Nothing Happened

Tags

girl power, italy, Poetry, rome, storytelling, women power, women's rights, women's safety

Late afternoon sun warms the urban ladder.
Mediterranean promise lies behind its rays.
A light, sultry, dust-carrying desert wind lifts the grime of the inebriating city.
Time is running low to this experience of rebirth –
a Renaissance of her own – from midwest to mid-Med.
Learning hides behind every corner, life lessons coming fast and furious.
Lessons of world struggle, history’s shifting poles of power give pause.
Independence comes through the panes of a speeding train, the pains of growth spurts.
Significance creeps through everywhere, through every crack in the asphalt, in every sprayed tag.
Courage, faith, steadfastness arise, filling her core.
Everyday a new discovery, everyday a new blessing.
All this, she thinks, as she scampers down the metal framed staircase.

Observations skills keen, she sees his furtive backward glance.
She advances aware, her newly fortified armor up.
Rounding the bottom rung, he pounces.
Arms flail, breath caught, fragments of rumpled suit and razor stubble betray social ineptitude.
Escaping as quickly as he attacks, she runs back up the rickety metal staircase towards the masses.
Thank goodness, she repeats to herself and later to her caregivers, nothing happened.

Nothing happened.
Except that instead of falling into warm, fitless sleep each night, she replays the sound of those metal stairs in her head, her heart beating fast against the silent walls.
That happened.

Nothing happened.
Except she no longer walks anywhere unaccompanied, her newfound independence taken hostage in a fragment of a second. Her self-assuredness under siege.
That happened.

Nothing happened.
Except that her smile ever-so-slightly lost its brilliance.
Her glance ever-so-slightly suspects.
Her voice holds a veiled apology.
That happened.

Happy exploration of new pathways is now tantamount to a six-year-old walking down a shadowy hallway to a dark bedroom during a thunderstorm.
Venice’s romantic canals reflect threat.
Rome’s gelato has lost its creamy lustre.
Sleep lacks rest.
Study brings unwanted mental meanderings.
That happened.

From girl to woman in an instant
she discovers solidarity among women and women-loving men.
She will overcome and find power within.
Women are not playthings.
Women band together, find strength and come back stronger and more fierce.
This happens.

 

Taxi!

Tags

rome, taxi driver

The question of Roman taxi drivers has been plaguing the city for some time now. Self-owned taxis are driven by drivers who generally belong to one cooperative of the other, all part of a large lobby which plagues and often holds hostage the Mayor’s office. It is a generally well-known fact that many, many licenses are often sourced, purchased and not necessarily “earned” outside of Rome. Legend has it that if you were to search 10 drivers, you’d find as many as 8 of them have licenses from Pescara, Terni, Ancona or some other underwhelmed city not far from Rome. 

Taking a taxi in Rome has become a gamble. Will he be kind and service-oriented? Will he act as though having to give me a ride somewhere is an imposition to his busy schedule? Will I hear endless sugary hits Baglioni and Venditti tunes from the 80s at the highest volume or will it be interminable arguments about La Roma or La Lazio (depending on whether the decals on the dash are Giallorossi or Celesti)? Will there be the sweet aroma of dope mixed into the grungy Marlboro stench or will the Evergreen hanging from the rearview mirror make my stomach turn? And when it does begin to turn because of the smell, the heat or the rapid weaving between lanes of traffic, will he allow me to open my rear window without a lecture about how the wind affects his cervicale? Or will he be a she? Oh, that is a rare and generally appreciated occasion!

Here is one episode of Roman taxi idiocy which makes me crazy with rage: taxi comes to take me to the airport. I tell him it’s a credit card fare to make sure he’s not one of those POSfobes whose portable machines are always mysteriously broken. “Si’, si’, signora. Ce l’ho.” We pull into the terminal and he realizes he’s left his ‘man purse’ (literally ‘borsello‘) at home with all of his documents, including his license and his little portable credit card machine. 

