I will remember that flight for the rest of my life. A “cardboard” Piper suspended between the Santa Gilla pond and the exclusive Cala di Volpe. The Costa Smeralda, fiscally, was no longer his, but no one had ever dreamed of taking away the sceptre of the Prince. When the commodore, director of land and sea in that port famous throughout the world for at least forty years, rang the phone at Villa Devoto, he did not linger in long pleasantries: I put you through to His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan . The morning in the Gregorian calendar was that of April 9, 2003.
The Patriarch
The tact was that of a Prince, the firmness that of a patriarch. He did not leave me many alternatives: his presence in Porto Cervo is indispensable tomorrow morning. He did not give in for even a moment to a possible defection linked to the fireworks of the regional budget under discussion in the Sardinian Parliament. He used the aplomb of the Prince, but did not leave out the subtle threat of a diplomatic incident. Foreign authorities, of international prominence, will be there. The presence of the President of the Region is essential, he suggested with the impetus of duty.
Island State
Adding and emphasizing: “Autonomous” Region, as if he had the perception of being in an Island-State, almost independent, sharecropping between the Italian Republic and the Ismaili Republic. It was he who suggested a small cardboard “bird” to fly across the Island from the far south to the Emerald destination in time to safeguard the votes in the Regional Council and honor the State guests on Sardinian soil. When I showed up on runway 14 of Elmas airport, however, the certainty of that flight was not granite, if only for the subtle “sneer” of the ground controllers. The sky in the lagoon, after all, was agitated like never before, with gusts that seemed like knives at every altitude.
Mission
Between staying on the ground and taking off, that gentle voice echoed like a mantra, invoking the duty of the mission on the “emerald” land. At the control stick , instead of a pilot with flight stripes and a uniform, there was a Piper “owner”. Dangling glasses, uncertain Italian, Corsican slang , as befits the last journey. The phrase was famous, addressed to the daredevil passenger who had become skeptical even in his physical features: don't worry, he seems light, but he won't fall. The crossing was a bit like flying over paradise, passing through the pains of hell, a sort of motorized paragliding between Su Gorroppu and Cala Luna. The landing at the “Costa Smeralda”, opposite the first airport of Vena Fiorita, was as soft as a ruinous fall from the first floor balcony.
Head of the world
The Prince had thought of everything, including the helicopter to reach his last hermitage where sovereignty was total, patrimonial and sentimental: the legendary Yacht Club Costa Smeralda . When he stands before me, dressed in white, as in the iconic images of his first landing on Sardinian soil, he does not spare an extra touch of courtesy: I understand the sacrifice, but "our" Sardinia deserves it. Everything, for him, an Ishmaelite sovereign in the promised land, revolved around that Island that forty years earlier he had "discovered" virgin and untouched, an unexplored pearl in the heart of the Mediterranean. Without ever having seen it, he had bought a handkerchief of it, among mastic trees, granites and goats. A blind purchase.
Long look
A glance at the map was enough for him, relying on an innate perception for business and paradise. He never said it explicitly to me, but the contractions of his face were more eloquent than any whispered phrase: if he could, without a coup, without bloodshed, he would have imagined Sardinia as a sovereign state, capable of valorizing without frills infinite deposits of environmental and landscape wealth, a sort of “independent” earthly paradise in the middle of the sea. He, the charismatic leader of the Ismailis in the world, for everyone here, in Sardinia, has always been Prince Aga Khan Karim . Respect and honor earned with the tact of doing and the smile of courtesy.
Island of the Wind
The obligatory and no-frills invitation that morning was the last pioneering gasp of an extreme mission: to transform the Island into the world capital of great sailing, forcing the world's elite to choose the Costa Smeralda as the organizer of the America's Cup , the most coveted America's Cup. Not a mere sporting achievement, but the "vision" of a land that cannot stop at just two months of "life" a year. The table is round, facing the bay of Porto Cervo, still deserted. There are all those who should have been there, according to his plans: from the friends to the enemies of his dream. There was Michel Bonnefous , Ernesto Bertarelli's man, the owner of Alinghi. There was, above all, Juan Carlos, the sovereign of Spain, a great sailor who dreamed of the sailing challenge between the Spanish islands, but could not deny his friendship with the Prince. After all, Karim has all the weapons to manage the game: affable, elegant, he uses words with the calmness of a petal and the firmness of a sovereign patriarch. He argues, explains, draws racing triangles and fairytale scenarios, he who has memorized that stretch of coast in every remote inlet. He doesn't talk about Sardinia, he paints it.
