Lontano lontano
oltre Milano
oltre i gasometri
oltre i manometri
oltre i chilometri
e i binari del tram
Lontano lontano
molto lontano
oltre l'acqua corrente
e l'elettricità

-- Paolo Conte

Actually, running water and electricity do exist here. Concrete, and sand and sea and pines and oleanders too. I saw two dromedaries tied to a fence just outside of the airport. We had just landed with all our wrong intelligence, realizing the hot concrete of the airport was not adding that much to the heat, and were being rushed to the city by a laconic driver in a refrigerated car, to a little later be lodged into rooms filled with the smell left into the carpet by generations of smokers. Our contact is passed to me on the phone, we exchange polite and not entirely intelligible english. Nobody speaks italian, that's certainly a significant wrong piece of intelligence we had (my fellow traveler gardener not speaking much foreign himself).
In the hotel lobby, rich arabic business men lounging on the divans and near the reception half emancipated overdressed very sensual wives never looking sideways. I know I shouldn't look for a couple of reasons.
I think about Milan, only yesterday night I was packing in the heat of the night -- not so different a heat from here except for the humidity of the south mediterranean moving across the city -- trying to shove one more book about gardening into the bag... Libi was asleep. She had asked me not to leave for the third time that night, again this morning, obviously I felt like shit. Gisi called and told me that her beloved dog I lived with for a long time, few years ago, died this week, suddenly. I cried over the phone, almost silently and without words, I can't say I left with a light heart, but hey, I wouldn't have a light heart anyway. Never had one. I was so terrified I didn't want to leave anymore, but I left anyway. That's experience, I guess, when you lack recklessness. Little it matters, now it's the time of the great expectations, namely going for a walk, watching the unknown, listening to it, and all the rest.