Talks with Amanda Knox in prison

Take me with you

Rocco Girlanda

• Publisher: VandA edizioni
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9788898475094
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Biographies de sciences sociales

Amanda Knox's prison stay in Italy was made bearable by the visits of one man who took it upon himself to ease her life behind bars, and to eventually leave the country. At the time, Rocco Girlanda, president of the Italian/USA foundation, was the only person, outside of her family, Amanda chose to see during her time in prison. This book tells the story of the profound friendship born between them and provides an intriguing and intimate portrait of the real Amanda. «I don't read the paper or watch TV. I have my world. I know I am not alone, even when I am alone.».

Take me with you
Talks with Amanda Knox in prison

“Take me with you.”

Without turning, I answer her as I continue to look out the window of the taxi. “How can I take you with me? You know we can’t do that.”

We cross the bridge that takes us to the road going to JFK. The New York taxi passes a couple of cars and goes forward, fast as my thoughts, while Amanda asks me again for us to leave together.

“You know my plane goes in another direction,” I answer, hoping she’ll understand.

She puts in my hand her pink iPod that incessantly plays Beatles music. I hesitate and stare at it.

Then I look at her.

“It’s a present,” she says looking straight into my eyes. “I can give you a present today, can’t I?”

Her face crumple as it always does when she’s going to cry.

“Will we take bike rides in Umbria and eat dinners with truffles? Will we do it even if I don’t come with you now?” she asks me.

“Of course, Amanda, why wouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know. I’m scared, I’m so scared…”

My mouth fills with saliva and I try to swallow it. It breaks my heart that I have to go back to

Europe, but I know that we’ll see each other again soon.

This conversation with Amanda continues for a few minutes as we go through some residential areas outside the city; she huddles into her dark red sweatshirt as if for protection.

I wake up in my bed, in my house in Gubbio. And I realize that the trip in the American taxi with

Amanda was only a dream. It’s almost five in the morning, I’d like to try and sleep some more. But

I have to admit I’m worked up and maybe even troubled. And not just from the dream - who knows why in New York, who knows why in a taxi. But also by the meetings and talks I’m having with

Amanda.

It’s not the first time Amanda appears in my dreams. And it won’t be the last.

When pointers and suggestions are given to young writers, they’re always told that for a novel to be successful they have to talk about feelings and emotions. No matter whether they’re happy or sad, conflicting or superficial.

Amanda is twenty-two the first time I meet her, the same age as one of my daughters. During this experience and my meetings in prison with her, I’ve certainly seen emotions, I noticed them when I was talking with her, in the looks, the silences, and I also felt them deeply in first person.

I’d never entered a prison in my life. The obvious expectations are influenced by films, often

American films. I’m tense and nervous.

The first visit takes place only a few days after the verdict of guilty, on a cloudy Sunday in mid-December, and begins with the metallic noise of the bolts tormenting the imposing locks forward and backward, noisily opening and closing the doors behind us each time we go past a new section.

Before I meet her I want to know about the facility where she is, absorb the setting. The Perugia penitentiary is new; it was inaugurated in July 2005 in the Capanne area, a few kilometers from the Umbrian capital city. It’s a very neat and efficient facility, very different from the images of deterioration of some of the penitentiaries we’re used to seeing. In the women’s area there are little more than sixty or so prisoners during my visits, about 40 per cent of them foreigners, almost always from outside the EU.

The section also has cells specifically equipped for women prisoners who need to keep their children with them until they are three years old. I chat for a few minutes with two foreign prisoners and their children. There are various areas for the children including a small nursery school full of toys. A little boy runs down the corridor brandishing in one hand a Japanese super-hero toy and in the other a green dinosaur.

They explain that the children can stay with their mothers until their third birthday. And the morning of their birthday they are inexorably separated. I immediately think about my little boy who wants his mommy.

Then I visit the laundry room and the kitchens where the meals are prepared and have a few words with the cooks. Even the courtyard for the so-called outdoor air hour is separated from the one for the other women prisoners in order to safeguard the children.

