Dear Readers:
July jottings with an Italian connection: Auto acronym F.I.A.T, which some wags said stood for “Fix It Again, Tony” when the company last did business in North America in 1983, and the brand suffered a reputation for breakdowns, actually stands for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino. The Italian Auto Works company was founded July 1, 1899 by Giovanni Agnelli, a former cavalry officer, under the acronym F.I.A.T.
His namesake Giovanni Agnelli (son of Edoardo, who died in an airplane accident in 1935) took over the family business in 1966, when he was 45 years of age and turned the carmaker into one of the world’s industrial leaders and a national icon. Mr. Agnelli clung to the idea of national heritage and insisted Fiat should remain in Italian hands even as Fiat’s heyday was replaced by dwindling sales and debt.
Mr. Agnelli’s death in 2003 at age 81 ended the crusade against foreign ownership of the Fiat Auto Division, which makes the Lancia, Alfa Romeo and Fiat brands. As part of the new deal with American automaker Chrysler, Fiat has agreed to share the technology it needs to create the smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles now craved by U.S. drivers Fiat’s “Cinquecento.”
The new Fiat 500, slightly larger than the original has been praised for its low carbon dioxide emissions and won several awards, including Europe’s Car of the Year 2008. Since its launch in 2007, the new 500 has secured Fiat’s turnaround and anchored its new image.
With more than 170,000 cars sold last year in Europe – about half in Italy – it has proven its appeal beyond the nostalgia buyers. The old Cinquecento, released in 1957, was the archetypal cheap car and a symbol of Italy’s postwar economic boom. The tiny rear-engine model with two seats up front and a back bench still holds memories of the first cars and first loves for many Italians.
***
Afghanistan and Pakistan is the locale where Three Cups of Tea, a #1 New York Times Best Seller, takes place. This non-fiction book by authors Greg Mortenson and David Relin chronicles one man’s mission to promote peace, one school at a time. In 1993 a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson drifted into an impoverished village in the Karakoram mountains after a failed attempt to climb K2. Moved by the inhabitants’ kindness, he promised to return and build a school.
Three Cups of Tea is the story of that promise and its extraordinary outcome. Over the next decade Mortenson built not just one but fifty-five schools – especially for girls – in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban. The book’s title was inspired by a local Afghanistan and Pakistani saying “We drink three cups of tea to do business; the first you are a stranger, the second you become a friend, and the third, you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything – even die.”
As you may recall the former King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, who spoke Italian after living in exile for nearly 30 years, mostly in Rome, was flown into Kabul fresh from exile shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York’s Twin Towers. Afghani crowds cheered him hoping he would be able to restore life in Afghanistan to the peaceful 1933 to 1973 period over which he has presided. But it was not to be.
On a flight to Afghanistan, Mortenson recognized the ex-king from pictures he had seen on old Afghan currency and they began to converse “American?” he inquired. “Yes, sir,” Mortenson said. Zahir Shah sighed. “Are you a journalist?” he asked across the aisle. “No,” Mortenson said. “I build schools, for girls.”
“And what is your business in my country, if I may ask?” “I begin construction on five or six schools in the spring, Inshalah. I’m coming to deliver the money to get them going.” “In Kabul?” “No,” Mortenson said. “Up in Badakshan, and in the Wakhan Corridor.” Shah’s eyebrows lifted. He patted the seat next to him and Mortenson moved over. “Do you know someone in the area?” Shah said.
“It’s a long story, but a few years ago, Kirghiz men rode over the Irshad Pass to Charpurson Valley, where I work in Pakistan, and asked me to build schools for their villages. I promised them I’d come…discuss schools with them, but I couldn’t get there until now.” “We don’t see many Americans in Afghanistan anymore. A year ago this place would have been full of journalists and aid workers. But now they are all in Iraq. America has forgotten us,” the King said. “Again.”
A year earlier, Shah had flown into Kabul fresh from exile in Rome and greeted by a cheering crowd who saw his return as a tiding that life would once again resume its normal course, free from the violence that had marked the decades of misrule by the Soviets, the feuding war-lords, and the Taliban.
Before being ousted by his cousin Mohammad Daud Khan, Shah had presided, from 1933 to 1973, over Afghanistan’s most enduring modern period of peace. He had overseen the drafting of a constitution in 1964, which turned Afghanistan into a democracy, offering universal suffrage and emancipating women. He had founded Afghanistan’s first modern university and recruited foreign academics and aid workers to assist with his campaign and to develop the country.
To many Afghans, Shah was a symbol of the life they hoped to lead again. But by the fall of 2003, those hopes were fading. American troops still in Afghanistan were largely sequestered, hunting for Bin Laden and his supporters or providing security for the new government of Hamid Karzai. The level of violence across the country was, once again, escalating, and the Taliban was said to be regrouping.
Mortensen says, “As best I could tell, only a third of the aid money we’d promised had ever made it over there. With Mary Bono, I found one of the people in Congress who was responsible for Afghan appropriations. I told him about all the teachers who weren’t being paid, and asked him why the money wasn’t getting there.” “It’s difficult,” he told me. “There is no central banking in Afghanistan. And no way to wire money.”
Mortenson says, “We had no problem flying in bags of cash to pay the warlords to fight against the Taliban. I wondered why we couldn’t do the same thing to build roads, and sewers, and schools. If promises are not fulfilled, and cash not delivered, it sends a powerful message that the U.S. government simply does not care.”
Now it is 2009 and with our new president, the U.S. is again focusing on Afghanistan. Let us hope they follow the advice of Greg Mortenson, a former mountaineer and military veteran who wants to promote peace by building schools and not by building better shotguns. “If we Americans are to learn from our mistakes…we need to listen to Greg Mortensen.” – Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America
***
Anthony Mandino aka Og Mandino (1923-1996) best selling author of “The Greatest Salesman in the World” was once the most widely read inspirational, self-help author and popular motivational speaker in the world. I had seen one or two of this 17 published books and thought that Og Mandino, the author, must be one of those new age gurus from India or other exotic locale.
I was surprised when in his book, “Secrets for Success and Happiness,” a beautifully written journal, and intimate record of his innermost thoughts and feelings of his day-to-day life, published by Ballantine Books in 1995, a year before his passing, I found out that Og was about as exotic as Boston Cream pie.
Og was born in Massachusetts, had an Italian connection and wanted to be a track star when he was 11 or 12 years old. He recalled: “I constantly dreamed of being a great runner someday. Next to our home, in Natick, Massachusetts, was an abandoned nursery, and day after day I would run those dirt roads, working on my speed and endurance. Back then I was not called Og, I was the son of an Italian immigrant father and a first-generation Irish mother, had been baptized Augustine Anthony Mandino, and that’s what the kids called me, usually accompanied by giggles.
Since I dreamed of being a famous runner, I adopted, as all kids do, an adult hero. Who else? There was only one famous American runner with an Italian name – Archie San Romani. And so, on those lonely nursery roads I was Archie San Romani, winning track meet after track meet and medal after medal.
Dreams. Archie San Romani finished fourth in the 1936 Olympics in the 1,500-meter run, but that didn’t change my feelings about him at all. He was a very special man who had overcome the terrible adversity of almost losing one of his legs after being hit by an automobile as a child and the world record he set for the 2,000-meter run endured for
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
