Zennaro after prison in Sudan: ‘With rugby and rowing I get my life back’

Some had already found him, others run to hug him as you do with a friend found after a lifetime, with a survivor. Three months after leaving Sudan, Marco Zennaro reunited with his old friends, that group of rugby players who between Venice and the Mainland saw him grow and who for a year, from April 2021 to 12 March 2022, filled the city of banners for his release, flooded the web, gave birth to a thousand initiatives. Marco, “The Prince”, has always been one of them, especially now that he needs to regain possession of what he was and what he is, to leave behind the trauma of a legal matter that looks so much like a kidnapping, a ‘ extortion. Marco has been back for three months and seems in great shape, few 46-year-olds are so “pulled”. The wounds remain, a tattoo under the right bicep (“The meaning I revealed to very few and it remains private. And to think that I would never have a tattoo of mine”) says that that experience will stay with him. His life is packed: at dawn he row, then he goes to Marghera in the family business, the one at the center of a commercial dispute over a supply of electrical transformers that has put him at the center of a Kafkaesque vortex. Above all, he is Carlotta’s husband and Leonardo’s father, Carolina and Tullia. They too arrive at the Campo delle Quattro Fontane, on the Lido, for the Rugby Venezia end-of-year party. “It is a commemoration, a way of remembering the comrades who are no longer there. Going forward playing is the only way we know to do it ”. But it is also the first rugby match – to the touch – that Marco has played for who knows how long, a way of returning to what he has always been and what he wants to be. Also participating is Leonardo, the 15-year-old son that Marco trains. And then hugs, pats on the back, friendships of all time. “We were young, we played headless, rugby was truly a unique joy for us. I have always played in the area, I was tied to the group of friends, I did little at Cus Padova as an engineering student, but also at VeneziaMestre, at the Riviera “.

Rugby player and Venetian rowing enthusiast. Did he do the Vogalonga?

“This year no. I forced myself to do those 4-5 days of bridge with the family, since I returned I had never disconnected. But we did the Mestre regatta and it went well, I’m training with Sergio Barichello with two oars to make a caorlina for the Storica. It is a project, as with all sports you have to train compatibly with work. Which for me means going out in the Lagoon at 6.30 in the morning. Those are the best moments, fully enjoy the silence of this wonderful environment. Venice is always seen with the very critical eye of mass tourism, while there are still some wonderful places “.

His story has awakened the Venetian identity. The city was filled with banners and initiatives for her.

“It would seem an unexpected thing, but if one knows the truest characteristics of the Venetians inside, they know that they are generous people with the people they are familiar with. They become very suspicious the moment they feel overwhelmed and that is where our classic moaning attitude begins. In fact the city has been turned upside down by tourism, but it is not very different from the historical centers of Florence or Rome. It has the peculiarity of being an island, from which you cannot escape, but it is fortunate to have a lagoon and other islands where you can cultivate your passions “.

In the city there is even a “Chorus of complaints”.

“I’ve been away from the city and my life for a year. When I got back I started taking the vaporetto again to hear the neighbor complaining, the one saying ‘Wow, this weekend I have to take my son to ski’. You come back from something a bit different and you think ‘Mum, it takes you to take your child to ski, maybe you will have to do it too …’ When you are away for a year you realize what the problems are and which are not “.

After a few months, do you feel that you have regained possession of your life?

“If you ask me if I’m okay I say yes. If you ask me if everything is okay, I will answer no. The only way to undo the knots I have inside will be to let time pass. Staying here is paradise, rediscover friendships, family, work, take back your life in a different way, but it is not that what you lived is past, it would be ridiculous to think so. We must continue to build positive thinking, keep our daily lives steady. We live days that must be built with positivity, but every now and then I think about what I experienced and where I was “.

