White Bride

“Will you like to have lunch with us?� she offered one day. We drove down to Tajora, some thirty kilometers to the east of Tripoli. When we moved to the dusty tract from the metalled roads, the only comfort I had was that she was there, along with me, an experienced and seasoned person, who has seen these farms over the decades.

Marino was waiting for us. There was a large Alsatian dog on the farm. I was a bit apprehensive but the dog was calm as he recognized us as the friends of his master. It was only much later that I came to know that this ‘dog’ was actually a wolf whom Marino had bred as a puppy. “There are two more in the back side of the farm� he added.

“My grandfather first came and settled in Tripoli in the second decade of the past century. He had a beer factory.� Marino showed me the farm house, the photographs of the old Tripolitania, a charming place when the Assai Al Hamra was still next to the sea, and the Arabs smoking Regilla on a winter evening in their Jellabiyas looked like ghosts from a distance.

“It was a peaceful and different time� Marino told about his conversations with his father and grandfather.

“Now, most of the family is outside Tripoli. Some went back to Italy. One of my cousins has settled in Cairo. One sister has married a rich Italian hotelier in Beirut. They have a chain of hotels and keep telling me to join them there.� Marino told of the different openings which he had.

He had traveled wide and far. But the only place he knew as home was Tripoli. They called it the ‘White Bride of the Mediterranean’ and it is still one of the most charming and peaceful places he knows. The farm in Tajora has been his base, from where he goes for fishing, some water sports or just sees the clear skies. He has some trusted friends. No one troubles him. He has stayed on, and merged with these people.

Saka is one of his mother’s old friends. A moral support who has known them for decades. The person who drove us to the farm, a tall Libyan Arab, has known them for decades. It was these two who helped perform the last rites of Marino’s parents, who died in quick succession of each other, his mother of cancer and his father of heart disease-or so the doctors say- but more probably of grief.

“I worry about him� Saka said. “He is young, has money, and there are a lot of people who will want to trap such a person into a marital alliance� she continued.

“He does not know many things and now his parents are not there to guide him.�

“Probably he should get a white bride soon, so that he is safe� Hemali, their Arab friend said. “Italiano?�

“No!� said Marino. “I will marry a person who will adjust to my home-Tripoli. A person who knows and feels this place, has breathed here and walked these roads.�

“From where will you find such a match, my dear� Saka asked in a worried tone.

“You shall see.� Marino answered in a quiet but firm manner. He was young, but not a novice, and knew his way around Tripoli where he had grown up. He knew it’s potentials and pitfalls. And the last thing he wanted was to be married off to an Italian settled in Lebanon or Cairo; proposals that kept coming to him through his cousins. He would get a white bride from the ‘white bride of the Mediterranean’.