Without shovels
He imagines the Island as a land of wind, even if he would never have thought of having it transformed into an industrial landscape, violated by wind turbines and vile profiteers of state incentives. He imagined that wind as a driving force for great world tourism, capable of attracting, out of season, the great international stage of sailing. He doesn't leave me much room for maneuver. When he gives me the floor in that small gathering, the margins for maintaining a minimum of institutional prudence are reduced to a glimmer: Sardinia is a candidate to host the America's Cup, the Sardinian Region will do everything necessary to organize this world event in the times and ways that will be necessary. His left eye, in an unregal but explicit gesture, narrows in a sign of complicity for that operation that would have given his dream new lustre and unexpected potential. There is Tom Barrak , the new American magnate who had just taken over the hotels of the Costa Smeralda, invoking harmony and continuity with the "Patriarch" of Porto Cervo. The Prince hopes so, but the game is complex. Before returning to the south, this time on four stable wheels, he bids me farewell with eloquent words, aimed at the future: "Sardinia deserves to be at the center of the world." It was the last exhortation before that slow detachment from his creature, the bitterness of the unfinished work that irremediably marked the years to come.
Sardinian heart
He felt Sardinian, not even that acquired, but he writhed before the manifest impotence of a land unaware of its value. The first time I met the Prince was in the spring of 1999. A very private meeting, on the eve of an election campaign. He wanted to stay away, given the treatment he had received from the old politics, but he was curious to know and, above all, he had not lost hope of being understood. The fact that someone had mistaken him for a property developer looking for mere real estate deals embittered him quite a bit, as if forty years of facts had not been enough. The meeting took place in the afternoon gloom of the studio overlooking the port, in front of an old drawing board, the ancient drawing table where for years he had laid out the architectural tables of Jacques and Savin Couelle , Luigi Vietti, Michele Busiri Vici, up to the most enlightened architect-independence Antonio Simon Mossa.
Paintings
Not real technical drawings, but real paintings, author's sketches to set "jewels" in those rigid rules that he had rigorously imposed on the building-architectural regulations of what would become the Costa Smeralda. He kept repeating it to me: architecture is not measured in quantity, but in quality, the same that he imposed on every "work" to be chiseled in the golden paradise. The polyglot inflection, when his creature was involved, shattered into strong and clear words capable of sculpting the deepest "feeling" that had inspired and animated the largest "factory" of dreams and development of modern Sardinia.
Landscape
In the sixties, and the papers are proof of this, he reasoned about "landscape impact", environmental protection and enhancement of the Sardinian hinterland. More than reasoning, he imposed a new and rigorous style, an indelible identity signature, recognizable in the world firmament. In 2002, early in the year, winter already leaning towards spring, we started discussing again: everyone called it the Master Plan , but the name was already a curse. The years had transformed that plan for the relaunch of the Costa Smeralda into an almost concrete symbol on which to overshadow mere real estate deals.
Disappointment
Politics, institutions, had deeply disappointed him. Reconnecting the threads of dialogue was a difficult task, but not impossible. I met him once again in his “Prince-architect” studio, where everything had started. It was the last “ lectio magistralis ”. He never spoke to me of cubic meters, never of volumes, but of a common thread that could be reconnected. The “worry” was that unfinished work, referring to this land of Sardinia full of problems, but rich in infinite and unexplored potential. He was explicit and frank, as never before: this Island can and must live on tourism much more than three months a year, it has an incredible deposit that is waiting to be exploited, we need infrastructures and structures capable of systematizing everything we have already achieved.
Vision
He had a clear “ master plan ”, not the one of concrete, but a “visionary” plan capable of expanding and multiplying the attractive force of Sardinia in the world, guaranteeing more employment and more development. Three cornerstones of his unfulfilled “dream”: major sporting events, at the highest world levels, to be held throughout the year, outside the summer season, to make the existing structures capable of developing a much wider potential; five-star conference tourism, capable of attracting the greatest cultural and scientific initiatives on a global level, creating functional extensions in all the existing hotel structures for conference activities at the highest levels; finally, the well-being of the soul and body, from wellness centers to environmental ones. Many did not listen to him. Too many waged war on him. His enlightened and visionary thought remains: enhance and respect this paradise-land. His lesson is now carved in the skies.
