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Taxi Tales: Part 1 Naples

Posted September 28, 2016 by Sharon 2 Comments

By Walter Sanders

P1120663It was an ideal day of touring in Naples. Via Tribunale was lively with shoppers and tourists taking selfies with the bronze Pulcinella. The funicular ride to Castel Sant’Elmo high above the bay delivered us to a breezy, fresh air mass much cooler than the busy streets of the centro. I shot pictures and videos with my phone.

We splurged on a late lunch overlooking the city, bay, and Mount Vesuvius in the distance. Plates of fresh seafood kept coming. I wandered the terrace and took group photos of families.

It was late afternoon by the time we took another funicular down toward the port. We got off, but we weren’t near the port. I G-mapped to try to figure out our location. At street level, it was hot and humid and we were tired and getting grumpy.  We decided to grab a cab and return to the Hotel Palazzo Decumani.

I always like to sit in the front seat in a cab when the driver agrees. Ours did. The cab driver was a delight. We talked about his two sons…the oldest was a partner in the cab business. We stopped at an ATM for some cash. He took us at the hotel and we were glad to be back in air-conditioned comfort.

Salvatore, the spirited Neapolitan bar man at the hotel lounge, was on duty. I reached for my phone to share some of our videos of the city that Salvatore loves. The phone was not in my pocket.

I was devastated. I scrambled. “Sharon, do you have my phone?  Have you seen it?”

How stupid to leave a phone in a cab. How dumb to leave a phone in a cab in Naples. I asked Sharon to call my number from her phone. No answer. I asked the hotel desk to call the cab stand where we had caught the cab. “No, we didn’t the driver’s name (but we knew about his family!), we didn’t know the cab company, we didn’t have the driver’s mobile phone.”

I got on-line via my lap top to chat with the phone service provider: Google’s Project Fi.

She asked me whether I wanted to deactivate the phone. “No, not yet,” I typed. “I want 60 minutes. The cab driver was such a good guy.”

We camped out in the hotel lounge on a sofa with a view of the front door. An hour went by. Then 90 minutes. I opened the lap top to chat with Project Fi again. The service person, Michael, pulled up the thread via my mobile number and asked whether I wanted to deactivate the phone.

“There he is!” called Sharon as she jumped up to run to the front door.

It was the taxi driver holding the phone up like a trophy. He saw me. I gave him a big hug and he kissed me on both cheeks. I thanked him, and thanked him again.

“May I offer you something…a glass of wine, a beer?”

“No thank you” he said.

I asked him where he found the phone. He said he had five more fares after us. When he was cleaning out the cab for the night, he noticed a black phone sticking out from under a black floor mat under the seat. He saw English language on the screen cleaning pad attached to the back of the phone. “This belongs to the simpatico Americano who I brought to the Hotel Decumani.”

I hugged and thanked him again. I gave him 50 Euro and waved goodbye as he drove off. When I got back to the lap top and the chat, there were a series of “Walter, are you still on line?” entries.

I typed “Yes! You won’t believe this but the driver just returned with the phone.”

taxidrawingI hogged a full page in the hotel guest book with a drawing of a beaming guy holding a mobile over his right shoulder, a cartoony drawing of a taxi cab with a smiling grill, and a recap of the phone story. That’s when I realized that I had neglected to get the driver’s name.

Sharon and I then traveled to some seaside towns for two weeks. Because we enjoyed Naples so much, we decided to return there earlier for our return flight on Meridiana back to JFK. Sharon booked an AirBandB on lively Via Tribunale and we stayed for a couple of nights.

Francesco Aragiusto, the hero of our taxi tale, with Walter.

Francesco Aragiusto, the hero of our taxi tale, with Walter.

One afternoon we enjoyed some time and wine at the port. We decided to grab a cab back to the room. There were a couple of cabs on our side of the street, but no drivers. So we crossed the street to a different cab stand with dozens of drivers at the ready. I acknowledged the nearest, told him where we wanted to go, and asked if I could sit in the front seat. He said yes.

Then we got a better look at each other. He said “I remember you! You left your phone in the cab.”

“And you found it and returned it!” We rubbed each other’s heads and had a mini celebration.

I asked for his name: Francesco Aragiusto. One of the many upright and honest citizens of Naples.

Do you have an Italian taxi tale? Share it here.

Coming up . . .

Taxi Tales: Part 2 Palinuro

Filed Under: Campania, Miscellany, Naples, People, Travel Tagged With: Italian taxis, italian travel, Naples taxis, Naples tourism

The Neapolitan Novels

Posted September 11, 2016 by Sharon Leave a Comment

Photojournalist x captured this image of two girls in post-war Naples. The f

Journalist David Chim Seymour captured this poignant image of two young girls who could be Elena and Lina in Naples 1948.

As fate would have it, I finished The Story of the Lost Child on a recent stay in Naples.

The last pages resonated with me as I don’t believe they could have anywhere else.

The Story of the Lost Child, is the final book in the Neapolitan quartet by Elena Ferrante. The protagonists are Elena Greco (also called Lenuccia or Lenù) and Raffaella Cerullo (also called Lina or Lila).Elena and Lila were born into a shattered world in August 1944–in a dismal neighborhood in a neglected city that had endured massive bombing during World War II.

friendcover_9781609450786_131_240

The Neapolitan Novels

My Brilliant Friend
The Story of a New Name
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
The Story of the Lost Child

In the narrative, the girls grow into women and then into old women. Their personas are inseparable even when they are physically apart. For those who have read the novels, nothing I could write would enhance your experience of them. For those who have not read the novels, I can say: If you read the Neapolitan novels you will enter a world you will never forget.

Fans are anticipating the November 2016 release of Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey, a nonfiction collection of the author’s writings, to glean insights into the life and work of the fiercely anonymous novelist.

cover_9781609452926_806_600Ferrante elaborated on the word frantumaglia in a May 2016 interview with Nicola Lagioia published in The New Yorker:

“We are, as you say, interconnected. And we should teach ourselves to look deeply at this interconnection—I call it a tangle, or, rather, frantumaglia—to give ourselves adequate tools to describe it. In the most absolute tranquility or in the midst of tumultuous events, in safety or danger, in innocence or corruption, we are a crowd of others. And this crowd is certainly a blessing for literature.”

She mentioned the word also in a Paris Review interview conducted by Europa publishers. “My mother liked to use the word frantumaglia—bits and pieces of uncertain origin which rattle around in your head, not always comfortably.”

While Ferrante would no doubt disapprove, journalists and travel writers are descending upon Naples sleuthing for locations to pin to the narrative. Here are a few interesting reads: The New York Times, NPR, The Irish Times.


I myself followed Ferrante’s footsteps to Piazza dei Martiri in the chic Chiaia shopping district. In the books, this piazza represents a place of aspiration, but never quite assimilation, for some of the characters.

Along the lungomare on a Sunday twilight, I spotted two teens who could be Elena and Lina in 2016. I wondered how different, or maybe in some ways similar, their lives are compared to the Neapolitan novels.

Have you read the Neapolitan novels? Share your thoughts with us.

 

 

Filed Under: Books, Campania, Culture, History, Language, Miscellany, Naples, Travel Tagged With: Campania, Elena Ferrante, Italian literature, italian travel, Italian writers, Neapolitan novels, Neapolitan quartet, Southern Italy

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