Chapter 1
Isidoro had always been a shy bud, one of those flowers that open and close depending on the time of day. If we had to choose a flower, the four o'clock flower would be its representation. With the arrival of evening, when he returned home, he let his petals open, releasing a sweet exhalation, while for the rest of the day he remained holed up in the corner of his shop, trying to hide among the plants.
Being a florist was the only tolerable job for him, in fact, to be honest, he really liked that job: he didn't have to sit for hours in front of a computer, nor did he have to carry out tiring or dangerous activities, certainly sometimes he had to put up with some chatty customers or rude, but do you want to combine the tranquility of spending the day surrounded by the beauty of flowers with that of having to work in a factory or an office? And then, if there was one thing he was willing to do everything for, including having a conversation with a stranger, it was flowers.
Since he was a child Isidoro had been a taciturn person, at the beginning his family didn't give it any importance, after all their son was active: with his small hands he left footprints all over the house: on the furniture, on the walls, on the floor. Once his mother even caught him with his hands inside a vase, while he tasted an amarillo. Of course, the bright appearance of the red petals was inviting, the taste perhaps a little less so: after swallowing it, he shook his head no and stuck his tongue out, grimacing.
When he wasn't around smearing the sofa cover and chairs with his food-stained hands, he was sitting on a blue blanket playing with some molds, occasionally letting out little screams and clapping his hands when he felt satisfied. For the rest of the time, even though he wasn't even a dwarf, he took on a very concentrated expression and, if it hadn't been for the pacifier between his lips and his still not entirely coordinated movements, you could have mistaken him for a child of at least three years old.
Isidoro had been a very curious and creative child, one morning he observed his mother while she was making a painting and decided he wanted to imitate her, he grabbed a brush that had fallen to the ground and waved it in the air, nothing particular came out, except a few spots of color thrown by chance who knows where, yet he seemed very happy, so happy that he did something truly strange: he ran towards the vase of amaryllis and with the brush tried to capture the red color of the petals. When his mother saw him performing that childish gesture, she picked him up and, accompanying him in his movements, made him draw a red flower on the canvas. They both laughed a lot.
At two and a half years old, when his mother served him a pudding for the first time, instead of eating it he dug his hands into it to draw cave drawings on the tablecloth. They were really funny drawings: dad Khaleel swore he could see Africa in them, in some places he even managed to identify the deserts of his land, the bodies of water in the oases and a row of small beings with long necks; mother Sofia, however, claimed to see the wind blowing on a flower and, what for her husband were camels, for her were petals.
«They're too big to be petals» the father asserted with conviction. «Come on dear, how can a child have a sense of perspective? All children draw incredibly large or microscopic things, do you think they care about adult's logical rules?»
We may never know what Isidoro was really messing up, what we know for sure is that from an early age Isidoro showed himself to be a lover of art and beauty, which is why he decided to become a florist.
Every time he closed his eyes and smelled a flower, a pleasant sensation of freedom pervaded his body, it was almost like flying: he imagined the wind blowing on his face and carrying him who knows where, to some hidden corner of the world, perhaps to Libya, to the small village where his father was born, sooner or later he would go there, he had promised, to his family and to himself: he wanted to know his roots, touch them with his hands and walk on them with his feet, because a man without roots is a half man. Unfortunately, perpetual political conflicts prevented him from realizing his dream. Between the desire to get to know his father's country and the fear of being stuck there, the second had won. After all, his life was already complicated enough: he had always had to deal with bullies, prejudices, clichés.
He had awaited adulthood with trepidation and had long hoped that something would change, however, on the stroke of his eighteenth birthday, absolutely nothing had happened.
Society continued to treat him like a fool, a handicapped person. And, if when you're a child or a teenager, inside your head you think "Okay, they're just kids, when they grow up they'll understand", when you're thirty and everyone still continues to treat you exactly the same as they did twenty years ago, then your arms drop and you ask yourself "Why, why me? Because if I don't care about being deaf, why do you have to make me worry about it? Why can't you treat me like you would anyone else, why do you have to speak so softly that you sound like a damn cow , putting me in an absurd difficulty, in trying to interpret that ruminating mouth?".
And if empaths become mimics, evil people always have some poisonous word on their tongue, you become a gossip, a bad news that the people of your village have to discuss. And no matter how good you are at your job, how much effort you put into it, how kind you are, to people you will always be Isidoro, the deaf one.
