This episode tells of a journey back: it is a homage to the places, the communities, the living and the dead who made me who I am.
It is dedicated to the arcane of the Chariot, which speaks of movement, of taking back the reins, of finding one’s direction even when one isn’t sure of who is actually steering.
In the story, this movement follows a path that is not only spatial — from Florence to Naples — but also biographical. It is a journey through memories, teachers, and belongings that, however sedimented they may seem, continue to speak to me.
Along the journey the voice of my father reappears: director, pedagogue, craftsman of ideas, who returns not as an icon — never that — but as a living, concrete presence, with his unmistakable way of thinking out loud and moving his hands nervously in the air.
In Naples, another layer of my past opens up: that tribe of Italian Orientalists I knew in Cairo during the years of the revolution, years of study and escape.
In that tribe was my friend Flavia, whom I find and thank in this episode; and there was also, in a way difficult to explain, Giulio Regeni. Not because we were friends, but because we belonged to the same small world, the same dusty streets, the same rickety minibuses, the same cafés where we talked too much and slept too little.
His presence in these pages is not meant simply as a tribute, but as a mending: a stitch between a before and an after.
Totò also appears, acting as symbolic custodian of Naples: a comic and metaphysical guide, a tank-top Virgil who accompanies me among the living and the dead — reminding me that the Chariot, to move, needs lightness.
The episode is thus a story about how one crosses cities and memories, and how every journey is always a way of recognizing who is still part of us, even when they can no longer sit at our side.
The train runs toward Naples, cutting through the October air like a thought determined not to stop.
I sit by the window, a notebook open on my knees, but I don’t write. After my mother’s scolding — “what you need is a psychiatrist, and leave the priests alone!” — I had sworn to myself this trip would be mine alone. A few days without teachers, without ghosts, without pedagogies lying in wait.
How naive from me.
Because as soon as I relax, as soon as I let my thoughts float between a ploughed field and an abandoned farmhouse — there he is, the ghost that once frightened me the most: my father.
Imagine if the old man would ever allow me an escape, and now of all times.
I feel him first in my shoulders: a small adjustment, like when he would straighten his jacket before entering a classroom. Then his voice appears; not as a sharp memory, nor as an external sound — more like an echo settling beside me, bending the seat a little.
“You see, Margherita…”
I already know there’s no point in trying to run, so I sigh.
He clears his throat the way he did before starting an important lecture. In the air there is the unmistakable smell of tobacco and red wine.
I almost see his right hand — the one that always gesticulated too much — opening and closing in the air, marking commas, sculpting invisible concepts.
“Never forget this: every subject you deal with — be it Hamlet, the Qur’an, the Tarot, or a novel by Carolina Invernizio — is a macrotext. It carries within itself all the signs, all the gestures that others have inscribed before you.
When you work on it, you are only the last in a long line of operators — authors, actors, readers — who have touched it. This procession of ghosts won’t abandon you as long as you hold the subject in your hands. You do realize that, don’t you?”
And so: once again the escape of minds hasn’t worked.
For a moment I remain still, as if the train had slowed down only inside me. Then I smile.
“Yes, daddy. I know well that no one ever starts from zero.”
He nods — I feel it in the rhythm of his presence, without seeing him.
His voice returns, softer, lower, like when he truly cared.
“If you aren’t aware of it, that mass of culture plays tricks on you. You end up repeating gestures whose meaning you do not know. But if you become conscious of it, then you can play with it yourself: with skill, with knowledge, and — if you’re lucky — with great pleasure. You’re no longer a blind medium, but an interpreter.”
Now I really see it: the hand tracing two crooked quotation marks in the air; and that tilt of the head, ironic, meaning: farewell innocence, now we begin to work seriously.
“Behind you,” he continues, “are the traditions, the original contexts, the uses that have stratified until they’ve worn out. In front of you, there are the new circumstances, and the living culture of those who are listening to you.
Between these two extremes moves every true interpretive work, and it is impossible to escape this tension. You cannot erase or remove the teachers who formed you, or the tools that sculpted you; if you try, you will only get lost.”
The train slows down near Aversa, while the plain opens in a grey breath.
Picchi’s voice grows thin, as if he knows he has already said enough — or as if he is waiting for my answer.
“And you, now, where are you going?” he asks, almost ironic.
“To Naples, daddy. To see a friend. And…” I hesitate a moment, “maybe to see you again, too.”
Silence.
As soon as I say it, I feel he has gone. Only the sound of metal on tracks remains, answering with an ancient rhythm:
Going,
knowing,
joining…
The smell of Naples Centrale hits me in the face as soon as I step off the train: it smells of sea and fried food mixed together, as only this station can.
