by Igiaba Scego
“You’re not dead, are you, little nigger?” said Beppe, nudging him.
Before those blows and insults there was a time when he had felt fulfilled by that motley world that praised him, those people who complimented him. It was Rome itself that had conquered him. When he’d been told he would be going to spend a few months in Italy, in the Eternal City, Zoppe thought it was a miracle. A Negro in Rome? Him?
Rome was his dream, he knew it even before seeing it. “We’ll give you some work. Mostly documents to translate.” He accepted that transfer like a prize, recognition for his sacrifice, his loyalty. The work was plentiful, but most of all, painful. Because those papers stank of betrayal. War was nigh and some were already rushing into the victors’ open arms. They could have said the same thing about him, even called him a collaborator. But he wasn’t betraying anyone. He would never take arms against a neighbor, a man with the same color skin. He translated, that’s all. He was a linguistic ambassador, a mediator, he didn’t hurt anyone. His work involved the present, the passing moment. And maybe he would end up with a nice chunk of change. He would return to his land and build a big house one day. There he would bring Asha, daughter of old Said the Sightless, there he would take her, there she would become his woman, there she would raise their heirs.
.
The vision was still there, comforting him.
Father and daughter ... The streets ... The trees ... The dome of St. Peter’s ... And the wisteria in bloom ... The women’s perfume ... Take-away sorbet ... The soldiers’ military step ... The rustle of colored skirts ... The cries of swaddled newborns ... Boots on cracked stones ... And another father ... And another daughter ... The touch of their hands ... Their smiles ...
Their hopes painted in the sky ...
Zoppe was comforted by those murky, shaky images. By those visions, softer than the wind.
His photographic memory surprised him.
He had recorded every detail, every nuance of the recent past. He remembered the girl in particular.
Her little flower-print dress, tan coat, red gloves, and that felt bucket hat.
What a pretty little head she had. An oval-shaped head that disappeared entirely in that tiny old hat.
She reminded him of his sister, Ayan.
Ayan had a pretty head too. But Ayan never had a cute hat like that. “If I come out of this alive,” he muttered, “I’ll get her one just like it.”
Fists had been replaced by feet. They kicked him good and hard. Zoppe clung to the vision so as not to give in to death.
They were shadows in front of him, but it was to them that he entrusted his soul. The girl smiled. Zoppe noticed tenderly that she was losing her baby teeth.
“If these goons ruin my nose, the little girl won’t recognize me.” The thought of his face changing terrified Zoppe.
“I hope your papa takes you away. As far away as possible. Yes ... as far away from here as possible.”
.
Zoppe remembered going for lunch at the man and his daughter’s house three months earlier.
It was a Wednesday and there was an unusual air of anticipation in the streets.
The smells from the countryside formed a heady mix with the acrid scents of the city.
Horsehair, wild rose, and hay merged with automobile combustion and motor scooter exhaust.
“Why don’t you come to our house for lunch?”the little girl asked him.
Zoppe, who was dressed in his usual khaki uniform, was taken aback by the odd invitation.
He was standing on the corner, ready to cross the street and rush toward his daily life, toward more words to translate. The little girl was standing on the same street corner.
And her giant father a few steps away, shielding her from wind and desperation. “Anyway my name’s Emanuela, with an E, mind you. I don’t like it when they call me Manuela with an M,” and then taking a breath, she added, “and this is my papa. His name’s Davide. Now shake hands. That’s good, like friends.”
And they shook hands. All three.
The little girl had a know-it-all tone. Almost annoying. She liked being bossy. You could tell that her parents spoiled her rotten, she was the darling of the house. She had no discipline.
But all the same there was something about her that delighted Zoppe. The Somali extended his right arm and opened his hand to greet Davide.
Zoppe noticed that he had a firm, powerful grip. A grip that put you at ease and gave you a sense of trustworthiness.
“So will you come?” the little girl implored.
He had been observing them from afar for a while. The father and his little girl. The little girl and her father.
Same keen eyes. Same furrowed brow. At a glance the girl seemed eight, maybe nine.
The same age as Ayan.
And she too had eyes that sparkled like emeralds in the sun. “So will you come?” the little girl asked. What could he say?
He had been in that strange land for months now and the girl with her big father were the only people who ever gave him a nod of greeting. The only ones in those nasty never-ending months. In that city that had been so stingy with him. And to think that he had imagined blonde girls at his beck and call and hordes of friends to play billiards with. But he had quickly discovered that a Negro in Rome had to keep vigilant. “If possible,” one of his supervisors had told him, “you should do everything you can to disappear.”
He had imagined Rome to be an open-air palace, but instead it was a pisspot for dogs and humans alike. And sometimes the latrine stench turned his stomach. But never as much as the sorrow of seeing how unliked he was. Sometimes others’ disgust provoked unexpected gobs of spit that he’d learned to dodge with great skill.
That’s why he was supposed to disappear, make himself invisible.
When he was out, he was always in a hurry. He wanted to be seen as an optical illusion, not a Negro.