Insert here cultural sidebar: It is late afternoon, just past traditional lunch time. Here’s a guy constantly on his phone Whatsapping even as he drives. He gets a call or two. The mumbling and smirking are so transparent, he’s lucky his wife isn’t in the car with me. He’s clearly been somewhere other than home for lunch and gotten something a little extra on the side. During his little afternoon love distraction, he left his borsello where he stores his credit card machine much like he’d have taken his entire car stereo with him every time he parked his car in the 80s. Something about gadgetry that men have to always take them with them.

So, here we have a two-timing taxi driver speeding to airports with no license on him. And I’ve got no cash and he knows it. This is a business expense I  had hoped to put on a credit card but his gadget is in a boudoir somewhere. I bet he’s regretting his little fuga already! The wife would be rejoicing in Karma coming back to bite him.

Yet, I’m the one to suffer. In a fair, Western, working world, I’d say “well, I’m sorry, I have a plane to catch”. Instead the lavativo suggests I leave my bags with him while I frantically look around for a Bancomat (and everyone knows those abound in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport). Off I go in a rush and overheating. Then I stop: “Hold on. What’s wrong with this picture?”
I go back and suggest he follow me so I can then pay him and be on my way. I take my bags– yes, I take them — ever heard the word cafone? This is its embodiment. I, client, carrying my bags like a mad woman running through Fiumicino looking for a cash point as the slow, unprepared, imbranato taxi driver follows behind, talking on his phone.

When I do finally find the ATM, I turn around and ask him if he has his receipt book with him. “Oh, mamma mia, I’ll run to the car and be right back.” Yes, I actually wait for him. The alternative to all this would have been my responding to his initial claim “‘sti cazzi” and been on my way. But police and carabinieri and public bystanders, all with an opinion would have ensued. I make it to my gate with no time for my airport manicure but in time to find the 60 Sicilian Middle School students lining up for my budget flight to Catania: the kind where you have no assigned seat and the quickest and craftiest gets the good seat. As if with 60 12-year-olds there is such a thing as a good seat.

Insert happy ending sidebar here: Landing to a view of active Etna at sunset, I rejoice in my new assignment which will bring me to Sicily again and again. As for those rambunctious, pushy, little tweenies, here’s the trick to no assigned seat flying: recognise that the first to board the shuttle to the plane will be the last to board the plane. I, therefore, can write to my heart’s content on my little device, sat on my little bum (ok, poetic license), drinking my little espresso and be – what a concept – the last on the bus and the first on the plane! So, first seat, first row, slept the whole way. Now to my room with the waves gently lapping just off my balcony, grilled sword fish and some ridiculously wonderful pasta peppered lightly with toasted local pistachios. And this is why we put up with awful taxi drivers and the like.

 

Preface to the exhibition: A Roman Experience, Reflections on Immigration, Isolation, Otherness

Tags

cross-cultural communication, immigration, italy, migration, rome, the other

“When I Left Home -home! what remnant of home there was to be called home- the smell of saffron and freshly ground flour still filled my pores.

With a rucksack of roots, an extra tunic, a pair of sandals and a head scarf, I set out.

Small figurines of animals known to me and carved in ebony line my left pocket. Prayer beads line my right one. I fidget with them as I walk. My shoes prepare to bear the unbearable in the coming days. 

The dust on my skin is familiar, the wind’s song, the noises from a distance all find a home in my brain’s facets of memory.

We walk – I meet others – we all walk in silence. We are the strong, the capable, the eager, the hopeful, the dreamers. We will make a difference and prevail. We will provide for our own.

I have never known what it is to be a minority, to be the one to speak a foreign tongue, the one with the outlandish dress, the one whose skin differs from most.

I have never pondered what air different from that I knew tasted like; what the wind on another continent felt like; never felt pangs of hunger for what’s known, what’s familiar, what’s friendly.”