I barely have time to set foot on the platform before a group of tourists tramples me with their suitcases, but for once I don’t care — because I hear a voice I recognize immediately.
“Oh, what are you, exactly the same as ten years ago?”
Her sharp Milanese accent is like no other: Flavia!
She spreads her arms wide even before coming near me, as if already embracing me from meters away.
Her black curls have grown a little greyer, the circles under her eyes a bit deeper, but her gaze is still as lively and ironic as when we met on her Cairo small balcony, half destroyed, with a couple of Stella beers to drink on rickety metal chairs.
“It took talent to grow older without becoming adults,” I reply, winking at her.
She bursts out laughing. “And to think someone told me you had matured and become respectable!! Didn’t you win a Marie Curie?!”
“I had won it,” I answer, “but it’s still hanging a bit. I managed to create problems even before starting. I haven’t lost hope of saving the grant, but it’s been really hard.”
She grabs my hand — without even asking, just like she used to — and drags me out of the station.
We’ve grown up, yes. Maybe changed. But our friendship hasn’t: it’s remained fresh, elastic, straightforward. We don’t need to warm up the engines.
We walk up Via Foria; traffic screams at us but we’re in our own bubble.
“So,” Flavia says, “what got into you to come back here? A bout of nostalgia? A mystical crisis? A Neapolitan lover?”
“A tarot card,” I reply.
She blinks twice, then bursts out laughing again. “Of course. What else?”
She tells me about her job, posters to hang, bureaucracies to dodge; about her horse, her challenges, her passions.
We avoid, almost naturally, the names that hurt.
For a while.
Then I point to the yellow bracelet hanging from her backpack, and I open the more difficult subject: “You still haven’t stopped asking for truth for Giulio.”
She looks at me with a bit of nostalgia. “How could I?”
I sigh. “I’ve always tried to talk about it as little as possible. I have enough ghosts already.”
Silence falls like a metal key on the floor.
“He’s the hardest of all,” I continue after a bit. “Because since they killed him, we all ran away. Each in our own way. And every time I see one of you I feel… as if I still had something to finish.”
Flavia says nothing. Some wounds don’t need explaining: they only make noise when touched.
She places a hand lightly on my shoulder.
She’s always been like that: few words, placed exactly where needed.
We start walking again.
The afternoon passes like a forgotten cup of tea: slow, warm, full of traces.
We eat a sfogliatella balanced on a sidewalk; we complain about the heat, the scooters, the colleagues; we buy plastic jewelry in the tiny shop of an aging femminiello with impeccable elegance.
When we return to her place, Capodimonte begins to glow in the evening.
And under its light, while we watch Lady Oscar, making the bed and laughing about nothing, I feel the whole day has opened the right door inside me.
So it’s not strange that that night, as sleep drags me down, the catacombs come looking for me.
Night falls on the city like a heavy blanket.
From Flavia’s window, the lights of Capodimonte seem suspended in the air, like unmoving fireflies.
I fall asleep thinking of the dead, of fathers, of unspoken words.
In the dream I walk down a damp corridor carved in stone. The walls glisten with saltpetre, the air smells of wax and incense. I know I’m in the catacombs of San Gennaro, but I’m not afraid: I’m carrying a bottle of Tuscan olive oil, the oil of the living, the kind you dip bread into as a snack.
It is a gift from Saint Catherine of Siena for the dead of Naples.
As I advance, I glimpse two figures.
Totò, dressed as in Big Deal on Madonna Street, gestures for me to be quiet and points to a votive lamp that never goes out.
Next to him, Giulio Regeni smiles faintly, with that gentle and tired smile I’ve seen a thousand times in photos. He holds a worn notebook.
“It’s better not to speak directly with the Big One up there when you need to ask for something,” Totò says in his hoarse, mocking voice. “He’s got his circles, you know? Better go through intercession. Saints, Madonnas, friendly spirits. That way the message arrives clean.”
Giulio nods, serious. “Saints are like cultural mediators,” he adds. “They know the language of God and that of human beings.”
I feel like laughing and crying at the same time. I place the bottle of oil on the altar, and for a moment everything lights up: a warm glow, neither alive nor dead. Then the scene fades, and I wake up.
Morning.
On the bedside table, the phone blinks.
I scroll through the messages, still groggy, and find the words I wrote to Father Thabang during the night, almost without remembering:
“Brother, I had a dream tonight. I’m in Naples, in the catacombs of San Gennaro, where I brought some Tuscan oil for the dead. Totò and Giulio Regeni told me it’s better not to speak directly with God, but to ask through the intercession of saints and friendly spirits. I think, on this point, I will remain faithful to the Catholic reading… and to the Sufis.”
