Piazza del Mondo in Trieste: A Mixed Couple Between Asylum Law, Integration and Civil Resistance
There are places that almost never truly enter the European public debate. Places that exist on the margins of cities and consciences, crossed every night by people who have walked for months, sometimes years, to reach a border they imagined as salvation. Piazza della Libertà — now called by many "Piazza del Mondo" ("The World's Square") — is one of those places. Here, the Balkan Route, human vulnerability, international law, civil solidarity, and even love stories that challenge deeply rooted prejudices all intersect. It is here that the story of a newly married couple began: he is Pakistani, she is Italian. A couple who chose a civil marriage, who openly live their cultural and religious differences without turning them into barriers, and whose relationship inevitably raises questions about law, society, and even the very meaning of identity, integration, and coexistence.
He is twenty-nine years old. He left Pakistan nine years ago. His journey lasted seven months on foot, but his migratory life has been much longer: three years trapped in Turkey, two years in Greece, and then Italy. Ten pushbacks. Ten times sent back along Europe's eastern frontier, which for years has represented one of the most critical points in the protection of the right to asylum. His testimony inevitably recalls the principle of non-refoulement established by Article 33 of the 1951 Geneva Convention, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and Article 19 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. No one should be pushed back to places where they risk inhuman or degrading treatment. Yet contemporary migration routes often tell a different story — one made of informal pushbacks, suspended rights, violence, and permanent precarity. He originally wanted to reach Germany. He remained in Italy almost by chance, persuaded by a person who told him: "Stay here, you can work, you can learn the language, you can live without fear." What is striking is that his story contains no idealization of Europe. Instead, it contains something more concrete, and perhaps more powerful: the simple desire for a stable, safe, and dignified life.
Piazza del Mondo entered his life immediately. He arrived from the border asking only for something to eat. "Go to Mama Lorena," the other boys told him. This is where the figure of Lorena Fornasir appears, symbolizing a form of civil solidarity that over the years has filled many gaps left by institutions. Shoes, jackets, sleeping bags, hot meals, medical care — but above all, presence. Interestingly, she herself does not particularly like being called "Mama Lorena," because she sometimes feels that the expression risks depriving her of her own personal identity, reducing her exclusively to a caregiving role. Yet she accepts the name with affection and cultural awareness, because in many areas of the Middle East and Asia calling a woman "mother" is a profound sign of respect, recognition, and moral authority. It is neither infantilization nor a simple nickname. It is the way many young migrants express gratitude toward a female figure perceived as protective, reliable, and constantly present. For many of them, after months or years of violence, hunger, pushbacks, and loss of emotional reference points, she truly represents something very close to a mother: someone who cares for them, listens to them, clothes them, helps them survive, and above all still looks at them as human beings worthy of dignity and attention.
The woman who is now his wife arrived in the square in a completely different way. She knew nothing about the Balkan Route. She had no idea what was happening in Trieste. Everything began with medical supplies left over from the daily care of her grandmother, who was undergoing dialysis. It was her grandmother herself who told her: "Don't throw these things away. They could help someone." She searched for secular, non-religious organizations and found Linea d'Ombra. Then she came to the square. What she saw overwhelmed her: two hundred people who had just arrived from the Balkan Route, dehydrated, starving, wounded, their bodies marked by border violence. She says that scene "made her choose never to go back." Not physically, but morally. Because there are experiences that, once truly witnessed, make it impossible to return to previous indifference. From a simple observer, she became an active presence. And her commitment stems from one clear conviction: opposition to violence. A violence that along the Balkan Route takes different forms — physical, psychological, bureaucratic — but which continues every day to produce invisible suffering on the margins of Europe.
Their relationship slowly grew within this human frontier space. What is striking is the normality with which they describe differences that public discourse often transforms into absolute incompatibilities. Food, for example, is described as the greatest everyday difference. He is learning to appreciate Italian pasta; she loves her husband's Pakistani cooking. They laugh about culinary differences, yet they speak very seriously about the fundamental pact of their relationship: mutual respect for each other's cultural and religious identities. She was baptized but is atheist, having distanced herself from religion after her grandfather disappeared and was never found again, and after profound disappointment with the hypocrisy she perceived within religious institutions. He is a practicing Muslim: he goes to the mosque, prays, and observes Ramadan. Yet neither of them has ever tried to convert the other. Their civil marriage arose precisely from this need for neutrality and reciprocal freedom. Marrying in a church or before an imam would have meant privileging one belief system over the other. Civil marriage, instead, was perceived as a neutral and respectful common space. A choice perfectly consistent with the supreme principle of secularism developed by the Constitutional Court of Italy, according to which the State must guarantee pluralism and freedom of conscience without identifying with any religion.
