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5 10 15 20 25 30 35 8 “Ok, ok, who cares?” Mariella interrupted. “Will you let me hear the story?” “Well,” Rahma continued, “the maths teacher asked Jensika a question, and she gave the wrong answer, and then the jerk said ‘you’re obviously always wrong because in underdeveloped places maths never gets through, and moreover, everyone knows that women are not good at maths anyway…’” “Ah, and what do the underdev… underdevelop…” Gaetano tried to say. “Underdeveloped places,” Mariella finished. “That is, the teacher was intending that Jensika is limited in her understanding of maths because she is from Sri Lanka, which according to him is a third-world country.” “And also because I am a woman…” Jensika added. “And what about Hypatia? Yesterday my sister and I saw the movie on TV… We couldn’t say now that Egypt was an underdeveloped place at the time…” “Ah… I saw that too!” Mariella exclaimed. “Of course Hypatia didn’t have a good ending… She was killed by monks because she was pagan and a mathematician…” “Ah, yes,” Jensika whispered, “there must be a lot to discuss here…” Gaetano, perplexed, was looking at his friends. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know who Hypatia was, but I would like to understand what Jensika has to do with the fact that Sri Lanka is a third-world country and with mathematics?” “Gaetà, wake up. According to the teacher, Sri Lanka is a third- world country,” Mimmo explained to him, “because its technology is not developed like in other places of the world, so he thinks that all the people who were born there have difficulty learning maths.” “And so,” Mariella added, “because, according to him, women generally don’t have talent in maths, he thinks Jensika can’t understand anything in maths.” Gaetano understood. He became all red, and with the smoke that was coming out of his nose, yelled, “Tomorrow morning I am coming to your class to give him my take on this. I will tell him that he must learn to respect people!”