When Stones Bloom...

There is one week every spring when the Spanish Steps turns into a giddy garden of potted blooms. Brilliant purple and white azaleas crowd out--well, almost--the tourists. Just a snapshot from an afternoon stroll today down the Via dei Condotti, my gift of a mini Roman holiday to the armchair traveler.

Tales from Tehran

Roxana Saberi--the American freelance journalist in Iran recently sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of espionage--worked for years as a reporter in Iran. Now the young woman is freeze-framed in a strange and frightening bit of Iranian diplomatic theater as a character useful to a regime seeking to engage with the United States.

Saberi, who worked for NPR and the BBC among other agencies, lost her press credentials in Iran in 2006 for reasons never really made clear to me. I imagine comparisons could be made to the riddle of reasons given after her arrest a few weeks ago.

Saberi was said to be taken in for buying alcohol, a forbidden purchase in the Islamic Republic. Then it was said that Saberi, who has dual U.S. and Iranian citizenship, was being held for working without press credentials -- a surprising turn since authorities were aware for some time of her status. Next came the charges and conviction: The young writer was an American spy. Confused? Well, welcome to Iran.

It might be helpful to know the difficulties that any Westerner encounters in trying to enter Iran as a journalist. I met Saberi once or perhaps twice in 2006 during visits to Iran as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Contact was initiated by me and was routine: On any foreign reporting trip, I stop to have coffee or dinner with smart local reporters.

Saberi was matter-of-fact when we met. Friendly and pleasant, she had chosen a rough road, trying to make a career in very hard place to report. She mentioned that she was having trouble getting her credentials renewed. As a fellow American--and one also bound to work in a headscarf, long pants and knee-skimming overcoat to fit government demands on women--I could understand that she would.

Iran was allowing some U.S. journalists in the country to report but I found gaining a journalist visa, even a temporary one, was an arduous process of repeated phone calls, multiple emails and faxes and unending requests for (often already-submitted) documents.

I never knew when or why a visa would be issued. It could take months. It might be ready in days. (I haven't been issued one for a couple years now--and no, I don't know the reason--so I cannot attest to the process now.) To report from Iran few years ago, I had to first file a written request to the Iranian mission to the United Nations, a letter or email including passport information and personal data such as my parents' names and country of residence.

That letter--and a letter from an editor at the paper--then had to be tracked by me with innumerable phone calls to the government's foreign press department. Many journalists, including myself, ended up relying on well-connected, for-profit translation services in Tehran to help push the visa through. I was usually told that the holdup was related to intelligence clearance and somehow these translation services--now, think about that--could smooth the way.

If the visa was suddenly issued, I had to drop everything and hurry to Iran before the visa ran out. When I landed in Iran, I already owed the translation service a couple hundred dollars for what in theory was a cost-free visa. I also would be fingerprinted, every finger pressed into dark-blue ink and recorded on paper, before leaving the airport.

Within days of my arrival, cash flow became a major consideration. I would need a visa extension to get a few more days or even another whole week of reporting time. That would cost. I was, of course, bound to work with the same translation agency to get that extension, a firm that was already charging $150 a day for a translator who may or may not be very good. Those translators were, of course, on the government's watch list. They would have to file or give oral reports on any given reporter. Tips for translators were no small consideration.

To be sure, I could and did send the official translator home so I could, on my own, meet with English-speaking analysts and even people on the street. I often ended up paying other English speakers, on the side, to help me with private interviews.

None of those people, of course, were foolish enough to think that this American journalist was not on somebody's radar. Hotels that catered to foreigners--and time-zone-challenged journalists who needed 24-hour internet--were equipped with closed-circuit cameras in their lobbies and on every floor. Everyone who crossed the threshold of these hotels knew they were caught on tape.

The regime has access to all phone lines, websites, closed-circuit videos and whatever reports or insinuations that neighbors or acquaintances or translators might make. People all along the line know the vulnerabilities. As Saberi's sad arrest shows, the system can manipulate anyone's reality at any time.

Doing Right

The grand displays of sorrow in L'Aquila--a public televised funeral for hundreds and a national day of mourning-- are over. What remains beyond the dismal tent cities in this once-lovely medieval city are questions about whether Italy will do right by those suffering.

Specifically, will there be a hard look at why modern buildings in this earthquake-prone region turned into tombs during last Monday's temblor? Will authorities hold people accountable?

Prosecutors told journalists last week that they are investigating the collapse of at least two buildings: a student dormitory and the main hospital in L'Aquila. The brick dormitory essentially pancaked, killing about a dozen students. The hospital, the biggest in the Abruzzo region, was rendered useless when the earth shifted. The facility's pipes and walls cracked so badly that patients had to be evacuated at the city's acute moment of need.