Below is Thabang’s reply, arrived at dawn:
“Indeed. Be strong, my sister. Ask St. Gennaro, and also Our Lady of Pompei.”
I read it twice, then look outside: the sun begins to touch the hill, the woods awaken, and from some balcony the smell of coffee rises.
It feels like somewhere, someone is laughing softly.
The sun rests on the terrace like a veil of gold.
I step outside for some air: Capodimonte wakes in the still-cool silence, cut only by the motorini that never stop darting.
Totò is already there, in tank top and underwear, hanging laundry on a string stretched between two chairs.
When he sees me, he pretends to adjust his hair and says:
“Signò, life is like bedsheets: you gotta hang ’em while there’s still sun.”
We both laugh, and for a moment it seems that even the jungle of antennas and courtyards laughs with us, in that light embracing everything.
Then he walks me down the stairs, his steps light and sure, toward Via Santa Teresa degli Scalzi.
The morning air is thick with voices, roaring scooters, warm bread coming out of ovens, and the smell of frying already drifting despite the early hour.
“You know, Totò,” I say as we climb toward the hill, “yesterday I left a cigarette butt on the palace’s altar for the dead. A small gesture, but it felt right.”
“Eh, here in Naples even the dead smoke,” he replies, lighting one.
He takes a long, slow drag. “But be careful not to be one of those who want everything in return. Those who talk to the dead only to get lottery numbers.”
I nod, lighting one myself.
“Neapolitans are good at still respecting the cult of the dead,” I murmur, “but reducing the smorfia to extracting numbers isn’t right. The only time they suggested numbers to me, they got them all wrong.”
Totò bursts out laughing. A full, sincere belly laugh.
“And what did you expect? The dead like to have their fun too. Destiny, signò, is a comedy!”
We walk to the catacombs.
The sun is already high when I reach the gate. It hits me all at once — a warm, almost physical push.
I buy a bottle of water at the catacombs’ café and leave a tip for the woman cleaning the bathrooms.
In front of Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio, two men sleep wrapped in cardboard. I approach slowly.
The first opens one eye, the other raises himself to sit, slow like a nocturnal animal hit by the sun.
I leave them some coins and ask if I may borrow their guitar.
They exchange a long look, hard to read. Then one hands me the guitar without saying anything, and I reply with a smile I hope is enough of a promise to bring it back.
Then I enter the church.
Inside, the air is cooler. I open my backpack and place the oil on the altar — the good one, the one brought from home, the oil of the living.
I sit on a pew, take the guitar, and breathe deeply.
I start playing De André’s The Testament. My voice comes out low, almost shy; then finds its space between the walls.
for that pale old countess
who never leaves my bed
to extirpate from me the insane promise
to reserve for her my lottery numbers
I can’t wait to go among the damned
to reveal them all to her, all wrong.
The words slide into the dimness, slip into the niches, echo as if touching bones and marble. When I finish, there is a sweet silence, full of mercy.
Then, somewhere in the shadows, I hear a rustle, like a light garment moving.
A hoarse voice begins ’O padrone by Pino Daniele. An old-throated voice, of a tired man, but alive.
Other voices join: thin, childlike, feminine, broken. It is as if someone, from behind a door that isn’t there, had said: “Come, now we sing.”
’O padrone nun dà duje sordi…
A shiver runs down my neck. The chorus grows slowly, like a breath crossing bones and becoming flesh.
Stateve accuorto… ’na botta nce ha vugliuto dà…
Totò removes his hat and puts his hand on his heart. I close my eyes.
The Chariot, I think, is this: the movement that carries you from one world to another, from heaviness to lightness, from death to voice.
Nemmeno ’e muorti stanno buono…
I open my eyes slowly. The marble is still.
But I swear that for one second — just one — I felt Naples breathing together with its dead.
As I walk back home to change, my phone vibrates.
A notification: “Palazzo Corigliano — 14:30. Asma Lamrabet: Women and Islam. The Controversial Questions.”
I freeze for a moment.
On the screen, the reflection of my face is crossed by a sudden light: the sun has shifted and cuts through the glass with a precise blade, like a strip of gold.
It’s the card of Strength, I immediately understand. The woman with the lion.
Totò, sitting on the railing, pretends to read the seminar program and comments: “Signò, today you gotta talk with serious women.”
I smile, but a small shiver rises in my chest.
Because I know I’ll have to listen to — and maybe face — that kind of discourse that shakes me the most: the one that claims to liberate women in university halls, speaking only of light and forgetting their shadows.
I head toward the seminar, ’O padrone still echoing in my ears.
And at the point where the road curves toward Palazzo Corigliano, I think I glimpse, beside my shadow, a second figure walking with me.
Perhaps it is the card shifting.
Or perhaps the lion has just awakened.
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