Christmas present
Gerges will spend Christmas Day like any other: on the streets. When he turned 18 earlier this year, he no longer qualified to stay in the Italian children’s home where he was living. Now he sleeps rough.
How will he mark the occasion? “I don’t know,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “How everyone else does on the street.”
He has not spoken to his parents for two months; calls are too expensive. He hopes to scrape together enough money for a quick call on the day itself.
Though he will be cold and alone, he will still cling to the day’s spiritual significance. None of his personal belongings survived the journey from Egypt, so the only physical reminders of his childhood are two tattoos: one, of a cross, on the back of his wrist; the other, of the Virgin Mary, on his arm.
“I will be thinking of a celebration,” he says. “Celebrating my religion. I have heard Christmas makes Rome even more beautiful.”
Like hundreds of others in the gloomy streets near Rome’s central train station, Termini, Gerges is under the radar: he is not officially registered and Civico Zero, the day centre, is one of the few places that will feed and advise him with no questions asked.
Last year, it was very different. Gerges was still living in the children’s home, in Pescara on Italy’s east coast, and woke up to find his first ever Christmas presents beneath the tree. He knew what size the parcels would be: the home had let him pick out some gifts a few days before.
He made practical choices: trousers, a shirt, a pair of blue Nike trainers. Now they were wrapped up, like everyone else’s.
Later, he was allowed to call his parents for an hour. Then the children were taken out for a special dinner.
Although grateful for the food, he couldn’t help comparing it to his mother’s cooking back at home. “It was not the same at all,” he recalls.
Christmas yet to come
The future is a difficult thing to grasp. For generations, it was simple: take over the farm, provide for the family. Now, it is so uncertain.
All he knows for sure is he must find a job, learn the language (his Italian is already good) and obtain a work permit. Then he can begin to pay back his cousins, a debt that causes continual stress.
“Anything I could find, I’m happy to do,” he says. “I would like to finish school here in Italy and then I might have a better idea.”
He struggles to imagine what a future Christmas would look like. “I can only take it one day at a time,” he explains. “I’m running away.”
But, he adds, he wants “a family, a home. A normal life.”