Farah was glad to accept Giuseppe’s invitation to nonno Francesco’s farm for Easter’s lunch: since Ismail had repudiated her, her life had shrunk between work and caring for little Omar. Her community, the Muslim one, treated her little short of a plagued person and, in the end, why would she have been repudiated if she didn’t commit something horribly wrong?
What could her family do, down there in Jordan? They sacrificed so much to let her study, to grow her up for good, to give her the opportunity to go and live in a rich Western country, and how had she repaid all their efforts, making her husband repudiate her? They didn’t willingly even talk to her through Whatsapp.
The Italians at work saw her as an alien body, an intruder unasked for: Farah had been a brilliant student, a great biochemistry promise, even, but in Italy no one wants a great promise to outshine and displace the “baron’s” son at hand, so she barely managed to hop from fellowship to fellowship just to stay within the academic world. In the end, the only decent and legally paid job she could do after so many years of schooling was the researcher.
Ismail had not been the husband she had dreamed of: he had brought her to the West, sure, just to make her continue living as a Muslim woman. She had never imagined that Ismail, her own Ismail, he who in Bitra had filled her head with his Western dream, would have proved so backward: Farah should have stopped studying to care about the family. What family? Omar had been perhaps the last time Farah had given herself to her husband, between an exam and the next one; later on, the man had taken by force what was no longer his own.
When, after Omar’s arrival, after the long-sought defense of her doctoral thesis, Ismail extantly revealed himself as the violent and despicable man according to whom she shouldn’t have entertained Western whims, one last furious quarrel, moderated at the last moment by the police intervention, marked her new status as repudiated, a pariah for her native community, as if she wasn’t already like that for the anyone else around her.
She had known Giuseppe some time later, when her emotions had finally extinguished and a man was truly the last thing on her mind.
She had brought Omar to the emergency room: the child was burning with fever and coughing like a dog. She had tried calling up Ismail and asked him to bring them to the hospital, but her ex husband did not want to be disturbed under any circumstances, especially when he was with his new Western partner. That time Farah hadn’t felt the usual pang of compassion for the other woman: Omar was a far greater reason for concern.
She covered herself, cloaked her child and went to wait for a bus under the pouring rain: taxi cabs did not accept calls after a certain time, from the neighbourhood where Farah lived. When they got to the hospital they were in a pitiful state, with Omar coughing worse and worse, his temperature soaring, his face nearly cyanotic. Yet the clerk at the reception caught the triage data just like another nuisance, assigned them no more than a white code, non-urgent, a number, and instructed them to wait in the bare waiting room.
At least, it was warm, there. Farah spotted two empty seats and, on the verge of tears, laid Omar there. “Don’t worry, precious. Now the doctor will visit you, will give you medicine and you’ll get well”. A mother’s love speaks a universal language.
Farah was completely unaware of the stares directed at her. A professional across the room thought They come and steal our jobs, and get cured with the money of our taxes, as he fiddled boringly with his expensive digital watch: a “working tool”, according to his latest tax refund. Omar was the woman’s only reason for concern: if anything had happened to that child, all her life would have been in vain.
Suddenly the emergency double door opened wide and a stream of cold, damp air ran over the room: from the tailgate of an ambulance two porters rushed in, pushing a stretcher. The first of the two keepers ran to the door at the other end of the room, opened it and let his colleague pass through, then went to the reception desk to deal with the damn paperwork. Out of the corner of his eye he framed the now usual scene of a waiting room filled with patients at the breaking point, with the exception of a woman.
Farah, who had taken the soaked coat off from Omar, at the flow of cold air had sprung up to cover her son again, placing herself between the outside door and the child’s prone body but, while moving, the hijab framing the almost perfect square of her face had got stuck in her chair, falling down. She gasped a curse, but disregarded her own exposure, focusing instead on shielding Omar from the wind; yet a tear of helplessness welled up in her eyes: what else could she do? Why had God abandoned her?
At the sound of the curse in Arabic, a well-to-do elderly woman hissed venomously through her teeth Barbarians! as if annoyed at the mere sight of that mother worried for her own son. She was there to check the irritation caused by her last Botox injection. She matched her expression with a grimace of disgust, made even more vulgar, for a woman of that age, by the obvious swelling of her lips.
Giuseppe came closer to Farah slowly, cautious, seeing that, among so many patients, she was the only one showing sincere concern. He picked up the hijab from the chair and tentatively held it out to her.
“Here”, he said. “I know it’s important”.
“Thank you”, she replied, without turning around, “yet Omar is more so. Will it take much longer? He’s had a high fever for hours now, and it won’t budge”.
At that moment the boy was seized by a coughing fit that worried Giuseppe as well: perhaps the cold had settled in his chest. “I’ll check what I can do”, he said, and went to the reception desk.
He talked with the clerk, went to check the waiting list; they pointed out and looked over every person present, one by one, they even bickered under their breath. The clerk at the desk didn’t want to raise her voice and looked around nervously, worried that anyone might overhear the instructions she had been given to withhold faster care from the patients, but Giuseppe prevailed, thanked her and came back to Farah with a different number in his hand. “Here, have this!” He held it out to her. “It won’t be much longer, now”.
From the other side of the room, the professional’s eyes twisted into a smirk of malevolent smugness. Bravo! He thought. Trying your luck, eh? He was there for some intimate discomfort that, no doubt, was totally unrelated to some of his more than questionable acquaintances.
That was how Farah and Giuseppe had met. During a follow-up visit to the pediatrician, they had crossed paths again along the hospital corridors. She had recognised him and thanked him deeply for the time he’d saved them: perhaps Omar had been spared grave consequences thanks to the porter’s intervention. He had played it down: what else was he supposed to do? But now he had to rush off, he had to deliver some samples for testing to a university biochemistry lab, a lab Farah knew only too well.
