Naples and Death

It felt strange, today, visiting two doomed cities. One whose doom came many years ago, on a dark day in August, and another that grows ever larger, seemingly oblivious of the inevitable cataclysm that lurks under the slopes of sleeping Vesuvius. One day, not that far distant, that sleeping giant will awaken and the ash-cloaked death that came to Pompei nine days before the caldendes of September, 833 years after the founding of Rome, will surprise the millions now living in and around Naples.

Walking through the hauntingly intact streets of Pompei this morning, nearly two thousand years after dark Vesuvius' sudden visit, I fancied I could hear the distant echos of the long-dead voices that once filled the streets, market stalls, temples and villas of this once-proud city. Words of commerce and denarii, murmurs of tenderness, jealousy and dark secrets, cries of pleasure, pain and fear. How many mad ignored the warning signs coming from the grumbling giant above them, the shuddering earth and the dark clouds rising around its summit? How many had waited one hour too long, until the black rain came to cover them in its deadly embrace?

Perhaps it is simply morbid curiosity that compels me to dream about the last days of this doomed city. Or is it a breathless augury, one last lingering whispered warning from forgotten gods that the giant Vesuvius slumbers less deeply than many may hope.

Malta and the investigator

I can't see the word "Malta" without my mind flashing to "The Maltese Falcon". Bogart is a legend for many, and a veritable icon for me; the Black Bird is where it all started. The Black Bird, clutched in Captain Jacobi's dying hands, symbolized the essence of the thriller, and the drive to investigate those dark secrets, the hidden fabulous treasure from the hermetic pits of history that men and women would pay for, seduce and kill to get.

Malta may have only been the pretext that Dashiell Hammett needed to string together his tale of betrayal and intrigue, but it has a magical feel nonetheless. Today, Malta is a sleepy Mediterranean inkblot, scarcely a severed appendix hanging off the belly of Sicily. Proud fortresses lean against ornate gothic churches that stand on the toes of ancient Knights Hospitaler chapter houses and elbow aside the five-story balcony-laden stone façades that give the streets of Malta their charm.

Me, I like to feel like the hard-boiled private dick, even if the mysteries I seek to unravel consist only in finding out what frescoes, votaries and shrines are in the next church on our circuit, or which crenellated wall will most fire my medieval imagination. There may be no treasure and no femme fatale at the end of my quest, but then again no one is trying to kill me either. Valetta, Malta's capital, offers many time-worn secrets for the curious traveller to discover, with none of the dangers one associates with a quest born of intrigue and cupidity. I swam through those enchanting streets in a dream, and even managed for a while to forget the call of the waiting Cuba Libres.

Springtime in Africa

It's a wonderful thing, springtime. here we were in North Africa, on the edge of the largest desert in the world, and there were flowers everywhere. Our guide said they'd never had so much rain, and it really brought out the green. The ruins at Leptis Magna were much the same. We saw snapshots of many of the locations from thirty years before, and it was amazing how much they'd fixed the place up. The central arch was complete, in nearly pristine condition - the bloom of spring was even in the stones.

Moamar's guards were everywhere, and they seemed to be enjoying the wonderful weather too. Sure, they were watching us, just in case we managed to slip a thirty-foot collumn into our back pockets, but they spent more time soaking up the sun and the cool breeze. Even the sentries posted at the topmost point, at the back of the temple to Saturn, seemed half-asleep in the gentle flow of spring.

Elsewhere in the city, and in the museum of antiquities, Moamar himself was even more ubiquitous than his guards. With his upturned face and triumphant expression, I finally concluded that spring must have arrived on Presidential order.

Stretching towards the Sauna

I decided to take the easy way out. My Sugar did her "stretching" while I... sat back and watched. And drank. There's something about unlimited cocktails that reaches a man deep in his soul. Nadia, the lithe and mysterious East European dancer, led the disparate band of tourists in 45 minutes of low-intensity calisthenics. Not all of them stayed the course, though. After one Canadian girl exclaimed that the movements made her feel like a chicken, she and her clutch of young hens left the stage, amidst much clucking and pecking. I couldn't fault her for her insight: with her long skinny legs and longer neck she did look rather gallinaceous.

