On falling in love

(#20) 📍 Naples // canta fortuna

People told us not to go to Naples. They warned us it was not the most scenic of Italian cities. And indeed, when we arrived there, the sky was hazy with smog. We travelled on a bus with shaded-in windows to a noisy transport interchange, where it took us an hour to figure out which train to take to our holiday rental.

Naples was not an easy place to navigate. We stayed over the Easter weekend, when the streets were so rammed that even the free walking tour guide, Giuseppe, said he would skip some of the main sights and take us a different way. Young men raced along the steep cobbled streets on Vespas. Old men blew into horns, creating an ambience not dissimilar from a budget Hollywood movie set in the Middle East.

Our apartment was perched on the top of a hill overlooking the city. Every time we walked up there, we passed an open door where an old woman sat on her haunches, smiling out at us. In the city centre, a young woman sat in a hammock, cradling a plastic baby doll with an expression of Madonna-like serenity. In the evening, a middle-aged woman sang a string of ululating ‘Hallelujahs’ which echoed off the walls of the old town. It felt like all of human life was there, crammed into one place - and that was an exhausting thing.

I was visiting Naples with my three schoolfriends, Jahnavi, Ash and Ramiya. On our last day, Ramiya and I walked ahead of the others through the hot, dense streets. We passed a baby pigeon with downy feathers, standing in the thick of the crowds in bewildered stupefaction. All I’d drunk that day was a cappuccino, and it made me wired. There was a thrumming tightness in my chest; I felt anxious about getting separated from my friends.

We turned at the end of the street to wait for Jahnavi and Ash. They were a long way behind, clinging to one another, visibly upset.

“We just saw a baby bird get run over,” Ash said.