Two Worlds

This thermal spa is typical of the places the new generation of Ischitani go to get tan and meet people. © Photo by Francesca Di Meglio

Get the truth about one of Italy’s most popular islands – and its people – by reading my new weekly blog installments (every Monday morning right here on this site)

Chapter Three – Italian Men Past and Present

This [2003] vacation in Ischia – a return to my roots – was as much about taking a break from that crazy job as it was about questioning my life’s choices and finding myself again. In addition to finding myself, I was hoping to find an Italian man, even if but for a distraction.

From the moment I put my feet on the plane that would take us from Rome to Naples, there were men surrounding me. First, there was Enzo, who was returning home from his engineering job for the Easter break. He was a typical Neapolitan with broad shoulders, bronzed skin, and wavy black hair. He chatted me up on the plane from the start. First, he asked about my work and life in America. Then, he moved onto how pretty he thought my eyes were. I had never met such a forward man before (besides the ones with whom I was related, who I witnessed picking up other ladies). It was like I had just landed on Mars, and this was a whole new species before me.

In college, I barely dated. In fact, I didn’t even share a kiss with anyone. I had many male friends, who came to me with the problems they were having with other girls. I’d nurse their broken hearts but witnessed few opportunities for love for myself. The few boys who showed the slightest bit of romantic interest in me either scared the hell out of me or had a back-up girlfriend on the side. Since I’d never be the other woman – that’s just not my style – they fell into the “friends” department, too. In those few years out of college, I lived at home with my parents and worked hard to launch my career at women’s publications. I had forgotten what men looked like all together.

Of course, my Italian relatives in the States were concerned I’d never marry. They’d say, “You miss-a the boat-a.” So, in their glorious wisdom, they’d try to fix me up. One of my cousins chose a guy whose family hailed from Naples because she thought he’d fit in great with the family. She would go on and on about how his parents had a house in Italy, and he was such a great nurse, and he was so cute, and he seemed like a real catch – until he was always unavailable for a date and my cousin ran into him and his boyfriend doing wheelies on a carriage at IKEA, where they were shopping for furniture for their apartment. Another cousin tried to set me up with a banker from China, who was cute and wealthy – and in love with my cousin’s sister-in-law. Another cousin brought me out to eat with the mushiest kid you’ve ever met; he might have cried more than I do. When my cousin’s mothers tried to get in on the act, I drew the line and headed to the homeland.

Italian men reminded me of masculinity, and I associated them with strength and dependability. Even though I knew there were good and bad people in every culture, I just assumed most of them, especially the ones from Ischia, would be like my papa’ and uncles and cousins and grandfathers. They would live for family and work harder than anyone I know. They’d be serious and committed. If one of them chose me for a wife, he would make me his number one priority.

Later on, I learned that life is not as simple as I made it out to be. Ischia had changed since my Italian men had left the island. This was a new breed of men in Ischia. They wore a mask that made them look and sound similar to my people, but there were subtle distinctions. It would take a few years for me to realize it, but there was something different and disturbing about this new generation of men in Ischia.

My peasant people in Ischia are all but gone. Replacing them are overgrown teenagers who work in the hotels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and travel agencies. While my father and his siblings made due with hand-me-downs and shoes that had leaves for soles, today’s islanders are decked out in Armani and Prada whether or not they can afford designer labels. If you want to do something special for them, you will bring them a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt from America. They zip around the island on their vintage Vespas in a rainbow of colors or Smart cars that carry with them a certain prestige but can’t transport more than two people at a time. They worship the sun and look like bronzed statues with not even a hair out of place. They’re often so pretty that it is painful to look at them.

Take Roberto*. From top to bottom, he is delicious. Despite his salt-and-pepper hair and being nearly 40, he seems forever 17. His wavy hair reaches the nape of his neck, and falls in front of his eye as he talks. It’s the kind of hair that has him always looking like he just got out of bed. It perfectly frames his tan face and that crooked smile. When he looks at a woman – any woman – with those crystal blue eyes, he has her convinced she is the only person in the room with him. On the beach when he takes off his shirt, he reveals just enough muscle to prove he is not trying too hard to look this good. In the winter, he wears a button-down shirt, American blue jeans, a scarf around his neck that drapes and dips into his chest, and a pea coat.

