The fight broke out without much build up. Pressed against the sliding door of the metro cabin I could see nothing except the shoulders and necks craning to have a better look. Dani who is a head taller than me gave a running commentary. The loud boisterous group of young men had already shooed us off as we tried to board their side of the overcrowded compartment. There was a some small issue, which Dani thinks, concerning a girl in one of the groups and then people started beating up each other in earnest. In the moving compartment I swayed precariously and kept banging my head against the door as the momentum of the fight built up. The crowd was not impassive, rather they were active participants who were doing everything else than put an end to the fight.
Now the train stopped at some station and I gratefully took a breath of fresh air. The portly official in blue uniform peeped in and seemed to have decided that it is better to let them fight it out. Meanwhile, a young handsome man in a purple t -shirt, who occupied the centre stage ran out of the performance jumping over our heads on to the platform. For a moment it seemed he had had enough. Then he jumped back in with the same momentum from the other side to occupy a better vantage point for attack.
It was almost 20 minutes before the train left the gladiators behind and moved on. Back in the compartment the Napolitans had resumed their loud conversations which had nothing much to do with the fight. I watched amused as the group of north European tourists whom I had met the day before at the Naples central station huddle together, their faces pale with fear and amazement at what they seem to have perceived as something close to the total disintegration of the world order.
If you travel southwards in Italy there is a perceptible change of mood as you leave Rome behind. As you approach Naples, slightly dilapidated, crowded flats begin to appear. The multicolour washing hung on slack ropes across their brown walls, seem
to flutter as you look across them through the heat haze rising from tarred dusty streets. Napoli breaths life from its narrow winding streets like a huge tentacled animal.Rowdy boys on bicycles shout hoarsely at each other as they meander through the crowds hardly caring to break.Tiny shops line the street in a haphazard queue almost fighting for space.Over the clutter of bright yellow bottles of limoncello and coloured strands of cold pasta the shop owners call out to you to step inside for a look.
The rough edges of Napoli somewhat smooths out in Sicily. In her cities the tones of brown are lighter and the the streets wider.Often, when you ask for directions on those streets,your enthusiastic guide decides to accompany you all the way .The sun though burns over Sicily with a harshness I had never encountered before. After a short day time stroll through Palermo I was so beaten down that I dared not to step out of my hotel room for the rest of the day. But as the night falls the temperature drops and the streets come alive. The customers at the way side restaurants and bars draw out their chairs to the wide side walks and talk loudly among themselves as children with faces of angels weave in and out of the crowd hoping to sell the single red roses in their hands.
The Sicilians mock our stereotypes by selling little porcelain figurines of portly men and women holding pistols proclaiming "I am mafia"to tourists.
Sterotypes on Sicily are abound. People talk in half amused tones of the severe matriarchs of the Sicilian families and their obedient servile sons.The infamous Sicilian machismo is rarely encountered by the passing tourist except as extreme and irritating expressions of chivalry. Old men leave their seats for you in crowded buses and refuse to yield to their arthritis until the damsel in distress is comfortable seated. They also say that the Sicilian men are the best love makers and charmers. Whether or not they live up to their reputation, men of Sicily flirt without scruples.And they do it with style like the young waiter who offered himself as dessert at the end of a sumptuous diner, mischief lighting up his brown eyes.
In Sicily you slip in and out of colours. From the dusty brown of Palermo and Catania, to the yellow rolling grasslands of the countryside. From the pearly white beaches that lace the turquoise sea at Cefalu to the engulfing blackness of the lava heaps at Etna. Sicily does not cater to your expectations. It does not entertain you with live shows of screeching cars and mafia shoot outs. But it is the unexpected that Sicily has to offer- a tapestry of ill assorted shades held together with a liveliness that is palpable.
No comments:
Post a Comment