by Paolo Perego

A year of marriage. If you were to tell about it, where would you start?
I’ve come to understand that it’s a fairly difficult road to follow, but it’s a road for me and for her, and it’s a gift God has given us, so that He can build His Kingdom. It is an “event” when I am conscious that this woman, Ramziya, my wife, is Jesus who looks at me through her eyes, embraces me with her hands, smiles at me, even prepares my meals.
We have encountered many difficulties because we have two very different characters, but this companionship, this encounter with Christ has helped us to understand that we are not sufficient unto ourselves. For example, like everyone, we’re always tempted to “possess” and this is seen even in the little things. Maybe I speak harshly and she gets angry, or I arrive home late and she reprimands me. By temperament, I get upset, because I don’t understand how something so little can generate a problem, and so I blow it even more out of proportion.
Very slowly I have come to understand that this position is unreasonable. How did I understand? By looking at what exists, staying before reality. My friends help me to understand that this is reality and I have to love it–it’s more reasonable to love it than to get angry.

Is the experience of family, that is, of two young people who love each other and get married, something “normal” in Kazakhstan?
Normal? Absolutely not! In this context, in the dominant mentality, the norm is that family is not a value at all; it’s not a pillar of the culture, most emphatically not! We have a great number of couples who don’t get married, but just live together, or those who marry and then get divorced after a year or two. From the point of view of children, too, it’s a disaster.
For example, when Ramziya was hospitalized in the gynecology ward, every day we would see 6 or 7 girls arrive for abortions in the 6th or 7th or 8th month. This shouldn’t be done, but the doctors do it anyway, because otherwise these girls would abort at home and risk dying. Actually, not just girls either. There are also mothers of families who abort because they already have many children.
But I think that these situations are consequences of something else. The problem, as was said during the assembly with Carrón, is that there’s no person; there’s no awakening of the questions: Who am I? Why am I in the world? What am I living for? The grace that has been given to us, the encounter with the Movement, is truly a salvation, because even when you get angry, afterwards you have the chance to ask yourself, “Does your heart desire precisely this? Did He unite Ramziya and me for this? For this paltry foolishness that we’ve gotten angry over and in the end will even ruin our health over?” You come to understand that you have to be saved every day; you have to be encountered and your heart needs answers to these exigencies, in the relationship with your wife, at home, and at work.

In what way?
As a method, there’s prayer. In the morning, I pray as soon as I open my eyes, because I need to, not because I have to. Why do I need to? Because I have to be saved; I have to ask to be saved. My day starts off in a way that saves me, and fills my heart. Otherwise, everything becomes “I have to, have to, have to do!” At the end of the day, I ask myself, “Am I happy or not? And my duties, the things I have to do, how do I do them?” At times, it’s very tiring to stay before what happens, but at least one can ask for this. It’s a reasonable thing, and I can’t do otherwise, even though at times it can happen that I do otherwise! It’s in my best interests. I’m better off; I’m happy.

In day-to-day life, do others notice this about you?
With our neighbors, we don’t talk a great deal. But when we happen to meet on the stairs or outside, an interesting thing happens: they stop to talk, something that didn’t happen when we first came to live in this building. At home, we talk about everything, how the day went, and we share things; the walls are very thin, and there are even holes, air vents connected to the neighbors’ apartment, so you can hear what they say. But they don’t talk, no! Do you know what most of them do? They watch television, that’s all! This placates their boredom. We don’t have a television. Maybe they listen to us when Ramziya and I chat. In any case, sometimes they stop us on the stairs and we ask them, “How’s it going? How’s your job?” This is unusual in Kazakhstan. Nobody gives a fig about anybody. We’ve never invited our neighbors over, but it would be a good idea. We’ve often invited Ramziya’s university students, or my friends. One friend of mine, who comes to see us since he began working in Astana, said at the end of a dinner, “It’s really great to have a home. I feel at home here even if it’s not mine.” And he didn’t want to leave! It’s this way every time he comes to our place. The students we invited this summer were also struck, not by us, but by the gaze that reaches them through us. We’re not capable; we forget, and we mess things up royally. We want to have everything and, in the end, we lose ourselves.