Hello,

I am writing from Rome, where I am stranded but well. I thought you might be interested in a story from my perspective here. 

I am writing from an Internet cafe which is crowded and the computer frequently locks into keyboard transitions for other languages. This makes typing a challenge.

Hope you are all well. What a world we are living in . . .

Best regards,

Joan Lipkin


Stranded in Rome: The Kindness of Strangers

by Joan Lipkin

Rome - Sister Barbara, a nun of indeterminate age and infinite grace, greets me at the door of the Casa Santa Brigida, a convent off Rome's Piazza Farnese, where I am staying for a few days before flying home to St. Louis. Her customary serenity disturbed, she speaks more rapidly than usual.

"Nuovo Yorke! Nuovo Yorke!" She gestures with her hands, suggesting an airplane.

"A bomb?" I ask. "A crash?"

"No, no bombe. Quattro, quattro." Again, she makes the gesture of an airplane and holds up four fingers in agitation.

My rudimentary Italian and limited imagination cannot fathom what she is saying. She points me in the direction of the dining room where I stop to speak with Monsignor Chestle, the Oxford-educated priest who celebrates mass with the sisters at 7:30 every morning and then works with the Pope as a translator for his English correspondence. He confirms Sister Barbara's story and elaborates on the details.

I falter in shock. I think of my brother, who has just moved to New York to take a job at Columbia University, and of all of my relatives living there. I imagine the terror of passengers on the highjacked planes, and of all the people trapped in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I wonder what will happen next.

Monsignor Chestle tells me that all flights have been cancelled for an indefinite period of time. I am due to fly back to St. Louis early the next morning, September 12, via Frankfurt, the busiest airport in Continental Europe. After a long-scheduled vacation with my family, who have left a few days earlier, I am eager to return to St. Louis. I have meetings all week and a rehearsal on Saturday.

"I'd rethink my plans, he says kindly. No one will be able to go anywhere for a while. This is an international crisis."

The convent, which doubles as a kind of hotel to help support the sisters, is completely booked. All 22 rooms. I have spent most of my lire, as the currency will no longer be in use after February 2002 when most of Europe converts to using Euro Dollars. Even though I have been in negotiations with an arts foundation in Rome to produce one of my plays, who knows if and when that will happen and if I will ever be back. 

I begin to cry.

The dining room, filled with a group from the Friends of Guildford Cathedral in England, grows quiet. Monsignor Chestle motions to Sister Heidi, an Indian-born nun who has taken on a Swedish name, as is the custom of the Swedish-founded order, "If you don't know what to do, eat your dinner and you'll feel better," he says. She brings me a bowl of soup, on the house.

He presses a glass of red wine on me. Then, two. We finish the bottle. 

He asks Sister Gertrude if I can stay on at a sister house on the Via della Isole, in another part of Rome. It, too, is full, as are all the hotels I call. September is a very popular month to visit Rome, second only to June. And now, countless people are stranded.

Ann Leigh, the 6Oish indefatigable British tour director who is escorting the group of elderly Anglicans from Guildford, helps me call United Airlines, through whom I have tickets. Two of the highjacked planes were on United. After trying to get through for several hours, they finally tell me that I will not be able to return for a week. It will be Tuesday, September 19 at the earliest. I turn to Ann in distress.

"This is like wartime," she says briskly. "So all of our usual personal boundaries are down. Not to worry. We will see if we can get a cot and you can stay in my room." She pats me reassuredly on the shoulder and hurries off to deal with lost luggage and the dietary needs of the lacto-vegetarian in her group. Problem. Solution.

My relief is short-lived as I ponder sharing a room the size of a cell with a virtual stranger. I have not had a roommate I didn't know since college. And despite Ann's offer, I am concerned about imposing. After squiring around 36 people all day, won't she want privacy? Then I begin to wonder if the problem isn't mine. Could I be so generous if the tables were turned? Would I?

But these musings are a luxury I can ill afford. At least for the moment. We are all hungry for more news. I go to the tiny television room on the third floor that is filled with the Guildford Anglicans and Ed Fronick, a 61-year-old Catholic deacon of St. Martin of Tours Church in Lemay, who sells printing for Bernadette Business Forms in St. Louis. We embrace like long lost friends.

It is his first visit to Italy. He has a ticket for the Papal audience that his newly-ordained auxiliary bishop, Timothy Dolan has arranged. Monsignor Chestle knows Arch Bishop Dolan, as well as Arch Bishop Justin Rigali, both in St. Louis, and speaks of them warmly. As with many things, the Vatican is a small world.

Ed tells me when he first heard the news, he thought it was a hoax. "As others began talking, I was stunned," he said. "I could hardly wait to watch CNN. Then, as I watched, I prayed. Prayed for the victims and their families."

As we watch in disbelief, we see video images of Palestinian children dancing in celebration of the attack. A gasp goes through the room. An elegantly dressed matron from Guildford reaches over to take my hand. "Never you mind, dear," she says. "They are only children. We are with you. The whole world is with you. We are your allies." She presses my hand to her cheek and then kisses it. So much for the legendary English reserve.

Ed and I decide to attend the evening service the Anglicans are holding that night in the convent library. Canon Maureen Palmer, one of the first women ordained as a deacon and a priest in the Anglican church, will be celebrating mass. The Briggidine nuns do not know what to make of this tiny English woman who wears a collar and trousers and leads her group in prayer. Sister Serena tells me she does not understand and that it is not the natural order of things. But they are respectful and offer the library.

