First Impression of Rome, Assignment #2

Roman Salad

The heat is seeping into the airport; the air conditioning is losing to waves of smothering humidity lingering like a rainy cloud at the edges of the building. It makes us sluggish, but others around us seem unaffected. People buzz around me – travelers arriving and departing dart across the smoothed tiled floor, weaving between bags and carts. Here I am insignificant – no one takes notice of the path of a little Chinese girl dragging along two matching green suitcases, no one except the one airport security officer. Blue collared uniform, short-sleeved, ironed, stiff black slacks, polished shoes – he is liked a cardboard cutout. His are the first Italian words I hear – and I cannot recall a single syllable. He speaks with a heavy Italian accent, so much so that for 5 minutes I recite my flight itinerary because I mistake where were you born for where did you board. No one around me takes notice, just pass by as if I was just another support column.

A line of cab drivers are recruiting tourists – we are the most tourist-looking of them all. As we slow our pace, looking around for signs of the Concora, we are bombarded with travel offers. It is not difficult to single us out – Hank has the all-American backpacker image, but perhaps he could have slipped in the crowd if he was not then accompanied by two Chinese girls and a Sri Lankan. We are a visual focus, like statues in a museum where others circle quickly about, studying us but never losing speed, as we remain still.

Rome is much quieter than I had imagined. We sit gazing through the windows of our Mercedes Taxi-Van at the square buildings that lined the streets, shaded behind olive green leaves and swaying branches. Everything is still – the only cars I see are parked along the streets, compact and miniature, squeezed together between the occasional Japanese SUVs.

The city is glazed – perhaps because I am still dazed from the 20 hours of travel – with a blanket of earthy tones: the tarred-brown of wooden shutters; the rough orange paint that seem blended from a distance, but likely chipped if closely inspected, like erected croutons; the dark greens of the foliage, which remind me of spinach; the occasional red petals that enliven the duller tones, like cherry tomatoes in a Roman salad. This is not the Rome I pictured – where is the sense of history living behind crumbling architectural feats? Where are the people? The streets are soulless, not even a stray cat roams the sidewalks, no flashes of tourists snapping photographs; stark contrast to Fiumicino. I leave my camera sitting in my bag, thinking that if I did take a picture, no one would believe this was Rome (Madrid perhaps, but not Rome).

Only tourists – flagged by their adornment of large backs, sluggish pace, wandering eyes, and cameras of all sizes strung around their necks – roam the streets under the beating sun. Where are the Romans? The van drives through the streets as if the people were street décor (lamps, hedges, garbage cans); safe distance is never in consideration. A middle-aged, tanned man is washing his hands and drinking from a small rusty pipe that tapped into an underground water supply. I have heard that the water in Italy is the best; I speculate that this man was the first Roman local I encountered, for his movements are familiar not awkward, requiring little thought for a normal sip of water on a hot afternoon.

We sit on sizzling metal bleacher that stood alone in a corner of the Campo dei Fiori, gelatos in hand. Neon graffiti streaks pink, baby blue, and yellow across the seats. The sweetness of my 2-euro melone gelato pickles my throat – perhaps this was not the best place to have gotten gelato. I grow thirstier with each lick, and the rusty fountain looks more appealing. This time I watch as sweat-sullen tourists would approach the flowing water with hesitant woes and leave with smiling satisfaction. I watch as small kids covered in sticky-white gelato are escorted over by their parents for a refreshing cleaning. I watch as Hank waits among the doleful, wondering how he should bend and twist to be able to quench his thirst; a small child runs up and plugs the pipe, causing water to arch through a small hole at the top of the pipe – a drinking fountain. Hank runs back, a smile across his face, having learned a valuable Roman lesson.