Good books take their time. Un indovino mi disse – Tiziano Terzani

Good books take their time, and a perfect one may take years and years before finding you. 

It was the end of my first year of high school when my professor gave us three mandatory summer readings. I still remember the titles: an Italian book titled Una Storia Semplice, an eternal classic by Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea, and another 400something pages book. (Photo 1)

 

It was September; the days were getting colder and shorter when we came back to class. With a shift round of questions, I asked around who read the books. Some of my classmates read all of them; others answered me like “were we meant to read books???”. I soon figured that I was right in the middle of the spectrum. I was absolutely mediocre; I read two books out of three. I remember myself, on the very first day of the second year wearing a camouflage jacket (Photo 2), saying to myself “I am not the best student, but not even the worst one…”. Mediocre! 

In fact, during the summer I had read Una Storia Semplice a 58 pages book, and the other beautiful, but kind of short story The Old Man and the Sea. I did not read them for pleasure; I read them because I had to. Saving the best one for last. 

 

I was 15 years old, it was the very end of summer, and I still had this – to what appeared to me – gigantic book to read. I was in Palermo, in the very south of Italy, at my grandparent’s place. (Photo 3)

I took this book by the red cover, nobody was around after lunch, and I decided to go to the toilette to “finally” read it. 

Something amazing happened, like a deep moment, a revelation… by just reading one page I was so into it, I was connected that I fell dead asleep right there on the toilet halfway through the turning of the first page. Fortunately, the book fell on the floor. 

 

What did you think I said to my Professor? That I read all the three books, of course. I could not possibly tell her that it was the most boring thing I had ever read. 

 

A couple of years ago, during a short holiday in my hometown, I explored my parents’ home looking for some texts that would have helped me during my studies in Amsterdam. Somewhere, somehow that 400something pages book came out. Talking to the book, I said: “come with me, I may read the second page this time”. I put in my library in Amsterdam and there it was looking at me passing with my pointing finger looking for the perfect book but never picking that book up. More than one year passed this way, maybe more,  till one day, (this time I can say FINALLY) I chose it. 

 

By the end of the first chapter, I began to feel goosebumps. I was in the mezzanine of my building, wondering why I waited so long to read such a book. Why? Why? Why me? 

I remember writing on Facebook years ago “my heart beats Asia…” how did I miss such a book?? (Photo 4)

 

Now, a few weeks away from turning 30, I can look back to that 15 years old version of me (a young little Luca) and understand why I did not read it. It was not the time. I was not ready to appreciate the true story of a journalist who crosses some of the most remote areas of Asia without flights for one year simply because many years before a fortune-teller told him his fate. The journalist took the path less travelled, met unique protagonists of the most populated continent, but mostly travelled like a few in the world did. Definitely not understandable by a mediocre student. 

 

I am talking about Un indovino mi disse (a fortune-teller told me) by Tiziano Terzani. (Photo 5)

 

I haven’t been to my favourite continent for more than three years now, and I miss it every day. However, thanks to Tiziano Terzani’s stories, I re-lived that vast continent, and I miss Asia a bit less. Or even more? 

 

Maybe the title of my story is wrong; good books do not take their times. It is just us that we are not ready for them… 

 

 

Thank You Tiziano Terzani, I wish you were still alive to meet you. Even if only once.