Outside the City Walls: An Analysis of Immigration, Religious Urban Landscape, and Community
by Jonathan Reiber

Twenty years ago in Rome, three kilometers from the Caravaggios, the Roman walls, and medieval Basilicas of the city center, the Italian government built a massive and ineffective public housing structure. One kilometer in length, the edifice of Corviale was built to house the poor who had migrated from the south of Italy. With small concrete rooms and color-coded floors, 9,000 people lived like ants in a colony. Apartments were without windows or water; there wasn't a single bus line between the city and Corviale; residents didn't know the name or location of the Tiber. On the periphery of Rome the poor lived their own, private, sequestered, history.

On the night of Sunday, March 17, 2002, after six weeks at sea, 928 Iraqi-Kurds arrived in a cargo boat off the southern coast of Sicily. It was Italy's single largest arrival of asylum seekers and immigrants in three years. In the town of Bari, the home of the most well-equipped immigration center in Italy, a state of emergency was declared. Such mass migrations are not an abnormal occurrence. On November 9th, 1989, the whole world was watching TV. In Boston it was a cold day, but a great day. My mother was 50, my dad was 46; they called me down from my room to share champagne and faux caviar. Mom was involved in the strange act of crying and laughing at the same time. "Communism is about to fall," my father said. "Jonathan, the Berlin Wall is coming down. Your world will be utterly unlike that which your mother and I have come to know. You will have friends from the Soviet Union." In the next days East and West Germans ran towards each other in an explosion of freedom. The rest of the world followed, and so did the biggest economic boom since the 1970s.

In our world today, complex post-colonial and post-Cold War geopolitics, ranging from the partition of India and the ensuing civil war with Pakistan to ongoing conflicts such as the civil wars in Angola and Algeria, have directly and indirectly lead to an immigration explosion in Europe. Like the immigrants from the underdeveloped south of Italy who came to Corviale, the Iraqi-Kurds and their fellow immigrants came to Italy in search of security, peace, and a better future. Yet, as in the intrastate migrations to Corviale, today's immigrants face a parallel and wholly different world, a world divided by a complex psychological, economic, and political wall.

The overlapping problem is that both America and Europe are in trouble with ‘Islam’, a religion whose very name has been demonized, objectified and misunderstood by many. In Rome, where many of the immigrants are Muslim, both of these problems are being mended through a powerful, imaginative, and creative process of story: The Community of St. Egidio, and a subgroup inside the Community, the People of Peace, is re-imagining the world. As it did in 1989, a wall is again tumbling down in Europe.

Walls divide the physical and mental geography of human life. Built over time and through experience, these walls complicate and punctuate the human journey; some walls are big and obvious, like the Berlin Wall, while some are small and unknown, like one man's secret fear of the dark. Global political and social history, as we can see in our current post-colonial and post-Cold War world, is the biggest and most skilled builder, and as the Berlin Wall came to symbolize, the great divider of people. Yet the human spirit does not like division, nor the feelings of suffering that come from being blocked by walls, and it is in the spirit that we find our imagination, the first step to freedom.

How we understand other beings is dependent on which story becomes ours. If there is a positive or inclusive story at work in a society, then during times of difficulty that story can provide great strength and cohesion; if there are competing stories, or if there is pain between the groups and the competing stories involved, then a wall rises.

The wall is rising all over the world, and one need only look at a few examples to see its impact. In Tongaat, a South African town on the eastern coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal, Mozambican and Congolese immigrants form gangs out of their own need for security, in a social process that has repeated itself throughout time, and in the competition for power they commit acts of violence against their South African neighbors. Despite the citizens' attempts to create a neighborhood watch, the violence and robbery continue unabated. On the other side of the world, in the slums of Calcutta, impoverished Bangladeshi squatter camps tax already depleted water sources, further destroy the city's tired infrastructure, and threaten food supplies. In Europe, many immigrant communities have become hotbeds of violence and crime. Although its politics can certainly be debated, the rise of the Northern League in Italy — one of Europe's most rightwing political parties — speaks to the need for new security in Europe. They want stringent immigration laws; they do not like the danger on the other side. But immigration will not go away, and it cannot be ignored.

Peacemaking in a world of violence

In 1968, in the period following the Second Vatican Council and just as Corviale was being built, a small group of Roman high school students came together out of an earnest desire to live the Gospel, to pray for peace, and to serve the poor. They met in a small church on a square in Trastevere, one of the oldest sections of Rome; they followed Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI in a mature vocation for dialogue between the various religious traditions of the world. Through attention brought about by the powerful ethos of the Gospel, this small, devoted community cast its loving eyes on Rome and the world. The effects have been immeasurable.

Since its early beginnings, the Community of St. Egidio has spread to become an international movement of lay Catholic peace-workers of incredible social and religious importance. Through its prayers and work it has saved many lives — some from the physical death of war and poverty, while others have been delivered the message of meaning that is at the heart of the Christian tradition. In some circumstances the Community has taken its vocation for peace to the highest levels of successful international diplomacy, as it did in the negotiations that ended the civil war in Mozambique.

