The Road Ahead

As they open their second gallery in Hong Kong, Anna Maria Rossi and her son Fabio reflect on the wild journey that brought them here

- Oliver Giles

In the summer of 1973, Anna Maria Rossi went on one of her annual holidays to explore a remote part of Asia, this time venturing to Kabul, Afghanistan. She was enjoying a welcome break from her job as a history teacher and her hometown of Turin, Italy, whiling away her days admiring the city’s Islamic architecture and the dramatic, craggy mountains that surround it on all sides. Then, on July 17, she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire.

“Some aeroplanes started to fly above the city early in the morning and there was some shooting,” says Anna Maria, now 88, with a tone so nonchalant that she might have been describing an unmemorable, low-budget action film. As it happens, with the Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, out of the country that summer, the military rose up and seized control, ending more than two centuries of royal rule. Although it was alarming, the coup was relatively bloodless. Anna Maria half-smiles at the memory, shakes her head of bright white curls, then matter-of-factly sums up the dramatic turn of events: “One person fell in the river and drowned. That was that. The king never came back.”