In 2007, Teresa Nanuzzi, a 58 year old native of Italy, was living and working in Syria. The Italian foreign minister had sent her to the Syrian higher education ministry and she was hired as a professor of Italian Literature for the Higher Institute of Languages at the University of Aleppo.
Yaman Saudi, an Italian language teacher and Syrian opposition figure currently living in Germany, had been one of Ms. Nanuzzi’s students in Italy. He told Orient Net that when he would visit his hometown of Aleppo, he naturally felt led to return the hospitality his former teacher had shown him in Italy and would invite her to sit with him near the Citadel in the Old City.
It was a common gathering place for tourists and those who love the city to sit for hours drinking coffee while enjoying the breathtaking beauty of the ancient surroundings.
Yaman explained that since generosity and hospitality have always been principles of his Syrian culture, entertaining guests in his homeland was the normal thing to do.
On one particular night, Yaman had invited his former teacher to have dinner with him in Citadel Square. After a pleasant evening of food and conversation they each went home.
Yaman told Orient Net that three days later he received a note from the detective section of regime intelligence in Aleppo saying that he was under investigation.
Having been summoned to come in for questioning, but reluctant to go to their headquarters, Yaman agreed to meet the detectives at a friend’s office at the University of Aleppo.
Knowing he hadn’t done anything wrong he was very curious to hear from them why he was under investigation.
At the meeting an officer showed Yaman a passport and asked him if he knew the lady it belonged to.
Yaman answered that he knew her very well because she was one of his professors. The officer told Yaman that they had been seen sitting together at a restaurant in front of the Citadel.
Yaman sarcastically asked the officer; “Did you see us doing anything wrong?”
The officer then told Yaman that he was accused of being a Syrian communicating with an Italian according to the reports that had been registered against him.
Yaman told him that he had studied in Italy for seven years and that he was a graduate of the University of Rome.
The officer never-the-less asked Yaman to sign a paper saying that he would neither meet nor talk to Ms. Nanuzzi ever again.
Yaman refused to sign.
About six months later, Yaman answered a late night phone call only to hear his beloved Italian professor crying on the other end of the call.
Ms. Nanuzzi told him in Italian that her home had been ransacked and robbed and that nothing of importance was left; all of her personal papers were gone along with her electronics and her money. She had been living and working in Syria for four years.
The next day, Yaman went to the security detective branch to report the robbery.
After hearing Ms. Nanuzzi’s story, the officer in-charge sent a group of his people to check out her house.
When the investigators returned, Yaman was told that it was the intelligence detectives who had invaded and robbed Ms. Nanuzzi’s home and that he should “close this chapter completely.”
Two days after being robbed by Assad regime detectives, Ms. Nanuzzi, the Italian professor who had been teaching in Syria for more than four years and was much beloved by her Syrian students, decided to leave Syria and take a teaching job in Morocco.
She vowed never to return to Syria again as long as there was no security or safety for citizens or foreigners.
Yaman hopes that someday, after the Assad regime is no longer in power, that Ms. Nannuzi will once again return and enjoy the warm hospitality of true Syrian people in a free Syria.
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