My holiday had just started and all was as it should. Then Fabio entered the room…
On the northern tip of Yafo (Jaffa), an ancient Mediterranean city once famous for its oranges and just a stone throw from Tel Aviv, its baby-young neighbour, is Old Jaffa Hostel, a friendly refuge for travellers during three decades. If it’s a posh hotel you want, this isn’t it. But as far as hostels go, they don’t come much better. Housed in an old quirky building from the Ottoman era with beautiful tiles on the floor and cooking facilities on the roof, where you drink your beer while listening to the muezzin’s call to prayer from the minarets close by, it’s easy to stay longer than first intended. Once, I stayed for nearly a year.
But that was over twenty years ago, a fact I was contemplating behind a book as I stretched out on a mattress in one of its dormitories. I probably looked like I was reading, but I wasn’t really. Just tried to make sense of it all. Men often do this. As they get on a little bit, they might look like they are sleeping, reading or indeed being very busy with something. They have that ‘don’t disturb look’ on, but don’t be fooled. They are just trying to understand. Where it all went, how it happened and if this indeed was all.
So there I was, hard at inner work on my holiday, when a hand was stretching into my private space.
“Hello!” an articulate and loud voice said cheerily, “I’m Fabio”. I was laying on the lower bunk bed, staring at this approaching unwarranted hand and wondering; “what do I do now?” “I don’t bloody care who you are, I’m busy”, was what I wanted to say, but that’s not nice, is it? And it’s not what you’re supposed to say in dormitories. One reason dorm-beds are cheaper than private rooms is the fact that you must, like, Inhibit. Obviously, you’re not supposed to shove your geeky arm into strangers faces either. But… Not everyone understands this.
And now I had this guy with a friendly, if rather loud and merry, voice stretching out his hand into my face, telling me what his name was. Oh well, good thing I have manners. With a smile, I took the stranger’s hand and told him that my name was David.
Fabio looked good. He looked good in the way that no one would disagree with. Your friend would think he looked good, as would your partner, your child, dad, boss and your mother in law. He looked so pleasant and agreeable that no one possibly could think of him bad apart from maybe the odd cynical grump. He had an open face with brown happy eyes framed by glasses and a holiday stubble. On his slim body, a slightly geeky choice of shirt and shorts. Do you know the male models that opticians and barbers have on the walls? He looked like that. I’d just concluded that he actually seemed quite annoying, when he interrupted me again:
“Hello, I’m Fabio”. There he was. Shirt and shorts, slightly geeky, slim with dark hair, brown eyes, glasses and a holiday stubble. And an over friendly voice and face. Beside him, another guy that looked the same. I got the feeling I’d just shaken the other guy’s hand. I looked forward and back at the two good, geeky smiling guys. “Hehe, right… I’m David”, I said. “Still. Hehe”, I added awkwardly before disappearing behind my book.
I had pretended reading for a few seconds when I was interrupted for the third time. “Hello, I’m Fabio”, a happy voice declared. Decisively, I put my book down, sat up on my bed and had a good look out in the room. Three happy young were standing there, all looking at me, all smiling. As far as I could tell, they looked the same. Early thirties, stubble and all three had glasses and dark hair, were slim built and quite geeky-looking in shorts and shirts. “Right, so where’s the camera?” I demanded, making the three Fabios look unsure. But not for long.
“Haha. HAHA. That’s funny” The were all laughing, like children. I asked politely if they were brothers, but no, they were just friends. Then one of the Fabios started chatting. His first question wasn’t how long I’d been in the hostel or where I’d travelled from or how I found it but… What my job was. Or in his words: “What do you do for a living?” Still being good, I didn’t roll my eyes, but answered that I was a nurse and then asked him, and the other two, what they did, as that’s what I now had to do even though I really didn’t give a monkey’s. ‘We’re doctors and we want to become GP’s’, one Fabio said on behalf of all of them. They looked like sixteen-year olds on work experience.
I put my hand up in the air and asked them to just hang on a second. Was it right that not only did they look the same and had the same name, but also, they all had the same profession? That’s right, they said and one of them, I’m not sure which one, informed me that yes, people sometimes find this funny. “You don’t say”, I mumbled before asking if they were French because they all shared the distinguished accent. “No, we are Swiss”, came the happy reply. Of course. Annoyingly good people from an annoyingly good country. I know all about that, so I told Fabio, Fabio and Fabio that “that’s great” and started digging in my bag for my running gear.
Time to go for a jog on the beach.
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