Hanging Out With Gazans on a Magic Mountain Top in Como, Italy
The Palestinian siblings, each doing studies tied to science, are alive to Italian culture. One is a Milan medical student. The youngest is bound for a US college. The SAT math exam phased neither.
A cable car took brother and sister to a vista overlooking the city of Como, north of Milan.
For fun, the brother took the SAT five years ago and scored 780 out of 800 on math.
The sister, several years younger, got 780 as well. The pair hadn’t told each other of their respective marks until last Friday in Milan, where a family-reunion walk took them to the cathedral, the town castle and an ice cream shop.
Back at the apartment, her brother pauses after dropping a package of pasta into a pot of bubbling water. The sister, on a short holiday, is grating pecorino, a sheep cheese soon to be melted into divine cream.
The SAT boils to the surface. No pricey New England preparation courses had helped either of them on the US college-entrance exam.
“How many did you miss?” he says, misting the pasta water with a pinch of salt. They are speaking fluent English.
“Two,” she says. Neither laughs. It’s just a fact.
“Me too,” he says, assembling four bowls. The Cacio E Pepe, a Roman dish, has his full attention, requiring precision as precise as a surgeon’s. The 22-year-old is a fourth-year scholarship medical student rounding his way through Milan hospital shifts devoted to urology and infectious disease, with other specialities to come.
The sister has just been accepted to a US university that is every bit as selective as Harvard and Stanford. That’s hint enough.
“The cafeteria food there will be good,” she says. “Do you know they even got halal and kosher?”
The siblings grew up in Gaza, where their grandfather remains. “I won’t leave, no way,” he said six months ago. “I was forced to leave my homeland once already.”
The two grandchildren are coping, tending to such exterior challenges as mastering the finer points of English. A year ago, a text message centered around a date came an American’s way.
“Bro, what does ‘Can I give you a rain check?’ mean?”
The American: “It means she is trying to say she can’t see you this evening but might in the future.”
A second text follows: “But how should I reply?”
The American: “You’ve got to play it cool. This is what you do. Write her, ‘It’s all good.’ “
It is what it is. A girl told me the same over the phone in 1986, turning down an invitation to a Friday night dance at Sandy (Ore.) High School. Rain checks are rarely redeemable, from my experience. We Americans and our nuances.
Let’s test the US undergraduate-to-be:
“What do you say if somebody on campus says, ‘What’s up?’ “
Her answer misses the bullseye, not as superficial as it needs to be. The American tweaks it.
“Just say, ‘Not much.’ “
The erudite sister is familiar with the filler word like, when an American girl might deliriously say, “He’s so cool, like, he makes me laugh.”
Chill to the term, she says: “Oh, yeah. Some of the girls at my high school are already saying that.”
Her brother is now curious about his accent, checking with the American to make sure it doesn’t sound fake.
“No, it doesn’t—not to me,” he says. The American, randomly steering the conversation, advises him to watch “Ripley,” an American TV series set in Italy.
On an afternoon away from Milan, a cable car pulls brother and sister ever higher to a hill top overlooking Lake Como, where giggles accompany selfies and group portraits, when lush Italian landscape, if but for a day, evaporates any anxiety tied to their futures.
“I can’t believe I’m in Italy,” the sister says, beaming toward Bellagio, to the right, and back to Milan, which looks like microscopic Lego pieces.
Down below, a meandering stroll reveals a gelateria, a chance to top the day off with a dose of sweetness. Her brother, serving as translator, opts for two scoops on a cone as she deciphers the dizzying list of flavors.
“I’ll take three scoops—the pineapple, the pistachio and, and . . .”
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An hour-long wait preceded the cable-car ride.
Como, a 50-minute train trip from Milan, has just been promoted to Serie A, the country’s top soccer league.