Читать книгу Roman Daze - Brontè Dee Jackson - Страница 5

Twenty years ago I had a normal life. Then I bought a raffle ticket. Who knew two bucks was going to change my life forever?

Everything was on track. I had graduated university, travelled a bit locally, gotten married, was contemplating children and a mortgage, had a professional career, all before I turned thirty. But within three months I had lost it all and instead had a free airline ticket to Europe (via the raffle ticket) and a huge redundancy package (via having lost my job). No husband, no job, lots of money and an airline ticket. And still I hesitated. Then my landlord gave me notice.

I was in my late twenties, not the time you give up your life to go travelling. It was the time to buckle down, get even more serious about your career, do a post-graduate master’s degree, buy a house, or quickly find a man and start procreating. All of these things I had expected of myself and desperately wanted to want enough, so that one day they might seem like the rewards I had always thought they would be. Even though I couldn’t seem to make my life work, I didn’t have the will left to figure out a different one.

I spent the first six months of that long ago trip consoling myself on the beach in Greece and Turkey over the life I had lost, and then admitting to myself the profound relief I felt in no longer having to have it. During that time I had no itinerary or even a vague idea of where to travel. I decided to stay a month in Rome, unheard of in backpacker terms. Staying for a month in one city is a lifetime. When I eventually found myself there it took only three days to fall in love with it, deeply and profoundly, like I had found a soulmate.

My passion for wanting to stay in Rome meant that I accepted any job I could get. Knowing that I had no grounds to apply for legal residence, it was therefore hopeless to think about having any kind of career job. At first I was the manager of an illegal pensione. Then I was a model for an art class, a job in constant demand. And I lied to get work, which at one point resulted in me staring at around 250 people across the counter of a bar at the opening night of the ‘first Australian bar in Rome’, along with Phil, the other Australian who had also illegally stayed and needed to lie about his experience, both of us expected to pull beers rapidly for all of them, neither of us ever having actually done it before. Luckily, Italians are not big connoisseurs of beer and didn’t seem to notice the lack of foam, or the presence of too much, in their glasses. But even the most lowly jobs are not legally open to non-European citizens for more than a few months and I took the only option open to me. I advertised myself as an English language teacher.

A professor from a university contacted me and offered me two jobs: one where I would teach a subject in English that I knew something about to university students, the other one was where I would accompany him all around Europe on free tours, staying in the most luxurious hotels, meeting dignitaries (as this Professor was the only one in his field in Europe) and not actually doing much teaching. This role required me to be his ‘girlfriend’.

But teaching didn’t pay nearly enough to keep me in the habit I wanted to become accustomed to, and after two years I started to look around. I noticed that down the street from me was an office where a lot of people who spoke English seemed to exit every evening. Speaking fluent Italian was a prerequisite for any job in the Italian market, as was the kind of VISA I could not qualify for, so I needed to look at places where English speakers were sought after and where I could work using English as my primary language. One day I walked in with my CV and asked to speak to the HR Manager.

There was no sign on the door or anywhere in reception to identify this building. There was an acronym written across the top of the building – WFP – written in huge letters and surrounded by some circular leaves. This was in the days before the internet, and the only other place where I had seen a similar symbol and acronyms was on the television, marketing the plight of pandas throughout the 1980s. I therefore assumed it was some Italian version of the World Wildlife Fund, with the letters changed to reflect the different sentence structure of the Italian language.

I was asked to come back tomorrow and do some preliminary tests. Here started my career in the United Nations. Buried in the bowels of HR administration procedures, where nobody ever referred to the organisation in full but only by acronym, before the days of branding, websites, email, the need to have a market ‘presence’ and a corporate identity, I diligently managed tasks and processed documents, wondering why there was always so much reference in them to rice and the costs of shipping, while pandas were hardly mentioned at all. It turned out I was not, in fact, working for the World Wildlife Fund but for the World Food Programme of the United Nations. I was equally happy, however, to be working for the world’s largest humanitarian organisation providing emergency food to millions of people in times of natural disasters, war and famine.

A few years after I had been living in Rome, I met a diplomat at a toga party. We were side by side, pushing a supermarket trolley disguised as a ‘chariot’ and in which rode his wife, around a circular driveway as part of a race against other party guests. It was after the belly dancing display but before the fake human sacrifice. Here started my stint in Foreign Affairs.

I was happy and peaceful for the first time I could remember since I was a young child. The day I realised this, I was walking down my street on the way to the shops and something stopped me in my tracks. I stood on the footpath, wondering what this thing was that I was experiencing, this difference that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I was missing something, and the thing that had gone had been so much a part of me for so long that its absence made me feel something was wrong. I realised that it was the absence of anxiety. So this is what peace feels like, I thought.

So the man who took my breath away the first time I ever set eyes on him was kept at a distance for six more years before I was sure that giving up my singleness was going to be worth it. And it was. Like winning the raffle ticket all those years before, marrying Alfredo felt like I had won first prize again.

My heart responded to Italy’s maternal character, the firm agreement that everyone needs to be cared for and forgiven. The greeting of each other every morning, the time taken to chat for a few minutes before serving the customer, the acknowledgement of each other as humans that have good days and bad days. And, as we all have bad days, the forbearance of someone who is having one, not expecting too much of them, giving them time and space, frustrating as that is if you are waiting for them to cut your hair, cash your cheque, make your sandwich or answer your call. You know that it will be the same on the day you need others to wait for you.

Twenty years here has included setting up my own practice working as a Management Consultant for international foreign affairs organisations and flying to over thirteen different countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East; working for the United Nations emergency response, development and health organisations in Geneva, Rome, Budapest, Barbados, Bonn and Dakar; hearing Fidel Castro speak live on May Day in Havana, Cuba, and having my hire car commandeered by his soldiers with me as their designated driver for the day; taking a train back to Australia via Russia and Mongolia; co-driving a hovercraft to Capri; and never ever having to own a car.

I have had the chance to get to know Rome, my love, very well; its history, its failings, its short-sightedness, its arrogance, its self-doubt and its secrets. I have had the chance to give tours of it, write about it and apply my natural curiosity as a social anthropologist to its inhabitants, its myths, beliefs and identity.

This book is a personal guide to a city seen from the inside. It is an insider’s experience of the mystery, misery and magnificence which is modern-day Rome. It includes important facts, such as why Sunday is a re-enactment of the Middle Ages, what ‘The Changeover’ means and when to do it, when it is okay to go calling in your pyjamas, what to do on a day off in Rome, tips for how to survive the blistering heat, and how to recognise and take advantage of a money laundering enterprise.

Like all infatuations, I expected my feelings for Rome to wear off and decided that I would leave when I no longer noticed the Coliseum, when I treated it as just another roundabout for traffic, the way the locals do. I am still waiting.