Earlier this year, Piera Aiello became an Italian MP after campaigning with a veil over her face. Having now revealed her identity, she tells how she was forced to marry into the mafia
Sipping a cappuccino in a cafe on Sicily’s Palermo docks, a woman is recalling a dramatic exchange with her daughter. A year ago, she explains, the 16-year-old had gone up to the attic of their home and opened a big dusty box that lay in the corner. Her parents had always forbidden her from entering the attic, or opening the box, but now the girl was determined to disobey them. Inside were about 10 packages, each individually wrapped. They were paintings: landscapes, the sea, olive groves, the deep south. All were signed with the same name: Piera Aiello.
Her mother entered the attic. “I painted them,” she said. “They’re beautiful,” her daughter replied. “But Mamma, if these paintings are yours, why are they signed by a different name? Who is Piera Aiello?”
With tears in her eyes, her mother asked her daughter to sit down. “I am Piera Aiello,” she said. “It’s time I told you who I really am.”
A tall woman with dark eyes and black hair, Aiello smiles and gesticulates wildly as she tells her story. Not far away, three armed police guards survey the surroundings, making sure no one gets too close. “My daughter’s curiosity in that attic was one among the many turning points in my life,” she says. “I told her to listen and I started from the beginning, a thousand miles away from that attic, in Sicily, where it all began.”
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