Thawing out in eternal Rome

ROME, Italy – Saved by the sun! That’s what you’re tempted to cry out as you emerge from the freezing rain, heavy fog (which coils all over Roissy itself and restricts visibility at CDG airport), and harassment by security-paranoid women fonctionnaires at the X-ray machine – and step out of your Air France plane in Rome’s Fiumicino airport.

The surly woman back there in the Paris terminal, where thousands lolled around listlessly awaiting rebooking on outbound flights, mourning their cancelled expeditions and lost "connections", wasn’t a particularly horrible creature. She was just being herself. There was a gleam of virtuous malice on her face as she pawed through my bag, questioning each item. She pointedly ignored the blue ribbon of du merite on my coat lapel, my decoration from her own government, perhaps determined to prove I was a cell member of John Reid, the shoe-bomber. I wasn’t offended, but rather amused to find that Madame Lefarge was alive and well – in Paris. (Remember that gap-toothed patriot of the novel, A Tale of Two Cities, who cackled gleefully over her knitting as she sat at the foot of the guillotine as the cruel blade separated each royal or noble head from the body. "Vive la France! " she shouted.

Vive la France, indeed. In any event, it takes all kinds of people. We Filipinos, too, have people with caractere mauvais. Finally, one of Lefarge’s male colleagues in the inspection line, annoyed at her antics, rapped out in that unique Parisian argot: "Cut it out. Tell the gentleman he’s free to catch his plane. Don’t forget to say ‘thank you’." Thank you, she said.

* * *

That Wednesday evening, when our friend Ambassador Philip Lhuillier met my partner, Jose Manuel "Babe" Romualdez, and this writer at the Leonardo da Vinci airport, we discovered what might have triggered off that paranoia.

Earlier in the afternoon, there was a botched airplane hijacking. An Alitalia flight, bound from Bologna in northern Italy for Paris, was almost seized by a young Italian (at least they thought he was an Italian) who brandished a device claiming that, if he punched the "d" button, explosives planted in the aircraft would detonate.

According to the ambassador (who’d heard it on the radio), crewmen and passengers had managed to wrestle the would-be hijacker to the floor. When they took the detonating thingamajig, it was said, it turned out to only be an ordinary TV remote control device.

Anyway, it turned out to be a false alarm. That guy, somebody remarked, might only be a fugitive from a nut-house, and not related to Kasama bin Laden, or al-Kidder, or some newfangled conspiracy. But who can blame airport personnel for being paranoid?

* * *

The sun is shining brightly outside my window. The birds sing. The sky is blue. Having left the countries of mist and fog, one gets disoriented in Rome. Every suit you’ve brought along is too heavy. Your thick overcoat, so useful only the previous day, is a drag in your luggage.

But this just goes to remind us Filipinos, while we sweat and complain of the heat, of how lucky we are. The trouble is that we push our luck too far. We inherited a paradise, but have despoiled it.

Yesterday’s front-page banner in The STAR is disgusting. It blares out: "ESCALER: IF MJ WILL LET ME, I’LL TALK ABOUT $2M." The headline itself, let me clarify, was good editorial thinking – and packaging. What was disquieting was the idea that Ernesto Escaler, who’s in the hot seat, won’t tell the truth about the so-called $2 million (which has been generating so much angst and condemnation) unless Manila Congressman and erstwhile business wheeler-dealer, Mark Jimenez, gives him (Escaler) permission to talk about it. Sus, Ernestine even reportedly wants that permission in writing!

Is this true?

Just tell it like it is, Mr. Escaler. MJ, instead of being "extradited", seems to be on a roll – indeed, to mix metaphors – on a roller-coaster of publicity. Nani Perez’s reputation, even before the Ombudsman starts asking nasty questions, is in tatters. It can’t even be described as the likes of a Greek tragedy. It appears more like a Roman comedy.

FLASH! We hear that Escaler has fled to the United States. What next? Will we now have to ask for his extradition?

I won’t try to say anything more profound today. The sunshine, after 11 days of shivering, is much too beckoning. Got to get out and walk, and thaw my bones out.

Ciao.