The chance encounter thus became the opportunity to exchange a few words with someone who was not Ismail, or a colleague worried about Farah taking part in the upcoming competition, or another member of her Islamic community who would have treated her with precious little respect, or her distant family, who were now trying to convince her to get back home and find a new husband, as if no other destiny existed for her but to end up as someone’s wife.
The cafe at the university was a warm, welcoming place, with its wide windows overlooking green, well-tended flowerbeds and the neverending hum of students and professors at all hours. For reasons never quite precisely articulated, Giuseppe became the courier between the hospital and Farah’s department, and the two saw each other more and more often. Finally, he had invited her to lunch. It was to be a family gathering, for Easter, at nonno Francesco’s.
“Do you Muslims celebrate Easter?” Giuseppe asked, always careful not to offend Farah.
“Sure, we celebrate Easter, though it doesn’t mean the same thing to us as it does to you. And we celebrate it with family, but my family is just Omar now. But…”
“Bring Omar over, of course!” Giuseppe felt silly for not mentioning the boy right away. “We are going to nonno Ciccio’s* masseria, and Maria and Rosa, two cousins of mine, will be there too. It will be a different kind of day both for him and for you!”
A different kind of day: out of the studio flat, out of the condo, into the countryside, even! Farah accepted with no second thought.
“But”, she observed, “I am bringing the lamb. Sorry, but I cannot abandon certain traditions. Is that alright?”
“Are you kidding? No problem at all!” Giuseppe replied enthusiastically. “When the family gets together, every one of us brings something too”.
Farah was tempted by the urge to explain the reason behind her request then and there, but it didn’t really matter: let Giuseppe think it was just a form of courtesy, that was more than fine! Let him even think about that worn-out misunderstanding about pork! Finding similarities between their cultures was certainly better than having to explain those rituals -which she now judged as a whole to be bleak- the cause of her final exclusion from her own community.
They agreed to meet on Sunday morning and said goodbye as usual, with a handshake that was growing more awkward every time. Giuseppe watched her, almost dazed, as she disappeared in the corridors of the university, behind the cafeteria, with her dove-grey hijab sailing after a waft of jasmine scent.
Omar was a remarkable boy for his age. As she could no longer rely on anyone, Farah had raised him to be the man Ismail should have been: he helped her with the chores, kept his things in order, behaved well at school (both his grades and manners were a source of solace for all his teachers, who pointed him out as a role model for the other pupils), he always made her laugh… He filled her life with the love Ismail hadn’t been able to give her, yet still a son’s love, and Farah was still young -very young, even.
His mother had told him they were going to the countryside, that the man who had helped them at the Emergency Room, the one who had made it possible for the boy to be examined more quickly, had invited them over, and Omar had been struck and left doubtful about that: what did it mean? For him, a Muslim child in a foreign country, the fusion of the two cultures, his heritage and his new home, opened up a nearly infinite range of possibilities. Naturally, the longing for someone to call “dad”, someone able to console his mom during her darkest times, was his wildest, yet unspoken, dream: children are wise enough never to say their hidden dreams out loud, fearing that the very act of naming them might make them vanish.
He had woken up quite early, had breakfast with his mom, cleared the table and, while Farah prepared her own family’s recipe for the lamb, he had brushed his teeth and tidied his room up: they would be out all day and, upon their return, they might feel too tired to straighten up anything at all.
Farah’s voice -he had not heard her singing in a long time- came to him from the kitchen, along with the smell of the lamb browning in the oven, seasoned with aromatic herbs. Omar went into the kitchen to see what was going on and stood there, eyes wide: “Mom, are you okay?” he asked.
Farah, who had not realized her own mood, turned to him smiling, giving him a curious glance and replying: “Yes, why do you ask?”
Omar smiled as well, almost with an effort: he could no longer remember the last time he had seen his mother like this, and his eyes glistened with joy. Farah saw him and ran to hug him, her little man: “What is it, Omar? What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve never seen you so serene!” the boy replied. “I’m glad for you, mom! Because you are the smartest mom of all, and you deserve to feel this happy all the time!”
“But I’m happy whenever I’m with you!” She squeezed and kissed him hard. “We haven’t been very lucky, that’s true. Other things may not have always gone our way, but I have you, and when I’m with you everything else fades into the background!”
“Yes”, the boy agreed, “but this morning you are more… beautiful! How come?”
“Who knows, Omar? You children are always beautiful and happy. How come? You should tell me!”
“I think it’s because we have a lot of friends!” the boy replied. “At school, the happiest kids are the ones with the most friends, and the saddest are those who are always alone, apart!”
“Do you feel sad for them?” his mom asked.
“Yes, I try to get closer to them, to make friends, but they are always sad! You, on the other hand, are more cheerful this morning! Did you make a friend, mom?” His tone was half inquisitive, half embarrassed: could he, a child, ask his mother that kind of questions?
But Omar was Farah’s whole life, and he could have asked her anything. “A friend?” she thought for a moment. “Maybe, we’ll see. For now, I am just glad we are spending a day that’s different from all the others. Don’t you think that’s reason enough to be more cheerful?”
“Oh, yes mom, yes! I can’t wait!”
“Good, then go get ready; Giuseppe will be here to pick us up any minute now. I need to go get ready myself. If you’re done before me, keep an eye on the lamb, so it doesn’t burn! But don’t touch the oven, you might get burned! If you see it getting dark, call me!” She went to her room.
The neighbourhood where Farah had found a place for herself and Omar, affordable on her modest lifelong fellowship salary, was the typical suburb of high-rise concrete blocks that the self-righteous would never even approach: the pushers of poor-quality weed outnumber the grocery stores; broken glass and graffiti on the walls are part of the landscape. Every now and then a piece of graffiti stands out for its artistic value, but it is wishful thinking to imagine that the artist’s hand will ripen into a signature: the themes are always the same, and technical mastery cannot convey a message that simply isn’t there.
