Navelli è il tipico borgo delle montagne abruzzesi, fatto di vicoli stretti e ventosi, e scalinate in pietra che si aggrovigliano, senza un'apparente logica. E come ogni borgo montano abruzzese, durante un Lunedi di Pasqua può apparire come un villaggio addormentato da secoli.
Osservo le donne anziane che siedono nei pressi della fontana. Le rughe che attraversano i loro volti, ne sono certo, sono i solchi di un disco in vinile, dimenticato nel polveroso scantinato della memoria. E vorrei passarvi una puntina attraverso, per poter ascoltare le innumerevoli storie di gente comune, per sempre impresse sulla loro pelle.
I had arrived in Navelli following the cloud trail, in search for meadows with saffron flowers in bloom. Late March's spring days had failed me though, and when I arrived in the plain facing the mountains, and afterwards in the village, all I found was silence. Silence, broken just by the wind whistling, and suspicious dogs barking at me, to keep the eyes of a curious stranger away from some ancient secret.
Navelli is the typical village of the Abruzzo mountains, made of narrow and silent pathways and stone stairways unwinding without any appearent logic. And like any such mountain villages in Abruzzo, it looks as if asleep from centuries, during an Easter Monday.
I stare at the old women sitting by the fountain. The wrinkles running through their faces, I'm sure, are the grooves of an old vynil, lost in some dusty basement of their memory. And I wish I could run a needle through those grooves, and listen to the many story of common people, forever engraved in their skin.