 

“I have lived here my whole life and before me my parents and before them their parents, and so on and so forth. We have roots here. 

See that shop? That was once my uncle’s fruit and vegetable shop. Look at it now – a bunch of Sri Lankan immigrants there now. Just listen to that racket! They never stop laughing! 

Smell that? That’s my neighbor. I used to have a nice Sicilian family living next door. They weren’t the easiest to understand either but at least they ate at normal hours and cooked with normal ingredients! The grandfather passed away and his son up and took the family north – said it was getting to be unlivable here with all these foreigners moving in! He decided it was time to go somewhere where he could live and work unperturbed! I don’t know what he thinks they’ll find! It’s not like in the North they’re any better to the Sicilians than we are to the Africans. 

I much preferred Sicilians to this man from Pakistan or Kurdistan or Afghanistan one of those places over there! When he’s not praying, he’s cooking, it seems. And smell that! Have you ever?? It’s all those herbs and spices and vegetables they sell now at the market. All their stuff from all their countries. I have to walk twice as far to find a local vendor of local goods! This country is going to Hell in a hand basket, I’m telling you!!

What? Oh, yeah, that old line? Italians emigrated all over the world? We were the ones who they shut out of clubs, apartment buildings and restaurants? The ones the Want Ads excluded? ‘Italians Need Not Apply’. ‘No Italians Allowed’. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it over and over. It’s what those bleeding heart leftists go on and on about. Or the parishioners who come every year at Christmas and Easter to ask if we’d like to volunteer our time to serve hot meals at the train station to the likes of these guys over here. But I didn’t emigrate, did I? No. I’m right here, tried and true Italian. That wasn’t me on those long boats so why should I feel any empathy at all for these others invading my Rome? My people have been here for over five generations! Get them up and out, I say. Rome is for the Romans.”

 

“I’m trying to recite my prayers quietly to myself because I feel as though my neighbor gets angry every time he hears me praying.

Usually prayers calm people – whenever there is the call to prayer in my country people pause, even if only for a second, and acknowledge a higher power to our own. Here, church bells clang incessantly and yet, no one pauses. No one looks up or bows their head. And on and on they clang.

It is right to recognize our humility, our humanity. We must live in respect of others and of God. We must treat our brothers as we ourselves would like to be treated. But the man next door, as much as he has two arms and two legs, as I do, and two eyes and two ears, as I do, he does not appear to me as brother. As hard as I try to communicate with him, he ignores me or throws up his hands at me. Sometimes, when I hear he is coming out of his door, I open mine to smile at him and he turns the key and runs away down the stairs. It is hard to treat others humbly and with humanity when they refuse you. I try, I fail, I feel defeated. 

I miss the big sky and the earth tones from home. The bird’s song is different here – more aggressive and threatening, or am I imagining it? I spend my days from dawn until dusk on busses and metros and in line from one public office to another. They do not ask my name or where I am from as if they want to know me. They don’t. They want to shuffle me. They want to move me along and push me out. I don’t know where is next but I know it won’t be as frightening and solitary as here. My nights are spent in line at the train station. There Italian brothers and sisters with some foreigners who speak in English serve me hot meals. They do not know me and I do not know them. I try to smile, they’re looking down the line to the next to serve. We are shuffled again. The food is so different from what I know. I eat out of hunger, I hunger for what I know. My biggest fear is that that hunger will, eventually, turn my hope and my will to dust.”

 

“My neighbor is learning a little Italian. Seems the parishioners who bang on and on about the hot meal service also started teaching the poor souls Italian. At least now I can ask what it is he’s cooking all the time. He even brought me a taste. Rice with some saucy stuff on it. It wasn’t exactly a Sunday dinner but it didn’t taste half as bad as it smelled! 