What would the message be? Unease? Monotonously articulated and repeated in all its infinite variations? Unease for the conditions of the neighbourhood? For the border-zone schools that are never granted enough funding? For underage prostitution? For drugs within children’s reach? For deaths on the job? For those caused by heroin and immortalized in the countless spray-painted faces of the Rashids, of the “Ramón 1998–2021 Your friends never forget you” staring at the regulars of the “little-park cemetery” with the bright eyes of a youth slashed by a syringe? The self-righteous, those who would possibly pay for art, don’t want to have it thrown in their faces that their own affluent life stands on the exploitation and the holocaust of so many less fortunate people: in their mindset, the poor men brought on themselves! So what message is this supposed “unease” smearing so many walls, if not a childish excuse, a pretext to persist in a state of everlasting sloth, in not wanting to do shit with one’s life? Should the self-righteous even finance the “art” of people who don’t want to do shit in their life?
Giuseppe did not live in a neighbourhood like that and felt out of place, as he followed the directions of the navigator to Farah’s tower block. Is it even mapped correctly? he wondered doubtfully, wishing no one would notice his trusty small car, a bit dated but kept almost like new.
The building, an anonymous large concrete box among so many identical ones -so alike that even the glaring cracks in the plaster looked mass-produced- stood twelve stories high, exactly where indicated, and Giuseppe felt relieved.
He got out of his car, trying not to draw too much attention to himself, and headed to the intercom, wishing it would work: the condition of the buildings there bore witness to repeated outbursts of wanton violence. On the intercom plate, he found no names, only blank white labels, and a few buttons were missing: just as Farah had told him, people living there had no desire to be traced.
He ran his finger down the third column of buttons from top to bottom and pushed the fifth one; the device croaked something halfway between a raspberry and an explosion, then silence.
A few seconds later, a boyish voice answered in perfect Italian: “We are coming down right now!”
It took a while: the seven flights of stairs, carrying the tray of lamb, were little short of a challenge for Farah, accompanied by Omar. Moreover, the woman was being careful not to stain her best clothes: a nice, long camel-coloured coat with a simple, modern and surprisingly elegant cut, fitting her like a glove and enhancing her slender, youthful figure.
Giuseppe stood there for a moment, dazed by the sight of her, then he recovered. “But… What about the lift?” he asked.
“Oh, that thing could break down at any moment! Come on, take this”, Farah said, handing him the tray, “and let’s go to nonno Francesco’s. Can Omar sit in the front?”
Giuseppe appreciated the young woman’s caution, but little Omar was not allowed to sit in the front seat yet, so he improvised: “But I thought that today’s guests would enjoy having a chauffeur!” He opened the rear door with a smile.
Farah seemed to blush in amusement, and ducked her head to avoid showing her emotion. “Get in, Omar!” she encouraged the boy gently.
The drive away from the neighbourhood soon became pleasant: they say that in other countries ghettos stretch for miles and miles — all the same, monotonous, grey, neglected, brutal… An insult to human dignity, to the aspirations of the young lives growing up there, to the hopes of those who settle there. Italy, for better or worse, seems different from the tales of the immigrants to France or Germany, but Farah had her own ideas on the matter: Italy is a far wealthier country than France or Germany! Maybe not in terms of the macroeconomic indicators (with her degree, and the constant pressure of submitting research projects, it hadn’t taken Farah long to form an idea of how Western economics works), but poverty, the kind linked to hunger, lack of water, schools and hospitals, that is something Italians have no idea about. The commuter town where Farah lived was like an unhappy island lost amidst green countryside: the apartment blocks end and the streets of prostitution begin leading, several hundreds meters away, to the city’s outskirts.
Poverty is something so far removed from Italy that even ghettos are ostracised from the urban fabric, they don’t touch it. They are not like certain Parisian banlieues that besiege the French capital! They aren’t like certain Spanish neighbourhoods controlled by South American cartels, and yet bordering the town centres! They aren’t like certain Northern European suburbs where the local language is not spoken and yet they are a seamless urban extension! Even the metro stop in Farah’s neighbourhood -five kilometers from the next one, just two tracks running through nowhere- serves to separate rather than connect. It might as well be saying This place, down here, is your place, far from over there. Go work for a pittance, then return to your miserable homes they don’t want to see, don’t want to know about.
Yet that day was different. Giuseppe’s car seats were wide and comfortable, they smelled clean, and Omar had immediately noticed that as he leaned against the window: the sight of the fields all around was such an unusual thing for him!
The boy grew sad as he spotted a woman standing at the roadside. He turned to his mom, looking for solace.
“That’s why you have to study, Omar. So you don’t end up like Aisha’s mother, or worse!”
She had spoken in Arabic, but Giuseppe was looking at them through the rear-view mirror and hadn’t missed her compassionate tone or the change in their expressions. He felt his own ease as a kind of guilt, as if he had achieved it to the detriment of those less fortunate than himself. Yeah, he, a porter, knew he was lucky, a wealthy man.
Trying to ease the tension, he threw out a random subject: “Omar, your mom says you get good grades at school! What do you like studying the most?”
The boy was caught off guard, but he was pleased to talk about something he was good at. “I like maths, but also drawing! I like drawing houses: big houses with lots of rooms to play in with plenty of friends!”
“Then maybe you’ll like nonno Ciccio’s house: it doesn’t have so many rooms but they are large. You can play there along with a lot of friends! When I was a child, my whole family used to go there — twenty, maybe twenty-five of us! Sometimes, we were more than fifteen cousins! What a racket we made!”
Omar’s eyes went wide: “Fifteen cousins? Mamma mia! And did you all get on? Will they all be there, today?”
Giuseppe pondered the question: Did you all get on? He was about to answer Yes, sure! They are my cousins! but held himself back: that kid had never had a family like his own.
“We got on well enough…” he hedged. “With some more than with others. With time, almost all of them moved far away, far off, and I don’t see them anymore. Today, there’ll be just Maria and Rosa, and nonno Ciccio”.
