Life in the Eternal City
You belong to the working class in the first years of your career. If you work hard, in a few years, you’ll make it into the middle class. And, if you work harder, you’ll be part of the upper class,” this was 10-year-old me explaining the class system to myself.
How wonderful would it be if this were reality, wouldn’t it? This distorted view of the world might’ve been naïveté. That reality is ages away now.
I have been living in Rome, Italy, for the past seven years.
Sometimes, it’s a fairytale; sometimes, torment. The first few months, or even years, were the hardest.
Together with absorbing the language and culture, and getting used to the Italian way of life, I had to swallow the hard pill of reality that, in Italy, we wouldn’t enjoy the same conveniences we did in the Philippines: no more private schools, no more school buses, and no more helpers.
My conservative comportment was opposite to the more liberal and raucous comportment of Italians, and my profound, mostly dogmatic, Catholic faith was opposite to the atheism and anti-clericalism that pervades Italian society.
But while my move to Italy has been tumultuous and traumatic on numerous occasions, it has also allowed me to experience what I wouldn’t otherwise.
I remember when my friend threw a paper plane, on which she had written her Instagram username, at a curly-haired guy skating at the piazza near our school located in Rome’s Latin Quarter. They started chatting and, three days later, my friend and I found ourselves at the train station of Ostia, one of Rome’s shantytowns, where the skater picked us up in his beat-up car.
Ostia reminded me of wealthy subdivisions in the Philippines. But my association couldn’t have been more wrong. “Welcome to Ostia, guys!” the driver yelled and added, “This is one of the most deprived parts of the city.” This area with tall white buildings and idyllic green spaces turned out to be public housing. We spent the entire afternoon skating in an empty car park.
There have also been some experiences that weighed on my conscience and kept me up at night. For instance, that time I met an Arab guy on the bus. It was an exhausting day, so I decided to take away some food from McDonald’s; the nearest one was at Rome’s central station, a 15-minute walk from school.
I left the fast-food chain with two large paper bags, having asked my pregnant mother if she wanted anything. I headed to the piazza and hopped on a bus. A digital sign inside said that it’d be leaving in 10 minutes. I sat on the front seat and waited. Just when the bus was about to depart, an Arab teenager hopped on the bus and sat on an empty seat two rows back. He wore a black cap and I noticed a white necklace, which was visible only on his nape as he hid it inside his shirt. He sat, hugging his bag, while the visor of his black cap covered his face. I went over to him.
What followed was a short but profound conversation. He had a thick Arab accent, despite having lived in Italy longer than me. While he responded to my questions, I contemplated whether to invite him out to lunch so we could continue the conversation. But being stingy, I decided not to. I told myself that I’d probably find him at the same stop the following day. But I never saw him again.
Before I got off the bus, I told him: “Alhamdulillah” (May all glory be to God”).
He didn’t understand me.
I repeated. Nothing.
Only later did I realize that he was a Coptic Christian, the most persecuted Christian sect in the entire world. And the white necklace? A rosary. The persecution drove him out of his country.
My cosseted life in the Philippines is in contrast to my life in Italy.
Together with the conveniences, I had to leave behind some notions which would’ve anchored me to explore this new country I had found myself in.
I got to know the various and diverse aspects of Rome: from its classical glory to the modern squalor, from Italians who complain constantly about Italy to migrants who consider Italy home, from activists to men nostalgic of Italy’s fascist past.
I got to know teenagers who dealt drugs in order to buy clothes, mostly designer, which their parents couldn’t afford; young homosexuals who had to resort to prostitution to survive, after being kicked out of their homes as a result of coming out; and even children of mafiosi.
Each one of them taught me something and made me realize that although we may be divided by class, race, religion, and sexuality, in the end, we all share suffering and mortality.
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Tyrone Skye Macaraeg, 18, is a contrarian, cinephile, and hopeless romantic who loves strolling along the cobblestone streets of the Eternal City.