Turns out he’s a doctor, too. Studied medicine but never got to practice it. It seems war broke out, he lost some family and the rest, I guess they say, is history. We’re not friends, mind you, but he’s a nice enough guy. Says his name is Sam. That’s easy enough. Says it’s short for something but I didn’t catch what. Seems he speaks English and German and he’s hoping to head north from here but, in the meantime, he’ll learn Italian and wants to know if I want to help him practice. Ah, what the hell? Who else do I have to talk to? If he wants to come over and watch the game every so often, why not?”

 

“Turns out my neighbor is my brother, after all. He speaks loudly and uses his whole body. Sometimes he hits me in the shoulder to get his point across. It’s a very odd thing but I notice other people do it, too. Sometimes I see two men walking and talking and then they stop. They stop in the middle of the sidewalk to finish their conversation or to make a point. If anyone is walking behind them, he simply has to go around them. It is funny to see how other people get on in the world.

I gave my neighbor-brother some rice the other day. I didn’t tell him but I do worry about all the pasta he eats. I don’t understand how an entire country can survive on wheat alone. If it’s not pasta, it’s pizza and if it’s neither, it’s bread. 

I have begun Italian conversation with him. I think tomorrow I will bring him pictures of home so we don’t have to talk about – and over – the TV!”

 

High Commission

Tags

Italian hairdressers, Nuances, prima repubblica

Often I can be heard raving about my hairdresser who, for the purposes of this writing, we’ll call Pasquale. Pasquale arrives to his salon every morning from Naples, his native land. More than his native land, I’d go so far as to say Naples is his flag, the blood pulsing through his veins, the sly anything-could-happen-from-this-moment-on escaping his crooked smile. He embodies the mellifluous lament, the passion originating from the bite of the taranta, the beat of the Neapolitan tammorra omnipresent in all Neapolitan music (the good and the bad). He saches from sink to the client’s chair; the phone rings and he two-steps to get it while twirling slightly on the balls of his hand-sewn leather mocassins and reaching suavely for his cigarettes and lighter, all in one smooth move. And do not let the prose fool you; he does so in an entirely heterosexual way.

Pasquale is old-school. He represents the caste of Southern-Italian, self-taught, male hairdressers. He and his brothers have built an empire on the craft they learned as boys from their uncles, fathers, grandfathers. He will have had the famous stool to step-on when shaving one of his father’s customers and his own broom which will have been unceremoniously sawed off and taped up for his slight height and he will have been given the responsibility to sweep up after each customer swiftly and without getting in the way.

In his old-schoolness, Pasquale is also what we refer to as “First Republic”. To belong to Italy’s “prima Repubblica” was a distinction made in the nineties to refer to those who still hadn’t grasped the fact that we’d turned a page; that the political-religious-economic-social web woven by governments from the end of the Second World War until 1992 was untangling and that transparency and honesty would be adopted by all. Those of us who read the papers, marched in the marches, cried at the rallies and for the blood of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, to name only two, used the term (and still do) with condescending tones: “that’s so First Republic” of him”, “oh, we don’t go to that bar/pizzeria/school….they’re very prima repubblica“. Little did we know that the first would soon swallow the second transparent, honest, untangled, forward-thinking, upward moving Republic and with one big, 17-year-long belch, thus creating the third: Berlusconismo. But I digress.

Pasquale, alas, is very first and third Republic. He is, I believe, the only representative of that part of this country whose happy patron I remain. I shop at the organic, grower-to-consumer markets; I teach about corruption and its prices to society; I preach about entire neighborhoods built illegally only to be ‘condoned’ by the administration once they’ve been erected with no consideration for safety, water, waste management, schools, roads, bus routes. I am always reminding businesses that, yes, actually, I do need a receipt just as surely as they need to pay taxes.

But Pasquale. Pasquale can do no wrong. Pasquale is where vanity meets sanity and wins. His workmanship is tantamount to a Sorrentine wood inlayer or a Venetian lacemaker from the island of Burano. My professionalism is challenged as I search for a way to credibly herald Italian hairdressers the likes of Pasquale and his caste as Italian artisans in their own right.