“And where did these cousins of yours go?” Omar asked. He thought he had already heard so many similar stories, only now it was an Italian telling it, not one of his classmates or a member of his own community.
“They went looking for a job! Some up North, some abroad…” Giuseppe replied with a trace of wistfulness. There were many tales about the cousins who left: some had become very rich, some had climbed the corporate ladder, no one had come back, never! At times, someone would remember to bring a flower to their own parents’ graves. They didn’t even send holiday greetings anymore, and some had even showed annoyance, this year, when Giuseppe had announced he would be attending the usual Easter lunch at nonno Ciccio’s masseria with a guest. Giuseppe had never quite understood that much the ones who had gone away.
“Like mom?” Omar asked again.
“Who? What?” Giuseppe returned from his thoughts. “Yes, just like your mom”, he began. He wanted to make the boy feel that they were not so different, that their stories had more elements in common than not, but what was he saying? “Actually, no! Your mom is so much smarter than all of them! Your mom is highly educated, her job is important for everyone! My cousins only went away to put food on the table and weren’t educated. They have been lucky to meet success! That’s why I didn’t leave: where would I go, if I can do here as well what I can do there?”
That was the excuse he had given himself many years ago so as not to abandon his own land: why emigrate if there was no place waiting for him? Yet another voice within himself had always branded this decision of his as an act of cowardice: Giuse’, nun te ne vaje perché nun tiene ‘e ppalle! — you ain’t leavin’ as you’ve got no balls!
Farah was embarrassed at Giuseppe’s compliment, but turned it again to discipline her son: “See, Giuseppe’s saying what your teachers say: school will give you better opportunities, so you will be able to choose what you want to do with your life. You will be able to decide if you want to leave, if you want to get back to Jordan or if you want to go elsewhere, as everybody will want to have someone as capable as you working for them! But with no good education, you will only have to rely on luck, whereas you want to design many beautiful houses, don’t you?”
“Yes, mom!” the boy replied, convinced. “And I want to design one for you, by the seaside! It’ll have a garden filled with sweet-smelling trees!”
The youthful dreams of Farah came back to life again at those words, and she was again the hopeful girl who had left Jordan a few years before. Giuseppe caught a glimpse of her wistful gaze through the rearview mirror and was captivated, as always happened when he saw the deep, bright hazel of her eyes, framed by the single line of kajal that highlighted her long lashes.
Giuseppe wasn’t a dreamer. He was one of those people with solid principles who can be met at times even at an early age, and he had stayed that way since his youth, unable to find the soulmate he had been so deeply aspired to. Perhaps it was because he had been raised in a family still tied to the land, and yet no: all his cousins had managed to get married, except for Rosa and Maria. He simply couldn’t settle for just anyone. He had even fallen hopelessly in love with a classmate, had had his own close bonds and romantic adventures during the nursing school, but all the people he had known had proved, sooner or later, to be dishonest, frivolous, unreliable, all of them too self-absorbed and, above all, not committed to their work.
Which, for Giuseppe, was unconceivable! He found it incomprehensible how anyone could be a nurse without always being attentive to the patients’ needs, without being moved by their suffering, their hopes, their joys!
With time, he had learned not to ‘take his work home with him’. At least he had learned that lesson, thanks to one of his now dearest friends. “You cannot care for others unless you are well yourself!” she often told him and, due to some unpleasant experiences, he had learned that work had to end the moment he had taken his coat off. On the job he kept exuding an incomparable humanity: who did they call when there was a case in the children’s ward more desperate than usual? Giuseppe! And the terminally ill, whom not even morphine could comfort? They were his own! His days were punctuated by even worse cases because every head physician knew they could trust him, his great humanity, backed by an instinctive empathy that allowed him to understand any patient at a glance. That same empathy that now allowed him to read Farah’s eyes.
“Omar, do you know what?”, he tried to get the boy’s attention. “At nonno Ciccio’s masseria, there are plenty of fragrant trees! And fruit trees too! Many of them are always in bloom!”
“Are there peach trees?” the boy asked. “I love that colour of theirs so much! From home, I can only see them in the distance…” He finished his sentence with a daydreaming expression, as if watching right then the half-wild fields from the meager balcony of the flat on the seventh floor of his building.
“Yes, there are peach trees and so many more: cherry, apple, orange, lemon, pomegranate trees… Nonno Ciccio has a fruit for every season!” Giuseppe stopped reeling off names when he saw Omar putting his hands to his cheeks and turning abruptly to Farah: it was an expression of wonder and trepidation so simple and genuine that he couldn’t remember what other plants grew on nonno Francesco’s land. He smiled, cheered, and turned his focus back to the road.
They reached their destination in a short time: the countryside had quickly become healthier and better tended, far from the dormitory neighbourhood, and the road was in better condition, although not very well maintained. Tall, lush green weeds grew along its sides, and soft white clouds drifted across the blue sky like cotton candy tufts, pushed by the brisk spring wind, projecting here and there a sharp, cool shadow from the bright sun.
The masseria lay at the end of a narrow country lane that stemmed abruptly from the main road and ran straight like an arrow for nearly a kilometer, bordering a narrow irrigation canal. On either side, a row of plane trees went along with the path and shaded it on both sides like a long green cave. Sunbeams filtered brightly here and there, playing among the leaves stirred by the wind, and the rolling of the car tires on the road gravel drowned out any other sound.
They reached a wide courtyard where two other cars were parked. Giuseppe pulled up beside them and turned the engine off. “We’re here!” he announced aloud, with a certain trepidation. How would Farah react to this day? What would she think of being brought to a place so far removed, in appearance, from anything modern?
He couldn’t read it on her face through the rearview mirror, not even when they got out of the car. Farah seemed absorbed in thoughts of her own: she was looking at everything around her with great intensity.
