I was lucky to get a table the last time I was at Benjamin’s. It was a sunny weekend day, and the restaurant was crowded. Many of the guests were from Trieste or neighboring towns. I sat next to five boys and a girl between seven and ten. Their parents, three couples in their late thirties or early forties, sat at a table across the isle. They paid no attention to the kids, as is Italian habit. The boys got rowdy every now and then, but most of the time they focused on an electronic game one of them had brought with him. As one of the boys would play, all the others would crane their necks toward the toy in hushed rapture. But the girl paid no attention to the boys. She not only sat close to the wall, away from the hubbub, but she also faced it most of the time. She was special. Down’s syndrome, to be exact. She was far from bored in her own world, though. Looking toward the wall, she would grimace. Now she was sad, and now happy. She would make lively gestures toward it. Now she would point at something, and now she would beckon with both hands. She would whisper. And then she would giggle to herself, coyly hiding her face. It was clear that she was in lively communion with someone or something just beyond the wall. Someone or something just beyond the boys, the parents, and everyone else around her. Someone or something just beyond this world. So many days later, I still relish the memory of that girl. Of all the people at Benjamin’s that sunny weekend afternoon, she was the only one who was truly and blissfully alive.

To Eni Nurkollari