In 1999, the Community, in response to the influx of immigrants on Italian soil, began a movement of immigrant peacemakers called People of Peace, or "Genti di Pace." Out of their mutual sense of responsibility and friendship, Italians and immigrants alike were determined to build a city without a periphery. Like the Community, the People of Peace movement started out small, but after three years the People of Peace had spread through different chapters of the Community all over Europe. By the beginning of 2002, membership in the movement included over 45,000 immigrants and Europeans. The People of Peace have parties for each other, and through those parties they become friends. Birthday parties, football matches, weddings, and all of the religious holidays of the different immigrant communities are celebrated en mass, in different locations around Europe. These parties allow people to share their lives; friendships are made, people share their experiences, and in so doing they heal the pain of loneliness and estrangement that come from living in an unknown and unforgiving land.

Built on time and built to last, the People of Peace create relationships that enable a positive future. This was illustrated for me on February 13, 2002, when I was invited by my friend Qorbanali, an Afghani, to the European Secretariat of People of Peace. On that day immigrants came to Rome from all over Europe: Algerian immigrants from Brindisi, Chinese immigrants living in Padova, Iraqi immigrants from Germany — all gave testimony to the importance of the movement in their lives. Mohammed, a Moroccan, spoke for so many in the Secretariat, saying: "Before I met all of you, I felt lost, lonely, and without a home or job, but now that I have so many friends from all over the world I feel safe, strong, and happy. I have a job, now. We are important, I have learned. We are important to each other, because we can sit and tell each other stories. It is important that we be here for each other — it is not just important, it is saving me, and it is helping Europe."

Breaking down walls to Islam

The migrating presence of Islam, the crisis in the Holy Land, and the poverty of the Third World bring diverse messages, narratives, and traditions into Rome, messages which mix into the specifically Roman landscape to form new interpretations and meanings. Sometimes the messages that emerge can become a light to the world, as was the case this year when the People of Peace celebrated the Muslim holiday of eid-ul-Adha. On eid-ul-Adha Muslims remember the journey that the Prophet Mohammed took to the mountain to meditate on Abraham's sacrifice of Ishmael. From Indonesia to Bosnia, on that day Muslims sacrifice a goat in remembrance of Abraham. Falling at the end of the Hajj season, eid-ul-Adha is the culmination of pilgrimage; it is a day of prayer, of fasting, and feasting. But above all else it is a celebration of the call of Ibrahim, Abraham, the father of monotheism, and of the beginning of Islam.

This year eid-ul-Adha fell on the cold day of February 22nd. In celebration of the event the People of Peace held a party for the entire Muslim population of the city, which is mostly immigrant. But a celebration such as eid-ul-Adha is a special celebration, one of the most important holidays of the year. On this particular eid-ul-Adha, the forces of this world — made up of the conflict between the west and Islam, the mass migrations, the building of lonely and isolated immigrant communities, unease by Muslim nations towards the west, and the continued unconscious objectification of Muslims by Europeans and Americans — were counteracted by another force, the caring of a small attentive community and its immigrant friends.

The "tribes of Israel" and the "tribes of Ishmael" have moved away from each other, a wall of fear and mutual hatred rising between them. Biologically and physically, all life is one — unfortunately, history and the psyche care nothing for this idea.

The People of Peace and the group celebration of eid-ul-Adha are incredibly important for the creation of a new Europe, and indeed for the world. Coming together to share stories is what allows for friendship, and it is through friendship that history, no matter what it may have done, is allowed to release its grip. For each immigrant who is made to feel welcome, for each story shared, a little bit of the wall falls away, and another life is woven back into the world.

If you walk through the massive structure of Corviale today you will find happy citizens. People have transformed concrete rooms into beautiful homes, gardens flourish, even the livestock seem to be happy. Today Corviale is a neighborhood. No longer living in poverty, they enjoy a similar standard of living to most working class Romans. The Berlin Wall fell, and the free market was allowed into the old Communist nations. Old walls have fallen away, but in their wake new ones have risen, and as the Romans were once afraid of the Southern poor, as Americans were once afraid of the Russians, now immigrants and Muslims suffer under ostracization and their own unawareness about what it means to be "western." The fear of the unknown, like one man's secret fear of his own dark side, can consume — our own insecurity subconsciously tortures us, driving us to raise the wall.

We can not wait twenty years to destroy the walls that have arisen in our minds and between our nations — the stakes are too high, the opportunities too great. Our responsibilities extend out into the furthest regions of the furthest nations, to the nations caught up in civil war and ethnic strife, and then they return to our own backyards in the form of the immigrant, a messenger from our own history. Our communities and our cities have immense potential for cultural exchange, for learning, and for healing this history — if we admit to ourselves that we want to build a better city, we will find that we are not alone. Through the dust and grit of the stone, through the mess of history, through the first small hole, we can see the eyes of another. In those eyes, as in our own, there are a million stories waiting to be told.

Jonathan Reiber recently returned from a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, during which time he studied religion, peacemaking, and community in South Africa, Mozambique, Italy, India, Turkey, and Cyprus. His interests include the effects of globalization on religion, identity, and conflict; ancient and early-Christian history; geography; and poetry. He currently lives near Boston, Massachusetts, and can be reached by email at reiber@middlebury.edu.