WHEN I KNEW Naples better than I know it now, it had an array of shops that sold all manner of ephemera – the flotsam of faded industries and the discarded inventories of estates – pertaining to the lives of the Napolitani and their visitors in that once great and wealthy port city. At the time I lived and worked at a hostel, up three grand flights of stairs to the top of the minor Palazzo in which it was situated. A middle-aged tabby cat would lie on my legs all night until I vacated the bed, where he would stretch lavishly as I prepared the colazione service for the guests, filling worn filter funnels with dark coffee grounds for pots of espresso and laying out breads and jams and fruits.

It was on the recommendation of a guest who belonged to a large party of French couples that I visited one of these shops filled with ephemera, north of the booksellers on Via Port’Alba and west of the Caffè Arabo tucked into the corner of Piazza Bellini (which always reminded me of a café in Fitzroy, just as Naples itself reminded me of the Levant without my having ever seen it); and whether the owners were Palestinian or not, they advertised Knafeh Nabulseyeh on their menu, which was a surprising offering for a city with little culinary diversity.