Everything is Illuminated, again

One of my best friends has just came back to Rome from Pakistan. Beautiful how the words "best friend" have just slipped out even if I don't know her for a long, long time in someone else's definition of how long you need to know someone to call them a "best friend". I call her a "best friend" because I miss her when she is away and I am happy whenever she is back. I am calling her a best friend because she asks me the right questions - she asks the kind of questions that only the very best of friends bother to ask. I call her one of my best friends because her presence and existence have enriched my life and because I know that we will be friends for a very, very long time. And so there she comes, with her shawls and chocolate, but above all with her love of books and literature. One day, she is carrying in her hands "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Foer and I realize that for the very first time....First, I have seen the film. It has always been the other way around: first comes the book, then comes the dissappointment with the film that I have already played out in the eye of my imagination. Regardless if first came the book or first came to film, now I know that my two friends, who came from very different cultures, did find something in common to laugh at and both are and will be the best of intercultural communications professors that college students could ever be blessed with. Intercultural communication is our daily bread in the age of globalization. Mastering it requires a bit of a heart. M. and A. know how to open it. This sneak preview shouldn't hurt.