Friday, November 10, 2006

See Naples, and (literally) die!

If I’m not mistaken, the above saying pertains to Naples. I’ve been there on several occasions, the first time going as far back as 1981. I was about to conclude my first-ever backpacking tour of Europe (I had started in Spain, went up to France and then down to Italy). I was with my then girlfriend Jennifer. We were both coming from Winnipeg to Europe. After Rome, we headed down to Naples and nearby Pompeii (for the very first time in my life I actually slept outside, but not in a tent but rather on the ground in a sleeping bag near the ruins. We did this because we couldn’t find a hotel/pension. I’ll never forget the name of the campground either, “Spartacus” (a very appropriate name for the area, indeed!), nor being eaten alive by the mosquitoes that night). Pompeii was really nice and evoked memories of Pink Floyd’s concert there. If my memory doesn’t fail me, we even went to the island of Capri, or “Capri’” with an accent on the “i” as Americans quite often mispronounce it. In order to do that, we had to go to Naples’ port, and, as everyone knows, most ports around the world are rather seedy in nature. I was somewhat worried until we saw a group of US marines coming towards us. Some looked like linebackers for the Green Bay Packers! As soon as they saw the Canadian flags on our backpacks though, they cheered us on. I certainly felt protected. Why on earth did they cheer us on? Because shortly before Canada’s Ambassador Ken Taylor (with the support of the CIA), had helped sneak out of Iran six US citizens during the hostage crisis in Tehran. To thank Canada for that gesture, many billboards in the US thanked the “Great White North” publicly. As someone had stated back then: “What the US couldn’t do with brawn (the helicopter pilots killed in the desert of Iran in the botched-up rescue attempt of the hostages by Jimmy Carter), the Canucks did with brains”!

The other time in Naples was when on July 3rd, 1990, I was sitting DIRECTLY behind the penalty shootout goal at the San Paolo stadium. I was there for the semi-final match between Italy and Maradona’s Argentina. Argentina managed to eliminate Italy from the 1990 World Cup that night. It was also one of THE saddest days of my life (once back in Rome for two days I didn’t leave my house, that’s just how depressed I really was!).

I’ve also been to Naples in more recent times and again to Capri. I’ve always enjoyed the city and its people who are more open and jovial than Romans in general. I’ve never had major problems either, even though I’ve never driven down (I’ve always taken the train) and nor have I walked around with massive and expensive watches on my wrist (Rolexes are hot stuff in Naples. They’ll rip them off your wrist as they whiz by you on their scooters when your sitting in your car at a red light). I recall that Oliviero Toscani, Benetton’s former photographer, once did a reportage on the city about 10 years ago. His conclusion? That nothing in the city works. This same sentiment has been recently evoked by one of Italy’s foremost authors, Giorgio Bocca. The title of one of his recent books is: “We are Naples”. But the Neapolitans nevertheless do seem to have a very “Carpe Diem” approach to life, even though many recently have been (literally) dropping like flies in the Camorra (one of Italy’s four mafias, the others being: Cosa Nostra, the ‘Ndrangheta and the Sacra Corona Unita) gang-land wars. High unemployment is one of the major causes as most young people can’t find good and honest jobs, so they gravitate to the Camorra which pays rather well for pushing drugs or wiping out opponents.

A good Italo-American friend of mine used to work there for a major American bank. He told me that he’d work late and would come out to still find his car in the garage with the keys in the ignition plus the car radio, something totally unthinkable in Naples. The garage owner though was nowhere to be seen as he had gone home. How could this be possible? Because the garage owner was also a member of the Camorra, and if you truly loved life, you didn’t bother stealing the car of a customer of a Camorra member! On another occasion, while playing soccer on Sunday, my good friend had a young kid, clad in his Sunday-best clothes, advising him that someone had just stolen his spare tire from the trunk of his car. My friend was indeed most bewildered, checked out the trunk of his car and indeed the tire was gone. The kid looked at him and said, “But for 25 bucks I know how you can get it back”! My friend paid and got the tire back. It was as simple as that. Another interesting anecdote of the rather contorted way of thinking in Naples concerns a fellow who had his car radio stolen. He left a note on the car dashboard saying, “Please, spare me, they’ve just stolen my car radio”! He returned to find a piece of paper on the ground where his car once stood. The note read: “We’ve used your car to get your radio back”! Prime Minister Romano Prodi has been urged to send down to Naples the army in order to bring justice to the town. Apparently, there are parts of Naples where not only US military personnel are prohibited from entering (the NATO base is not too far away from Naples, in Bagnoli) but Italian law enforcement officials are also discouraged going there.

I personally don’t know how the situation will be resolved because the Neapolitan mentality goes back a few centuries (the mentality in northern Italy is completely the opposite from what it is in Naples. Things that happen there are totally unthinkable in a town like Udine). All I do know is that it must have been totally amazing for a certain Diego Armando Maradona to have lived and played for Naples for eight years! Only someone with his kind of personality could have lasted in that type of environment, and only that type of environment could have allowed Maradona to do what he miraculously was able to do with Naples (two national titles plus a UEFA Cup victory). Club Naples, has he himself said, also helped him to become world champion in 1986. Marco Van Basten won his three Golden Ball awards while playing for AC Milan in the north. Ditto for the great Michel Platini when he played for Turin’s Juventus. I just couldn’t see the two surviving in Naples’ environment like I couldn’t have seen Maradona do the same in the somewhat “sterile” environments of both Milan and Turin, sterile compared to the chaotic atmosphere in Naples (former national goalkeeper and Fiorentina, Naples and Milan goalkeeper Giovanni Galli once told me that Maradona wouldn’t even bother showing up for practises, and yet he’d play and would play magnificently! That’s just how great he really was). So great was Maradona’s charisma on Neapolitans that some people in their homes would replace the effigy of the city’s patron saint, San Gennaro, with that of Don Diego. And one evening, when Naples won its first national “scudetto” title (the very first in 60 years!), kicking in the process both Milan and Juventus in the ass, someone had written the following on the outside wall of a Naples cemetery (directed obviously to those unfortunate laying inside): “You don’t know what you’ve just missed”! In conclusion, the following perhaps best sums up that “Carpe Diem” nature which is soooo embedded in the Neapolitan DNA. A fellow one day gets on a bus while smoking a cigarette. The bus driver looks at him and says, “Sir, can’t you see it’s forbidden to smoke on the bus”! The fellow looks at him rather startled and says: “But I’ve just had a coffee”! The driver: “Ah, sorry sir….”.

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