In the US, Jews are known to go out for Chinese food on Christmas day. In Milan, I’m not so sure. The only Jews we know are Israelis, who are more likely to go out for Italian food, irrespective of the actual occasion. This evening we decided to get doner kebab piadinas, with several pieces of baklava, and a free side of fries thrown in for good measure.
Searching for an Edward Hopper exhibit on Sunday, we happened upon a stage being prepared for Silvio Berlusconi. Several hours later, the Prime Minister was assaulted within two or three meters of this location.
Watching the news over dinner, the proximity of the event felt especially unnerving. Relatively private, without many local acquaintances, it was a visceral reminder of where we are, and how deeply we’ve become tied to it.
Locals observe the first anniversary of the credit crisis. Via Beroldo, late September.
“I don’t understand what interests you so much about the army,” Amir said, sounding somewhat exasperated. “My father’s stories, about being sent into Lebanon to hunt Fedayeen, would scare you to death. Even he gets frightened when he retells them.”
That conversation took place in the spring of 1976, on the balcony of Amir’s mother’s apartment, in Ramat Gan. We were both nine years old at the time. Seeing this advertisement, for the Venice Film Festival winner, brought his concerned words to mind.
Mussolini and his entourage were hung outside our apartment building, in Piazza Loreto, on April 29th 1945. We’ve never ascertained the exact spot, though we assume its dual-commemorated by a monument to fallen Communist partisans in immediate view of our building’s front door, on Viale Andrea Doria. Indeed, it is curious that there is no memorial for the event.
That’s why when we encounter nostalgia for the late Italian dictator, we are almost always surprised, lulled as we are by the ideological consistency of our neighborhood. Walking down Via Torino yesterday, we encountered this positively non-ironic collection of Mussolini chic, displayed alongside classic rock bootlegs and Catholic calendars.
You have to appreciate the art school quality of the collage. Eric Clapton and Il Duce? That’s awesome.
Coming home from dinner a few nights ago, Jennifer pointed out the number of stores that had closed along the Corso Buenos Aires. “The economy is definitely worsening here,” I replied. “Just look at how many folks have moved out of our building.” A few minutes later, we found ourselves staring at five for rent signs at our building’s entrance, (“affitasi” in Italian), along with a fresh advert for the sale of a live/work space.
If you’re used to living in apartment buildings, you get accustomed to people moving in and out, especially in densely populated commercial areas like central Milan. However, such a high turnover is especially noticeable when your building only has 14 units. Considering the immense political and economic turmoil Italy is presently undergoing, the exodus from our building helps personalize the turbulence, however uncomfortably.
Driving it all home the following day was the closure of the bakery on the ground floor. Ever since we first moved in, we’ve relied on it for basic needs like bread, beer and mineral water. Run by an elderly Italian lady, her establishment has been indispensable to us. If you were out of breakfast cereal, you could always run downstairs and buy a delicious brioche. If it was dinner you were after, you could get an excellent slice of focaccia pizza.
What defined the place was not the food, though, but the presence of three enormous mannequins, caricatures of Italian peasants, wearing vintage clothing, sporting disproportionately large, workman-like hands and bulbous noses. Affixed to the rear wall and the ceiling, every time you entered the bakery, there they were, looking down on the baked goods, as though they had harvested all of their ingredients. Cliched, sure, but still impressive.
Hence how striking it was to see the last of the mannequins lying on the floor yesterday evening, grasping a bundle of fake wheat and a piece of plywood in its hand. Everything in the place had been cleared out, save for this lone, dismembered-looking farmer.
Since the Six Day War, Europeans have tended to think about Israel relationally. French comparisons between Algeria and the Occupied Territories immediately come to mind. Reposition oneself in Italy, and you encounter the same basic reflex, as a book in this display would have it, with Ethiopia. Antique shop, Via Castaldi.
Italy is less well-known for its Palestinian community than its North African immigrants. Needless to say, in Milan, Palestinians are visibly present, their political struggles made obvious by informational kiosks repped by this Via Venini storefront mannequin, as well as by progressive, anti-colonialist inspired flyers and graffiti.
It isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think about getting a good plate of hummus. However, as far as San Francisco’s Arab restaurants go, its one of the city’s longest-running Mideastern establishments, and the kibbe, if I remember correctly, is absolutely first class. The only other local place that served kibbe of that calibre was the late, great Cleopatra’s, in the outer Sunset, several blocks west of the old San Francisco Conservatory of Music campus.
One of the things that Jennifer wrote to me about during the last month we were separated was her determination to find an equally good spot for hummus here in Milan. She finally found one near her firm’s new office, a few blocks from Garibaldi station. I’ve yet to try it, but frankly, I confess to having fallen in love with a Turkish-run doner spread a stone’s throw away from our apartment. If you ask them to hold the mayo (yes, mayo), their panino kebab is totally killer.
On Friday morning, every paper ran the same cover story: Six Italian soldiers had been killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul. Corriere Della Serra, La Repubblica, even the local edition of The Metro, all seemed to be working with the same set of photos of the event’s aftermath. For the first time since we arrived here in March, it was like we were overhearing the entire country sighing, simultaneously. From left to right, the reaction was the same. Everyone was in a state of shock.
Taking the dogs out for their afternoon stroll today, I decided to walk them down a side street, two blocks from here, where I knew the traffic would be light, and the pedestrians at a minimum. Hemmed in by a vacant elementary school on one side, another undergoing renovation, and a college campus, Beroldo street also boasts some of the best political posters in the neighborhood. Lo and behold this unambiguous response to Thursday’s death toll in Afghanistan.
“Enough Italian blood for American petroleum,” it reads.
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