reludio
1980, A Symposium on the National Character
…or so the invitation humbly titles the assembly it advertises. Intended to be an unbiased forum regarding the history of the country and its people from the Dark Ages up to the Progressive Era, twenty-three year old Anna Fortuna considers the event to be at least the most important of her academic life. Invitations were dispatched to authoritative speakers from around the country and the globe more than a year ago, and in the last week a small group of graduate students from various disciplines were hand-picked to attend. Anna falls into the latter group. Given the quality of the guest list, her inclusion is very much the lucky stroke of a lifetime. There is only one problem. The civics director is to begin the forum shortly after ten this the morning, and if our young heroine were able to exchange some of her studiousness for punctuality, she would not be running so late.
Speeding across the wide commons between the Halls of Naturalism and Mechanics, she nearly trips over a freshman couple sprawled out in the grass and enjoying the weather and their lazy Saturday morning. Her stack of texts and notebooks nearly takes flight in the awkward hurdle.
“Sorry!” she shouts behind her to the pair of rather startled obstacles, but she’s already taking off again across the quad.
Anna rounds the final corner, narrowly averting a collision with a poorly parked bicycle, and catches sight of the now century-old Romeo Hall. So named for a great philanthropist of the 19th century and the headquarters of the civics department for more than fifty years, the building was now the only place on campus she visited regularly outside of the library. She slows to a brisk as she hits the door. The weekend security guard at the front desk waves and greets her as she passes. She instinctively pulls her student ID badge from her blouse, letting it hang around her neck on a chord. Halfway down the main corridor she reaches the door of the small auditorium hosting the forum. In a way, it’ll be the most important class she’s ever attended. Of course, the in-session sign was already showing above on the door.
Damnit!
Well, it’s better to be late than lost. Anna creeps into the auditorium as stealthily as she can, stepping inside at the same instant the chief professor, already standing at the podium, first addresses the attendees.
“On behalf of our institution and our country, let me bid a warm welcome to everyone here this morning,” he says, smiling to the graduate students seated in the audience as Anna slinks into a seat in the rearmost row.
Professor Emerito L. Cicero Rossi, although technically an old man, shows few of the stereotypical depredations of advanced age. Not quite two meters tall, he has a thin build reminiscent of regular athletics in years gone by. He wears semi-casual clothing, a neatly trimmed grey beard, and short grey-black hair. Around campus, students recognize the man’s loud laugh and the director’s infamy for practical jokes, especially those perpetrated against senior members of other departments.
He continues, “We have students representing a variety of our academic departments in the audience today. Those of you who haven’t been around the civics building much, I trust will have some unique insights on our topics depending on your specialty. Those of you who are or have been my students—pay attention!” There are a few chuckles. He shifts to gesture to the panel seated behind him on the auditorium’s stage. He says, “Many of the esteemed members of our panel have traveled quite a distance to be a part of this discussion and I promise it will have been a worthwhile journey.” Some of the faces are easily recognizable to Anna from broadcasts or book jackets, others less so. Turning back, “Students, as you can see we will not be wanting for erudition today.”
In turn, the chief professor introduces the panel of carefully chosen experts. As appropriate, we shall meet each one. For now, there are a few who stick out in Anna’s mind as she listens to the introductions.
Niccolo Marcello, a colonel in the aerial artillery--that’s a surprise! Anna had not expected someone from the military to be present, although he is dressed in civilian attire. The colonel is an alumnus of the university with an impressive educational history for a professional soldier, and Professor Rossi explains that Colonel Marcello was invited to give the forum an authentic military perspective on the national character.
The famous 60’s activist and gender equity crusader, Christina Hernández-Romano, is among the guests. Anna doesn’t know her work in detail, but spent much of an ethics class in her sophomore year challenging the woman’s most radical philosophies in favor of more liberal views on gender equity. Hernández-Romano has been invited to provide an authoritative voice on women’s issues in the national history.
Then Professor Rossi introduces the very man on whom Anna’s entire post-graduate work is based. Her senior thesis as an undergraduate was dedicated to reconciling his calls for unrestrained violence against her countrymen in the 1930’s with his later writings and work, which are nearly pacifist. Her graduate studies have been much of the same, but she hopes that the unbelievably rare chance to actually meet the reclusive man and speak with him could point her in a new direction. There on stage, bowing respectfully to an audience whose parents would have likely run him off the campus if not arrested him, was Abu Nidal Abdul-Hakim ibn Muhsin al-Baghdadi. The professor refers to him as an expert on Muslim affairs, and in every way he is. Often simply called al-Muhannad, or the Sword, he spent much of his young adult life advocating (and some allege, practicing) violent jihad against the West. His appearance at this symposium, wildly uncertain at one point, has sparked quite a bit of debate on the broadcasts in recent weeks.
Nevertheless, there he is.
The Sword. An entire lifetime of study locked away inside his head only meters away. Nearly four years of studying Arabic might finally come in handy outside of a book or café, if only… Anna quietly asks no god in particular to grant a private meeting.
The introductions are wrapped up and Professor Rossi explains the format of the symposium and segues into the preliminary topic of discussion.
“According to the program,” he says, “we’ll concern ourselves first with the earliest period of what can be fairly defined as our ‘national history’. Human civilization has flourished here since time immemorial, of course. At one time the Greeks were lords on this soil and then the Romans. Christianity and nomadic peoples washed the classical empires away, and in the imperial wake a number of other powers held their own fleeting influences over what we today call our country.”
He taps a control panel on the podium, dimming the auditorium lights and lowering a large projector screen behind the seated panel. At once, a projection illuminates the screen, showing the geographic outline of the country.
The professor asks rhetorically, “When shall we begin our discussion?” While he speaks, the projection changes to superimpose various political boundaries from different historical eras on the geographic map. “The fall of Rome?” he suggests, “Hastings? Or why not the first Viking raids from Scandinavia?”
The political boundaries vanish and the map fades to grey. Looking to the panel, he says, “Well-read as we are, I think the defining point that we are looking for was chosen quite a long time ago. In our history there is a figure whose literary achievement lends a fundamental structure to the early centuries of our national character. He also donates a profound cheerlessness to the story of our national founding that deserves our present academic attention.”
The image of a man dressed in a simple robe and clutching a book close to his body slowly fades into view on the screen. “Of course, I speak of Dante Alighieri,” the professor says, his direction of the topic so far met by silent or whispered agreement from the auditorium. He explains, “Dante was an exile and his writings make a villain of our most celebrated medieval hero. It is a shame that they were not widely known in this country until the 20th century.” As Dante’s image fades, a scan of his original work appears in its place. “In order to set the tone of our discussion about the country’s medieval past, let’s now commence the forum with an excerpt from
The Divine Tragedy.”
ntroduzione
V, it’ll be on a rather high difficult setting to check any outrageous expansion on my part and to keep things challenging. 
