This article appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of “Glimpse Magazine” and is available online here:
The Half Court Line
Go ahead. Ask anyone. There are a thousand and one know-it-alls who will arm you with the misconception that everyone abroad hates Americans. The source of the derision is most often cited as our political attitude, which strongly contradicts the borderline-Communist lean of many of the nations just a few thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean. After all, we Americans all love Dubya (George W. Bush, for those less familiar), we are all war-mongers and we all strive to waste our lives away working for monetary gains.
Unfortunately enough, these were the arrows that were so graciously jammed into my little American quiver by numerous study abroad advisors and recent returnees from overseas, all in the hopes of arming me against those vicious and barbaric Europeans. I took all the snippets of wisdom with shakers full of salt, having myself lived abroad for a number of years before returning to live and attend school in the United States.
Still, the sheer volume of such warnings was enough to make even a somewhat experienced traveler reconsider his confidence. Furthermore, when a month-long study abroad trip to Pamplona, Spain, which I had signed up for, was canceled merely on the basis of potential anti-American sentiment, the warnings began to hold more water.
So, when I finally set foot on a jet that was to whisk me away to Italy, the country of my birth, I was slightly unnerved. Would I really be in great danger abroad? Did all Europeans really hate Americans? Were Italians, long held in my own mind as pacifists and love-smitten kittens, really going to come after me with their nails and Gucci heels filed to a point?
Much to my surprise, my fears were justified within a few hours of landing in Rome. I sat on my luggage awaiting the departure of my train when a nice young lady named Nnama identified me as a student at the Umbra Institute, likely as a result of the pink tags my mother had so lovingly attached to my bags without my knowledge. In retrospect, the tags were probably my first mistake, as they might as well have been little American flags.
As the train neared departure and we boarded the overcrowded car, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a herd of over-zealous soccer fans, who had just recently left a game that still had them quite enthused. They all carried dainty little cartons of wine and sang to each other in slurred Italian dialect, pausing only for swigs of their alcoholic grape juice or puffs on their ever-lit cigarettes. At first, I was quite amused by such a mixture of Italian virility (with enough chest hair and gold chains to fill every cliché ever concocted about this nation’s men folk) and sexual ambiguity (homoeroticism and tight jeans abounded like sun in California).
Very soon, however, my amusement turned sour. We were pulled into one of the cramped compartments by four other American travelers, who had just recently claimed their seats after asking the conductor to kick a group of the soccer fans out. Before I knew what hit me, I was pressing the compartment’s door shut against the whole group of soccer fans, more for the sake of sparing my own life than out of spite against their contrary efforts. The fans were enraged at having been removed from their seats and, to tell you the truth, I could see why. Ignoring the fact that we had paid for our tickets and they had not, we were six foreigners taking precedence over them in their own country, probably interrupting a weekly tradition that they had been carrying on for who knows how many years. And this, coupled with the powerful fuel they were gulping out of the cartons, had the soccer fans in a rage.
We battled against the onslaughts of dialectic swears and thundering kicks against the glass of the compartment for about three hours, while the train bucked its way through central Italy. To this day, it is impossible to forget the terrorized faces of the five other Americans that surrounded me and their utter disbelief at the grin spread across my own. I could not help but smile. Not only was the situation ridiculous, but the warnings I had received back in the United States were beginning to make more sense.
When the train finally halted and the conductor came on the overhead speaker to announce “Siena,” we knew it was time to face our demise. We had to make the unpleasant choice between staying locked in our cell until the fans made their way off the train (which could have been another few days, since the train was headed for the southernmost tip of Italy), or to brave our way past all of them and hope they did not start swinging their purple-stained knuckles at us. We opened the compartment door to find a surprisingly pleasant sight-about ten of the men sprawled, comatose, in a bed of spilled wine, cigarette butts, and empty cartons, stretching the length of the car’s hallway. Of course, the problem then became that we all had luggage enough to last us three months, luggage not so easily carried over our heads or maneuvered around burly Italian bodies.