On the first floor are the cells for the other women prisoners; they’re around 129 square feet. The largest ones may have four or five beds and can go up to 280 square feet. Every cell has a bathroom with a toilet, a shower and bidet. The prisoners also have a buzzer that activates a visual and sound alarm for the personnel of the prison police force.

There’s an infirmary, a games room with a pinball machine, ping-pong, and a library. There’s also a small church for mass and prayers. Through the bars of the door I see the altar and the crucifix: I look at Jesus through the bars and my mind floods with questions. Then I realize the group has gone ahead of me.

In all, the prison occupies a surface of about 104 acres, about twenty of which are used for buildings, while the rest are green areas. There are also cells for the handicapped, specially constructed with no architectural barriers..

The multi-functional gym for the prisoners is set up so that it can also become a 250 seat theater.

Before going up to the next floor, while waiting on the stairs for the armored doors to open, I introduce myself to the prison warden, Bernardina Di Mario, a splendid, elegant woman who is very different from the kind of person I expected to meet.

I explain that I that I held it necessary to meet Amanda Knox in order to verify her conditions as a prisoner, also because of the extraordinary stir the case has provoked in the United States, so much so that only a few days before my visit to the Perugia prison, even the American institutions and the

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, took interest in the matter.

As president of the Italy USA Foundation which is an independent and bipartisan institution whose only aim is to promote friendship between Italy and the United States of America, I felt this meeting was necessary because of the effects this dramatic crime case is having between our two nations, which have always been tied by an indissoluble bond of friendship witnessed by history, a bond that surely will not be harmed or comprised by a criminal event. In fact, I considered the surfacing of anti-Americanism in an event like this strongly out of place; for example, the comments made by the American senator, Maria Cantwell, after the sentence.

I am accompanied by Catia Polidori, the executive director of the Italy USA Foundation and my colleague in Parliament. Catia has been my friend for years, like me she comes from Umbria, and we have a history of shared human and professional experiences. Enthusiastic about America where she went to Harvard University, she was a must for the Foundation staff.

My first visit with Amanda, like the following ones, were obviously held beyond any consideration whatsoever about the development and results of the trial; these are themes that are solely the competence of our country’s judges, and cannot and must not in any way be part of the meetings with prisoners, something that in any case is also clearly specified by law.

To guarantee this and in respect for the regulations, at each of our meetings the penitentiary police chief, Fulvio Brillo, is always present. I have learned to know and appreciate him for his great qualities and preparation and his capacity to unite professional rigor to an ever-present humanity.

I have some books in English with me, I’m not sure that I can give them to her but I bring them, thinking that it might please Amanda. It turns out it was the right thing to do because every time we meet I will bring her ten or so books, seeing in her eyes the pleasure of receiving them and later talking about them together. I give them to the prison guards for the usual checks: The Mission Song by John Le Carrè, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, Italian Neighbors by Tim Parks, and also a prayer book from the Pontifical North American College of Rome and the English edition of the recent historical essay by Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, which I bought at the Vatican.

Everything in Amanda’s cell is very clean and tidy, a few plastic boxes on a small table, a turned off TV and no newspapers. “I don’t read the papers or watch TV. I have my world. I’m treated well, even if I have to accept things that don’t seem fair to me.”

In Italy, unlike in the USA, prisoners don’t have uniforms; they wear their own clothes. When I meet her the first time she’s wearing a grey-white turtle neck sweater with black trousers and her hair in a pony-tail. Amanda seems very tranquil, and we talk at length looking into each other’s eyes.

“When all this is finished, I want to go to my family because I miss them so much, but then I want to come back to Italy because I was happy here,” she answers me standing near her bed, after I’ve asked he if she’d come back to Italy when she’s free.

I tell her a true story about an ex-schoolmate of mine accused some years ago of killing his girlfriend. He was arrested and judged guilty here in Perugia, but then acquit...

Table of contents

• Author’s Note
• Take me with you Talks with Amanda Knox in prison