Shugaar Antony - Un Amico Italiano

Table of Contents

Luca Spaghetti was born in Rome, and his surname really is Spaghetti. Meeting American writer Elizabeth Gilbert in September of 2003 changed his life: Luca became one of the best-loved characters in Gilberts international bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, and to this day he receives letters from readers asking him if he really exists. Luca lives in Rome; he loves Roman food and American music. This is his first book. Visit him at www.LucaSpaghetti.com.

Antony Shugaar is a translator and journalist with a special interest in Mediterranean Europe. He received a 2007 NEA fellowship for his translation of Sandokan by Nanni Balestrini, and has translated twelve novels for Europa Editions and two books by Primo Levi for a new collected works from Norton. He also translates books for Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton university presses, and has written book reviews for the Boston Globe, the Washington Post Book World, and the Journal of Modern Italian Studies. Shugaar has a master of science degree from Columbia Universitys Graduate School of Journalism, a bachelor of arts from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a diploma superiore from the Universit per Stranieri in Perugia.

Watch my back and light my way,
My traveling star, my traveling star.

JAMES TAYLOR

Writing in 2003, Elizabeth Gilbert, the journalist and author, used those words to introduce one of the characters of her new book, Eat, Pray, Love, the true story of her yearlong journey of rebirth across Italy, India, and Indonesia, in search of herself and true love. That young manwhose name seemed like something out of a tourist brochure about Italy, who had driven her around Rome on the back of his beat-up scooter, dragged her to the stadium to watch Sunday soccer matches, and had taken her out to sample dishes that only a real Roman could love and appreciatewas me. And, yessince you askI really do exist, and my last name really is Spaghetti. Born and raised in Rome, a self-taught guitarist, a devoted soccer fan, and a lover of good cooking. Until seven years ago, I had no idea of the adventure that lay before me. Because no one, much less me, could have imagined that Eat, Pray, Love would be translated into practically every language on earth, enchanting an incredible number of readers everywhere with its candor and irony and becoming a phenomenal international bestseller, with millions and millions of copies sold. But for me, Lizs book was simply the trueand therefore all the more remarkablestory of what happened when a blond American girl, pretty but unhappy, full of curiosity and love of life, came to Rome. I met her one September day, through a mutual friend, but in a short time she became one of the most important people in my life. A real friend, a friend Ill never forget.

How could I ever have imagined that, in any country I visited around the world, Id find copies of Lizs books at the airport, or that my face would wind up on one of the most popular television shows in the United States, the Oprah Winfrey Show, where Liz would show the viewers a photograph of the two of us together in Rome? Who would have thought that readers from every walk of life and from around the world would ask me, curiously: Are you the Luca Spaghetti? And last of all, who would have ever thought that the story would be made into a movie, with Julia Roberts playing my friend Liz? Or that I myself would be portrayed in that movie, played by a likable and jovial Italian actor.

Life is odd and full of surprises: Liz taught me that. And she taught me the value of true friendship, the kind of friendship that neither time nor distance can undermine. Friendship, as she and I have said to each other many times, is almost a different kind of love.

In this book, Ive tried to tell my part of the story: my life, my dreams, my passions, my unexpected and extraordinary friendship with Liz, and the joys of my beloved birthplace, Rome. The Rome that I have known my whole life, since I was a child playing soccer in the courtyard, being made fun of for a surname that smacks of red checkered tablecloths and tomato sauce; the Rome that I explored inch by inch with Liz, sharing with her my loves and my memoriessharing my whole self, because that is how true friends are madeand in turn learning from her a valuable lesson about life and starting over, how you can always find the strength inside yourself to search, search, search, until you find what youre really looking for. And most important of all, I discovered that happiness can be hiding where you least expect it: in a plate of pasta with fresh tomatoes, in a goal scored by your beloved soccer team, in a glass of ice-cold wine in the Campo de Fiori, in the excitement of learning a brand-new word in a language youre just beginning to know.

Because, as the great Roman poet Trilussa once wrote, in a poem entitled Felicit, When you add it all up, happiness is a small thing.

My grandmother always used to tell me: Your last name is going to bring you luck! When people meet you, it makes them happy. And a little bit hungry, too...

Of course, I never believed her. I didnt understand what she meant. Every time she said it, I just thought she was making fun of me, like everyone else.

We were in Italy, in Romeit must have been 1978 or soand I was a child, a child whose mind was just beginning to register what it meant to have my last name: Spaghetti . It was an enormous burden to place on the fragile shoulders of a seven-year-old boy.

At first I hadnt fully grasped that it was my last name at all. Its probably just a nickname, I told myself. Maybe a few generations back we had a fat and jolly ancestor who ran a trattoria and was famous for his spaghetti allamatriciana. Or else, even before I was born, my father had made a name for himself by consuming an outlandish amount of pasta on one occasion or another, so impressing all his friends with his prowess as an eater that he earned himself that sobriquet.

Its true that when people asked me my name, I would say, Luca Spaghetti, but only because my parents had told me thats what I should say.

It wasnt until I started school that the full meaning of my last name dawned on me. Or, what was worse, it dawned on my classmates. In first grade, the situation was still relatively peaceful, but every September in the years that followed, when classes resumed after the summer break, I dreaded the first roll call. When the teacher got to my name, the entire class would burst into laughter. But I was too young to be able to laugh at myself. As if that werent bad enough, I had a little brother, Fabio Spaghetti, four years younger than me; naturally enough, I wanted to protect him from the same miserable fate. I did my best to warn him, but luckily for him, he hadnt yet grasped the gravity of the situation. I remember weighing the benefits of simply eliminating him entirelyI may even have made a few efforts in that direction. In my great and farsighted benevolence, I simply wanted to spare him the ordeal I was undergoing. My parents, unfortunately, failed to see things my way. They thought that my determination to wipe Fabio off the face of the earth was because I was jealous of my little brother, not a result of my great and farsighted benevolence. (Just for the record, let me point out that Fabio is alive and well, and he still carries our surname with pride.)