As I make my way through the fourth floor of the 5-star, luxury hotel chain where his salon is located, I force the thoughts of fronts and illicit economies from my mind.

He greets me with a wink and a crooked, knowing smile. He has a connection with each one of his customers; he knows them, he understands their weaknesses and strengths and recognizes their beauty – however deep it lies. A kempt head, well-kept hands and polished shoes are all tell-tale signs of the dignity and poise that lies beneath, my grandmother would have said. I am here to tend to the first and second of those.

As I wait, a woman who I initially mistook for a famous Roman movie actress begins to whine in her annoying, Roman, flirtatious way. She is artificially tanned and her breasts are squeezed into three layers of stretch tank top concoctions of various colors and patterns, the last of which continues its squeezing around her disappearing waist, over her hips and falls just above her knee. Rolls abound everywhere and her lime green bra straps are revealed atop heavy, round upper arms which hearten me and my vain attempts to hide mine. The pedicured toes at the end of rather chunky, tanned feet, peek out of nine-inch heeled sandals. Her eyelashes, coated in three coats of black mascara bat up and down and her thick-lined lips in deep raisin tones pout: “Pasquale, I’ve forgotten my phone in my car. Can you please go down and get it for me?” He looks around the crowded 3-chair, 4th-floor salon. Women wait patiently, I have my head covered in henna and it’s sticking up unattractively looking a bit like Jimmy Hendrix in mud. We are all interested to see how Pasquale reacts. He looks at her. “Look at how many people are here. What do you need your phone for? Relax.“. “No, I need it“ she pouts, “I’m working“. (Oh, shock and horror, reader. Don’t tell me you don’t pretend you’re working while you’re actually getting your hair done. It’s practically expected by Italian labor offices. Besides, this salon is a probable front, ergo it doesn’t exist, ergo I can’t be here, ergo I am at work.) He looks around again. He catches my eye and sighs, as if to share a little “can you believe this woman?“. I love being drawn into his circle of confidence. I blush.

“Where is it parked?“, he asks, visibly irked. “I gave the keys to the little black boys at the entrance.” I choke. My fresh-squeezed Sicilian orange juice almost comes out my nose. Not one other person in the salon bats an eye. “with whom?“, he asks. She repeats it. More audibly, “You know, the little black boys who park the cars.” (Mine is a loose and generous translation of the still quite frequently-used Italian term negretti, the diminutive impossibly implying anything but diminution. Many Italian friends and family will dispute that nothing is meant by it. Well, then, I say, don’t use it!) I’m reminded of a similarly batty tv personality who once said on a popular talk show, “oh, I’d love to adopt a child. Maybe even a little negretto.“. My reaction in the salon is similar to the one I’d had on my living room sofa that time. I cannot believe my ears.

In the time it took me to take that little foray into modern, social linguistics, my heralded artisan of hair took the keys from bimbette and went to get her phone and was back. She blew him kisses in the mirror with both of her manicured hands almost touching her painted lips. I texted a friend and described the scene. Having mistook her for this famous actress, I thought I was witnessing a scoop.

Pasquale continued to glance my way through the mirrors each time I looked up from my Blackberry; I, unlike some, was working!

After Bambi left and the wizard of hair was rinsing out my henna, I asked him if that really was Sabrina Ferrilli. He said many people mistake her for la Ferrilli but she’s not. “She’s the Police Commissioner.”

“Oh” was all I could muster. “Annammo bene“, the Romanesque catch-all phrase succinctly implying “well, if this is the state of affairs, I hate to think what might come next“,  was what I thought.