Roberto lives at home with his parents, brother, and sister, and their families. He works as a doorman at one of the hotels near his house. With little responsibility even during the high season, he manages to get one day off work per week to bum on the beach by day and dance and drink with his friends by night. His girlfriend of seven years is in no rush to get married because she’s younger and still going to university (many don’t graduate until they are 30 years old in Italy). Roberto is in even less of a hurry to settle down. Why should he? Mammina does his laundry and cooks his meals. And he comes and goes as he pleases.

While Roberto remains pretty faithful to his longtime girlfriend (barring a drunken kiss with an old classmate three years ago), flirting comes as naturally to him as making meatballs comes to Mammina. He knows not to cross the line despite the many, many temptations. What he doesn’t know is that his well-educated girlfriend with the parents who own three of the most popular restaurants on the island and who never seems to flirt, is about to get him embroiled in a love triangle with a carabiniere (considered to be like the fake, moronic police) that will have repercussions that no one in his right mind could imagine beforehand. By the time all is said and done, families will be split apart, seeds of doubt will seep into numerous relationships, and friendships will be over and done. And I myself won’t even want to return to Ischia, the island I once loved like home.

Meanwhile, we all should have been paying more attention to the gossip about the carabinieri on the island. It was like an alarm warning us of the dangers to come. The police officers sure do get around on Ischia, and they’re not fighting crime. Roberto’s friend Fernando has had two girlfriends who cheated on him with different carabinieri. Another carabiniere broke up his own marriage and ran off to Miami with his lover, who had been married to someone else, too. They both left behind their teenage children.

Frankly, however, no islander is a saint. For every Adam who bites into the apple, there is an Eve who helps convince him it’s a good idea. Women in Ischia are almost as beautiful as the men. What they lack in physical perfection, they make up for with…

*Some names and identifying characteristics of the real people involved have been changed.

Tune into this Web site, Two Worlds, every Monday for the latest installment in my blog about my experiences in Ischia, and every other Monday to ItaliansRus.com for the latest Our Paesani column about all things Italian. Di Meglio is also the Guide to Newlyweds for About.com.

Sunny skies in Ischia usually attract seamen and tourists alike. © Photo by Francesca Di Meglio

Get the truth about one of Italy’s most popular islands – and its people – by reading my new weekly blog installments (every Monday morning right here on this site)

Chapter Two – Sharing My Story with Ischia

It all began in 2003 with a weeklong visit to my cousin’s house in Ischia. The island was calling me. I hadn’t been back to Ischia since 1999. And one of my best friends from college, Samantha*, was teaching English in Europe. She would meet me in Rome, we’d travel to Ischia together, and celebrate Easter with my Italian cousins. A dream it would be!

Actually, the trip was better than Samantha and I had imagined. The sun was exceptionally warm and welcoming for the end of April, which can sometimes be rainy and cold in Ischia. We spent one afternoon on the beach embracing the rays, and many an afternoon lunching with my relatives and indulging in the island’s exquisite cuisine – from the signature dish of rabbit in white wine sauce to fried calamari and salad fresh from the garden.

One evening we spent shopping in the island’s main hub, Ischia Porto, where we picked up trinkets for our friends and family. I chose a magnet each for gli zii, who had left the island for America years ago, a bottle of Vecchia Romagna for my papa’, and Ischia’s famous ceramics for mamma. As I walked down Via Roma with my cousin and Samantha, gelato in hand, we noticed the rainbow-colored flags for “pace” or “peace” waving from the balconies of shops and homes. They were shouting hello to us and telling us Americans that the Italians had a distaste for George W. Bush’s America and its aggression in the Middle East post-9/11.

Everywhere Samantha and I went, people wanted to know where we had been on 9/11 and why we elected such a fool as our president. We didn’t pretend to understand America’s recent foreign policy decisions (in Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else). But we shared our 9/11 stories. Samantha was traveling with her family and was about to get on a plane when the terrorists struck. She and her family ended up in Europe for a week before they could return home.

I, on the other hand, lived in northern New Jersey, right over the bridge from Manhattan all my life barring the four years I spent in college in Washington, D.C. from 1996 to 2000. And on Sept. 11, 2001, when those planes struck the Twin Towers, I was at work in midtown Manhattan. As I described taking my heels off and running past historical landmarks, from Rockefeller Center to Central Park wondering if there were other planes rocketing toward us like bombs, my new Italian friends hung onto my every syllable. They asked so many questions. “How did you finally get home to New Jersey?”

