"At more than 6ft tall, Giacomo was hard to miss. He was also friendly, smiley and, while he didn't speak a word of English, I loved that he spared me the whole ciao bella swagger usually reserved for foreign girls. I wasn't foreign. Not really. My parents moved to Scotland in the 1960s, settling in the Borders town of Selkirk, but Atina had always been part of our lives, woven into every holiday, every dish on the dinner table."
"When Giacomo moved to Rome to study architecture that autumn, he proved to be an excellent cicerone an Italian word for a cultural guide and I got to know a version of the city that went beyond its landmarks. Through him, I was introduced to student life, open-air music festivals, and secret little bakeries that sold pastries from the back door in the early hours. But it wasn't all gelato and romance."
I was 16 when I met Giacomo in Atina, the Italian mountain town tied to my family's origins, and his presence shifted my perception of Italy from inherited background to lived experience. He moved to Rome to study architecture and acted as a cicerone, introducing me to student life, open-air music festivals, and hidden bakeries. I stayed in Italy instead of returning to Scotland, drifted between courses and jobs, struggled with oral exams, and missed home. After a period of exploration and interrupted studies, I eventually committed to a degree at Edinburgh University.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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