A Soap Opera starring Berlusconi

Mahroug seemed unfazed by the suggestion that wiretapped phone conversations published in the Italian press last week might contradict her. (In one,she said she had attended the prime ministers parties since she was 16.) Oh,I dont know whats in the wiretaps, she said.

Neither,it seems,do many Italians. Mahrougs performance was the latest installment in a surreal and Italian tragicomedyone that blurs fact and fiction,reality and reality tvin a land where the border between appearance and reality has long been hazy,both in and out of politics.

But the full drama has been airing for the 17 years that Berlusconi has been Italys most colourful politician,playing to an audience shaped by the sensationalist tv culture he helped create in his three decades as Italys largest private broadcaster. Today,the dramatic tension is rising. Berlusconi appears less the leader of a Western European democracy than a character in a late Roman Imperial drama,whose actors seem powerless to control their fates against larger currents of destiny.

As described in the Italian press,it is a world in which older men hold court and flirt with leggy showgirls and where middle-aged women,a prime audience for Berlusconis channels and an important bloc in his electorate,swoon over young male heartthrobs. Gently prodded by Alfonso Signorini,a host on Berlusconis channels and the editor of Chi,a tabloid owned by the Berlusconi family,Mahroug described a rough life. She said she was raped at age 9 by two uncles in Morocco,and moved to Italy,where she turned to petty theft. She was ashamed of being Moroccan,so told people that she was Egyptian. I invented a parallel life, she said.

But how can it be,many non-Italians ask,that Berlusconi is still in power? The answer is : politics. A growing number of Italians would probably change the channel if they saw an alternative,but the left is weak and the center unfocused and the PM has a parliamentary majority. Berlusconi,who has denied all wrongdoing,has repeatedly said that it is outrageous for magistrates to leak wiretaps from preliminary investigations to the press without sanctions. Lately,however,the particular details of this scandal are proving too much for some Italians,including thousands of women who have signed a petition calling for his ouster.

Whatever it is,it is very Italian. This is the culture that invented the Baroque,with its trompe loeil ceilings,and facades that disguise multiple layers or facades that disguise nothing at all. In his years in public life,Berlusconi has blurred the line between image and reality. Rather,he has made a brilliant career on the Italian truth that image is reality.