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I would love to know who spread the word that garlic bread is an Italian dish. The menus of the Italian restaurants abroad often include it in the starters page, hidden among bruschettas, salads and ham, disguised as a local, like a cuckoo egg.
Complimentary bread is never available and this impostor, its closest replacement, can only be ordered as an à la carte course.
But rumors don't know what borders are and urban legends can grow everywhere. Try, for instance, to tell the Chinese, that their most popular dessert in Italy is fried ice cream!
(Picture by OMGsplosion, wikipedia.org)
(Summer 2007)
At one o'clock we break for lunch and I take my students to the Petronas Towers. We sit alfresco at a nice cafe, where a spray of fine drops can cool our skin. When we're studying the menus somebody asks about her. There is an Arab woman a few meters away. Under the headscarf we can glimpse her face.
When we were choosing a place to sit, she swiftly moved to a separate table, which she shares with a column that shuts her away. I mask my embarrassment behind a menu. I pretend it's nothing and I don't do anything. I'm fairly confident: it's better this way.
All around me it's a waiving of hands. The anxious fingers of a Chinese student are inviting the woman to sit with us. She replies with a nod and an outstretched palm, as if she was begging us to forget that she exists. The big hands of a Croat are squeezing the chair, while his head keeps turning from side to side. He looks at his self-marginalized classmate and silently wonders what we can do. After a few seconds you can tell from his face that the obvious answer is a disappointing one. The fingers of the Saudi men are scanning the menu. They are calm and unconcerned: this is normal for them.
Patong doesn't have the reputation of an atoll, but sometimes at 5 it has a burst of pride. A quiver runs over the profile of the beach. After having put up with the heat for a day, fended off touts and standed the kids, the majority of the beach-goers pack up and leave.
Young Thai men, with dark skin and tattoos, close the umbrellas and pile up the lounge chairs. There are people who like to go for a swim, those who moor their boats to a tree and others with earphones who jog on the shore. The gay colleagues of the Bangla Road hookers start to play volleyball with their yesterday's clients.
At last everyone has some space for himself. I open my book and lie down on the sand. Some minutes later I finish a chapter, I bookmark the page and look at the gulf. The sun is setting as if it was solid and falls like an egg yolk on the foamy clouds. Steel and flames are slicing the sky, moving in parallel with the faded horizon. After the retreat of the high-season horde, the sand and the plants have reappeared in the picture. A golden cloud has shrouded us: the magic of the tropics, their atmosphere is back.
(Spring 2008)
I'm the only customer at a restaurant on the beach, when a middle-aged foreigner slowly walks in. His outfit and appearance are dignified. It reminds me of Mr Higgins, the friend of Magnum, the private investigator of a television series.
He sits at a table that hasn't been cleared. He scoops with a used spoon the leftovers of an omelet and let them fall on a half portion of rice. He shoves with a fork the food into the spoon and with a surprising ease he puts it in his mouth. His posture is impeccable: his back is straight, the shoulders kept wide and the forearms are resting on the edge of the table. He chews every mouthful for about thirty times and swallows it with a gentle stretch of his neck.
He lets go a long sigh and looks at the hills, then turns to the pier and starts to think. He remembers of Scotland, when he was young, of the massive castle on the shore of the lake. Everything had belonged to his great-great-grandfather, an Earl by the name of Sir William Francis Higgins, whose portrait still hangs from a wall of the hall.
There isn't pitching or even rolling. The ferry glides from the island to the mainland, slicing the sultriness of the Siamese gulf.
The engine roars and the boat slows down, I un-stick my back from the velvet seat. The Japanese fan blows a cone of coolness where I take refuge from the oven-like air. Not even the breeze that is tickling the deck can weaken the grasp of this unnerving heat. The pilot steers the boat towards the pier with a sequence of slow parallel half moons.
