Jacket from Trieste

The jacket lies on the ground in the square in front of the station in Trieste. It is light, too light for the winter woods crossed along the Balkan route. It has faded, worn out by rain and mud; the sleeves are stiff, crusted with dry soil and filled with fine dust, as if the journey had left behind a residue impossible to shake off.

Often, the pockets still hold small traces of life: a phone number written on a piece of paper, a photograph folded over and over again, a piece of bread wrapped in paper. This one too has a broken zipper, fastened with a safety pin. A simple, necessary gesture: along the route everything is mended, everything that can be kept together is kept together. The fabric still carries that acrid smell of sweat and rain, a smell that speaks of nights spent outdoors, of borders crossed, of fear and stubborn determination. Yet, inside that fabric there was once a body that walked for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres. It kept warm, shielded from the snow, and served as a pillow on the hard ground. It was a blanket, a shield, at times a home.

In Trieste many garments are left like that, piled up in a corner of the square. They are no longer needed; they are too worn to carry on. They remain like shed skins after a crossing. Every jacket tells of a crossed border, a danger escaped, a stubborn step toward a future still uncertain. It is a worn object, but also the tangible proof of a silent struggle to stay alive.