XENOPHOBIA

After lunch in a little trattoria near the Pantheon, Fe invited me to come back to her apartment in a suburb half an hour away. We walked a short way to the Via del Corso and caught the first bus. As we boarded Fe looked up and down the aisle before going right to the back where sat three woman. Fe nodded and smiled at them and sat in a seat just in front of them. As I sat beside her I whispered, ‘Are they friends of yours?’

She looked cross and shook her head. ‘Why do you ask that?’ She said angrily.

‘You smiled at them, that’s all,’ I said, feeling like I had put my foot in it.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘it’s just that we always sit at the back of the bus, people expect us to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re from the Philippines.’ She saw my confusion. ‘If we’re from the Philippines then we must be maids and if we’re maids we should sit at the back of the bus. It’s just the way it is.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. She shrugged.

‘And you’re not a maid.’ She shrugged again.

‘Neither are they probably,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘That’s because you’re not Italian. Nor Filipina.’

‘But…what happens when you are with your husband?’

‘We sit wherever he likes, but they still stare. And tut and mutter. They probably think he bought me, or I’m a prostitute, that’s their attitude to Asians. Didn’t you know? Of course not, you’re a nice white girl. Only Italian mothers would object to you, they want respectable young Catholic girls for their sons.’