Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (9 page)

T
hursday March 27, 10:39
P.M.
This morning I met the owner of the Bar Dandini. His name is Sandro, and he’s around fifty. He told me that Rome is human memory, the city that teaches us every morning that life is eternal spring and death a passing cloud. Rome has defeated death, and that’s why it’s called the eternal city. Something to remember: when Sandro asked me my name I answered, “Ahmed.” But he pronounced it without the letter “h,” because “h” isn’t used much in Italian, and in the end he called me Amede’, which is an Italian name and can be shortened to Amed.

Friday January 27, 11:42
P.M.

I’ve become a fundamentalist believer in the trio cappuccino,
cornetto
, and
Corriere della Sera
! I really love
cornetti
. Sandro’s bar is my first stop on the way to work. My relationship to cappuccino is like a car’s to gas: I have to fill up to keep running strong all day. Tonight I read an article in
L’espresso
by a psychologist who advises people to change their name every so often, because it creates an equilibrium among the various personalities that live in conflict within each of us. He said that changing our name helps us to a happier life, because it lightens the burden of memory. So I should be safe from schizophrenia—the name Amedeo won’t hurt me. But is there a silent conflict between Amedeo and Ahmed? I’ll look for the answer in wailing: Auuuuuu . . .

Saturday February 25, 11:08
P.M.

Sandro likes to imitate television quiz-show hosts. Often I’m one of the contestants. The questions focus on Roman street names and Roman history. I didn’t realize that I possessed all this information about Rome. The credit goes to my feet. I love walking, I hate the metro, buses, cars, and elevators, I can’t bear the crowds. I love to walk, to enjoy the beauty of Rome in utter calm; hurry is a lover’s enemy. I’m patient. I dream of drinking from every fountain in Rome, of discovering the most hidden corners of the city.

Sunday May 7, 11:37
P.M.

Today I went with Sandro to the Olympic Stadium to see a match between Roma and Parma. I’m not happy, in spite of Roma’s victory, 2–0, because I didn’t see even one penalty kick. How lovely it is to see a player facing the goalie, one man against another, a decisive challenge from which one emerges conqueror or conquered, alive or dead! The penalty is the gladiator’s death blow, and the Olympic Stadium is like the Coliseum, where seventy thousand spectators gathered centuries ago.

Sunday June 4, 10:59
P.M.

Sandro told me that Naples fans can’t stand the Olympic Stadium because of the banners of the Roma fans, which display a special welcome. For example, last year during the Roma-Naples game there was a banner that said “Welcome, Naples fans, welcome to Italy!” Romans don’t much trust Neapolitans, like the concierge Benedetta.

Wednesday July 7, 10:42
P.M.

This morning, while I was sitting drinking my cappuccino, an Italian woman asked Sandro where Via di Ripetta was and he turned to me for help like a man who’s been shipwrecked. I told the woman that the metro was the best way to get there, that she should get out at the Flaminia station, near Piazza del Popolo, and that Via di Ripetta was just a few steps away. At that point I remembered something Riccardo the taxidriver said to me: “Amedeo, you were suckled by the wolf!” By now I know Rome as if I had been born here and never left. I have the right to wonder: am I a bastard like the twins Romulus and Remus or an adopted son? The basic question is: how to be suckled by the wolf without being bitten. Now, at least, I ought to perfect the wail, like a real wolf: Auuuuuuuuuuu . . .

Saturday October 22, 11:44
P.M.

This morning Sandro talked to me about the problem of the declining birth rate in Italy. According to him it’s the government’s fault, because it offers no incentives to young couples. Then he went on at length about the phenomenon of “little monsters”; that is, children who kill parents, brothers, sisters, and other kids their age. At the end he said, “Having children is a ruinous decision. It’s like having stocks, when they lose their value you won’t find a buyer. No one listens to the Pope and the President of the Republic, when they exhort Italians to have children, and that’s because the cost is high, the risks immense, and the benefits few.”

W
ho is the real Amedeo? I must say, that’s a strange question. There isn’t a real Amedeo and a fake Amedeo. There is only one Amedeo: that magnificent man who loved me and whom I loved. One day I read a very short definition of love: love is sacrifice. Amedeo sacrificed everything for me. He gave up his country, his language, his culture, his name, and his memory. He did everything possible to make me happy. He learned Italian for me, he loved Italian cooking for me, he called himself Amedeo for me, in other words he became an Italian to be close to me. Believe me, there is no comparison between our story and Erich Segal’s
Love Story
!

