“You like sushi? Sushi? We go for lunch?”
The man in front of us swayed from one foot to another, repeatedly stretching and crumpling the 20 euro banknote he held in front of him.
My wife and I were in Taranto, Italy, visiting her parents. We stopped for a coffee at a café before going to the beach, perhaps two of the most Italian activities possible. The man in front of us was probably in his mid-to-late 30s but looked older, his eyes wrinkled. Despite being thin, the soft flesh of his belly hung out of his shirt when he lifted his arms. In all likelihood, hard drugs were a part of his lifestyle. He was smiling, though, because he had 20 euros, and he wanted to use it to welcome the couple he heard speaking English.
I was traumatized the first time I came to Taranto. Although part of Apulia, a region known for its beauty, the city of 200,000 is seldom in anyone’s travel plans. It’s home to Europe’s largest steel smelting plant, which was run by the mafia for many years with little environmental protections. Despite the outrageously high levels of cancer in Taranto, there is little push to shut down the operation, as it is the only major source of employment. Although the plant is now owned by the government, the city remains stifled by economic depression, which has ultimately encouraged criminality.
The difficulty of living in Taranto has created a type of energy that can, at times, be mistaken for madness. When I visited for Christmas several years ago, the city had turned off all the traffic lights, believing it would make the traffic system more efficient. Once my wife caught me reading on a bench while she ran errands. She immediately told me to put the book away, lest I look weak and get beat up. In many places in the city, a large man will come up to you after you park a car. If you don’t give him a euro to “protect” your vehicle while you’re away, the windows may be smashed in. We went to Taranto soon after we were married, and the eight elderly women in the apartment complex came to my mother-in-law’s apartment. They all spoke at once. If we ran all the farm machinery we had growing up, it would not match their volume. Perhaps most unnerving of all, when I walk the streets I am often stared at, and if I meet the other person’s eyes, they don’t look away.
Being approached by a stranger, much less offered lunch, was an entirely new experience for me in Taranto. Given the appearance of the man, if it had happened in other countries or cities, we wouldn’t have considered it for a second. Being such an unusual gesture in Taranto, though, I could even see my wife hesitating to say no.
“We go,” he said. “Come on.”
In the end, we declined. If we missed the next bus it could be a long wait until the next one, derailing the rest of the day. Unfortunately, the man took it quite personally, being visibly offended. Whether he was on drugs or not in that moment, it took a leap of faith for him to do something so out of the ordinary, and we had let him down. He didn’t seem to buy that we actually did have to catch a bus, but thought that we had rushed out of the café because of him. Still, even if it left him disappointed, my wife and I appreciated the gesture and the new possibilities the streets of Taranto seemed to offer.
Growing up in a rural area, I had a disdain for “city people.” As I understood it, they spent too much money on their clothes, they loved their house cats too faithfully, and their diet consciously included too many vegetables. They were a different breed altogether and, in total, an inferior one. To take it a step further, they were soft and didn’t know what real work was. In most cases, they probably couldn’t screw a nut onto a bolt.
Years later, I now believe that those ideas were born out of fear. Part of being on a farm in the last three or four decades, I would argue, is the feeling of being misunderstood – or worse, forgotten. The harder it became to make a living in the industry, the more it felt like no one cared. The sense of tribalism, at least my participation in it, was to reassure myself that there were others like me and my family and that we still mattered. However, ultimately, emphasizing the rural-urban divide is not useful, as it doesn’t lead to more understanding of farming and its struggles. Instead, I now believe that focusing on division only leaves room for politicians to use it to their own purposes.
In the end, despite how different the environments of our upbringings were, it is what my wife and I have in common that keeps our marriage going. With both of us from working-class families that placed little importance on material wealth, we are happy to spend disposable income on traveling instead of possessions, and are patient with others during periods when they don’t have an income. We’re not ashamed to drive a 2008 Honda Civic, and despite being Italian, my wife is only minorly critical of the way I dress. More importantly, she too believes that a person can be judged by the way they clean the bone of a chicken wing.
I’ve learned to embrace the absurdity of Taranto. Its aggressions and challenges, although still not charming, are starting to feel familiar. Now when someone stares at me, I sometimes smile. Before it’s all said and done, I might even buy someone sushi someday.
