He’s waiting for us on the porch of the house—another no-frills cinder-block box with a blue door and small windows—standing erect, with arms crossed, in an assertive posture that demands respect. He’s wearing a starched white kanzu and a kofia and, because of his dark hair and tanned skin, he doesn’t look that much different from the local businessmen I flew in with. He’s put on some weight and grown a short beard. He’s quite stocky, actually, and his curls are gone, though his green eyes flicker for a moment when he sees me and that flash of mutual recognition gives me a jolt in the stomach. I feel a light resistance from him, a rigidity, when I fling myself into his arms. He moves his face slightly to the side, so that I miss his cheek and end up kissing air. He steps backward and smiles shyly.
“Hey, Stella” is all he says.
“I can’t believe I finally got hold of you!” I almost shout, unable to repress my enthusiasm.
“Wait a minute, let me deal with him first,” he says calmly, almost dreamily, lifting his chin toward Tescari, who has stayed behind, talking to the taxi driver, possibly telling him to wait for him.
It’s disappointing, of course, that joy for this reunion should be put on hold and mitigated by the presence of a stranger.
Tescari sprints onto the porch baring his white teeth. He offers his hand.
“So very pleased to meet you at last. I can’t stand communicating via e-mail or phone; one has to be able to look people in the eyes when talking business, don’t you think?”
I catch a flash of surprise in his eyes as he takes in the white kanzu and kofia.
Andrea doesn’t answer, he simply shows us into a small room, empty save for a green couch sheathed in plastic, a makeshift bookcase with a few paperbacks, and a sisal mat on the cement floor. On the bare walls hangs but a single picture, Arabic calligraphy. Tescari takes in the ambiance, then throws me a reproachful glance, as if I have lured him into a trap. Andrea shows him the couch.
“Please sit down.”
Andrea instead sits on the floor, folding his legs in lotus position. Tescari slides uncomfortably onto the very edge of the couch, as though he wants to avoid contamination, and the plastic cover makes a screeching, embarrassing sound under him. He opens his briefcase and pulls out the drawings. I stand, as I’ve not been asked to sit down yet, glad to keep a distance from the position that Tescari has been given on the couch.
There is a moment of uncomfortable silence. Andrea and Tescari stare at each other as if neither one wants to be the first to speak. Then Andrea makes a gesture with his hand, signaling that Tescari should begin.
Tescari fumbles through his documents, then unfolds a large drawing.
“As I told you on the phone, I have investors in Europe that are extremely keen on this project. They are ready to come in as soon as I let them know the permits have been secured. Here, take a look at the plans.”
Tescari hands the drawing down to Andrea, who takes a cursory look at it and says nothing. I hear a noise in the next room. Someone is splashing water on the cement floor.
“We’re planning to fly the clients down from Dar to make it easier for them to reach the camp. All we need is a landing strip for a Cessna, that’s not a problem, but we’ll have to build a road to carry building materials and so on.”
Tescari taps his shirt pocket.
“Can I smoke?”
“No. You can go outside if you wish.”
Tescari leaves the pack of cigarettes in the pocket.
“How far is the beach from the main road? From the plane we couldn’t see, the foliage was too thick. And how about water? Do you have any idea how deep one has to dig?”
Andrea doesn’t answer. Just sits there with his legs in a knot. Tescari is puzzled but decides to ignore the awkward silence.
“You are the first person I am talking to, here. I will see the Ministry of Land and Forests as well, of course. But before I do I wanted to have a clearer picture of the technical aspects. I was told you’re the best person to talk to since you know everybody on the island.”
Tescari watches as Andrea folds the map shut.
“I’ve lived in East Africa long enough,” Tescari says. “I know it can be tricky to start a project like this if you are an outsider. That’s why I came to see you first. To get a sense of—”
Andrea hands the plan back to him. He speaks, slowly, enunciating each word distinctly. His tone is steady, unwavering.
“You can rest assured you will not get any permit, nor any help, to build this resort. The people on this island are not interested in facilitating this kind of project so that you and your investors can stash your clients’ dollars into a Swiss account. If anything, I will do everything in my power to prevent this from happening.”
There’s a moment of silence. Tescari clears his throat.
“I’m afraid there’s a misunderstanding. We are going to hire locals. Everyone will profit from this venture,” he says. “By which what I really mean is that it will give jobs to lots of people. I’m sure that you, more than anyone here, realizes that this island needs some—”
Andrea raises his palm to stop him.
“This is a traditional island. We won’t allow foreign speculators to wreck our customs and offend our values. We don’t want half-naked tourists on our beaches smoking and drinking. The people here don’t need jobs, we grow our own food and catch our fish, and this is the way the island has lived for centuries.” Andrea’s voice is quiet, unperturbed. “We don’t need you. Is that clear enough? Now you can go. Please.”
And he stands up, gesturing toward the door with a sweep of his arm.
Tescari shoots up, holding his folded plans to his chest, stunned. He turns toward me. “This man is crazy.”
“Please go. I see your taxi is still waiting for you,” Andrea insists, standing by the door.
