In Layla's ray: Something
an excerpt

A few years ago, I happened to be in Rome, on a street named Via Vittorio Emanuele in the Casalpusterlengo district, of the city that once was a playground for deprave gentlemen that later evolved into morally conscientious gentlemen. I was on my way back to my hotel, quite distraught over not being able to find the restaurant I was looking for, about which I had read in the local touristy magazine’s arts and life section. It said that the restaurant had seafood worth drowning for. ‘Frutti di mare degno morire per’ as I remembered it. All I could find was a simple trattoria, a few pizza places and an ice cream shop that was open at nine at night. Thinking about settling for a coffee and a pastry, I walked by a café, then two, then three, unable to make up my mind. The rows of cafes turned into tailor shops, flower shops, appliance repair shops. Shops of all kind, and then blaring out of an Internet café was something that stopped me in my tracks.
It was the first time I had heard the Rolling Stones in a foreign country. And to my surprise, at that one instant I loved them. Which was all the more shocking, since I despised the singer who danced like eels were slithering over him, and the guitarist who was a living, walking ad for a funeral home. I continued walking, after a brief lull. I wondered why that one moment felt magical. I decided there and then, that the only way to listen to and like the Rolling Stones was if one was in a foreign alien environment. The most it did was remind me of home. Which home, it did not matter. For what its worth, from that day on I could only listen to the Stones when I was in a country where I didn’t have a permanent bed. Only a temporary one.