Canon Maureen's voice trembles as she says prayers for America and specifically for Ed and myself to be comforted and safe. Afterwards, Pat, the secretary for the group, invites me to join them the next morning for the weekly general audience of the Pope at the Vatican. While the outdoor area can hold as many as 50,000 people, including standing room, their group has special tickets. The yellow are for unreserved seats, and the orange, allow you to sit up close. She gives me a prized orange ticket.

I toss and turn all night, finally falling asleep briefly at dawn. What will happen next? Will there be a war? Are my friends and relatives safe? And then it is time for the trek to St. Peter's.

The service is unlike any I have attended. An announcement is made in Italian and repeated in English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Danish that there is to be no applause today, either to welcome the Pope or to acknowledge various groups like the Friends of Guildford who, like many, have made the pilgrimage to Rome.

An eerie silence falls over the huge and usually exuberant crowd as the 81-year-old pope says that yesterday has been a dark day in the history of humanity. "I ask you to grant the American people the strength and courage they need at this time of sorrow," he says. It is the same slow, yet deliberate voice I remember from his visit to St. Louis last winter. He offers prayers for all who are weeping because of the violence and loss of loved ones. He asks us to hold firm in our faith and to commit ourselves to building a better world.

Those same words are repeated in several languages. The words for America, New York, violence and peace sound remarkably similar in various tongues. The gravity of the situation deepens with each lingual repetition.

On stage near the Pope, a select few await his personal blessing. There are children and many people using wheelchairs. In front of the stage, sit rows of brides and grooms in formal attire, most of whom were just married and awaiting a blessing.

A group of monks lift a statue of the Virgin Mary in a processional around the piazza and then, suddenly, it is over. I gather with Ann and the rest of the group from Guildford for the bus ride back on the Number 116 to the convent. Ann has been leading tours in Italy for 23 years and is a frequent visitor to the Vatican. She says she has never seen a service like this. So somber. So grave. Monsignor Chestle tells me later that this was a memorial service, really. 

That afternoon, I go to the nearby Campo de Fiori, the lively piazza which has been a focus of Roman life since the 15th century and now houses a flower and fresh produce market in the mornings. A wild eyed 20 something speaks to me of the evils of capitalism. He cites examples of Michael Jordan and Bill Gates, concluding with McDonald's as the ultimate insult. "What do you expect?" he says.

Around him, several youth shake their heads. At first they thought he was funny. But now he has gone too far. Too much violence, they say.

Despite an outpouring of notes and flowers, the American Embassy has cautioned U.S. tourists to lay low. In fact, it is closed, presumably for reasons of security.

Interviewed in the Corriere Della Sera, a leading newspaper, banker Philp Glickman recalls Rome in the 1980's, when American nationals were often the target of terrorist attacks. "I remember Carabinieri (police) officers with machine guns outside our schools," he says.

At that time, Italy's international schools were on alert, and for a time, the American Overseas School in Rome even dropped the "American" from its name. I begin to remember other occasions of terrorism in this country I so admire. The 1981 kidnapping of US Army General James Dozier. The bombing of a Pan Am office at Fiumcino Airport a decade earlier.

As I walk down the Via Corso Vittorio Emanuel, I struggle to reconcile Anti-American sentiment with an almost omnipresent preoccupation with American pop culture. The top three grossing films the first week of August in Italy were the American blockbusters, "Shrek", "Evolution" and "Pearl Harbor".

The admiration goes both ways. 2.15 million Americans visited Italy last year, Among European countries, only Britain has more Americans living permanently abroad.

Speaking live on all the country's national television channels, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi says Italy is in mourning over the massive terrorist attacks that destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and set fire to the Pentagon in Washington, DC. "Italy is in mourning. These attacks against the United States hit and offend the entire international community. They call for a uncompromising fight against terrorism," he says.

Some Americans from Dubuque, Iowa tell me they each received a letter in English under the door at their hotel early that morning from the Mayor of Rome offering condolences and hopes for peace. They show me the letter. It has been faxed to hotels all over Rome on official letterhead with the city crest.

Back at the convent, Ed and I compare notes on the day. He has a flight to Manchester, England on Friday. My flight is still postponed and with an estimated 16,000 passengers previously bumped from Frankfurt, the airlines now cannot guarantee a Tuesday departure. Still no word on whether my brother's partner's plane, which was diverted from New York, has landed safely and where. We discuss finances and how we will get by. The sunny afternoons are turning nippy. I will buy a sweater. St. Louis feels very far away. More than an ocean.

We decide to attend the evening service again with the Anglicans who have become our new friends. Canon Maureen talks about the importance of learning to receive as well as to give. They sing a hymn which has become popular at ordinations: 

"Brother, sister, let me serve you,
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace
to let you be my servant, too."

It is a difficult lesson for me to hear. I am fiercely independent and used to running the show. And, well, I am an American. But this one is out of my hands. In the chapel below us, the Briggidine sisters are saying a mass for those who have died. Ed remarks with wonder about a Jewish woman and a Roman Catholic deacon praying with a group of Anglicans in an Italian convent founded by Swedes.

The world suddenly seems a bit safer. And still I await my flight home.
 

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Joan finally got to fly home on September 23, 2001.  It took her 23 hours to get home from the time she left Rome to the time she arrived at her home in St. Louis.