“Crazy,” Tescari says to me, a finger to his temple. “Honestly, if I were you I wouldn’t stay here.”
And then he’s out the door.
I hear the engine start and the taxi pulls away. It is a relief and yet part of me feels abandoned.
“Wow,” I say.
I’m waiting for Andrea to remark, waiting for him to erupt in a roaring laugh and utter something outrageous. For him to undo the monastic posture, get out of the starched kanzu and declare that what he just said was a joke, a performance he played on the Italian with loafers.
Instead he keeps very still and suddenly I feel uneasy.
“What are you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“What are you here, anyway. Are you some kind of mullah?” I say, with a nervous laugh.
Andrea strokes his short beard and thinks for a moment. He doesn’t get that my question is meant to be humorous.
“No. Although I did convert to Islam years ago.”
“Oh. I see,” I say, as though that explains everything.
We stare at each other uneasily. I look around the empty room and I wonder many things at once: whether he has a guest room for me or I am to sleep on the screeching plastic couch, whether he might in fact have gone crazy or even be under medication, whether coming here was a terrible mistake. It has nothing to do with his converting to Islam. It’s that he just seems so much slower. Numbed.
“That guy,” he says, “isn’t the first one to show up here with a plan. I’ve told them all to fuck off. One by one.”
Here he gains a bit of speed. He’s more animated and that feels reassuring.
“I know how their plans work. They build what they call an eco-friendly self-sustainable camp in the wilderness for a pittance, so that for five hundred dollars a night millionaires can take a crap under the stars. Then, slowly but very very surely they declare the beach off limits, they deny access to the local fishermen because their clients need their ‘privacy.’ As though this has been their land for generations. Over my dead body they’ll get in here.”
“Absolutely!” I cheer. I’m relieved: he’s sounding like himself at last.
It’s only now that I realize that since I first arrived Andrea still hasn’t really looked at me. And I cannot tell whether he’s happy to see me or not.
His body used to be lean and taut. Hip bones, ribs and knee caps showing under baggy jeans and faded T-shirts. Long hands and nimble fingers that touched things gently. I loved his feet too. Once I told him, “You have the hands and feet of a dancer,” because there was a special gracefulness in the way he moved in space. He never brushed his hair, which was a tangle of light brown curls, often shading his eyes—those green, bright eyes that changed with the weather—and I suspect he didn’t wash it often. Whenever we’d be all together—me, our friends—discussing something we’d read, whether it was politics, literature, ethics, he’d sit back while we made our loud arguments. His silence made us edgy, we felt observed and judged. We wanted him to level with us, so we’d turn to him and say, How about you, Andrea, let’s hear what you think, and often what he said was just the opposite of what we’d so fervently maintained till then. He always seemed to come at things from another perspective, and what we had thought was right suddenly seemed wrong, what we thought was daring seemed banal.
We all wanted to be a this and a that: a writer, a photographer, an actor, an architect, a political activist, whereas he didn’t seem to strive to be anything. He was good with his hands, he knew how to fix things and work with wood, he worshipped his motorcycle and spent hours adjusting and calibrating its mechanisms. We were aware that he knew a lot—more than us—that he loved to read and the books he chose were unusual and difficult, as though he had already read and digested what we were reading and was way ahead of us. He read essays, literary criticism, obscure playwrights and poets, but he never lectured, never quoted from them. I think he found it pathetic, the way we showed off, always keen to sound wittier, more well read, more up-to-date.
We never met his parents and knew very little of his background. He was an only child and apparently his father was a strange man who drank too much and didn’t seem to have a real job. His mother had left the family when Andrea was a teenager and he didn’t like to talk about her. Once he said he thought Freud had given all of us an alibi to whine.
At a time when we all strived to be reckless, he was the most fearless with drugs, though he never seemed high, only more concentrated, sharper. We made love the first time under a shower, while tripping on LSD. I still remember how the yellow mosaic of the bathroom glimmered, and how I was convinced I was inside an Egyptian palace, shimmering with gold and sunshine. I don’t remember whose apartment it was, and why I was alone under the shower—the sprinkling water felt like a cascade of yellow diamonds—but suddenly there he was, smiling, getting out of his clothes, entering the magic circle of gold with me.
I was already in love with him by then and I wasn’t the only one. We all fought to get his attention, to spend time alone with him—men and women alike—and some of us fought harder to become his lover. There were jealousies and treacheries, though he never used the power we had given him to manipulate us.
One day he announced he was going away. Someone he knew had offered him a place as a volunteer to teach English to children in Africa. He mentioned the name of the island, a name so difficult to pronounce that it became impossible to remember.
The last time I saw him it was on a winter day on the street right below my apartment. He had come around to say goodbye right before getting on the plane. He must have buzzed the intercom and I had come down. I was living by the Via dei Riari then, in a small studio at the end of the street, at the foot of the Gianicolo Hill, and I remember the feeling of sorrow clinging to my clothes as I walked out on the street. It was drizzling and cold and he wasn’t wearing a coat or a jacket; all he had on was a thick black turtleneck and his old leather gloves. I also remember how he was leaning against a brick wall next to his motorcycle and how the wind ruffled his hair.