names of the elected.

It’s an ominous start for the “new Libya”. Its leaders (some of them until recently on the Mad of Tripoli’s payroll) have initially tried to pass off the cold blood execution as the result of a crossfire, but were swiftly belied by their own men’s merciless cellphone videos. Nato, on a UN mandate to “protect the civilian population”, repeatedly targeted with missiles the convoy carrying Gaddafi and his son Mutassim out of Sirte. Also Mutassim, unharmed after he was captured, has been executed and his body exposed, along his father’s corpse, in a meat market in Misurata.

And so what? The tyrant got what he deserved, they say. Why should we waste time with a trial? It could be risky. That crazy guy could speak out names, produce embarassing documents, prime ministers’ letters, lucrative contracts, arms purchases’ invoices…

Rough justice is now the rule. Hipocrisy is the game of the day. Gaddafi wasn’t useful anymore and he’s been thrown in the garbage can. Like Saddam before him: suddenly our man in Baghdad, so helpful in keeping the Iranian ayatollahs at bay, became “the butcher of Baghdad” and was hanged after a farcical judgment that will be remembered only for the victim’s dignified stance on the gallows.

In his last will Muammar Gaddafi asks to be buried as a muslim and wishes his family – especially women and children – will be treated well. He also asks his people to “protect its identity” and to “continue the resistance and fight any foreign aggressor”. Nobody will.

In his last moments, a pistol pointed to his head, he shouts: “God forbids this! Do you not know the difference between right and wrong?" They don’t.

Do we?

I think the movement will not die down soon. In fact it could grow even bigger and more organized. Having watched the first Republican presidential candidates debate, yesterday on tv, my guess is that Obama will be re-elected by default: but surely he will have to give some answers to the people in Zuccotti Park.

I crossed the Libyan border at Dhima on Tuesday morning, August 23, with Gabriella, her cameraman Elia and Elisabetta Piqué of the Argentinian daily La Naciòn. We took a ride on a rebels' 4x4 to Nalut on the Jebel Nafusa where we managed to hire a car and hit the road to Tripoli. All shops closed for Ramadhan, no food all day. Imad, the driver, himself a Berber from the Jebel, had sized the car from the local police during the uprising: a big sturdy jeep with no plate and plenty of space for us all. We headed down towards the plain: yellow landscapes and  barren mountains, clear sky, very hot. I spoke in Arabic with Imad. He told me the road was quite safe up to Zawiya, where we had planned to spend the night.

We passed deserted villages, left behind destroyed buildings, damaged mosques, abandoned fields. A few charred tanks laid among the ruins of what appeared a military outpost hit by Nato planes. At a check point we were told by rebel fighters that half of Tripoli was in their hands, so we changed our plan and headed straight to the city. Imad took us to a western neighbourhood where some of his relatives live and we were lucky to meet Hadia Gana, a smart cultivated and friendly revolutionary activist and art teacher (I wrote her story for Vanity Fair, with pictures taken by Ron Haviv): she invited us to stay in her house. The light was on and off, mostly off, but we had water and her nephews Ahmed and Yusuf could drive us in their cars (Imad had no papers for his stolen jeep and wasn't keen to use it in town..).

The rebels had just begun the final assault on Bab al-Aziziya, the huge fortified Gheddafi compound in the middle of the capital. We went there. The battle was raging. A towering cloud of black smoke hanged all over  the place. Buildings were burning, the famous Coronel's tent turned to ashes. We followed the fighters inside the compound and I wished I had a bullet-proof vest: the guys on our side were firing rockets, Rpgs, rounds after rounds of light and heavy ammunitions as they slowly advanced towards the inner circle of the stronghold. It went on well after sunset, when we decided to go home: we had to set up the Bgan and  file our stuff (written reports, videos and pics). We were exhausted: had not eaten nor slept for almost two days.

Early next morning we were back in Bab al-Aziziya. The rebels had just taken the main central building, partly destroyed, and were busy trying to tear down the symbolic monument in front of it: an iron fist crushing an american warplane, built after Ronald Reagan's failed attempt to kill Gheddafi in 1986. But there was still fighting in the southern part of the compound. Snipers were firing from different locations as I pulled myself crouching on my knees behind a concrete piece of wall from where I could see the green flags of the last resisting elite forces of the crumbling Gheddafi regime. Three dead bodies were lying in a pool of blood, one badly disfigured. There was a stand off. The rebels brought in heavy weaponry, rockets, machine guns. They fired straight on a bunker-like building some 400 metres down the street. Than, suddenly, at mid afternoon it was over. The Gheddafi soldiers had probably fled through one of the dozens underground tunnels.

