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Naples is deserted but does not sleep, on the road from Vomero to the Lungomare, when the curfew has been triggered for a few minutes, you see a world of people wondering behind the illuminated windows of the houses: what will happen? Naples cannot sleep because the silence of the streets is unreal and causes anguish just as in the days of the confinement that seem distant and instead approach, they are just around the corner and as they arrive they carry the enormous weight of controversy and tensions.
The city that discovers the curfew is sad, heartbroken, colored by the rhythmic blue of the flashing lights of the service cars. In Santa Lucia the guerrillas broke out, assaulted the Palazzo della Regione, burning garbage dumps, barricades between groups of youth and police. Journalists and carabinieri beaten.
READ ALSO Closure in Naples, the first closing night turns into an urban war
THE MOVE
The fun Friday night would include a little dinner and then a clubbing tour, music, dancing. In the Vomero the streets of the pubs are deserted at half past nine, small groups of very young teenagers leave the premises, mayonnaise mustaches, no one enters to replace them; the curfew begins long before the official one. In via Aniello Falcone until ten o’clock there is a sad coming and going of young adults who will soon feel alone without the glass in hand and the meetings at the tables, then only the loyal ones remain, ready for a dark farewell toast. A few minutes from curfew – applause for no real reason, just to chase away the fear of the returning monster. The alleys of the historic center have already been emptied in the afternoon and have never returned alive. In front of the most famous pizzerias, there has been no queue for a long time, on the night of the curfew very few tables were occupied, the most daring ones entered at eight at night and after an hour they were already out. Then nothing more, waiting for the forced closing, the shutters lowered.
THE SEA
In the alleys of the Movida many clubs and bars have not even opened. There is no use wasting energy on a job that starts to take off at one in the morning if you can’t stay open at that time and if people have to stay home.
On the seafront, in the early afternoon, the customers of the pizzerias are impalpable: in all Via Partenope at 9 pm we have 36 occupied tables. Practically nothing. Before the blockade, however, there were cars: a slow-moving funeral march – behind the windows the bulging eyes to look at the dark gulf – it is as if these people were saying goodbye to someone, to something: there is a bitter taste in that slow advance that, however, disappears around ten at night to make room for nothing. A hint of traffic reappears at 11pm, but it is the fault of the chaos of the protests.
On the opposite side of the Castel dell’Ovo, in front of the Mergellina chalets, everything has been standing still for days. There, too, the last daring people leave around ten o’clock to get home before curfew. There, Friday night never started, not even at eight o’clock at night there were people two or three tables occupied, the air was already ghostly at that time. So the 11pm wait turns into a long, dramatic countdown that many give up before zero hits occur. Shutters closed, all at home.
THE TENSION
Going up to Posillipo desert and not meeting anyone is not an exhilarating feeling. The trill of the cell phone causes a jolt: “In Vasto there are the usual foreign companies who make a mess in the street.” Getting to the other side of town, with a curfew, is less than ten minutes on foot. But in those ten minutes, obviously, the party that was celebrating dissolved because silence reigns even in the streets of that Naples away from nightlife. However, even in those streets, behind the windows, you can recognize dozens of shapes glued to the glass to understand what happens, if the unreal silence is what heralds the storm or is what will bring serenity. In Santa Lucia it is a completely different story: urban warfare, violence, which unfortunately make Naples return to the front page on the first night of confinement.
Last updated: 10:02 © REPRODUCTION RESERVED
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