Flashbacks I

A personal experience.

Flashbacks

As a technique used as it should in literature and movie scripts, flashback can be the perfect solution to enhance the plot with interest and drama. I’ve used it successfully in turning a short story into a novel; and I’ll use it right here in describing an episode in my life, which brought me closer step by step to Italy, Rome, the renaissance era with its numerous grand masters since Giotto up to Caravaggio.

Going back in time means what was first would be last, that episode was in between the last the first phases.

We were three very young couples in a forlorn village called Jimma in Ethiopia. There was one road crossing it, one eight room hotel, one roofless movie theater, a grocery store owned by an Italian couple, a garage owned by two Italian brothers, a barber shop and a few more little shops. The rest of the street was the city's market place. During the night late hours, if one ventured outside he could encounter leopards, hyenas and jackals, roaming the unpaved street. Vultures, eagles and hawks were putting a daily siege on the hotel’s kitchen, in expectation for leftovers �" it was an incredible sight to watch these birds of prey perched on top of the trees all around the hotel’s kitchen. The hotel’s small garden was full in extreme contrast with numerous species of birds, beautiful honeysuckles in particular. This village to this very day is the district’s capital. The district of Kaffa, and the name coffee is derived from this district’s name. For coffee grows there wildly in the jungles all around it.

I’ve seen many Italian movies during my early youth, the neo-realism famous movies. Verdi’s operas in Italian, but the first ever time in my life when I heard this language spoken in my presence, was in the grocery store in Jimma. I was there all alone with the owner’s wife who served me; we were speaking in English, the few words needed. The phone rang; she picked it up watching me, simply because I stood in front of her. She smiled and said: “Vabene”. The sound of that word in her melodious voice, her smile attracted me to that beautiful language, and to many more words that I’ve heard meeting several more times that couple, and the two brothers the garage owners �" when ever we needed to service our cars.

Hardly two months passed and we were at the small airport (just a narrow dirt air strip), expecting a newcomer �" my replacement. There was real trouble in one crew of our experts, a quarrel that could not be solved, and thus the only solution was manpower exchange. I was chosen to replace the trouble maker for my known forbearance. His crew leader was an unbearable type. I was the only one who knew my replacement, we served in the same unit back home;  he used to be as thin as a twig, but getting off the Dakota plane he looked so puffed up, I hardly knew him. After the hugs and handshakes I asked him surprised: ‘what has become of you?’ His answer was one word: ‘Lasagna’, he did explain right away the matter in detail of course.

The next morning I flew with the same two engine Dakota to Addis, to meet my delegation heads, to be briefed and be ready for my next mission in Asmara.

After two days of relaxation in the Ethiopian capital, a rather short briefing (they’d their reasons no doubt).

Thus we had enough time to meet several good friends of ours. We had a great delegation in that African country.

The flight from Addis to Asmara took some half an hour, nowadays it must be much faster I guess. After a very pleasant flight in a Boing 727 we landed in Asmara’s airport. We were picked up by my new team leader, an old timer who must have been some forty years old; a tall and heavily set man. He was ever so nice, he had to prove he wasn’t the one to blame. We didn’t mind the facts of gossip whatever took place there; we were young, we had one another, and we knew well enough despite our young age, that most of the disputes in any delegation abroad were over trivialities.

We drove to town in his Landrover the three of us, there were no seat belts at that time, and being the government’s guests we could do whatever we wanted; we’d a lively chat, learned a few facts about the surroundings, the population, watched the scenery, which was very encouraging " Asmara was beautiful, compared to any other town in Ethiopia. It was quite early while we crossed it’s main road with its broad pavements and the cafés  a la Via Veneto. These impressions of course were based on Italian movies that we’ve seen " ‘La dolce vita’ with Mastoriani for instance.

That’s what our life seemed to us, after a week or so in Albergo Italia " our hotel. It was situated in ‘downtown’ Asmara, near to its red brick cathedral. Each morning its bells’ chimes woke us up, and we won’t ever forget the flower vendors calling under our window: ‘fiori, fiori.’

The weather was fantastic, the population were good looking and friendly. Work and thoughts about what I was supposed to do there, were some three weeks away. The hotel’s little restaurant was superb, we learned in rather a short while to eat our pastasciutta with just a fork, as if we were used to it since childhood.

We met the few Israeli families there, five all in all. Two were representative of Israeli firms, the third one was an importer of electronic merchandise and two more were the owners of a canned food  factory. They were all much older than us, thus we used to meet them once in a while, during weekends or holidays. We were introduced to Italian coffee. It was quite different from anything we knew about coffee. We simply didn’t know a thing it seemed, after the first chance to taste it. I wasn’t too impressed by cappucino or café late’, but café machiato was my delight.

 We were lost in paradise, it didn’t last long though. As most of our expenses were covered by our embassy, a special administration envoy was sent, to help us find an apartment, buy furniture and settle us down in a much more humble and less costly abode.

We were settled at last in Asmara’s Palazzo Vecchio fifth floor, next to the cathedral. It was the town’s biggest building, five floors, four wings with an elevator in each wing and an internal yard; just like in Italy, that’s what we’ve been told. We made friends with our neighbors, and some young men and women, joined a bowling club, a tennis club. There were five movie theaters in that small but bustling town. On top of it there was a free phone service, free TV (black and white) and radio station in English, both these services transmitted 24 hours a day. Was it some kind of a miracle, not at all. It was an American satellite surveillance station, twice as big as Aamara, not far off " we couldn’t ask for more.

Good times pass quickly, and the time to work in such occasions falls in like waking up from a dream.

 

© Haim Kadman 2008 " all rights reserved.