As I paid Pasquale in cash which he quickly put into his designer pocket, I promised to make no more notice of the lack of register or refusal of credit cards. I made a deal with myself that this is my one oasis of sin where I am spoiled with fresh cookies and tea or fruit platters of every exotic color with champagne. Where the wizard once took one look at my overworked self, wrapped my head in a mask, drew me into a room where a young woman handed me a towel and invited me to take my champagne and fruit into the steam room for fifteen minutes while the mask worked through my hair. I made a pact with myself that I would ignore the constant reminders of backward thinking, ill-fed economy, dubious dealings and corrupt officials. And I do it all in the name of my love for Italian art and workmanship.

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Strikingly Nonplussed

Tags

ex-pat, rome, strikes, Toiling in Rome, traffic

There is most definitely an order to things in the apparent chaos of Rome and, indeed, Italy. It takes a trained eye and patient soul to recognize and acknowledge that order – particularly when in the midst of the chaos. Such training, in my current field, is pretentiously and- some may argue – incorrectly referred to as “cultural competency”. So, to gain insights into a context not your own, to learn to read cues from use of language, timbre and cadence or from body language, trends and counter-trends and to deal with those new insights in such a way as to refrain from judgement but, rather, deepen one’s knowledge of one’s self, one’s own background and position in relation to this new and foreign context all add up to “cultural competency” (sic). Personally, I liked it better when from closed- or narrow-minded one became open-minded; from provincial, one became worldly; from anxious around the new and different, one became confident, comfortable and empowered.

Now that I am nearly30yearsitalian, I can safely say I’ve got insights. I’ve got those kinds of insights that come to those of us who straddle two continents, absorbing and adapting that with which we choose to identify from each to our everyday existence.

Quick examples: when my daughter was little, I refused to allow her to stay up until all hours and, instead, fed her her dinner at what would be considered afternoon in Italy. She was in bed by the Italian equivalent to dinnertime. Clearly, she was happier, more clear-minded and rested compared to her sometimes sluggish peers in school but her naps were much shorter than theirs!

I also insisted my daughter drink milk at the table when growing up, convinced that Americans knew better and that milk with the meal was a wholesome, integral, healthy part of child rearing. Why I neglected to acknowledge the difference between the female girth between women raised on US wholesome and those on the Mediterranean diet, I don’t know. While I have no tangible proof that ties dairy to the midsection of most American women, it seems to me that it’s certainly a likely culprit. I am not so ‘culturally competent’ as not to admit that in the case of milk-with-meals I may have done without that one aspect of my home “rearing”.

On the other hand (or side of the pond), I’ve never embraced the concept of “politically correct” from my old world (commonly known as the New World) and rather stick with the truth the way I see it in respectful (even if respectfully raised) tones. My passion flows with the Med and I am often trapped in a linguistic battle where I inevitably stack among those who interrupt incessantly, have to have the last word and cannot refrain from expressing their own opinion, whether warranted, savvy or not.

So, like an anthropologist without the pedigree, I float through painful episodes of regular citydom and observe. My greatest joy comes from staying one step ahead of an unpleasant situation, gauging and planning my moves as dictated by the index cards of data and observation stored in the overflowing, imaginary Rolodex in my mind. (My mind is in constant disarray but, like Rome and my daughter’s bedroom, it’s an ordered kind of chaos.)

Today was one of those times. A Mass Transportation strike had been announced on Friday slated for Monday, today. The strike was to hit (pun intended) at 8:30 am and run through 5:30 pm. Sometimes clemency is allowed for school children and workers to get home for lunch. Sometimes not. Sometimes strikes are planned and then cancelled. Sometimes they are not planned and strike unexpectedly. I am often heard saying to those whose ‘cultural competency’ is yet-to-be-developed and who, therefore, hyperventilate at the mere sound of the word “strike”: “no self-respecting strike doesn’t raise havoc”. I say it almost in reverence to the strike and the striking(I prefer to call them ‘striking’ rather than ‘strikers’). I say it purposefully off-the-cuff so that my comfort with the unexpected and unplanned might roll of my tongue and into their panicked, little hearts.