As of this weekend, 289 people were known to have perished in the quake. As many as 70,000 people are said to be homeless.

L'Aquila is the biggest city in a region, about 80 miles from Rome, known for deadly tremors. Strict anti-seismic construction laws have been in place for years. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, visibly emotional at a state funeral on Friday, vowed to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in European funds to help rebuild this hilltown and its surrounding villages. The billionaire premier even offered to open his own home to displaced people -- although it was unclear which of his multiple residences (a villa in Sardinia, perhaps?) that he was actually offering.

So far, he has glossed over questions about who may share blame for some of the grief.

Specifically, in a country where organized crime fluorishes, did the Mafia have a hand in Abruzzo's loss? Who was tied to the companies that built public buildings? Did contractors adhere to seismic construction demands? More simply, where was the iron and concrete that was supposed to make these buildings safe?

L'Aquila suffered a quake that registered 5.8 on the Richter scale. The upheaval proved too much for masonry and designs dating from the 13th century and the most beautiful cathedrals and cultural monuments tumbled. But experts are rightly asking if modern construction shouldn't have defied that sort of bone-jolting.

Was L'Aquila twice a victim, of natural disaster and man-driven greed?

Berlusconi said on Italian radio that the week of sorrow in Abruzzo "was a devastating experience that I will never forget." One hopes he can get past his emotions and examine with vigor the causes behind the devastation.

The Next Tremor

Italy was strapped for money before the global financial meltdown and before Monday's deadly earthquake that swallowed whole villages in the Abruzzo region. Now as tents cities take over the medieval city of L'Aquila to make way for thousands of suddenly-homeless townspeople, financial demands are causing deep tremors of anxiety.

It will take millions, if not billions, of dollars to salvage the tiny hilltowns that once studded this mountainous countryside. L'Aquila, a 13th-century regional capital of stone streets and graceful domed churches, had just finished an initial stage of a multi-million renovation of its expansive Piazza del Duomo. All that hard work was buried under broken glass and dusty brick and mortar in a matter of seconds.

What nature did not crush Monday may well have to be demolished. Structural damage from the quake is so extensive---some buildings noticeably sway from daily aftershocks---that residents guess, in weepy conversations and interviews, that they won't be going home for years.

Some property owners, like Antonio Ponticello, wondered aloud if full recovery--of the local economy and its important tourist trade--was even a possibility. His own home was a bleak example. "Look at this. This is all I have," the 70-year-old said as we stood in front a two-story villa house that had literally been split open, its walls shorn from its foundation.

"Who could live here now?" Ponticello said quietly. "But even so, we are the fortunate ones. We were lucky to walk out."

Italy is blessed and cursed with centuries of man-made beauty. The world's greatest builders and sculptors graced so many regions of Il Bel Paese. That heritage is increasingly costly for those living in the modern age.

The state, rather than private donors, is bound by law to preserve and pay for the upkeep of cultural treasures. This past summer, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi warned that life-as-we-knew-it was over for the Italian cultural elite. Funds for restoration and archeological renovations were sharply cut back. Even sure-fire tourist draws, such as the vast grounds of Pompeii, were not safe. That venerable open-air museum lost $60 million in its yearly budget--a drop from $75 million to $15 million--for repairs.

In these dizzying emotional times, no one is even mentioning how much money will be needed to rescue the Abruzzo region. The death toll now hovers around 270 people. Close to 20,000 people are sleeping, for yet another cold and jittery night, in tents or their cars. Berlusconi, in an interview with German media Tuesday, tried to suggest that people should think of their time in the tent cities as a camping holiday.

Berlusconi said Wednesday he meant only to raise spirits with that questionable remark. He later, in an interview with CNN, dodged all questions about when L'Aquila and all the once-lovely villages of Abruzzo could possibly rise from the dust.

The Quake Zone

The earth continues to shake and so do nerves in central Italy. Even in Rome, an hour's drive away, aftershocks are stomach-churning. About 7 this morning, a strong tremor rattled through L'Aquila, the medieval city cracked and shattered by Monday morning's jolt. In my home yesterday in central Rome--a fourth-floor apartment--I was rattled by small tremors throughout the day, for several seconds, several times.

The reports of devastation shown on Italian media are stunning. Villages are reduced to dust and survivors are interviewed still wearing their pajamas. The rescue continues Wednesday morning -- searchers reportedly will carry on for another 36 hours.