“Two years ago, on June 13, St. Anthony’s Day, I had a strange day. So I took and left Marghera, where I work, and went to Padua, to the Basilica del Santo. On foot. I wanted to break free. As fate would have it, last year I was released from Khartoum prison on the day of Saint Anthony. So this year I decided to draw a line on a lot of appointments to return to Padua. Passing in front of places that are important to me, at the Mira field in front of the Miralanza where I played the first game at the age of 5. I have the video of that day: there was a 12-year-old boy playing against me, then it worked like this, and not knowing what to do, he grabbed my weight, moved me off the pitch and left with the ball. But also going to the new pitch in Mira, where I played my last match, and in front of the villa where I got married ”.

Does your head go where you want when you play sports? Does exercising help her get distracted or does it bring that experience back to the surface?

“Sport frees you, stops the thoughts you have. Rowing is being together with nature and the boat, rugby is a sport of multiple situations in which you have to stay very focused. Yes, sport helps. It is useless to hide, I am still followed by a psychiatrist (Anna Paola Borsa and Lucia Ceschin, psychologist and psychiatrist of the association for the Emdr, already followed him when he was in Sudan, ed). Many times I say ‘Look, I have periods that I run around in circles, but going for a run or to the gym puts me back in myself’. From a psychiatric point of view it is natural: if you came from a sport, to go back to practicing it is to regain what you were. And it’s the simplest way, because movement reconnects you. It is the key ”.

What was the use of being a sportsman during your captivity?

“The education I received was made of sport and there I built a foundation on which to resist. It was about resisting, running a marathon every day. Sport cannot be extrapolated into my training, I played rugby from 5 to 36 years, obviously it shaped me. From sport I got the strength to resist certain everyday situations. In rugby and in rowing, I have always built successes on a daily basis, with constant work processes, the same ones I needed there. This is what helped me the most: I come from a sport where nothing is invented, you have to work on it, develop a team spirit “.

Also because to go out he had to put his own.

“It was a continuous commitment, I had to be concentrated, pay the utmost attention or discard signs that could have saved me or on the contrary have made me go off my head”.

Among other things in Sudan he read Mandela’s biography.

“Yes, my brother’s Christmas present, just so as not to make me feel different … Completely different situations, but even reading that book I found ideas to build my thinking”.

Having landed in Fiumicino, he immediately went to the Olimpico for Italy-Scotland in the Six Nations rugby, postponing the return home. Because?

“There was a promise behind it. The director of the Farnesina Luigi Maria Vignali, when he came to visit me in prison in Khartoum. I was very prostrate with physical and mental fatigue, he told me that he knew that I played rugby, that I coached kids, and that he too went to see matches. “Come on, next year all this will be a bad memory, we will go together to the Six Nations in Rome. The incredible thing is that I returned to Italy on the very last day, there was this possibility. Marzio Innocenti (the president of Fir, ed), of which I was a player and for which I have a broad esteem, told me “Yes yes come, we will pick you up at the airport”. It was impossible to say no. Finding myself like this, with the Olimpico clapping your hands, gave me a very positive impulse. Too bad we lost, but it was the way to win in Wales ”.

His history with rugby is a family passion.

“My son, now under 15, is the fourth generation of Zennaro who play rugby. The grandfather was already in the Guf team, in the Thirties. My father played, but he was also president of the VeneziaMestre which he created in 1986 which preceded the football one by a year. He passed on the passion to me, but my mom always came to get me out of the infirmary with plaster. She was the one who took me to the pitch and healed my wounds ”.

“Yup. Maybe not tomorrow, but I’m making contact, it’s part of life to get a door in the face. Rugby teaches you to take shots and come back more solidly in the next game. The country is in political and social chaos, there is no government. When it will be more stable I can think about it. I’m already starving, when I was there with 500 Sudanese pounds at the beginning of the year you bought 10 sandwiches and finally five. Now with the Ukrainian wheat problem, they will be the ones who pay the most ”.

Did you go hungry in prison?

“My luck was that I had made friends with the only one who spoke English, an Iraqi professor, who had his family in Khartoum and who would send us something in the evening, otherwise they won’t give you anything there. They had also framed him in a strange round of blackmail, he said “I don’t pay” because in the end they go in search of money. He was released from prison the day I left, but his legal case is still standing ”.