While Rachelle and I were trying to figure out what we were doing at the Termini Metro station in Rome, a man popped up to help us. Middle-aged and dressed in a mishmash of found objects that almost gave him the appearance of a hipster, he began to enthusiastically point to spots on the map and the token machine. This proved to be very helpful, and in no time the mechanisms of the system had snapped into place. Grateful for his help, we decided to give him a tip, but while I was digging around in my pocket for some change, another woman who looked kind of like him, began to speak to me. I had no idea what she was saying, but similar in appearance and manner, I presumed they were a team, a kind of informal “help-the-tourists-get-on-the-subway” tandem and tossed some money in the cup she had outstretched.
As we turned the corner and headed down the stairs, a huge screaming fight erupted between the two of them while a 15 year-old boy with a cigarette in his mouth made a kissy-kissy at Rachelle. At the foot of the stairs leading to the platform lay a woman. Somewhere in her 20’s, she was quite beautiful, and had positioned herself in such a way that she was almost—but not at all– out of the view of anyone descending the stairs. Her eyes were forlorn, cast despairingly at the wall as if having given up on the cruel world swirling around her. Resting on her stomach, just as exposed and vulnerable as possible, (I don’t think she even had a hand on it) was a baby, as if just waiting for salvation. It seemed more performance art or street theater than anything else, and so we continued past her to the platform, like all the other people hurrying for their train.
The place was filthy, crowded and cut-throat. A little disoriented and intimidated, we took solace in the sight of a flock of nuns. We stood amidst them, as if to be blessed by the protectorate of their habits and grace. The subway, gloriously and beautifully covered in graffiti, shuddered down the tracks. It was impossibly full of people, and as this was our first time on the Rome Metro, we had no idea if this was typical and decided to look to the nuns for guidance. They did not hesitate, but bullied onto the train, pushing and squeezing and contorting, and so we did, too.
We stood rigid amongst the scramble of people, clutching our bags like the tourists we were. The feeling of shame of being an identifiable tourist is so strange. We knew we’d never be mistaken for Romans, but still, we didn’t want to be seen as we saw the other tourists—the woman with the Canada pin on her sweater who was reading In Touch Magazine, or her husband, who with an open-face, optimistically wore his Toronto Blue Jays hat.
We wanted to seem more fashionable, more sophisticated than that, but we weren’t, we weren’t.