Paska Devaddis

“Paska Devaddis was like us, either beautiful or ugly, either lawyer or poet. Paska went up through the death, when she was found and composed in her empty house. The whole village went to see her”. [...] “but she was already a shadow, a face created by the candles that surrounded it”.


This small fragment of dialog is extracted from “Paska Devaddis – Three radiodramas for a theater of Sardinian people”, by Michelangelo Pira. In this way, she was remembered by those voices led by the pen of the big anthropologist of Bitti.
Among the figures of Sardinian bandits, that of Paska Devaddis had a preponderant role. Bandit is a typically masculine figure. Woman, for her nature, unlikely, can become a woman bandit. Too factors and causes, too reasons and irremediably opposing motivations. It is a world dominated by man. Banditry is something "suitable for men". Woman approves, despairs and appears only in the moment of grief. But for Paska it was not such.

But who was really Paska Devaddis? And why did she appear as a right in the history of Sardinian banditry?
Her slender aspect of young woman appear in the notorious feud of Orgosolo, among the enemy Cossu and Corraine families and the other ally families among which that of the Devaddis.


A disamistade (enmity) that had a big space and echo in the chronicle of newspapers and in the public opinion, crossing the limits of the small village of Orgosolo. Omitting the reasons, the accusations and the deaths of this disamistade – we want only remember that it started on 3rd April 1905 through the killing of Carmine Corraine, although there were other previous preparatory events – we will dedicate to the figure of Paska and to the reasons of her participation.


In 1905 Paska was only a young girl and she would have never imagined of belonging one day to a disamistade. We can begin telling that Paska was not the strong, wild and cruel bandit who rode through her proud head and her mighty air. This figure who was represented by some press of that period – it was 1917 – was away from the reality. Paska was a minute, delicate and sick girl, which figure was not suitable to the hardness of the life of escaping. She had not the lack of courage, but, through her eyes, a desperate melancholy transpired.


It is important and noteworthy the portrait that was made about her by Anna Tilocca Segreti in the Vol. 8 of the "Library New Sardinia: Bandits & Carabinieres". Here it is remembered in detail the whole sequence of events of the young girl and of the big feud of Orgosolo. The anecdotes and the secrets that marked the tragic figure of Paska were many. The history of her discovering, her body transported during the night to her deserted house of Orgosolo, her virginity, her courage, her love, her desperation and her solitude. It emerges clearly a description that clashes with the brutality and the hardness of the fugitive’s life, where there is not a space for emotions, regret, self-pity and tears.

At the times of the beginning of the feud, as told, Paska was a child. During the years they began following one another the killings and they increased the victims in the social classes of the respective rival groups. Incredulous and confused, she was present at everything.
One day Antonio Succu was killed. He belonged to an enemy family and the girl’s brother was accused of this crime. Someone vowed that he saw also Paska while she walked around the place of crime. She was innocent, as her brother, but after the emission of a warrant of arrest, she had not other choice whether not that of the state of being in hiding. A simple accusation and suddenly Paska, from a life articulated in chore in a rather well-off family, became a terrible and aggressive fugitive, forced to share incursions, efforts and pains with other bandits.


In a short while her body ceded. The brutality of Barbagia, through its arduous mountains, its impenetrable woods, its unattainable caves and clefts, was fatal for that girl who died when she was very young. From the medical report it resulted that she died because of a tuberculosis. Writers wrote beautiful pages about the Paska’s death; above every pages, this short fragment extracted from the beautiful book “Bandits of Sardinia”, by Franco Fresi.
“Supine, laid down a litter made through fronds at the bottom of the rock cave she did not perceive the heat of the fire burned in a corner and she perceived all the cold of the night. The flames, that could not heat her, were the blaze of her youth” […] her eyes closed without a compassionate hand caressed her eyelids. […] Six bandits stopped in front of the Paska’s door. It was not necessary to knock”.


Paska was conducted inside and laid down a table. Someone made her wear the bridal gown; a macabre drawing of destiny, when she was dressed for celebration exactly in the day of her death. A wonderful dress that she had never worn before and a marriage only imagined. Courage, innate rebellion and a life broken too early and for this reason she was ready for taking part to legend.


The woman bandit "envelopped" in the freezing November of Orgosolo and who required her life, today she is still in a situation between who considers her a dreadful fugitive and who, on the contrary, considers her one of the many innocent victims of that hate.
Anyway, the remember of her must stay and will stay a mythical memory. In this sad sequence of blood, among sorrows, destruction, cruelty and the revenge and the torment of these families, only the image of her still emerges. The melancholy face of this young girl suffocated in her vitality, with her eyes still shining, with her beautiful handkerchief that covered her head and hid her lips, that handkerchief that, paraphrasing Pira, “cut by triangle the sides of full moon, too”.