Free Morning Sea by Margaret Mazzantini Page A

Amazon Guard and his satin slippers. Champagne in the Bedouins’ tent. No one said another thing about terrorism, exploded planes. His had been the first Arab government to condemn the attack on the World Trade Center. The actor of a thousand faces was now after a new role as mediator in the Mediterranean. Angelina laughed. He’s hoping for the Nobel Peace Prize .
     
    Nonna Santa, cleaning broccoli, whispers, History is a millipede with every foot pulling in a different direction, and our body is in the middle.
    By then Nonno Antonio had already died without ever seeing Tripoli again. But he’d dreamt it, dreamt a white wall and the café in Corso Sicilia where he used to play pool. He’d ordered a cup of mint tea, the pretend kind from the supermarket.
     
    ‘Mum, I want to go.’
    It was Vito who dragged her back to Tripoli.
    He was sick of hearing that broken story.
    So Angelina and her mother travelled back with Vito, who’d never been.
    Beforehand, he took a tour with Google Earth, saw Tripoli thanks to his mouse.
    Angelina wouldn’t come near the computer.
    She went around with that expression for days, hunched into her shoulders, absent, paralysed by her thoughts.
    She was anxious, caged in. She put things in her handbag and took them back out. She talked about nothing but what weather they would find and the intestinal antibacterial they’d better bring along in case they got the runs.
    She’d waited for this moment for who knew how long, and now that it was here she seemed uninterested, cursory, like a person who finally has to go through a small but necessary operation she’s put off many times. Yes, it was the same agitated calm as when she went to the hospital to get the lump in her breast removed and sat on the stretcher fully clothed, not making up her mind to change, to put on her hospital gown, until the very last minute.
    That very same almost autistic determination, that habit of fighting against herself, of never choosing a new wall to scale.
    In the end, she shuffled off in her slippers as if she were headed to the beach for a day.
    Nonna Santa was like a little girl on Saint Agatha’s Day in her white dress and new orthopaedic shoes.
    They flew on Libyan Airlines.
    Nonna looked out of the dirty window and studied what she saw.
    It was the first time they’d seen that sea from the air. Without the flavour, the foam spray, the anguish. With­out the fear they’d drown.
    It was a strange interlude within that pressurized cabin as it crossed the sea of their lives without moving.
    The first thing they saw from above were the fields the Italians had created in the desert around Tripoli, a geometry of tidy pieces. A docile pattern. That was the best bequest, the work of thousands of arms. Citrus and olive groves, rows of agave planted as bulwarks against the mobile horizon of dunes.
    They had no baggage and yet it was as if they didn’t want to leave the airport. They closed themselves in the toilets. Nonna had a swollen bladder. Vito’s mother rinsed her face, and when they came out, she had wet spots on her T-shirt and her hair was glued to her temples.
    Vito noticed she’d grown old. The thought pained him. Later, she’d go back to being young, but in that moment, he saw what she would become.
     
    The air of that sea, those cities unfurling themselves along the Arab coast, flat, caressed by the wind going in and out. Needle-like minarets, buildings surrounded by majestic palm trees. Vito was happy to be on holiday. They took a taxi. The country’s oil wealth was tangible. Tarmac roads with multiple lanes sliced through the desert. Sparkling Toyotas drove arrogantly, making U-turns and nonchalantly cutting through roundabouts in the wrong direction.
    The taxi stopped along the seaside promenade.
    Nonna Santa straightened her neck, made a dizzy face, stretched like a grey bird. Her daughter helped her up from the sweaty car seat.
    The two of them looked like they’d just stepped off a