A pillar is wrapped up in a pile of tires: the rubber is crushed and torn to shreds. I watch the complicated approaching maneuver next to the other passengers leaning on the rail. The rusty hull rests against the dock, stretching the fibers of a broken tire. Bits of dry rubber fall from the pile and are silently swallowed by the tiny waves.
Pivoting on the pillar the ferry rotates until it lines up with the wooden structure. The ramp comes down and a line of cars starts to pour out of the ferry's hold. Across the slip there's a strip of jute that puffs a small cloud every time it's pressed. Everything reflects the gray of the sky.
I stagger on the gangway with the sack on my shoulder, I cross the bridge that squeaks and sways, then I walk down the path that connects with the square.
Step by step, without taking flights, crawling up the southern strip of Thailand. Samui-Surat, Surat-Hua Hin, then the last van ride that will take me to Bangkok, zig-zagging through heat, palm trees and shacks, with water and dust flowing under my soles.
Traveling is boredom, chapters and thoughts, traveling is an IV of deep fresh lifeblood.
Photo Koh Samui, by Fabio Pulito
(Spring 2008)
The great globe-guy: that's who he is! I had been sniffing him for a while: his pungent stink wrestling with the spices in the bustling bazaar of the KL streets.
He's a walking knife that parts the crowd like a mountain rock splits the course of a stream. The globe is a shield that surrounds his body and it's perceived with the nose, not with the eyes.
He draws near your table with the face of a madman who pretends he's an idiot to go unnoticed, then he stretches his arm but hesitates, as if he was about to touch an alien. When you look up from the book that you were reading, you realize that you've been holding your breath for a while, then you ignore this guy as you've ignored the rest.
While you're searching for the paragraph you keep glancing at the beggar who drags his feet along the sidewalk. You wonder if that mad or idiotic expression is stuck to his face in a permanent way, or if he can shed it whenever he wants, as slowly as he takes back his begging hand. You're watching the scene as if you were hypnotized while your finger points at random on the page: with a rusty-robot movement he twists his neck, then kneels like an old man and picks up something.
You fend off the whiff puffing up your cheeks and wonder what he can possibly be holding in his hand. You look at him while he's staring at the object: if you didn't know that the hallucinated look is the natural expression that thrives on his face, you would think that he'd be studying some monster's claw. He lowers his hand and gives you an amazed look, but you already know that he can't even see you.
Then he starts to walk, with his typical calm, he finds a bin and throws the trash away. You jump on the chair and your body gets tensed, you search your pockets and you give him a tip.
The globe-guy stinks and doesn't take showers, but the cleanliness of his town matters a lot to him.
Photo Kuala Lumpur, by Fabio Pulito
(From my 2005 diary)
We are exploring the maze of a Shanghai marketplace when suddenly our eyes fall on a butcher-stall.
In the last few weeks we've moved quite a lot and enjoyed any kind of Chinese food, but the sight of a raw ham on display at this stall brings the minds of everyone home. Chuchi is chewing a slice of Serrano, while bits of Parma melt in my mouth.
We ask with gestures the price of a piece. The butcher says forty and I hand him a hundred. He cuts the chunk and wraps it up, gives us the bag and turns away.
We ask for the balance but he won't listen to us. With a swift movement Chuchi grabs the whole piece of ham, trying to trade our money for that hostage of fat. The man seizes a knife and aims it at us. We are in this stalemate when some people stop by. When they want to know what is going on, the butcher answers in Shanghainese. The man can tell them everything he wants, and we won't be able to defend ourselves.
I remember an old joke that might also work here. I move my fingers against my face, then quickly pull them away from it, miming in this way a Pinocchio nose. The spectators laugh and address the man, who tries to tell them that he didn't lie.
When they understand that we don't like this deal, they start to yell: “Bu yao! Bu Yao!”. The butcher can only take back his ham and with a livid face he returns our note.
We greet everybody and walk away. This time Pinocchio has been a good boy.
Photo Shanghai, by Fabio Pulito
Complimentary bread is never available and this impostor, its closest replacement, can only be ordered as an à la carte course.