A large white Maremma shepherd ran toward them barking joyously. Omar jumped and clung to his mother, frightened by the dog’s size, but Giuseppe calmed him down with robust strokes on his neck.
“Be good, Buck, they’re friends!” he said to the animal, who wanted to smell the newcomers and keep receiving his own strokes. He turned his head toward Giuseppe, then toward Farah and Omar, restless, wagging his tail vigorously. He plunged his nose against Omar’s hip and sniffled loudly.
“Buck! Easy now! Getting too friendly, huh?” Giuseppe rebuked him, pulling him by its neck, with not much hope of winning by force, but the animal was happily distracted by the grandpa’s arrival and, just as he had rushed toward Giuseppe and his guests, he ran back toward the elderly man at the masseria’s door.
He was a sturdy man, well over seventy, clean-shaven but with thick white moustaches, and bald head. Skin spots — the mark of his age and a life spent under the sun — gave him an aura of experience that inspired a natural reverence.
“Ah, here ye are!” he said with a certain relief. “Rosa an’ Maria reckoned ye were lost fer sure! Thank goodness you’ve arrived, yeah, or I’d never hear the end of it!”
At those words, two women, both in their thirties, appeared at the door. They were both dressed up for the holiday. One wore a kitchen apron over her best dress, the other one was drying her hands with a kitchen rag. They looked at the newcomers with curiosity: Farah’s trial had begun, but she let that sensation slide, thinking about the different kind of day Omar was going to have.
“And this must be yer friend!” the grandfather said, somewhat discreetly, lowering his eyes and turning toward the masseria, gesturing with his arm to invite the guests in. “Miss, beggin’ yer pardon for the state o’ the place — it’s a workin’ farm. Come on in, will ye?”
Buck was no longer pestering them: he ran back and forth between Giuseppe and the grandpa, Maria and Rosa at the door, perhaps hoping he’d get something to eat, and only occasionally approached Omar, as if offended by the fact that the boy was afraid of him. For Farah, carrying the tray of lamb wrapped in the towel across the gravelled courtyard while Omar clung to her, was little short of a balancing act.
“Don’t worry, Omar: he just wants to get to know you!” Giuseppe explained. The boy felt less distressed, but not less fearful: Buck reached his shoulder, and it was only out of courtesy that the dog lowered his head to his hip to smell him.
“Buck, settle down! Go to yer bed!” the grandpa commanded, and Buck froze in confusion: his moment of celebration was over. He sat right where he was and let the four of them file toward the house, wagging his tail and panting.
At the door, Maria did the honors: “Goood daaay! Haaappy Eeeaster!” She reached out to get the tray from Farah’s hands. Farah hadn’t expected such a warm welcome but she adapted; no sooner had she handed over the bundle, smelling of aromatic herbs, than she found Rosa enthusiastically clinging to her neck.
“Happy Easter!” she heard shouted into her ear by a ringing voice, as she felt her ribs squeezed so tight that she almost lost her breath.
“Happy Easter!” Farah replied, her eyes widening in surprise at the embrace.
“Happy Easter!” she said to Maria too, who shrugged and gave a little nod as if to say Yeah, Rosa’s a bit like that, but she means no harm! and entered the masseria.
They all went inside. The room was huge for such a small door. In the middle of a space maybe four meters high and at least as wide as Farah’s entire flat, there was a long table. Giuseppe hadn’t exaggerated, when he mentioned large rooms. Along the walls were a great fireplace at the far end, the kitchen to the left, and then cupboards scattered here and there: furniture that would have barely fit into Farah’s home and that here could barely fill the walls.
The fire in the fireplace was lit: even on that warm spring day the sun couldn’t have warmed the vastness of that room, and three or four small wood logs burned crackling, casting a warm, waving light through the room. The overhead lamp, a round fluorescent one, was also lit, as the high windows, designed to protect against the terrible summer heat and to keep out the winter cold, were small and deep-set.
Rosa asked Farah for her overcoat, and Omar’s jacket. Giuseppe’s cousin was the kind of person whom excitement turns into a chatterbox. “Ooh, dearie me, this coat’s lovely! Soft as a lamb’s ear, it is! I’ll go lay it on the bed, so that it won’t get ruined!” She followed suit.
“Glad to meet you. Maria!” The first cousin introduced herself after setting the lamb on the kitchen counter.
“Glad to meet you. Farah!” Giuseppe’s guest replied, returning the handshake.
“Nonno Ciccio…” Maria pointed to the elderly man and Farah shook his hand too, “and Rosa!” At that moment Rosa was coming back from the next room, still delighted by the feel of the coat she had just laid aside. Hearing her name, she rushed to their guest to shake her hand.
Farah introduced her son: “This is Omar!”
This was the trial by fire, for her. Omar, hearing his name, let go of his mother’s dress and turned to face the strangers. He had handsome features, the deep black eyes of his people, olive skin, but one would have taken him for a perfect street urchin.
“What a bonnie lad!” the grandpa exclaimed cheerfully. “Vide ‘o mar’ quant’è bbello…”b He hummed a familiar tune and everybody laughed, including Omar, who had heard the tune before. “Oh, he’s laughing too! This one’ll drive the lasses wild, when he’s grown up!” the elderly man declared, and Farah felt proud at that: Omar truly was a stunning boy.
Then Ciccio pulled Giuseppe aside while Rosa and Maria gathered around Farah to talk kitchen business: “Peppec says you made the lamb! Should we warm it up? In the oven?”
“Wait”, she replied gracefully, “I left it half-cooked, it’ll only take half an hour in the oven to have it ready. I know it takes some time before we get to the second course, so there’s no need to rush”.
This was Farah: a daughter of the desert, where time treads slowly and everything is done without haste, which gave her an aura of refinement that conquered Rosa on the spot and didn’t leave Maria indifferent either. “May I help you set the table?”
