Riva’s Peace Olive Tree: A Symbol of Hope and Collective Reflection
The attacks of three weeks ago in America and the international reactions have shaken consciences and forced everyone to reflect on the causes of conflicts and their consequences. Sweeping away many illusions about the untouchability of a superpower like the USA and about the stability of peace for the Western world.
The Symbol of Peace and the Story of a Collective Gesture
Among those questioning all of this in recent days is Professor Franco Farina, a Riva-based intellectual, who begins with an anecdote: “The olive tree of peace, with which a few years ago the eponymous public garden near the Riva bus station was inaugurated (“park” is a somewhat pompous name for a small green space snatched from growing urbanization…) is dying. No one seems to have noticed.”
This cannot but take on an emblematic value in the current situation we are experiencing. I vividly remember that sunny morning, the elementary school children with multicolored balloons gathered for the occasion – a fresh intercultural mosaic. In the air, the excitement of outdoor recess, an alternative to the classroom, particularly intense at that age.
At the head, draped with the tricolor, were the mayors of the Alto Garda area. I happened to be in the park. It was unscripted, but I asked and was granted permission to recite a beautiful, unknown poem by Iraqi poet Abb-el-Waheb El Bayati: “One should be able to laugh at the sun…”. Then, the balloons released from the children’s hands floated high into the sky until they disappeared – a living, collective poetry written through gesture, a complement to verbal poetry.
The Symbolism of the Sapling and the Message of Peace
And then came the culminating moment of the symbolism of founding peace: planting the olive tree, immediately reinforced with mounds of earth by the mayor of Riva and then by other present figures, including some United Nations representatives. It was as if each of us was called to contribute concretely with our own handful of earth.
At that time, war seemed an abstract, remote possibility. Strengthened by the sense of community I felt with that green island amidst a city traffic that was increasingly unmanageable for man, I followed day by day the health of that tender sapling, which embodied the meaning of the park of peace (on the plaque bearing the inscription, a rough hand of a stubborn teenager had meanwhile drawn a conspicuous blue phallus…)
The olive tree appeared to have rooted well, judging by the increasing number of silvery leaves. I read a happy omen in it for the planet’s fate, and I thought it right to send a poetic message to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, with whom I also expressed my gratitude as a global citizen for his firm pursuit of peace policy in the tormented Middle East.
Against all expectations, I received a letter from the United Nations Headquarters dated March 4, 1998, in which Hasan Ferdous thanked me on behalf of Kofi Annan: “for the words of encouragement”. What struck me most was the central thought of the letter about the necessity of peace built from the bottom up, with everyone’s contribution, and on the vital importance of a “determined and cohesive international community”.
How can one not think of the mounds of earth supporting the olive tree? Three years later, in these torn and inhumane days, the words take on a bitter provocative flavor. For some time, the symbolic olive had appeared sad, wilted, in unison with the world’s passion.
And a few days ago, while taking my usual morning walk, I realized – with the force of sudden revelations – that the plant was dying. Perhaps because of the gardeners’ neglect, in this “unforeseeable” scenario, much like others appointed to oversee the fate of peace?