I am lost.

The next morning I got up in the late morning. The sticky, humid heat was still crushing me. I went out for a walk and bought something to eat. And I found that the small shops were either closed in the afternoon or had a 2-3 hour lunch break. I bought some tomatoes, cheese, bread… I didn’t feel like eating much. The Sicilian Rat and Milena were in the apartment. We had a few conversations. The first was about separate waste collection. The garbage was thrown into different bags that were taken out on certain days, and if you took out food waste on the day of plastic collection, for example, they fined you. I liked that, it wasn’t complicated, and they had a schedule behind the door. The second conversation was more interesting, though.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 1 – I'm going abroad

It turned out that the colleague I was replacing was something like a domestic help to them. In plain language: she gets up early during the day, cooks for them, washes their dishes, irons the disgusting rat's underwear... for free... and in the evening she goes to work doing what they pay her for. So... I'm telling you, daughter, remember, daughter-in-law. In addition, Milenka should continue her Italian lessons - again for free, during the day. Also in plain language, I categorically told them that this would not happen. Milena's look at me was filled with some mixture of sympathy and resignation. The rat used her most evil expression possible, which seemed slightly threatening, but she said nothing.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 3 – The Pursuit

At around 8pm, Milena and I left for the site. They gave me a company T-shirt and told me that I always had to wear it because if the police stopped me in the middle of the night when I came home, I would have to explain what I was doing in the desert at such a late hour, and they knew the company. It was like an ID card of sorts. This later turned out to be true.

The first evening at work went normally. After years of working in an office, I was naturally exhausted. The girls were very nice, they helped me, they gave me valuable advice. There was also teasing, laughing with the boys… oh, what a close-knit team. We finished somewhere around 3 in the morning. We walked together for a while, then they jumped on their bikes, and I continued on foot in another direction. The industrial zone was brightly lit, and yet the late hour and the fact that there was not a living soul oppressed me. Here and there a dog was calling… there were no stray dogs, all the ones I heard and saw were locked up in their facilities. At one point I reached a truck parking lot, it was empty.

I sat on the curb… and cried. The pain in my feet, right on the bend, was brutal. I took off my otherwise comfortable sneakers, started rubbing my feet and cried. At one point, the carabinieri (gendarmerie) showed up. They got out of the car and questioned me. I told them who I was, what I was doing there at such a time and why I was braying like a donkey – from pain, from tension… they came out unharmed, we even laughed at the end. In the following days, I often met various patrols in the area. This gave me a sense of security.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 4 – Moroccan Honor

I got up and kept walking. I reached the place where I had to turn into an intersection. I turned right, absolutely convinced that I was going in the right direction, I even felt a little proud that I had memorized the place. Here we were already on the outskirts of the settlement, but it was pitch black. There were streetlights, but their light was barely flickering. I reached the middle of the alley and realized that I was in the wrong place. What now!? I thought about calling Milena to come pick me up… and immediately remembered that I couldn't explain to her where I was. I didn't panic, but I got nervous. Everything hurt, I just wanted to lie down and sleep. While my brain was racing in search of some solution, something shone in the distance from the opposite direction to me. At least that's what it seemed to me. It was so dark that for a long time I couldn't determine what this glowing thing that was slowly approaching was. It definitely wasn't an animal because it looked tall. And there was no noise.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 5 – I'm going to Padua

At one point, the lights came closer and I recognized the sound of footsteps, and after a few minutes I could make out the outline of a person. He was a black man, black as pitch. And I had seen his eyes the whole time and from time to time his dazzlingly white teeth. It felt funny and unsettling at the same time. I'm not racist... but alone, in the middle of the night, lost, a man, black... The man greeted me politely in English and asked if I was okay. I told him my English wasn't good and asked him if he spoke Italian. He spoke... as much English as I did. We got along anyway. As we talked, my initial anxiety disappeared. It turned out he lived in my building, a few doors down, so he was going to see me off. I came home feeling a little tired, but somehow I managed to get into the bathroom for a quick shower because I was all sticky. Plus, the cool water washed the pain off my feet to some extent. And even though I was about to faint, I managed to put my money and documents in the hiding place I had made in the bed. I fell asleep on the fly.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 6 – The Sabotage

I got up around 1 p.m. My unaccustomed body, exhausted from the night before, ached. Everywhere. Milena gave me aspirin. I made myself some coffee, and she and the Rat went out to do some errands. I caught up with my homework, surfed the internet, listened to music, and killed some time. But there were still a few hours left before I had to leave for work, and I was already bored. I decided that despite the heat, I would go out. I hung around the town, walked in the nearby park, and made friends with a few local vendors. One of them and I argued about whether the white brine cheese was Greek or Bulgarian. In the evening, I got home, had a quick bite, put on my work clothes, and left. This time, I tried to remember the right intersection where I had to turn on the way back. I would walk behind the building where I lived, on the side of the park, through some streets, then there would be a railroad crossing, where I could cross over (safely) a fence or go down into the tunnel where the cars would pass. Then my path would come out into a kind of neighborhood, with small, hunched-over houses. It wasn't exactly like a ghetto, it was more like I was in some Bulgarian village.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 7 – Expelled

Two hundred meters further on there was something like a crossroads and a bar, this bar was my guide. I stopped there for a while to take a good look around and remember how to get back. There were people in front of the bar and inside, a few parked motorbikes. A boy looked at me… he must have wondered what I was staring at. I continued on, left the city and then I could easily find my way around. It turned out that that empty parking lot was right in front of the cemetery. Then you reached the industrial zone, there as a guide there was a roundabout with some huge tire, a little further on – a pile of tires. I marked several company sites by the tires, because right there I could easily get confused about where to turn. I arrived on time, I even had a break.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 8 – A Night Under the Stars and Three Days on Camels

The second night didn't seem to be so hard for me. I got tired again, but when you're in a pleasant atmosphere with normal people, everything is easier. That night I got home without getting lost. However, passing through the parking lot, I saw that there were several lorries. My first thought was - "Yay, a living soul". The next - unknown men, wilderness, a woman alone, night, they're probably sunburned... I started looking around for a way to pass so as not to cross the parking lot and not catch their eye. It turned out that my only option was the cemetery. Brrrr... I shuddered. But I remembered a joke: "The dead aren't dangerous, be afraid of the living!" And I turned towards the entrance to the cemetery.

FIRST CONTACT WITH ITALY – part 9 – Subsequent revelations

It wasn't scary, on the contrary. I felt a sense of peace. It was different from ours. There were stone walls with niches in which candles were burning, artificial and natural, and in the niches - urns. I walked around a bit and went out through the other entrance, on the other side of the parking lot, away from the trucks and people.

© 2025 Iliana Dechkova