The two cousins didn’t need to be asked twice, and the three women took turns at the dining table and the cooker to prepare the lunch. Omar, not knowing what else to do, settled in to watch cartoons on TV.
Farah, Rosa and Maria exchanged tips and advice as they set the table and cooked. Farah had a certain poise while moving around the kitchen that amazed the other two women: as if she were a professional chef, whenever she did something, the kitchen stayed spotless! Slicing bread? Lacking a cutting board, she had laid a napkin under the loaf to collect the crumbs she would immediately toss away, leaving the table ready and tidy for the next task with minimal effort. When asked to stir the sauce, she did it with unsuspected expertise, never letting it splatter all over the stove, or stick to the bottom of the treacherous, heavy aluminum pot. All of this with a natural elegance in her motion that made both cousins blush a bit. By the time the lunch was ready, and Giuseppe and nonno Francesco had washed their hands, the table looked fit for a formal banquet, yet everything had been done with disarming simplicity.
Omar sat between Farah and Giuseppe, who sat at the right of nonno Ciccio. Maria and Rosa were at the old man’s left. Nonno Ciccio, at the head of the table, remained standing and made a gesture his family recognised. Farah caught the moment’s meaning and signaled for Omar to stand up too.
“Oh Lord who has resurrected, we thank You for this food, for the gifts You gave us, for this family, and for this nice company. We pray You to help those who have less than we do, the sick and those suffering through war”. Then he turned to his guest: “Would ya like to say a word too, miss?”
“Yes, thank you”, Farah replied. “Lord, thank You for having tested our faith and shown us Your favour. May it rest upon this and all the good families in the world”. She had been caught by surprise and had improvised a prayer, wishing to reconcile her own faith with that of her hosts, while also dedicating the moment to her son: her own family. She thought the words hadn’t turned out half bad.
Maria had been very careful in preparing varied appetizers, rich in vegetables, cooked in different ways. There were eggplants and broccoli rabe in oil, fried artichokes (which Omar gorged on), and some chickpea hummus (which nonno Francesco found tasty, after an initial wariness), and of course there was no lack of ham and cured cuts for the master of the house.
Rosa had prepared the first course: fettuccine with a ragù sauce so good that Giuseppe and Omar went back for seconds. Farah only worried that the boy might overeat, but between a “Let him eat: the country air makes you hungry”, a reassurance from Rosa she had used halal meat, and the nice company, the mother’s concerns subsided pleasantly.
The lamb had been put in the oven on low heat at the start of the lunch, so that it would warm through without losing its juices. Its aroma, laced with the scent of the aromatic herbs, had invaded the kitchen. To divide it among the diners, Maria accompanied Farah to the cooker, yet she let the guest dish out the portions as she saw fit; she just served the plates at the table. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help noticing the tenderness of the meat, and asked for her trick: the recommendation of cooking with butter and on a slow oven brought back childhood echoes of her grandmother’s advice. Caught up by that symphony of scents, she also noticed the choice of the cuts, tailored to each diner: for Omar, Farah had cut a drumstick, meaty and easy to eat; for herself and Maria, she had combined a bit of every part of the animal; for Rosa she had composed a similar plate, fishing out more dressing and generous amounts of dates, honey sauce, and spices; for nonno Ciccio she had chosen the neck and the forelegs; for Giuseppe… the ribs.
If the aroma had prepared the diners for a delicious bite, the taste exceeded all their expectations: new, rich, and sweet in a way that delighted the hosts, everybody ate up their portions in no time. Nonno Francesco observed with satisfaction: “How good! It reminds me so much of something my granny used to make! She used to put sultanas in it! Is there any more?” he asked, holding out his empty plate. Naturally Farah felt proud of that, and served another helping.
Giuseppe didn’t seem quite as convinced: those flavours, so starkly different from whatever he had tried before, felt too strong for him. Only toward the end of the dish did he begin finding their “balance”, and he finished mopping up his plate with a piece of pane cafoned.
Farah ventured a “There’s more, if you want!”, to which he replied “I just want to savor the sauce: it’s so sweet, but I’m stuffed and couldn’t manage another bite!” though he didn’t quite convince her.
Maria had travelled, exotic flavours were not a novelty to her and she sincerely appreciated the dish; for Rosa the experience was entirely new, but her open, spontaneous character gave rise to the most wondrous set of questions Farah could expect, and she had expected quite a few!
Among them all, Omar was the only one who could truly attest to the dish’s quality, and Omar was a severe judge. As he held his drumstick by its ends with his hands slick with oil, fat and honey, with his teeth sunk deep in the succulent meat, he declared with an expert, fully satisfied expression: “Mom, it’s shooo good! Mmm, again tomorrow!” and went back to his nibbling.
The scene triggered a general outburst of laughter and nonno Francesco observed: “It’s cheaper to buy ya a new suit than to give ya a square meal!”
They were about to move on to dessert, when Giuseppe’s mobile produced the unmistakable wail of a siren.
“Son, what now?” his grandpa asked, resigned.
“Well, nonno, you know how it is: it’s the job!” Giuseppe stood, looking crestfallen, and went to answer his mobile. Rosa and Maria shared his expression. Farah felt a bit lost: what would happen, now? She knew that Giuseppe’s job could break into his life at any moment, but today it meant that the party was over, as untimely as midnight at Cinderella’s ball.
Giuseppe returned to the table, flustered: “Nonno, gotta go. There’s been a nasty accident on the national road and we have to rush. You know: these days people get drunk and get behind the wheel… But…” he turned to Farah, “Stay here! I’m back before dark. What are you going to do back home? The sun is out, Omar can get some fresh air, and you too! Nonno, can they stay until I’m back?”
The elderly man caught in those words a care well beyond a fleeting acquaintance or a friendship, and consented gladly. “For me, I’m just happy! Omar, I’m headed out to the fields. Are ya comin’ along with me?”