Today, the Monday of the strike, I had to: get my daughter to school by 8:30, get two visitors to Termini train station by 8:40, get back to work by 10:00 am. The number of kilometres to all of this was minimal. The number of metro stops, 5. The number of ordinarily-left-at-home cars on the road, tripled. So, we, too, took the car and dropped the first passenger off at school after about 6 minutes, a bit of weaving in and out of traffic and having left two of the five metro stops behind. We were early enough to find a parking space immediately in front of the UN’s FAO building and just above the entrance to the metro. Intuitively, I chose not to pay for said space, another quick check of the cultural cue Rolodex: strike day, massive traffic and crowds to control, timed conveniently between the cappuccino and brioche and the second coffee (espresso) with meandering colleagues, the parking police would not hit the pavement much before 11, long after I’d be back. So, by rapid deductive reasoning, this space was free (see more on “creative, free parking in Rome” on this blog soon)! Slipping down the stairs of the metro, just 10 minutes before the supposed strike was to hit, we bought our tickets and boarded the subway. Not surprisingly, given the announced strike, it was pleasantly empty for that time of the morning. No need to push, prod or hold your breath. At Termini, we alighted and headed towards the train tracks, arriving a full fifteen minutes before the train was meant to leave. From where I stand, that means with time for coffee; in the US visitor’s book, not so much. Task number two: check.

Believing that the strike had begun, I, like many others, waited in line outside for a taxi. I never even thought to slip downstairs to see if  it’d been revoked; my bad. But I was way ahead of schedule and it was a glorious day. People behind me, next to me, in front of me grumbled as they waited. They complained aloud and looked to each other (and me) for support. If no one joined into their collective whining, they called boyfriends and mothers at home or on their own way to work, to describe the casino indescrivibile outside of Termini (if the mess is ‘indescribable’, how do they describe it so well?). The fila interminabile (the never-ending line), in actual fact, flowed quite nicely for a morning of chaos. I’ve stood in that halting line on non-strike days for much longer. I, too, made my requisite call from line to a friend in Naples. While we chatted about mayoral candidates and the day’s elections, I effortlessly reached the head of the line, stepped off the sidewalk towards the next available taxi, gave the man the address and glanced behind me at the one or two (or three or more) people I’d slipped past entirely unawares as they exchanged knowing glances and hand gestures in my direction. It was clear to me what they were saying. Whoops, I’d slipped right by them, in my comfortable oblivion. I confessed my sins to my Neapolitan friend who accused me of being worst than the Romans themselves. Actually, no, I was simply oblivious; the Romans cut with cattiveria. Always an answer, always the last word.

The taxi driver was chatty and made the usual comments about the strikers (he doesn’t find them striking). “They always want something – too much work, no work, too little work” He suggested they just get on with it and go to work. I thought it best not to mention the several times the taxi drivers of Rome have united to virtually paralyze the city’s traffic and leave residents and visitors without service for large blocks of hours at a time. We took a few detours, darted through traffic and made it back to my car by passing through via di San Teodoro, one of my favourites, cobbling behind the Palatine.

I then hopped into my ticketless car, headed towards work only to find that the strike, in fact, had been revoked. So, there we were in majestic Viale di Piramide Cestia with three times the ordinary number of cars plus all the ordinary busses (empty or nearly) and the result was a cacophony of insults with accompanying gestures and the time to take amateur videos with my Blackberry out the window.  I knew it was just a question of getting around the Piramide itself, a convergence of roads which call to mind amusement park rides on a good day. Once that was done, I’d be home free. In fact, by just 10:00 am, I was back where I’d begun two hours prior. Hardly a victory in some books; a triumph in mine!

Aventine Like in Rome

Tags

aventine, ex-pats, italy, palatine, rome, Toiling in Rome

I cannot count the number of times I have taken visitors to Rome, including my students, to the top of the Aventine Hill to look out over the city from the Orange Tree Park (not the view photographed here but not too far from it, either).

