Il te nel deserto
"It was sadness inherent in all deracinated things. ' Since the day the first drink was served at this bar', he thought, ' how many moments of happiness have been lived through, here?' The happiness, if there still any, existed elsewhere: in sequestered rooms that looked on to bright alleys where cats gnawed fishheads; in shaded cafes hung with reed mattings, where the hashish smoke mingled with the fumes of mint from the hot tea; down on the docks, out at the edge of the sebkha in the tents; beyond the mountains in the great Sahara, in the endless regions that were all of Africa. But not here, in this sad colonial room where each invocation of Europe was merely one more squalid touch, one more visible proof of isolation."