Sitdown Sunday: 'If they find her, they will kill her' - the priest helping women escape the Mafia

IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.

We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.

1. Escaping the Mob

Italian priest Luigi Ciotti, who leads an anti-Mafia organisation, speaks to D.T. Max about how he gives women in the Mob new identities and helps them to start a new life.

(The New Yorker, approx 39 mins reading time)

Men in the Mob generally insure that they discuss their illegal business activities out of earshot of their families, so women such as L. have often never been direct witnesses to crimes—making them ineligible for the country’s witness-protection program. Because they cannot help the state, the state won’t help them. Yet L. was in imminent peril. Mafia wives who leave their families are considered traitors, and some are assassinated. In 2011, Maria Concetta Cacciola, a thirteen-year-old whose parents were involved with the ’Ndrangheta, was married off to an associate. She eventually fled Calabria for northern Italy, leaving behind her three children. Cacciola’s mother lured her home, using her kids as bait. Less than two weeks later, Cacciola’s parents called her to the basement, where there was a container of acid. Most likely, she was forced to drink it—one of the Mafia’s punishments for being a snitch. Cacciola was pronounced dead at a hospital; her father told the police that she had died by suicide.

To help such women, Ciotti, who is seventy-nine, has spent the past twenty years creating an informal network of safe houses, burner phones, and coöperative policemen. When he needs an officer or a government official to facilitate someone’s flight, he often makes the request in person, thus avoiding any phone logs or digital traces. “You have to be smart,” he told me. “Any small mistake is enough to get people in trouble.”

2. Deserting Putin’s army

This novel-like, five-part story sees Sarah Topol chronicle how a captain in the Russian army escaped Putin’s war in Ukraine. It’s a remarkable read – but if it’s a bit too long for you, I would recommend listening to it here. 

(The New York Times Magazine, approx 170 mins reading time)

Ivan’s disappointment with the realities of service were bearable until he got a new commander. His subordinates nicknamed him Pig for his jowls and ruddy cheeks. Pig started pocketing the rations earmarked for field training, which the guys were able to sell if they brought their own food from home. Ivan was owed three days’ worth after a weekend in the field, so he went to demand them. If they didn’t put an end to this now, who knows what would happen. “First it’s rations,” Ivan said. “Then it’s our wages.” His colleagues told him not to bother; everyone knew Pig had plenty of schemes.

The confrontation went nowhere, and instead the commander started singling Ivan out, writing him up for minor infractions that everyone committed, like carrying a cellphone around the base, to get him demoted. When Ivan went to the military prosecutor’s office to fight his demotion, he was told he would win a case against Pig in court, but he lost. Of course, Pig had a krysha, a roof. “How is this happening?” Ivan would ask. “Everywhere I’m told I’m right, so why am I being punished? Did I steal the rations? No. Those are my rations. He stole them from me. And I’m wrong?”

3. Preserving the Internet

The Internet Archive’s servers hold 835 billion web pages and 44 million books and texts. Its Wayback Machine functions as an unparalleled record of the internet. But now, legal battles threaten to shut it down. 

(WIRED, approx 16 mins reading time)

Advertisement

“The story of Brewster Kahle is that of a guy who wins the lottery,” says longtime archivist Jason Scott. “And he and his wife, Mary, turned around and said, awesome, we get to be librarians now.” Kahle is now the merry custodian to a uniquely comprehensive catalog, spanning all manner of digital and physical media, from classic video games to live recordings of concerts to magazines and newspapers to books from around the world. It recently backed up the island of Aruba’s cultural institutions. It’s an essential tool for everything from legal research—particularly around patent law—to accountability journalism. “There are other online archiving tools,” says ProPublica reporter Craig Silverman, “but none of them touch the Internet Archive.” It is, in short, a proof machine.

4. Roald Dahl

An interesting essay by David Baddiel about the author, and the new London play that tackles his antisemitism.

(The Times, approx 7 mins reading time)

This isn’t a review, but I liked Giant very much, mainly because it embraces rather than shies away from Roald Dahl’s complexity. Brilliantly played by John Lithgow, the Dahl of Giant feels, from everything I’ve read about him, very close to the real man — a monster who could also be tender, a bully always convinced of his own rightness yet at the same time immensely witty and charming, and of course a genius of children’s fiction who was also a racist. It is a drama that calls on audience members, as good drama should, to hold many contradictory ideas in their heads at once.

5. Would you eat at Alchemist?

Diners looking for somewhere quiet to enjoy a nice, classic dish would probably be best advised to look elsewhere. Rebecca Mead interviews the man behind the sensory experience.

(The New Yorker, approx 27 mins reading time)

Inside, there’s no natural light, and a soundtrack of New Agey electronic music creates an otherworldly atmosphere, leaving a diner as disoriented as someone entering a casino or a haunted house. Munk consulted with architects when designing the restaurant, he told me, but they all advised him to let light flood in, and to deck the place out with Nordically fashionable concrete and blond wood. “I was, like, ‘No, no, no,’ ” Munk said. “I wanted to create our own reality, so it could be anywhere in the world.” Munk is similarly unconcerned about signalling seasonality or emphasizing local ingredients: fatty, vintage Ibérico ham imported from Spain is served on “airy bread” made from croissant-like sheets of potato starch and topped with a foam that includes egg yolk and crème fraîche; it’s a symphony in animal fat which, depending on your taste, is either the best thing you’ve ever put in your mouth or gag-inducingly excessive. Munk is at least as interested in texture as he is in flavor, and he devises ways to make something that might seem off-putting—say, slices of raw jellyfish—into something appealing. 

6. The human body in space

This is the toll spending over a year in space takes on the body. 

(BBC, approx 10 mins reading time)

Without the constant tug of gravity on our limbs, muscle and bone mass quickly begins to diminish in space. The most affected are those muscles that help to maintain our posture in our back, neck, calves and quadriceps – in microgravity they no longer have to work nearly as hard and begin to atrophy. After just two weeks muscle mass can fall by as much as 20% and on longer missions of three-to-six months it can fall by 30%. Similarly, because astronauts are not putting their skeletons through as much mechanical strain as they do when subject to Earth’s gravity, their bones also start to demineralise and lose strength. Astronauts can lose 1-2% of their bone mass every month they spend in space and up to 10% over a six-month period (on Earth, older men and women lose bone mass at a rate of 0.5%-1% every year). 

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…

Legendary British actress Maggie Smith passed away on Friday at the age of 89. Here’s an interview with her from 2019. 

(The Evening Standard, approx 8 mins reading time)

Ever since her teens, Smith had wanted to be a serious stage actress but got her start in revue in the 1950s, ‘and it seemed to take ages to get away from light comedy. I am deeply grateful for the work in Potter and indeed Downton but it wasn’t what you’d call satisfying. I didn’t really feel I was acting in those things.’ Indeed, she and her late friend Alan Rickman used to complain that their work on the Potter movies consisted entirely of reaction shots. ‘I wanted to get back to the stage so much because theatre is basically my favourite medium, and I think I felt as though I’d left it all unfinished,’ she says. ‘But there wasn’t anything that came along.’

Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.
Learn More Support The Journal