Old Rome. New Rome.

by Joanie Magill (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Italy

The walls are painted sunshine yellow and covered in framed black and white photos and memorabilia from Mexico. A line of azure wooden tables and chairs runs along a wall leading to a bar at the opposite end of the restaurant where shelves groan under bottles of mescal, tequila and rum. In the Valle Aurelia suburb of Rome, El Pueblo Mexican restaurant nestles at the base of a residential apartment block between a sushi restaurant and a modern Italian restaurant. Turn right out of the Metro on onto Via Baldo degli Ubaldi and you hit the main drag of a suburb that looks like any other suburb in any European city. Apartment blocks line the road and stretch for miles in every direction. The upper floors are shuttered to keep out the heat of the Roman sun. At street level, shops and restaurants are open, but the streets aren’t busy. It is that sliver of time between the end of the working day and the beginning of the evening. Soon the restaurants will fill, the streets will bustle, and the ambient sound will intensify. It had taken me a couple of hours to get here. A short flight from Liverpool to Rome, a ten-minute metro ride from my Airbnb in Testaccio. It took Buba three years. Two of those years, he travelled on foot, by vehicle when he could, fleeing The Gambia and crossing through Mauritania, Mali and Niger into Libya. He was imprisoned for almost five months in Libya before eventually scoring an opportunity to cross the Mediterranean Sea in an unseaworthy dinghy. I had come to Rome for Caravaggio and pasta. Old masters in old churches. Cultural pilgrimage. Culinary heritage. Buba had come for sanctuary. Less than two kilometres from The Vatican, home to Catholic Popes since the 14th century, and across the table from me, was contemporary Rome. You could almost hear the hum of tourists shuffling through St Peter’s Square. Buba is the host of Gustamundo, a restaurant within El Pueblo. It is staffed by migrant chefs who have created a tasting menu of dishes remembered from their home countries. Buba brings a plate of hot spicy samosas and takes a seat across from me. “When I got out of prison in Libya, I met a man who said he helps people cross to Italy. One day he took us to the beach. It was night time and there were a lot of people there. There were three boats. On our boat there were 150. On the other boats there were similar.” The samosas were delicious. Crispy and filled with a delicately spiced meat. “One boat sank. We heard a helicopter, then I saw a ship and an Italian flag. The ship took us to Sicily. When we got off our boat, we were standing for five hours. People were afraid, but I knew we would be ok.” Ilya, one of the chefs, emerges from the kitchen with a plate of Chicken Karahi, a Pakistani dish of chicken pieces cooked in a sauce of tomato, ginger, onion and spices. The sauce is rich and deeply flavoured. The heat is gentle, tempered by an underlying sweet note from cinnamon and a fragrant whisper of cardamom. “We were in Sicily for four days, then they brought us to Calabria before we were brought to Rome. I spent one month in emergency accommodation and now I live in Carsarena camp. I have two friends here from Cameroon that I met on the boat. They tease me about the journey on the boat, how I cried. I cried a lot that day.” Over Ciupapzi, a Serbian Roma coconut and chocolate desert, we discuss our plans for tomorrow. Buba has an interview for a hospitality course. I have a date with an old church. I reluctantly say goodbye to Buba and Ilya and step into the evening. The streets are alive. I make my way towards the Metro to a soundscape of fragmented conversations and snatched notes from music leaking out of open doors.