It is always a successful visit; the visitor is left awed by the view, stunned by the millennia of history this very spot has seen.

At one such visit, a student looked ponderous. He raised  his hand. “Is this the Aventine like in Rome?”

I paused before answering.
Was it a trick question?
Am I missing something?
I have been out of the country for nearly 30 years, after all.
Then it dawned on me.
“Yes. One and the same”, I said. I then added, “actually, it’s the other way around. This one came first, then came the HBO version”.

Sprezzatura, large and small

Tags

ex-pat, italy, rome, sprezzatura, Toiling in Rome

I am often asked for books, films, music suggestions which I feel express a certain “Italianita'”. One such recommendation is Sprezzatura : 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World (D’Epiro, Pinkowish; New York, Anchor Books 2001). Sprezzatura refers to Italian ingenousness and the art of making such genious look effortless. A sort of “voila’, I give you the Ferrari.”or “voila’, here, have a road (the first roads were created by the Romans), an archway (likewise), a beatifully tailored brocad e gown, a state-of-the-art kitchen,a perfect cup of coffee”, need I go on? So why, then, should I be at all surprised at what you see pictured here. What seems like an everyday sheet of A4 paper is actually an act of modern sprezzatura. Not as impressive as the art-made-to seem-simple to which Baldassare Castiglione referred in the 16th century or to which D’Epiro and Pinkowish refer in their book but oh-so-Roman.

The other day I had some business banking to do and went to the national headquarters of Italy’s largest bank where we hold our business account. If you’ve never been to Italy, you don’t know that all jewelers and banks in Italy are protected by triple-glazed, automatic, bullet-proof, metal-detecting doors. One pushes a button to be admitted to the anti-chamber, the door shuts behind you and, unless you are packing metal, a second door opens in front of you, inviting you in to either deposit, withdraw or – in the case of the jeweler – spend your money.

At the bank, if you are packing metal (and that means wallets, keys, telephones, lipstick cases) many times a voice will come on as the streetside door re-opens, inviting you to go back and deposit your goods in a locker outside. Most often banks employ guards who have magic buttons to push, opening the second door for you and waving you ahead without having to leave your handbag outside. Our bank used to have one. I often wondered if they could tell the good from the bad instinctively and, therefore, waved the good ahead and stopped only the bad or if they were actually on a first-name basis with the bad. I figure now that we have no more guards outside our bank, maybe it was the latter.

So, now, having no one to wave me through, the voice inevitably tells me to turn back and depositare oggetti metallici in the lockers at the entrance. And I do.

I then have to pray I get a teller I know and not one of the new ones (my bank likes to ‘rotate’ tellers; just as you get used to them all and learn a few names, even, they’re off to a new branch and you’ve got a new batch to get to know. I can’t help thinking that the reasoning is similar to that behind getting rid of the guards.) If I do not get a teller I know, he’ll ask for id. I then have to say it’s in my purse in the locker outside and, after having waited my turn with no fewer than 5 people ahead of me, he’ll say I’ll take the next person in line while you go get it. And out and back in again through the automatic, triple-glazed, bullet-proof, metal-detecting doors I go.

The other day I went through all of this and sat waiting for my teller as he prepared 2,000.00 euro in cash in a variety of bills for me while inquiring as to why my id card said USA if I was born in Vermont which is in Canada. I’ve been here long enough to know not to engage.

Instead, I ask for an envelope since handbags are forbidden and I have nowhere to stash my cash. And, there, before my very eyes, Italian genious: his right arm reaches slightly over his shoulder grabbing a piece of plain, A4 paper from the printer. The left reaches for the stapler in the drawer next to the cash. He folds the paper in two and, just like we used to do in Vermont when making pretty holders for our Valentine’s Day cards, he staples up two sides of the piece of paper and hands it over to me, “voila’, an envelope for your cash”.