I’ve worked in a travel agency in Piazza della Repubblica for ten years. I love everything that has to do with travel. As a child I traveled a lot with my parents and my brother Roberto, but the most absolutely wonderful trip was one we took to the Sahara. I was seduced by the Tuareg, I clung to them like a baby to its mother’s breast. When it was time to leave I began to cry, refusing to go back to Rome. I wanted to stay there forever, like Isabelle Eberhardt. My job at the agency doesn’t prevent me from working a few hours a week as a volunteer teaching Italian to immigrants.

Of course, I remember very well. I saw him sitting in the first row and looking at me with interest, and he followed the lesson with fierce concentration. I don’t know why he reminded me of the Sahara. He was fantastic, he answered every question with amazing quickness.

“When did you come to Italy?”

“Three months ago.”

“Did you study Italian in your country?”

“No.”

In all my years of teaching I’ve never met a student like him. Then something very important happened: just a week after we first met I dreamed that I was in a tent, in the arms of a man with his face all bandaged, except for his eyes. I looked up and said to him, “Valentino, my love!” He answered, “I’m not Valentino!” I took off the bandage and saw the face of Amedeo. Then he began to kiss me, slowly, and I felt an intense heat, as if my body were lying on the hot sand at midday. How happy I was! I hoped that dream would last forever. The next day, when I saw Amedeo I thanked him for the kisses of the night before, then I told him the dream in every detail, and he said to me, “It’s lovely when a dream comes true entirely, or even only in part.” At which I ventured, “Shall we go to the Sahara, retire to a beautiful tent, and make the other parts of the dream come true?” And he answered, “I would like to have the dream in stages, not all at once. For example, it would be enough for me to kiss you now to convince myself that I’ve set foot in the dream.” He took my hand, then he embraced me with a surpassing sweetness. After a few days my bedroom became a beautiful tent. The dream was transformed into reality.

I asked Amedeo insistently to come and live with me in my apartment in Piazza Vittorio, and he hesitated a while before agreeing. I’ve thought many times of moving, of leaving that building. I can’t bear Benedetta, she’s a gossip, a big mouth, and above all she’s hated me since I was a child and she would blame me for everything that went wrong in the building. She said I rang the doorbells to annoy the tenants, and left the elevator door open. As if I were the only child in all of Piazza Vittorio! I don’t like Professor Antonio Marini, because he’s like a traffic cop who does nothing but give orders and hand out fines right and left. I don’t like my neighbor Elisabetta Fabiani: that stupid woman had no qualms about giving the name of the mythical Valentino to her dog, who won’t stop howling, like a wolf on the plains. Once she accused me of being a racist. All you have to do is defend your rights and they stick the label of racist on you! I don’t know why she hasn’t yet blamed me for the disappearance of her dog.

I know that Amedeo speaks Italian better than many Italians. It’s his own doing, his will and his curiosity. I have nothing to do with this miracle, although it’s usually attributed to me. Amedeo is self-taught, all you have to know is that he called the Zingarelli dictionary his baby bottle. He was really like a baby attached to its mother’s breast. He would read aloud to improve his accent and didn’t mind when I corrected his pronunciation. He wasn’t bored by consulting the dictionary to understand difficult words. Italian was his daily bread.

Three months after our first meeting we decided to get married. Why wait? We loved each other. Before our marriage Amedeo begged me not to ask him anything about his past. I still remember his words: “My love, my memory is like a broken elevator. Or rather, the past is like a sleeping volcano. Let’s try not to wake it, so we can avoid eruptions.” I said to him, “Amedeo, my love, I don’t want the past. I want your present and our future.” Only now am I opening my eyes to this truth: I don’t know who Amedeo is. Who was he before he came to Rome? Why did he abandon his native country? Why did he choose Rome? What does his past hide? What secret do the nightmares that haunt him conceal? A mystery that envelops his previous life—maybe that’s the secret of my passion for him. One of the most beautiful stages of love is meeting, when one dives into the sea of love without bothering about details or asking dull questions.

I confess that our relationship hasn’t gone beyond courtship—there’s nothing boring or routine about it. “Passion is a box full of surprises”: that’s the beginning of a good song. Some lovers are limited by the temptation to want to know everything about one another. This is the cause of the boredom that can kill passion in an instant. The true lover doesn’t reveal himself entirely. You know why the Tuareg inspire admiration and amazement? Because they don’t uncover their faces. Mystery is the secret of the gods. The fantastic is mysterious by nature. I feel sorry for women who say, “I know my husband perfectly,” or “I’m jealous of my boyfriend, I don’t take my eyes off him for a second!” I often wonder: what does love have to do with control and police surveillance? I can’t bear details, because they keep us from dreaming and fantasizing.

