A YEAR AGO TODAY . . . . A year ago today, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina became Pope Francis. And a year ago today, I wrote and posted this piece which I am re-posting to celebrate, in my own way, this once-bouncer’s, who became Time Magazines’ “Person of the Year,” chalking off a year on the Throne of St. Peter. LOCKED IN! How does it feel to be a cardinal? I think I have now some inkling. You see, yesterday, it was as though someone had roughly intoned the Latin expression, “Extra Omnes” which means “Everybody else out,” the same expression that was also said yesterday, Tuesday, March 12 at the Vatican when the door of the Sistine Chapel was closed for the conclave to elect the new pope. And it will remain so until a plume of white smoke comes out of the chapel’s chimney, a signal which means “Habemus Papam” or “We have a Pope.” Until then, the participating cardinals will be locked in. And I was locked in, too! But don’t get me wrong. I was not with the red-robed cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, though when I started writing this late last night, I was wearing my favorite red t-shirt. Aside from that t-shirt, I believe that I have all the right to be, at least, a cardinal, that is, if the the main requirement is the thinning tonsure area of my head which I’m thinking of covering, from now on, by always wearing a Jewish skull cap. However, yesterday, I didn’t attend any conclave, religious or otherwise. I just stayed put in my papal apartment. Papal apartment? Yes, for like the pope, the father of his flock and Bishop of Rome who has his papal apartment, I am also a papa being the father of my brood (from a one and only mama) and Boss of my Room in my rented apartment, my Castel San Miguel, here in the Kingdom of Bahrain. And why did I not go out from my papal apartment? I was waiting for an electrician to come over, that’s why. You see, in anticipation for the coming brain-baking Middle Eastern summer heat, I decided to buy a split-air-conditioning unit and have it installed in my sitting room, so that, among others, I could coolly answer the messages of my Facebook fans. For this reason, I need a new electrical power source to be installed, before the cooling unit could be plugged in. And being not an electrician, I needed one to do it. It’s like when firemen were called in to install the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, for surely the cardinals in their red robes would definitely not do it themselves, even if it would mean having no pope at all. “Do remind the Indian guy at the paint and electrical shop to send over the electrician whom he said would come at five. It’s already five-thirty,” I told my grand-nephew, a nurse, who was on his way out to piously do his religiously-followed workout at a nearby gym. Then turning my attention to Katya Adler’s account on BBC on the closing of the Sistine Chapel’s door, I barely noticed the opening of my front door. It was my daughter coming home from work. “We have no bread,” I said, still with eyes on Katya. “Ok, we’ll go to Baba Ali’s,” she replied, refering to the nearby Indian-owned convenience store, before going to her room to call her husband. “How about also buying some grilled chicken?” I said before they went out, adding that it would be easier than getting something from the freezer and preparing it for our evening’s food conclave. Turning my attention again to Katya, I barely heard the lock turning from outside, a sign that the two had locked the door which is always done whenever someone goes out. After a sort while, I heard someone knocking. He was saying something in Hindi. “Vait, vait!” I said, trying to sound Indian. But when I reached the door, I saw that there was no key. “Baya, vait, I kent vind my key!” I shouted. Still looking for my key, I heard the door handle being turned from outside. “Baya, vait!” “They brought my key and locked me in!” I said to myself, my temper rising, as I dialed my daughter’s number, to tell her to hurry up or return right away. Hearing no answer, I dialed her husband’s phone. There was also no answer. From the bedroom, I heard two mobile phones clearly ringing like lambent Vatican vesper bells. Instead of the chimes’ soothing my head as chimes do, the more that my temperature gauge rose! “The crazy pair didn’t bring their phones!” I said, though it was rather crazy of me to have still said the obvious. Then, I heard the Indian guy shouting something from outside. “Baya! Can you come back after thirty minutes?” I shouted back, not bothering to sound Indian anymore. But there was no answer. Already agitated and fuming, I kept going around like that caged tiger in Thailand which was the BBC segment that rightfully followed that of the caged cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel. Mercifully, after what seemed like an eternity, the locked door creaked open. “You locked me in! You could have brought your own keys! You did not bring your phones! What if there was a fire here? I would have been roasted alive! Go back and ask the Indian guy at the shop if he could send the electrician here again!” I delivered my crisp and rapid-fire Waray-Waray homily. Silence! Neither of them spoke a bit of protestation. Perhaps, they saw a plume of foreboding black smoke rising from the chimney on the dome of my thinning Mendoza head. Going silently to their room before going back out, surely they were saying in the pig Latin, arsy-versy, alternate lingua franca of Nawigs, “Yam ada yolkud!” Indeed! “Habemus tantrum!”
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 08:06:32 +0000
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