I still can't believe it, my Captain.
For sea wolves like you, so accustomed to shipwrecks and rising to the surface, stern sails and unexpected capsizes, I would have liked an epilogue like Melville's helmsman: disappearing into the waves smiling with a cigar in his mouth, careful not to spill the glass of aged rum.
Yes, him, you, an eternal man: never immature like the youngsters, never with the presumption of the too wise.
Instead we said goodbye after the usual seasonal ritual of the dinner before your departure, arguing about Aristarchus and Ptolemy with good jazz in the background and joking as always about the good things you would have tasted in Italy in our face.
Fresh broad beans, pecorino cheese and good wine.
You were attacked on the ground, in a land that is now foreign.
It was a cowardly, merciless, unjust attack.
They should have given you time at least to return to the ocean, my captain.
As well as being my father's best friend (and how could they not have been, two such elements, apparently very different from each other but so similar in protecting their fragile, very human feelings from the outside?) you were a teacher of life for me.
Like the greatest mentors, you did it without ever pretending to teach me anything and without ever putting the word 'I' in front of the word 'life'.
And in your life there was travel, experience, knowledge, curiosity.
There was Bukowski and Debussy arm in arm, there was Dante reading the Vernacoliere, there was Captain Ahab on the back of Moby Dick whistling "Mood Indigo".
When I first arrived in Malindi, in 1990, there was you waiting for me in front of the first tusker. Everything was new and the Captain of Lungo Sorso was the most exciting Italian surprise.
It was a Malindi of pirates, pioneers, dreamers, adventurers, artists, courtesans, wanted men, losers, brave women and lovers, smugglers and lovers of Africa.
For a young man who dreamed of being a writer, the expatriate 'colony' alone offered dozens of novels...and then there was everything else, there was Kenya!
You were my first guide, the metronome oscillating between the mad desire to enjoy every drop of freedom and the more relaxing and introspective way of letting things flow over you, like the clouds in the immense low sky of the equator. A metronome that always returned to the centre, blunting my youthful extremisms, ideologies and commonplaces and false myths about Africa.
This was the philosophy, made of ethical discussions until dawn and endless moments of silence in front of a sunset, going to look for all the places where the sun would disappear as close as possible to the ocean.
Is that why you are present in every book I have written about this place?
In every story of mine, in every speech about Malindi, about how we were so criminally close to freedom, beauty and absolute happiness that only in dreams can you live, there is you.
You leave in days like these when most people are getting used to thinking that freedom, beauty and happiness means not having to be afraid.
We would have told each other at the next African dinner, between a risotto, an Amarone and a Charlie Parker, that there is no greater blunder than this.
There is fear in dreams, and there is wonder. There are even nightmares.
Fear is part of life, but if you are not a slave to anything, you know that you have earned it too, along with disappointments and defeats.
And you can always tell about it, demythologise it, mock it.
By drinking on it and drinking slowly, as you have always tried to teach me to do.
Should sadness ever prevail, you can always return to the waves.
Captain, My Captain of Lungo Sorso, Beppino, Beppao, Musett'appunta... I leave you with the words dear to you by Herman Melville, at the beginning of Moby Dick.   
"Whenever I notice that I'm sulking. Whenever a damp and rainy November comes upon my soul. Whenever I find myself unintentionally standing in front of funeral parlours or waiting in line at every funeral I come across, and especially whenever I am in such a black mood that only a firm moral principle can keep me from going through the streets with a deliberate and methodical purpose of taking my hat off to people, then I think it is time for me to put to sea as soon as possible.
 
Your ship's scribe, Alfredo.