Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 55
55 for important state matters, how could he spare time for other things. I put forth a request to the ambassador to try anyway. It would be better if he could make the time [to meet] , for my work was different from his work. I ha d come to this country for a brief visit and w ould be leaving soon, but the ambassador live d there and c ould meet with him a t an other time. It was possible that Mussolini might keep this in mind and grant time for a meeting. The British a mbassador replied, “ That is perfectly f ine, I w ill write to him. ” He wrote that a renowned religious leader from India is visiting Italy and he would like to meet you. Two to three hours later, he received an answer from Mussolini that he would be pleased to meet with us at 11 :00 a. m. the next day. It was Mussolini’s routine to arrive at his office at 8 :00 a. m. and work until 12 noon. Then, he would return to the office at 2 :00 p. m. and work until evening. That day he declared that he would not do anything after 1 1 a. m. The most surprising thing was that my private secretary forgot to make the arrangements to actually get there. The next day, he remembered with only five minutes remaining before 1 1:00 a. m. H e quickly r an out of the hotel and hired a car. I showed my displeasure at the prospect of Mussolini having to wait for us and the poor impression it would give. The private secretary said, “I made a mistake. ” T hen to make things worse, th e driver of the car did not understand any other language other than Italian, whic h we did not speak. We told him that we needed to see the Prime Minister. In the Italian language , Prime Minister is called ‘ I l D u l c e ’. As we were not familiar with the correct pronunciation and accent, we pronounced this word as ‘duke’ or ‘du kai ’. The driver took it for someone else’s name , drove around, and stopped at a house. We noticed that there were no guards outside the house. We inquired, only to find out that it was some other well - known official’s home. We tried explaining again that we did not mean to visit this person. We recalled that ‘premier’ is an Italian word and it is very possible that they referred to Mussolini as the premier. We told the driver to take us to the premier. He said, “Why did you not tell me before?” He took us to a palace. Once there we found out that it was the k ing’s p al ace. He took the word ‘p remier ’ to be the ‘the highe st’ and took us to the k ing’s ho me. Again, we tried to tell the driver using different names and titles, that we would like to meet Mussolini. After much struggle he finally said, “O! You would like to go to I l D ulc e. ” We said, “ Somehow, please take us there. ” When we reached there , we found Mussolini’s p rivate s ecretary standing