“How far were you from the Towers?”

“Were you afraid to return to New York after the attacks? Why go back at all?”

“What’s going to happen to New York and America now?”

Some of the questions were easy to answer. I made it home to New Jersey at 6 a.m. the next morning via ferry. I slept – or rather watched CNN – on my friend’s floor in Manhattan the night of 9/11. There was too long of a wait at the ferry, which was being used to transport the bodies that could be recovered from downtown. And I was afraid to walk across the George Washington Bridge, which was a terrorist target and rumored to have had a truck bomb on it earlier in the day. The office I worked in was outside Grand Central Station, which is far enough away from the Towers that I was not in danger but close enough that the ash-covered people who got away and survived ran toward me. The stench of the burning fuel and flesh lingered in the air for weeks afterward and reached as far as my home in New Jersey. It was the smell of death, and it still haunts me nearly 10 years later.

Other questions were not so easy to answer. Of course, I was afraid to return to New York after the attacks. But I had a job and this had always been my home. The gaping hole in the Skyline, which we still view from New Jersey, brings a deep ache to me. But it also serves as motivation to fight back by working in New York and making sure life all around us continues on. Still, I had no idea what the future would hold for the United States or me. The fear I learned on 9/11 is still a burden I carry in my heart and have to combat daily.

Some of the hardships that would bombard the United States and its people because of 9/11 I couldn’t even imagine in 2001 or 2003 when I was visiting Italy. All I could say was that 9/11 changed my life in ways big and small. Security at the airport was different, police in Manhattan often stopped me for identification because I looked Arab to them, and I waved hello to the National Guard soldiers who protected the George Washington Bridge every night as I drove home from the ferry parking lot.

In a way, 9/11 was the reason I was in Ischia. Besides bringing on a stirring inside me to travel more and take a vacation now and then, it also forced me to change jobs. When the economy tanked following the attacks, the famous women’s magazine for which I worked made sweeping changes in its editorial department. Many of my friends were laid off around Thanksgiving. Then, my direct boss beat the new regime to the punch line by quitting. And I started looking for a new job, which I found at a promising women’s Web site. Almost as soon as I started the new job, I realized the site was drowning since the dot-com bust and 9/11 just made matters worse. Before I knew it, the site’s creator – a true mentor and feminist visionary – was leaving. Others were laid off or quit. I, who had been trained as a political journalist in college turned women’s magazine writer, was hocking women friendly porn and accoutrements, the site’s attempt at making ends meet. With every vibrator shaped like a rubber duckie that I sold, I came ever closer to realizing this was not the work of a nice Italian girl, nor was it what I signed up for when I took the job.

This vacation in Ischia – a return to my roots – was as much about taking a break from that crazy job as it was about questioning my life choices and finding myself again.

In addition to finding myself, I was hoping to find an Italian man, even if but for a distraction…

*Some names have been changed.

Tune into this Web site, Two Worlds, every Monday for the latest installment in my blog about my experiences in Ischia, and every other Monday to ItaliansRus.com for the latest Our Paesani column about all things Italian. Di Meglio is also the Guide to Newlyweds for About.com.

Maronti is Ischia's most popular beach, and it's the bedrock of scandal on the island. © Photo by Francesca Di Meglio

Get the truth about one of Italy’s most popular islands – and its people – by reading my new weekly blog installments (every Monday morning right here on this site)

Chapter One – Ischia as Island Paradise

We were born of rock into a fountain of youth. But we must pay the devil for our paradise and eternal beauty, and our debt never ends.

Ischia is the place of dreams. Clear blue skies blanket lush mountainsides and the Mediterranean beaches filled with beautiful people, natives and tourists alike. At Maronti, Ischia’s largest and most popular beach, the setting sun’s rays dance on the ocean like diamond ballerinas on their tippy toes. At nearby Sant’ Angelo, an old fishing village turned tourist trap, a wealthy German woman in her mid 50s in a gold lame’ bikini and hooker heels pays 50 euro for plastic flip flops with a crystal flower in the center. Meanwhile, behind the Church of Soccorso in Forio, you are as likely to find a stray dog on his hind legs as if praying as you are a couple making out at full force, always with an old lady crocheting or making straw baskets in the corner.