Biting my upturned lip, I resigned myself to fate and started tiptoeing down the hall toward the exit that marked our safety. No more than three steps in, however, my foot slipped on a puddle of some sort (hair grease or wine, I do not know which) and sent me sprawling over two of the sleeping gentlemen on the floor. This not only woke everyone in the car, but also attracted the attention of the other soccer fans who had progressed to other cars for some solace. Immediately we were surrounded, only a few feet from our escape, and smothered once again in Italian profanity and the sweat and stink of men who had spent the night on the floor of a public train. “Well,” I thought, “I should have listened to all those warnings. What a fool I am for thinking that I was too smart or too worldly to get myself into trouble.” I was about to pay the price for my overconfidence.
“Che vuol’ dire, cazzo?” one of the gentlemen so elegantly asked me.
As rough as my Italian was, I knew he was asking if I had anything to say. I racked my brain for the right words, although even when I found them, I still had to conjugate them properly.
“Mi dispiace, amico. Non ho fatto niente. Solo voglio uscire. La mia sedia, adesso, e’ il tuo.” (“I’m sorry, friend. I didn’t do anything. I only want to leave. My seat is now yours.”) The words were rough and imperfect, and I imagined they spelled the beginning of the end for me. I was trying to say nothing more than, “I’m sorry.” I grudgingly prepared myself for a taste of the wine they were drinking-not from their cartons but from the knuckle that was about to break through my teeth.
To my surprise, however, there was a pause. The fan just stared at me, almost in disbelief, and then looked around amusedly at the rest of his compatriots. He rambled off a few phrases that, for the life of me, I could not translate or remember, and then he turned and faced me again.
“Cazzo mio,” he said, still smiling, and raised his hand to my face. But instead of the punch I was expecting, he slapped me playfully on the cheek. “Arrivederci, bello,” he said, and stepped aside, indicating with an open arm that I was free to go.
Goodbye, beautiful? Was that really the only thing he had to say to me?
Well, I wasn’t about to question him at that point. So I lowered my head, muttered a goodbye under my breath, and rushed out of the door.
As it turned out, the incident wasn’t the beginning of the end. It was the end of the beginning.
A few weeks later, after safely arriving and acclimating to life in Perugia, I was playing basketball in the city’s center. Despite all the aforementioned warnings I had received, the Italians I’d met hadn’t been at all abrasive. In fact, if anything, they were very standoffish. Pedestrians side-stepped groups of American students while staring condescendingly at us; shopkeepers provided short, curt answers to our questions.
On the basketball court, four of us from the Umbra program were shooting and dribbling aimlessly around. The Americans were on one side, and the Italians were on the other, separated distinctly by the half-court line. As usual, the Italians ignored us and left us to play by ourselves. The problem was, of course, that two-on-two is not always all that much fun.
Then, like a scene out of a romanticized civil rights movie, our ball took an awkward bounce off the rim, and rolled to the “Italian side” of the court. It was picked up by a short, stocky little guy who looked as if he was going to pop it, or punt it into the adjoining street. But, instead, we received an invitation. “Ragazzi, volete giocare?”
Do we want to play? We’d been waiting for him to ask.
From that point on, we met at the basketball court almost every day after classes and played ball with most of the youth of Perugia. We even entered a basketball tournament and took second place (it would have been first, were it not for some dubious officiating), and were applauded when our team was announced. These Italians had accepted us and we actually emerged from our basketball games with some lifelong friends and some pretty exclusive tours of Italian nightlife, thereafter.
What I learned that first night on the train, and what was reified over and over again, was exactly what I had known all along-without knowing it, of course. The warnings I had heard at home came from people who were afraid from the start, both to listen to and absorb the culture around them, and to express and celebrate their own.
But, what the Italians I met were looking for was proof that I had some merit. On the train, the soccer fan was surprised that I knew his language and that I was respectful of him. On the basketball court, the Italians saw how good most of the American students were at basketball, and so they made the first move to ask us to play, most likely so that they could learn something from us. Because, as it turns out, if “white men” can’t jump, Italians are far worse.
But the learning worked both ways. Generally speaking, there are a great many areas in which we Americans fell short of our Italian counterparts. We did not romance like they did. We did not emote like they did. And for the most part, we did not enjoy life like they did–gold chains, tight jeans and all.
