Strength is the card of calm courage — the kind that does not seek to dominate passions, but to contain them.
In its most widespread iconography, that of the Marseille Tarot, a woman holds open the jaws of a lion with her bare hands — she does not force its bite, she accompanies it.
It is a card that speaks of steady gentleness, of that power that does not need to bare its teeth in order to be heard. At the same time, it is the card of the transformation of desire: it represents animal energy becoming speech, rage becoming thought.
In this story, I take inspiration from this card to recount the (slightly fictionalized) tale of a happy encounter with a few feminist colleagues at the Orientale in Naples, on the occasion of a lectio magistralis by Asma Lamrabet — a gift of fate that I welcomed gladly at a moment when I am in deep crisis with academic feminism.
The title is an ironic reference to the title of a Gigi D’Alessio song that the teenage girl living beneath my window used to be obsessed with when I studied in Naples — she listened to it at such volume and frequency that it became the soundtrack to my nightmares for many years.
(Previous episode: –>Episode 8: The train to S. Gennaro )
The afternoon in Naples has a golden color, like a ripe orange.
I walk down toward Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, while the sunlight breaks across the baroque facades and the lines of laundry strung through the alleys.
The air smells of warm stone and burnt sugar: from a window someone is frying graffe.
Scattered around the square are students, musicians, pro-Palestine activists, confused tourists.
A girl reads the Qur’an silently, headphones in her ears.
Beneath the obelisk, an old man tells the pigeons that the truth is never found all on one side.
I nod, almost by reflex.
I arrive at Palazzo Corigliano a little earlier than the scheduled start time; the chairs are still half empty when I sit down, but they fill quickly and the room is packed by the time the lecture begins.
On stage, Asma Lamrabet speaks with a clear voice, without superfluous gestures. She explains that the key to understanding Islam is not the law, but practice, and that the exegesis of sacred texts — including feminist exegesis — cannot do without enacting what in Arabic is called ijtihād: the interpretive effort, the search for meaning.
She speaks of “controversial issues,” moving with naturalness and competence between different, complex themes such as the hijab, the so-called Islamic veil, female religious authority, family law — and every so often she smiles, as if she knows that controversy is the true breath of faith.
When she finishes, there is a respectful silence. Then the questions begin.
I let a few pass, then I raise my hand.
“Asma, thank you for your words. I have a genealogical curiosity. You said that the term Islamic feminism was coined by Margot Badran, and gender jihad by amina wadud. In this regard, perhaps it is worth remembering that Margot Badran, with whom I had the pleasure and honor of many conversations back in Cairo, actually took the expression from Iranian women after the ’79 revolution, in the early 1980s. This is why Ziba Mir-Hosseini has defined Islamic feminism as ‘the unwanted child of political Islam.’”
A murmur runs through the room, amused and attentive.
“As for gender jihad,” I continue, “amina wadud took it from South African Muslim women engaged in the anti-apartheid struggle in the early 1990s. It seems important to me to remember that academia often attributes the paternity — or in this case the maternity — of concepts to single figures that in fact arise from collective practices, from movements, from communities of women.”
Asma listens in silence, with that kind of attention that is already an answer.
Then she nods:
“You are right. It’s true, they didn’t invent those terms. But it is Margot Badran and amina wadud who theorized them, and thus made them thinkable for large numbers of people. That is an important difference.”
I smile.
“Yes,” I say, “you’re right. It’s an excellent distinction.”
For a moment, our gazes meet: two women who know that strength is never possession, but passage.
Above us, on the frescoed ceiling, an angel holds open the mouth of a lion.
A second presentation by Asma will follow later in a bookstore; but I am tired and prefer to return to Flavia’s home, at the Stella, to lie down a little.
I barely have time to touch the pillow when, almost without noticing, I slip quickly into half-sleep and begin to dream.
In the dream it is spring, and the air has that transparency that only the Tuscan countryside can have on May days.