Now he crossed Rome like a thunderbolt. No one noticed him anymore. He was too fast to catch.
He missed Magalo and the bovine slowness of that ocean city. There, he was important, at all hours of the day and night. No woman snubbed him or shunned him. He had all the women he wanted.
“My name’s Emanuela, what’s your name, mister?” the girl asked.
“My name is Mohamed Ali, but everyone calls me Zoppe.”
“Zoppe because you’re zoppo?” the girl asked.
“Yes, because of my limp. When I was little I caught a bad illness, but I was saved.”
“He was lucky,” Davide broke in.
“Lucky ... it’s true,” Zoppe replied.
“Papa and I have been seeing you around for a while, you know?” the girl said.
“Well, I’ve seen you too,” Zoppe wanted to tell them, but said nothing. He waited for the strange passing pair to continue.
“So will you come over? Huh? Will you come?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t prepared to have lunch out,” Zoppe replied, embarrassed.
“You don’t have to be prepared, mister.”
“Don’t be rude, Emanuela,” her father admonished.
“Don’t worry,” Zoppe cut in. “She’s young. I spoke that way when I was little too. That’s the nice thing about that age, don’t you think?”
“When you were little were you brown like you are now?” she asked. The father went pale and reddened.
“Emanuela, don’t make the gentleman uncomfortable.”
“It’s fine, really,” replied Zoppe, amused. “I can answer your daughter. Yes, brown when I was little too. The same way you’re pink, I was brown and I still am, as you see.”
“Are there ferocious lions in your town? I saw them in books at school.”
“Yes, and zebras too,” Zoppe replied.
“And rhinoceroses? Have you seen rhinoceroses?”
“Yes, and more, there are antelopes, hyenas, giraffes, and one day I even saw a herd of wildebeests ready to chase a dream.”
“What’s a
wildebeest? That’s not in my book. What is it like?”
“It’s like a big cow with a hump and lots of hair.”
“Do you eat it?”
“I’ve never tried it.”
The little girl looked at him in awe. Her father’s eyes were filled with curiosity too. “This is the first time that a brown man is coming to eat with us. And you’re lucky, today Mama made a big pot of artichokes and a cherry tart.”
“Sounds good. But I don’t have anything to bring you. Let me at least pick up some cookies.”
“You’re our guest today,” said Davide. “Today you’re sacred to us. Tomorrow you can get cookies if you like.”
Zoppe smiled. He was no longer used to kindness.
“Well I’m curious too,” he added. “I’ve never been in a Catholic home. Do you have a crucifix?”
The girl looked at her father.
Zoppe sensed that something in the cheerful atmosphere from before had broken. “We’re different,” the father murmured.
“The kids at school call me ‘killer.’ They say I killed God and my family goes around stealing children. Yesterday, Graziella, the fat one who still doesn’t even know the alphabet, pulled my hair and called me ‘pork-hater.’ I started crying ’cause she pulled it so hard.”
Zoppe didn’t understand, confused by the rush of words. “Emanuela,” the father broke in, “is trying to say that we’re Jewish. Is that a problem for you?”
4
ADUA
My father has never seen my movie. If he has he never told me.
Haji Mohamed Ali, aka Zoppe, my father.
It’s funny to feel the sound of that word in my mouth. When he was alive, I didn’t call him Papa much. He was just Haji Mohamed. Haji because, like every believer worthy of the title, he too had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
And anyway the truth, my little elephant, is that we never got along.
We both had strong personalities, we were prima donnas, battered by life. Neither made room for the other and sparks were inevitable.
Although by the end our relationship had become almost decent, in the beginning it was out-and-out war between us.
To me, my father was “the one who brought me into the world” or “the man who impregnated my mother” or “the person who tore me away from real life.”
Never Papa.
But since I’ve been bombarding myself with questions, elephant, I’ve reclaimed this word. It has a bittersweet taste, the word “father.” Its spines poke the tip of my tongue. But my palate is somehow soothed by it.
The word makes me uncomfortable. It’s as if I have no support. As if it delegated my happiness to someone else. The word father terrifies me. But it’s the only one that can help me breathe anymore.
I’m pretty rusty at saying it. I’m not used to its vibrations. I’m not used to all its deep curves. And what if using it too much pushes me into a hole, with no way out? Who will save me from myself then?
You, elephant, or what? Father ...
Aabe ...
I say it again. I’ve gotten a taste for it. Father ...
Aabe ...
I’m old, flabby. Maybe I can allow myself this difficult truth with you.
My husband, the boy I married, I never talk to him. I don’t even know why we got married.
He was a Titanic, someone who’d risked drowning at sea to come here, a boater who landed at Lampedusa, a bum. He needed a house, a teat, a bowl of soup, a pillow, some money, hope, any semblance of relief. He needed a mama, a hooyo, a whore, a woman, a sharmutta, me. And even if I’m all wrinkled, I was able to give him what he was looking for. I didn’t want a nice young man like him out starving on Via Giolitti.