For the next couple of days the fighting was confined to a few areas in the capital, mainly the airport and the Abu Salim district. But the battle of Tripoli was rapidly coming to an end as the city fell into the hands of the rebels. The town was still a dangerous place to roam. There were snipers on the rooftops, unexploded devices on the sidewalks and in the rubbles of the houses. And dead bodies rotting in the summer heat. I went to see the morgue at the Tobbi hospital: it was overwhelmed, and new bodies were taken in constantly in car trunks and trucks. We found other bodies scattered in the street of Abu Salim: some appeared to be civilians. A field hospital and some tents set up by pro Gheddafi activists against the Nato raids were razed to the ground, the corpses still there. Again I smell the stench of war: rotten bodies, hot metal, burning plastic...

There were celebrations at night in the former Green Square, renamed Maidan ash-Shuhada, Martyrs' Square. Shops were still closed and water was scarce but slowly the people started to dare the streets. Journalists were pouring in at the Corinthia Hotel: most of them never set a foot out in the field, but never forgot to wear a bullet proof vest and a helmet standing in front of the cameras on the hotel's veranda. The end of Ramadhan was getting closer. Bread was finally available in the morning, though the lines were long. Even longer were the lines at the few reopened gas stations: drivers had to wait two or three days to reach the pump.

Each day we left Hadia's house in search of news and stories to report: interviews with former Gheddafi soldiers, an 18 years sniper girl, the 53 charred bodies found in a warehouse next to the barracks of the 32nd Khamis Brigade, the prisons, the tortured, the underground tunnels, Gheddafi family's homes and seaside villas, the stranded african migrants, the raped women, the ammunition depots, the bombed Mukhabarat (secret service) headquarter where thousands of documents were left behind: in the top secret files found by Al Jazeera and Human Rights Watch the Cia and the MI6 are clearly involved in the activities of the Coronel's intelligence. By the way, this does't come as a surprise. As the finding of Israeli weapons in the hands of Gheddafi's mercenaries.

There was not an unified rebel command in Tripoli: the Transitional Council was still sitting in Benghazi, although some delegates had arrived at the Corinthia, and the thowar (revolutionary forces) had settled in different areas of the city, each group claiming to be in control of its own sector and manning the check points in a wild and joyful way, firing constantly in the air and chanting revolutionary songs. Quite soon the bulk of the rebels left the town, handing the check points to the local guys. They rushed towards Gheddafi's last strongholds in Bani Walid and Sirte, and we went along, stopping on our way to catch a glimpse of the ancient roman city of Leptis Magna (impressive, marvelous ruins on the Mediterranean coast: as the only visitors, we wondered in perfect solitude through theatres and temples untouched by the fighting).

Misurata, halfway between Tripoli and Sirte, some 200 km east of the capital, was severely damaged during the longest battle so far. Its fearless fighters, reputedly the bravest on the field, well equipped and disciplined, played a decisive role in crushing Gheddafi's forces in Tripoli and were now posed to attack in Sirte and Bani Walid where rumors hinted to the presence of Gheddafi's son Saif al-Islam. They lost hundreds in the bloodshed for Misurata: their names are written on a long white martyrs' wall in the city center. Tripoli Street had been the frontline for months: it looked like Grozny or Beiruth during the civil war, with demolished buildings, burned shops, empty houses, broken guns, charred tanks, shrapnels, minarets sprayed with bullets. And people lost in the rubble.

We spent the night on the floor of a vacant apartment and the following day we reached the last check point on the road to Sirte. We chatted with the fighters: they were waiting orders to advance, as they were the rebels at the check point near Bani Walid. Negotiations were on the way for a peaceful surrender. No one wanted to shed more blood. We drove back to Tripoli and got trapped in a traffic jam: a huge celebration for the victory of the Libyan soccer team vs. Zimbabwe in Cairo. Lights on in the streets, boys and girls weaving flags, dancing, cursing the hated dictator, finally showing their relief for the end of fighting, the end of the terror. For us, it was time to go. The story was dying. Politicians were taking over the stage. Gheddafi's second wife Safiya and sons Aisha, Hannibal and Mohammed had fled to Algeria. Gheddafi himself was likely hiding somewhere in the Sahara sands, but was finished anyway. France, the UK and Italy promptly announced the unfreezing of Libyan funds in their banks and started to airlift cash to the new government: the rush to the oil fields and to the spoils of the Jamahiriya had begun. So we cross the Tunisian border and flew home.