Senior citizens flock to Ischia in search of the fountain of youth. They soak themselves in the thermal waters and mud, hoping to preserve their skin and physique for all eternity. Some of them line the beach outside the “fungo,” a naturally occurring rock formation that is in the shape of a mushroom and sits tall and proud in the ocean in Lacco Ameno.  They wear the kinds of bathing suits and caps that Sofia Loren might have worn in the 1950s. When you pass by them, in fact, you are half expecting that they’ll jump up and start belting out, “Vuoi far l’Americano.” When you arrive at Ischia’s second port in Casamicciola, you often hear the buzzing of Vespas and smell the sweetness of wine and tomatoes smothering coniglio, or rabbit, which is a specialty dish in Ischia. Families, after all, eat long lunches at home because everything closes for the siesta every afternoon. All the while, pastel houses dot the island like sprinkles atop a fluffy vanilla ice cream cone that you just can’t help but devour.

In Ischia Ponte, Castello Aragonese, a castle connected to the island by a cobblestone bridge, is a testament to Ischia’s ability to lure the fabulous people. The castle was once home to royalty who used Ischia as both fortress and love shack. In the 1960s, the royalty were replaced with celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, who romped on the island with wild abandon. There is a hedonism that hangs in the air. Tourists often buy T-shirts that say, “Ischia – dove si mangia, si beve, e si fischia,” which means, “Ischia – where you eat, you drink, and you whistle.” Indeed, the islanders eat, drink, and have fun – and always at a slower pace than the rest of the world.

Still, the island has two faces. While the new royalty – those whose families own hotels and restaurants and thermal spas – still exist and rule the island, there has always been a peasant culture in Barano and Buonopane, the Ischia towns of my ancestors. In the mountains of Buceto, a wooded area where many of the contadini (peasants) and zappatori (diggers) once worked the land and now have barbecues and hikes, many of the natives know how to seek porcini mushrooms. They pick chestnuts and have sing alongs around a campfire. Some of them ride into the mountains on horseback. Every so often, you’ll find one of the older men planting something there, taking advantage of the rich soil their ancestors once relied on for both food and a few bucks. He’ll wipe his brow with a linen white handkerchief he pulled from his back pocket and offer you a quick, “Buon giorno,” while leaning on the handle of his shovel.

Nicola ‘u pazz’ (Nick the crazy guy) was once a fixture up there. With a mane of wild, wavy, gray hair and a long but thick, gray beard that looked like a Brillo pad that had been torn to shreds, black linen pants with holes at the seams, Nicola ‘u pazz’ would hike Buceto day and night. His shoes had no bottoms because he had worn them out long ago. In the humid cold of February, I would see him with nothing more to keep his chest warm than a striped T-shirt and black linen jacket with sleeves that were too short. As a child I found Nicola ‘u pazz’ terrifying, and whenever I would hike to Buceto with my parents, I dreaded seeing him. I imagined that sack on his back was filled with rocks and he’d use them and the stick he carried as a cane to kill us and leave us for dead in Buceto. It seemed like an episode of Dateline in the making. In reality, however, he sometimes would sing songs and always said, “Ciao,” to us. Even though as a kid, my father also ran like he was in the Olympics whenever he encountered Nicola, as an adult, he would sometimes shake his hand. Years later, my maternal grandfather finally confided that Nicola was actually a cousin of mine on my mother’s side. You can still feel the spirit of Nicola u’ pazz’ in the woods of Buceto.

There was a simplicity to life in the Ischia of my father and Nicola ‘u pazz’. But things have drastically changed since then. Now, there’s a sinister cloud hanging over Ischia. I tried to ignore it, but the cloud has sucked me in, and I now I float above the island and I see it in a whole new light. And my life will never be the same. It all began in 2003 with a weeklong visit to my cousin’s house in Ischia…

Tune into this Web site, Two Worlds, every Monday for the latest installment in my blog about my experiences in Ischia, and every other Monday to ItaliansRus.com for the latest Our Paesani column about all things Italian. Di Meglio is also the Guide to Newlyweds for About.com.

Francesca Di Meglio © Photo by Antonio Gerenini

I’ve been dabbling with the idea of writing a book for sometime now. And I even started one that would be a compilation of the Consiglieri columns, samples of which you could find on this site. Basically, my crazy relatives would be giving us all life advice. But a few other interesting stories have crossed my path since then, so I’m wondering what I should actually write about. I decided to pose the question to all of you. Do me a favor and take the poll in the right-hand column of this site’s homepage to tell me what book I should write.