The young boy turned hopefully toward his mother, and that look made her mind up. “Fine, you can go with nonno Francesco! But behave, and help him in the fields! I’ll stay here for a while and help Rosa and Maria with the tidying up”.
“I’m sorry”, Giuseppe said hastily, “I’ll be back as soon as possible, but now I gotta go”.
“Go, go!” Nonno Francesco dismissed him. «No worries: they’re fine, here! And don’t speed: let’s not have ye kill yerself trying to help others!”
Despite the good advice and all the reassurances he could give about driving carefully, Giuseppe had to rush. He grabbed his jacket, crossed the courtyard out of the masseria to his car, started the engine, and sped down the dirt path, raising a cloud of dust.
As the car had vanished, the grandfather observed: “Oh, that lad… He is such a good man! Let’s go, miss. Let’s go and finish up!”
The pastierae Rosa had made sat proudly in the middle of the table, its crust golden from the oven, and its smell of orange blossom spreading through the air. The grandfather introduced the cake as something exquisite: “My granddaughter is always a whirlwind, but she’s a master of cakes! D’ya know about pastiera?”
Farah had already tasted that shortcrust pastry filled with custard, ricotta and wheat, heavily scented with orange blossom and cinnamon. She always found it so peculiar that here, in a Western country, certain customs had survived so similar to the ones of her motherland.
Truth be said, all the pastiere she had tasted before were from pastry shops and, as good as they might have been, they all had seemed somewhat bland to her, as if they had something amiss, but from the moment Rosa had placed the baking dish in the center of the table, the girl had watched the cake with curiosity.
Its surface was not as dry as she had seen on other occasions, but lightly moist, a hallmark of the Middle Eastern sweets.
Rosa sliced the first portion and offered it to her grandpa, who pondered it with an expert glance. “Did ya make it the way I like it, Rose’?”
“Yessir, nonno! I made it just the way ya like it! I know ya like it thick and plenty, and that the grains of wheat shouldn’t be felt in your mouth!”
Actually, that little theatre of rehearsed phrases, hints and scripted answers, was artfully staged to wait for everyone to receive their slice: respect toward the elderly man dictated that the first portion be his, yet his own moderation made him return the received consideration as he, in turn, waited for the other diners to be served as well.
“Now let’s see what Omar thinks!” nonno Francesco said.
The boy didn’t need to be told twice and bit into his slice, already won over by the scents; the second morsel was even bigger than the first, an unmistakable sign of his verdict. “Goood! I like it!” he exclaimed with a full-mouthed grin.
The filling of the pastiera was also moister than any Farah had ever tasted before, and this time the explosion of flavours was complete. An instinctive smile spread across her lips and lit up her eyes, making her look so beautiful that Maria was struck by it. It was the smile of one who finally feels at ease, a sensation hard to define otherwise, and which at times a dish, perhaps through its power to recall emotions from childhood, can trigger.
“Rosa! She says she didn’t like it!” the grandpa jested. Rosa didn’t catch on immediately and at first her eyes widened in dismay, but when she saw the pure bliss in everyone’s eyes, she felt delighted.
With Giuseppe gone, the dessert became an opportunity to start inquiring about how Farah and the man had met, and to tell about him. The grandpa, as he thought that women of the same age had rather preferred chatting by themselves, took his leave: “Gotta go to the fields. Omar, will ya lend a hand?”
The elderly man had given her such a strong impression of familiarity that he reminded her of her own grandfather, he too a man of the land, for as much as the countryside might differ between the Western world and her own. Farah felt no fear and nodded to her boy, who had turned to seek her permission.
“Oh, good lad! Come, let’s go and see how these plants are growin’!” he said, giving the boy a light pat on the shoulder. His mother followed the gesture and for a moment apprehension seized her, then she calmed down again: they were among good people, Giuseppe’s relatives; no one would do them any harm, there.
At the doorway, nonno Francesco remembered to make one last request of Farah: “Ah, miss, please, would ye also come, a bit later? I’d like to show ya one thing”.
“Yes, certainly!”, the girl replied. “Where shall I find you?”
“In the fields! Listen for the dog, we’re bringing him along”.
Perhaps Rosa and Maria would have liked to talk with Farah a bit longer. In the time they managed to let her tell them the episode of Omar’s fever -a courtesy the two cousins returned sharing tales of a Giuseppe who had been enthusiastic but worried about the world’s woes since childhood- Farah had managed to wash the dishes and sweep the kitchen, talking as she worked, quiet, composed, even elegant. When the kitchen was completely tidied, Rosa felt guilty for having spent the whole time chatting and for having left, along with Maria, the chore to their guest. Farah, however, looked at them with a disarmingly simple smile and said: “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go look for Omar”.
The two cousins looked at each other embarrassed, and Maria replied: “Sure, you’re right, go ahead! We’ll take care of the rest!” She immediately felt shame for the words used, a sentence as grating as nails on a blackboard: We’ll take care? She thought. She’s already done it all!
Farah stepped into the courtyard and the sun welcomed her in a warm embrace. She closed her eyes and heard Buck barking from afar. She headed in that direction.
“Mamma mia, how beautiful she is!” Rosa observed in a hush behind Maria’s back. “Maybe it’s finally time for Peppe to get hitched! Have you seen what a nice face with no stitch of makeup, and those full lips? And those eyes: Peppe never told us she was this beautiful!”
Maria, the elder of the two, had always shielded herself behind Giuseppe’s bachelorhood thinking that, as long as he remained unmarried, she could still consider herself a young girl, and now Farah had come to tear that illusion to pieces. If Farah had been any other girl, someone in whom she could have found some fault, she would have told herself that sooner or later Giuseppe would have noticed it too, and she could have gone on with her life as an overgrown teenager. But Farah’s only flaw had been her past misfortune, such were her noticeable qualities: intelligent, elegant, hard-working, beautiful, kindhearted…
“Hey, Rose’”, she finally replied to her cousin, “you also want to marry her, now?” But her mocking tone immediately turned to a deeper one. “Maybe it’s finally time we straighten ourselves out and get ourselves hitched too, huh?” she remarked.
