Italy Fermata 09: Lecce
when to judge a book by its cover
On a bench in Matera’s refurbished train station, I sat next to an old woman. She reminded me of my gran’s sister, who would often take care of me, and whose house in the village we would visit, picking plums in the orchard. The old woman was small, with a black dress, and a walking cane. She looked at me and asked-in the Italian of these parts?-if my boot hurt. I understood this, but when it came time to answer - I had nothing - a jumble of words in … Spanish? She gave me a resigned look and turned away. My 1800 day Italian duolingo streak counted for nothing.
In a bookstore in Lecce, my duolingo Italian deduced a conversation between a little girl and her old grandmother (nonna). The girl had found a book she wanted (nonna had offered any book to buy?).
Bookstores are as beautiful and holy as cathedrals. And in Italy, there is something aesthetically pleasing about the ways books look. Italian books of all formats and genres. They could be translations of books from other languages, or original Italian books - but as long as they are published somewhere in Italy - they look crisp. The cover design is clean, classy, elegant. It grabs, it pulls, you want to buy them all, it makes you want to read Italian. Sometimes the book cover image is so clever, you can feel the book, the story.
The girl’s book was a Roald Dahl. Nonna was not convinced. “Are you sure this is for you?”-she asked. The girl nodded. Maybe nonna was weary of the cover, she looked for adult help. As I was leaving (empty handed), I heard nonna getting a second opinion from the salesperson, and I got a flashback of standing at the checkout counter of a small kids library in Sarajevo. My gran (baba) is next to me and the librarian is looking suspiciously at The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾. The librarian says that this book is not appropriate, but I manage to pull the “cleverer than other 7 year olds” card, and my gran lets me borrow it.
I wasn’t ready for Adrian’s daily woes.
In foreign places, as much as we yearn for the different, we relish when we encounter shades of the same-same.