I walk along a white gravel path, the cypresses drawing severe lines against the sky, and a scent of cut grass rises slowly like a song.
Beside me is him — my masculine double, the one who has always accompanied my dream wanderings. We speak intensely, like siblings who have known each other forever. Words are not really needed: we understand each other through the cadence of our steps, through the exchange of glances.
Then, suddenly, the landscape changes.
The sky grows veiled, first a deeper blue, then a cobalt shading into violet. The wind blows hard, and a shiver runs along my skin.
I turn — and my faithful companion is no longer him. In his place stands an unknown man, dark-skinned, his smile cut like a wound. He laughs, a cruel and powerful laugh, and lunges at me.
I want to flee, but my legs do not respond.
I feel his fingers grip my hair, dragging me into the dark, while the wind whistles and the world dissolves.
I wake with a start, my heart beating like a drum.
The ceiling of the Neapolitan room is low, the open window lets in the smell of rain and sea.
For a moment I don’t understand where I am, whether still in the dream or back in waking.
Then the phone vibrates on the bedside table: a message from Flavia reminds me that I’m invited to dinner at the Taverna Santa Chiara.
The Taverna is warm, the wood dark, a glass of red wine in front of me.
Outside it rains, but inside its small room the voices create a murmur that feels like quiet.
I tell my colleagues about the dream. Not as confession, but as an exercise in looking.
I tell of the double, of the stranger, of the fear that is not only mine.
I discuss how the part that unsettled me the most was its iconography, unmistakably racist, drawn from the colonial imaginary of the “black peril.”
“From a theoretical point of view,” I say, “I know all too well where that image comes from.
The so-called black peril is born as a colonial invention: a myth constructed to feed fear, to justify violence, to turn an entire continent into a sexual threat. In South Africa, J. M. Coetzee calls it ‘the non plus-ultra of colonialism’s horror fantasies.’ It is a dirty story, as long as the European colonial project itself.”
I pause for a moment and take a sip of wine.
“And yet,” I continue, “no matter how well I know genealogies, texts, studies by heart… that figure returns. Not in thoughts, but where I have no guards: in dreams. As if the unconscious were every so often reopening an old family box, and inside it found images I did not choose.”
Sara looks at me in silence, then says softly:
“It is the return of the colonial, even in dreams. The body does not lie.”
Flavia laughs, but gently: “After all, you’re a historian. Even your unconscious speaks to you in archives.”
I nod. “Yes. Only this archive burns. It is full of inherited images, of voices I struggle to distinguish: which are mine, and which are alien?”
The others fall silent.
Outside, the rain splashes on the cobblestones, the wine smoke rises like mist.
I keep talking — or perhaps thinking out loud — about racism that is not hatred but structure, about coloniality that persists in bodies even when minds believe they have dismantled it.
About the danger of ‘dismantling the master’s house’ without realizing you still live in its mezzanines, with the same tools, the same grammar.
“And then what do we do?” asks a voice.
“We go down to the basement,” I answer. “We look the ghosts in the face. We let them speak.”
Flavia pours another finger of wine. “And if they have nothing more to tell us?”
“Then we walk elsewhere,” I say. “We are free to seek another light.”
Later, leaving the taverna, I see the rain has stopped. Naples shines with reflections, the stones seem alive.
I walk up toward the Stella, then pause for a moment before the closed window of a shop selling ex-votos: silver hearts, eyes, legs, pierced hands.
I choose one in my mind. I will offer it in Pompei.
Not to ask for something, but to understand.
I walk slowly, while the wind dries the air and a smell of sugo rises from the kitchen windows.
In my mind I see the card of the Hermit: the lantern lit, the solitary step, the mountain waiting.
And I decide that tomorrow, if the weather allows, I will indeed go on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Pompei.
Perhaps there I will find the next voice that speaks.
Or perhaps only silence — but a silence finally able to listen.
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Thank you my dearest!!