a memory...

Ah, the men of Italy. Tall, dark, handsome, amorous, and persistent—their kind has peopled the annals of art and literature for centuries. No woman, I was told, could ever visit Italy and leave feeling undesirable.

I visited Rome, and I encountered men who fit the pattern…some, embarrassingly so. But my most memorable meeting was with a quite different individual.

It was the final day of our stay in the eternal city: a gusty, cloud-swept night. The lights of the city and the noises of traffic made me question whether I was, indeed, walking the venues of that ancient city—it felt so industrial, so modern. As my doubts gained credibility, the street blossomed in front of me into a vast flagstone piazza, dominated by a massive sculptured fountain: the Piazza del Populo. Now this was Rome. Lovers walked arm-in-arm across the wide area, or draped themselves in various attitudes on the benches and the stairs of the sculpture. The patchy breeze and the plashing of the fountain mythologized even the distant roar of traffic. My companion and I seated ourselves on the cement stairs of the fountain and looked about us in silence.

The stranger annoyed me at first. Another grasping peddler, destroying my experience by trying to exploit my tourist’s purse. He approached us hesitantly at first, hovering from a distance of several yards as if weighing his chances. In the darkness, I distinguished a short round figure in jeans and a sweatshirt. In his arms he bore a bunch of roses. His dim outline gradually gained clarity as he gained nerve and approached us. I guessed that he was of Indian origin by his pigment.

He extended the rose to us with a fawning sort of smile.

“No thank you,” I shook my head apologetically and smiled. “They are beautiful—but I have no money.” I hated this aspect of tourism. All week, I had been turning down the wares of wandering vendors, speculating whether this was their only source of income, and how much actually depended upon my reception or dismissal.

This man appeared unfazed. “Where are you from?” he questioned, his already timid voice so confused by his accent that it took a moment for me to decipher its message.

“Umm....oh! I’m from America,” I replied.

“America,” he nodded and smiled, lingering.

Maybe he had gone all day without exchanging more than a haggling conversation or two with a handful of self-important tourists. His posture and the eager expression on his face told me that he desired to stay. And I, on my part, was intrigued.

“Where are you from?” I returned.

Without need of further prompting, the man unleashed a torrent of words. It took all my powers of concentration to be able to interpret the unfamiliar cadence and articulation, but I understood the gist of his speech. Originally from Bangladesh, he had moved to Rome three years ago to earn some more money. He planned on returning to his homeland soon—within the year. I asked if he had family there, and he shook his head.

He began questioning me then. Did I like Rome? When did I return to America? Did I have a boyfriend? Gradually, his voice had acquired vigor, and I found it easier and easier to understand what he was saying.

After a few minutes, he shook my hand with an enormous smile, wished me and my friend a good final evening in Rome, and bade us goodbye.

So much of his story remained a mystery. What had inspired him to leave his homeland in the first place? Why Rome? Where did he stay? Did he find it difficult to make ends meet? Why roses?

As I wondered about that man, the people teeming around me took on a new strangeness. Every single one of them had a story like that of the Bangladesh rose-vendor, a story that had led them to Rome: Rome, the city that had drawn people from all civilizations and walks of life to it for centuries. On every face, the genetic material of ages of human life had blended to produce an absolutely original individual. How many of our ancestors had encountered each other in the past, in other settings, under other circumstances? And there we all were, cheerfully breezing by each other in a starlit piazza of a Roman spring.

Even as I sit here reminiscing, I wonder if that man still walks the streets with his armful of roses, telling his story to anyone who will listen. I wonder how many people from all walks of life have his blooms, dried and pressed, adorning the pages of their scrapbooks. Perhaps he has returned to Bangladesh, and there entertains his friends with tales of his adventures abroad.
And I wonder…does he tell the story of two American girls he met on the stairs of a fountain in the Piazza del Populo, who would not buy his roses?