Rome is Lost N a t h a n i e l
R
M e l l o r
ome is lost.
Not physically lost. It’s still where it’s almost always been, about halfway up Italy, just a little inland, sitting between the folds of the Tiber and the swell of the seven hills. It still has cars narrowly missing pedestrians around tight corners, though the cars are now Audis and BMWs, no longer the whimsical Fiats and Peugeots. Old men still gather on plastic stools and benches around cafés that have been there longer than Western democracy, and old women still file through green markets under unfinished roofs made from green tarps and unusable bed sheets to buy vegetables (in season only) and dried meats (from last autumn). Rome is lost in the same way the immigrants of the Esquiline district are lost, adrift in a place so determined to make them feel unwelcome, unable to return to a place that only exists in their minds as a remnant of childhood. But there are days
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