Amedeo doesn’t like the past. Often he says to me that the past resembles quicksand: there’s no escape. Amedeo is as mysterious as the Sahara, and it’s difficult to grasp the secrets of the Sahara. Once I heard an old woman in Mali utter words that I’ve treasured like rare pearls: “Never trust a guide to the Sahara. He is like Satan, cursed forever, because the Sahara doesn’t like arrogance. Those who claim to know it must expect the inevitable punishment, death from thirst. Modesty is the only language the Sahara understands.” A few years ago I met an Icelandic tourist who told me something extraordinary: that fishermen in the region where he lives don’t know how to swim, because the safety of a shipwrecked man depends not on knowing how to swim but on obedience, submission, total resignation to the sea. There is no difference between the sea and the Sahara.

I’m not ashamed of not knowing Amedeo well in spite of the years we’ve spent together. It’s an open-ended journey full of stupendous surprises and fantastic discoveries. I’ve worked for a long time with tourists from all over the world, and in my opinion the problem of tourists lies in their excessive desire to discover everything, and know it, in a few days. I often advise travelers to be patient, not to be in a hurry. The best journey doesn’t end, because it preserves within itself the promise of a new beginning for the next one. It’s like the stories of Scheherazade, which never end, but are always beginning. The beautiful Scheherazade manages to save herself from the revenge of the sultan Shahryar, who has been betrayed by his wife, through the stories of the
Thousand and One Nights
. At the rooster’s crow she leaves the story unfinished, to take it up again the following night. That’s how she saved herself and the other women from death.

Amedeo has suffered from stomach aches for as long as I’ve known him. Before going to bed he shuts himself in the bathroom. He’s had lots of tests, but without conclusive results. All the doctors who’ve seen him say his stomach is healthy. He’s in the habit of staying shut in the little bathroom for a long time every night, he takes a tape recorder so he can listen to music, to relax his nerves and settle his insides, he says. I read in a scientific magazine that the Arab doctor Avicenna cured his patients with music. Every so often Amedeo has nightmares. I’ve never asked him about them, because “the nightmare is the window through which the past enters like a thief,” as a French writer says.

I’ve often heard him utter incomprehensible words. Once he woke up frightened, repeating, “Bagia! Bagia!” He was sweating as if he had escaped from Hell. The next day I couldn’t contain my curiosity and I asked him the meaning of the word Bagia. He didn’t answer but looked at me reproachfully, perhaps to remind me of the agreement we made before our marriage: the past is like a volcano, be careful not to rouse it! The word Bagia has gotten stuck in my memory, though, and I’ve tried to find out what it means. I’ve asked some Arab clients who come to the agency, but I haven’t unraveled the mystery.

No. I say that there is no connection between the death of Lorenzo and the disappearance of Amedeo. I’m sure that Amedeo is innocent. There is not a single motive that might have led him to commit such a terrible act. The Gladiator was not liked by the building’s residents, everyone knows that. He was mean to everyone without ever apologizing. It’s not right to accuse Amedeo like this. Ask the people of Piazza Vittorio about Amedeo and you’ll see how much he was loved by everyone. He didn’t hesitate to help those who needed it, without expecting any reward.

For example, Amedeo managed to persuade the Bangladeshis to send their wives to school. He successfully completed a difficult mission. For these women the school provides an occasion to meet each other, to talk, to get out of their houses. It’s a real motivation for leaving their prison. Many of them—far from home, in a strange culture—suffer tremendously from solitude, yet they stay in Italy because a ticket home is expensive, and they can’t afford it. Many Bangladeshis return to their country every five years or even less frequently. Talking is useful for letting out their sadness, anguish, homesickness, for lamenting the absence of loved ones. The men are extremely closed off, they live as if they were in Dhaka, they eat rice and wear Bangladeshi clothes and watch videos. I often wonder: do they really live in Rome?

I don’t know where Amedeo is now, I’m afraid something has happened to him. I still look for him everywhere—I hope he’s all right. There are so many questions surrounding his disappearance, because of this terrible accusation of murder. But I am an optimist, and I’m sure he’s innocent. I will defend him to the very end, without giving up!