I got him to toss that bottle of cheap gin that he bought from the Bengali and that kept him warm on cold Roman nights. I got him to toss it and took him in, here on Via Alberto da Giussano, in Pigneto.
There were not many guests at our wedding. I called a few friends, we ate sanbuusi.
Someone gave me a shaash, like a regular virgin bride. They perfumed me, massaged me, hennaed my hands.
I wore an old costume that had belonged to the famous actress with the gray eyes. I snatched it at Cinecittà during that fateful 1977. The cast was just steps away from my set, from my movie. I’m not a thief, but that dress felt like it was mine. It was a three-piece dress: bodice, capelet, petticoat. One of those old outfits that could have come out of the closet of a Jane Austen character. The ochre linen gave me a certain solemn air, which was promptly broken by the pearly violet flowers dotting the dress. But it was the taffeta petticoat that really gave me substance. That taffeta hidden from the world made me feel precious. I was a cloud. Frothy and free like the foam on a Guinness.
The women sang ritual songs for the new union. I laughed. It was nice to hear them. No one had ever sung for me. No one had ever celebrated me. It was a joy, a great joy.
And so I laughed, happy for all the tradition finally washing over me.
The wedding made no scandal among the Somalis of Rome. “You did the right thing, sister,” several of the women told me. “You chose your little lamb well,” they remarked, winking.
After all, I’m not the only one to do it, I wasn’t the first.
There are lots of us now who have gotten a second youth with these fresh arrivals. No one sees anything wrong with it. It’s a perfect trade. They get a roof and we get a little attention. They kiss us and we sew their holey socks.
One day they’ll go away, toward love, other lands. But for now, they’re curled up at our feet, ready to satisfy our longings.
Every night my little man falls asleep on my droopy chest like a baby hungry for milk. I rub his head and nestle my hand in his hair. It makes him forget the cruel waves of the Mediterranean that nearly swallowed him up. It makes him forget the tranquilizers they put in the bland soup at the immigrant welcome center. It makes him forget the girl he used to love, who was raped and murdered by Libyans in the desert.
He dozes off on my grandmotherly breast and gets an erection. So many times I’ve asked myself: “Don’t I disgust him?” But he says: “You’re so beautiful. No woman is as beautiful as you.”
Only when he gets mad does he call me Old Lira. That’s what young Titanics call women from the diaspora. They are as cruel to us as we are to them. It’s not fair to call someone who risked their life at sea the name of a shipwreck. One time my husband even said to me: “I know that Titanic is a movie where everybody dies. But remember that I’m not dead.” Old Lira, in comparison, is harmless. And maybe it’s even true. When many of us came to this strange peninsula it wasn’t the euro that captured our dreams, it was still the lira, the beautiful lira that intoxicated with promises of wealth. Too bad he won’t listen to me, my husband. He doesn’t want to know anything about the past. He’s not interested. It bores him. He wants to drink the future. Luckily I have you now, elephant, and I can vent.
At first, all these memories scared me. I was afraid your big ears would rip the soul from my chest.
But now I feel calm. I can tell that we’ll last, you and I.
You and your big ears are the only ones left to listen to my voice. The world has long forgotten me.
It’s only you, little elephant, who remembers me, Adua, beautiful Adua. Only you.
5
TALKING-TO
Is that how you greet a relative, Adua? With that look on your face? Smile. What else have you got teeth for? Smile. Open that big mouth of yours. And do it quick if you don’t want me to get mad.
6
ZOPPE
Zoppe knew that the best escape route was through his head.
That was the place where he found all the lost scents of his childhood. There, caano geel, shaah cadees, beer iyo muufo.
Candied ginger. Marvelous cinnamon. His Wonderland Somalia.
Zoppe thought about all this crouched down on the cold floor of his cell in Regina Coeli. His head between his knees and his thigh an
xious against a battered chest. Vertigo and stabbing pain coursed through his tired veins. And his aching limbs felt defeated. He suspected he had two broken ribs. It was hard for him to breathe and even to bend over.
“Those bastards really mangled me.”
And as if that weren’t enough, they had tossed him unceremoniously in solitary. “This way you’ll learn what happens when you mess with us.”
Beppe gave him a pat on the head before handing him over to the prison. He touched him like a mother her young. Then he had him sip a yellow liquid.
“Drink, nigger, drink.”
Zoppe gulped with difficulty. He made a horrified grimace and felt something burning inside. Was he dying?
Beppe patted him again. “Drink up, you’ll feel better.”
And Zoppe drank and died once, twice, three times. Then with the fourth sip, the warmth began to reach his spent cheeks.
“My aunt’s walnut liqueur can revive even the dead. You’ll feel better soon, you’ll see,” the soldier said, smiling.
In that miserable cell where they’d stuck him there was a cot and a bowl of slop. Limp potatoes floated alongside prickly worms. Zoppe was young, he was famished, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat.
“I don’t want to shit myself to death in this stinking cell.” The room was square, gray, repugnant. Words inscribed with bloody fingernails covered the walls with pain. Zoppe started reading to try to figure out what lay ahead in his increasingly uncertain future.