Sugar stick it out a bit longer, while I wrote and gawked. When she'd had enough, she smiled and said it was time for the sauna. I'd never been much for the clinging heat and oppressive humidity that makes every pore weep for shame at all the chemicals we keep pumping into our bodies. I couldn't help thinking it would have done me a world of good, so, with my usual heroic zeal, I decided instead to head once more for the bar. Maybe I was becoming a lush. I've certainly been worse things in my time. But I had a finely crafted argument in my defence. It's a cruise, and I can live it up all I like.

In Sidi Bou Said

The Romans really knew how to destroy a place. The only vestiges of the Carthaginians are those the Romans filled in with sand and gravel - below ground level. Of course, their day came and went in turn, and Sidi Bou Said rises today above the Punic and Roman ruins with a cacaphony of white walls, blue windows, doors and balconies, and the garish colors of market stalls selling t-shirts, brass jewelry and every sort of knick-knack known to man. We had risen above all that, or at least liked to think so, as we sat at the Café des Artistes drinking our mint tea and looking over the squirming crowd. Yes, we too were part of the flood of tourists that came to drown anything local or individual or authentic in a thousand ports in every corner of the world. our politically-correct consciences couldn't change that. The only thing setting us apart was our self-apportioned burden of guilt.

With all that baggage, it was a pleasure to return to the ship, to familiarity, to two-fisted drinking and banquets that left us stuffed like geese about ready to have our livers harvested. We were back amongst our own kind, for better or worse. The most important effect of our brush with exoticism was to remind us who we were... and who we weren't.

Sardinia

It's hard for a landlubber like me to really appreciate the roll of the waves, the bite of the wind and the rhythmic rising and falling of the swell until he's felt it for himself. As our cruise ship churned down along the west coast of Sardinia, I finally knew what it all meant. It's not that the sea was particularly rough, but for someone used to terrestrial solidity and whose maritime experience had previously been limited to canoes, sunfish and speedboats, it was an unsettling, even disorienting feeling. I was lucky, though, and didn't join in the crowd at the ship's rail.

Our excursion was, if anything, typical - just what I would have expected from a guided tour. Had I really been paying attention, now I'd know in what year the Savoie family had arrived with their Gothic architecture, when and how they had handed the island over to Spain, and the precise circumstances under which the whole thing became once and for all Italian. But, interesting as our guide's explanations were, informative, and even pedagogical, I can't say I really listened much. The cathedral was impressive but, then again, aren't they all? That is their purpose. No, at the end of the day I was more interested in my chances of getting a good backrub, and a Cuba Libre that hadn't been too far watered down.

Departure

Lost, we wandered around the port, in and out of disused and silent docks, alongside run-down warehouses where the only residual signs of life were rusting parked semi trucks and hundreds of containers in scattered piles, each hoarding its trove of hidden treasure until the day the dockers would move them out for transport.

But not that Sunday, under that clear sunny sky that made us feel as if we'd already left behind the incessant demands of the work week. It was still cool, just nearing the end of April, as we scoured the page of directions we'd downloaded from the cruise site. We had a dock name and number, but nothing seemed to be marked - I suppose the men who usually navigated this forlorn labyrinth already knew where they were going.

Me, I'd never seen this side of Marseille. The "Phoenician City" had always meant for me the Vieux Port, with its fishermen haggling for a good price and crowds of gawking tourists, the Cannebière, that iconic boulevard that rose from it into the hills above portside, the Arab market at Noailles, where I'd bought so many gyros and loaves of matlouh bread, and the hot clubs and bars of Cours Julien. I'd lived in Marseille for nearly three years, and thought I knew it well. But not that side of it, not at all.

Eventually, some port security guys came round and showed us to our destination. But our wandering that day, lost, showed me a part of the real Marseille that I'd never seen, if not its heart, at least the stomach and liver of the city.