Particularly interesting is the way he speaks about his culture and religion. In a public climate often dominated by stereotypes about Islam, his words carry important weight. He explains that his culture allows him to live peacefully with an Italian woman, a Christian woman, or an atheist woman. His parents simply told him: "If you are happy, go forward." Most importantly, he continuously links his personal ethics to the teachings of the Qur'an. He clearly says that his culture teaches him not to steal, not to harm others, and not to lie. And this finds real support in several Qur'anic verses. The Qur'an states: "Indeed, Allah commands justice, kindness, and generosity toward relatives, and forbids immorality, wrongdoing, and oppression" (Surah An-Nahl, 16:90). Another passage states: "Whoever kills an innocent person, it is as if he has killed all mankind" (Surah Al-Ma'idah, 5:32). And again: "Do not consume one another's wealth unjustly" (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:188). He never presents his faith as a tool of superiority or imposition, but rather as a personal ethical reference founded on nonviolence, dignity, and respect for others. A narrative profoundly distant from the simplistic security-based portrayals through which Islam is often represented in European public discourse.
Their marriage is openly described as a form of "civil resistance." Not abstract ideological resistance, but everyday resistance. The resistance of two people choosing to build a family despite social prejudices, bureaucratic difficulties, and the constant suspicion directed at mixed couples. "You're doing it for documents," they were told. Here emerges one of the most problematic aspects of contemporary law: relationships between European citizens and migrants are often viewed through a lens of preventive suspicion, as though the love of a foreigner must constantly be proven authentic. Yet he strongly states that he does not need marriage to obtain citizenship: he works, pays taxes, and contributes to Italian society. Most importantly, he does not want to lose his Pakistani identity. "If I get Italian citizenship, I will still remain Pakistani," he says. A sentence that completely dismantles the assimilationist idea that integration means erasing one's origins.
There is also another deeply symbolic element within this marriage: it was celebrated by Lorena Fornasir herself. This was not a casual or merely emotional choice, but rather the natural recognition of the central role that both Piazza del Mondo and Lorena played in their story. It was there that he arrived after crossing the Balkan Route. It was there that she first discovered the reality of migrants in transit. It was there that they met, listened to one another, and slowly grew closer. The fact that Lorena herself celebrated their marriage transforms their union into something even more symbolic: not merely a private choice between two individuals, but the human result of years of care, presence, civil solidarity, and relationships built within one of the most fragile and complex spaces in contemporary Europe.
Their criticism of the Italian reception system is equally strong. They do not contest the principle of reception itself, but its concrete management. They speak about slow procedures, difficult access to police headquarters, months of waiting just to formally lodge an asylum application, and above all a system that too often treats asylum seekers as numbers rather than people. A criticism directly recalling Articles 2 and 3 of the Italian Constitution and Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights on human dignity. The problem is not only bureaucratic — it is cultural. When people become administrative files, the ability to see their human complexity is inevitably lost. The same happens in the civil marriage process for international couples: endless certifications, consular verifications, difficult documents, exhausting waiting times. "A foreigner has to struggle three times more than an Italian," they explain. And indeed, their experience shows how law still often looks at foreigners through a logic of control rather than human recognition.
Perhaps the deepest core of their story emerges in their final reflection on "difference." Fear, they say, often comes from the absence of real experience. "Getting to know someone, shaking hands, listening, stopping, waiting" are the things that break down fear. It is a simple reflection only in appearance. In reality, it contains a very strong criticism of a society that constantly speaks about "the other" without ever truly meeting them. Their entire story demonstrates exactly this: when people truly look each other in the eyes, the migrant stops being an abstract category; the Muslim stops being a stereotype; the woman in a wheelchair stops being reduced to her disability; "difference" stops being frightening.
Piazza del Mondo, then, no longer appears merely as a place of migratory emergency. It becomes a place of relationships, listening, shared humanity, and even civil resistance. A place where profoundly different people discover that they can simply be this: human beings.
Related posts:
Afghanistan, Asylum Law and the Balkan Route: When Protection Becomes Intermittent
Balkan Route and Asylum Law: A Migrant's Story from Pakistan to Italy
WhatsApp