Farah walked the orchard’s rows slowly, with no haste: it was such a pleasant afternoon, and she had so little chance to walk in nature! As she drew closer to the barking, she began hearing Omar’s amused voice: it seemed the boy had finally made friends with Buck. There was no hurry at all.
She reached nonno Francesco who, standing on an old wooden ladder leaning against a tree, was carving the bark of the plant with a small curved knife. He peeled off a sliver, brought it to his eyes to inspect it, tossed it to the ground and began descending the ladder.
“Omar!” the woman said to the boy, “Aren’t you holding the ladder steady for nonno Francesco?”
The elderly man turned and saw her. He smiled. “Eh, that one, the lad, he’s got a new friend now! And so does Buck! For sure they aren’t thinking about an old man! Innit right?” he asked the boy and the dog, teasingly.
He descended the ladder slowly and carefully, then turned toward the woman, planting his fists on his hips to stretch his back, and exclaimed: “Farah! What a lovely name you’ve got! Reminds me of the Queen of Persia!”
“Thank you, but in my country it is quite common, like Rosa or Maria are here. They are also lovely names! But what did you want to show me?”, she reminded him.
“Yeah, ye’re right! Miss, ye’ll have to excuse me — I can’t speak proper Italian, haven’t got much schooling. But ya understand Neapolitan, don’t ya?”
“I like Neapolitan though I can’t speak it, sorry. But I do understand you, go on, tell me!” Farah replied with a dazzling smile. In her country, too, dialects varied widely from standard Arabic; her own grandfather would have been just as embarrassed to admit that he could only express himself in his peculiar Levantine dialect.
“Thank you! Peppino told me ya studied plants, is that right?” the old man asked, as he slowly crossed the tree-lined rows.
They were all so neatly kept! Farah recognised persimmons, the peach trees Omar loved, not yet in bloom, cherries, the taller apple trees, pears, and then lemons, mandarins, and taller again the orange trees. At that point nonno Francesco began walking down the length of the row.
“Yes”, Farah answered the question, “I studied a bit of botany: my country is arid, everyone must help with agriculture, all the more so those whose studies are related to that field”.
“What lovely things ye say!” the elderly man complimented her, almost moved. “Ye come from the desert and know the plants. We have this nice land, so rich, and our children leave this place…” He shook his head, dejected. “Then they call me and say: Nonno, you don’t know how much the fruit costs by the kilo, here! They say they’re making money… Well!” He cut himself short, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head, partly showing his disagreement, partly as if exhausted from hearing what he clearly deemed nonsense.
They had reached the head of the row, with Omar and Buck accompanying them, noisily chasing each other around them. There stood a tree, tall, mighty, filled with buds. At the base of its crown there had been once a branch, now cleanly severed. The elderly man stopped and looked sternly at the plant.
“Here it is!” he announced. “This one’s my heartbreak! Ain’t it a beauty?”
It was indeed beautiful, straight, a lord among trees!
“Won’t even give me a single orange, that little sod!” The old man looked at the plant as angry as if he was watching an incorrigible son, fit only for prison.
“Only once, from this scrawny, dried-up little sprig ya wouldn’t give a ha’penny for, out came an orange as big as a bairn’s bonce!” He juxtaposed the thumbs and index fingers of his large hands, tracing a circle about half a foot in diameter. “And after that, not a single one more!” Stiffly bending his knees, he picked up a branch from the ground and turned its end in his right hand as if gauging its weight, as if searching for the most comfortable angle to wield it and, with it, whip the disrespectful plant. He threw the branch to ground again, knowing the action was futile.
Farah asked the obvious: “What have you tried doing to it?”
“Anything! Everything…» nonno Francesco replied brooding. “But then I did just what old Don Nicola, my neighbour, told me”. He nodded toward the boundary of his land beyond which lay another farm. “Come on, I’ve gotta show ya another tree…” and he turned back toward the previous row.
There stood another citrus tree of an odd appearance: its trunk was pale but, above it, its canopy abruptly changed to a darker bark. Its branches were bare, yet rich with buds beyond belief, as if tiny snails had swarmed over them.
“This is what old Don Nicola told me: Master Ci’, that poor tree’s flagging now: the trunk can’t take it anymore. Mark my word: lop off the branch that bore fruit and graft it onto another plant: onto a mandarin tree!”
“I could scarcely believe it: Don Nico’, are you quite alright? I said him. That plant there gave me one single orange from that very branch, and I’m to hack it off?
“And he to me: Master Ci’, now you surprise me! What, after so many years tilling the land, you’ve never tried a graft?
“I looked at him, sheepish: what a fool I felt! Me, raised in the middle of these fields, why, hadn’t I ever heard ‘bout grafts? But if I do that, I told him, I’m wasting the best branch of the tree! What if that doesn’t work?
“If that doesn’t work, he replied, it means it was not meant to be. How many plants do this? But if you keep it like this, it’s sure it won’t bear you no fruit no more. Now, what is it you want? Do you want this plant to bear ya leaves or fruit?
“And I to him: That it bears me fruit, what are we even talking ‘bout?
“Then make the graft, give it a chance!
“I thought on it a bit, and so I did as Don Nicola bade me: took a knife, grafted the branch onto the mandarin tree. And this here…” he pointed to the plant in front of them with his arm outstretched “is the upshot”.
He seemed proud of it, and rightly so: if only a little part of all the buds populating the plant were to bear fruit, the harvest would be nothing short of exceptional!
“That’s an incredible result!” Farah said. “But why did you want to show it to me? Everything seems to have turned out for the best, doesn’t it?”
“Miss, see…” the elderly man turned toward her with an uneasiness in his voice that sounded like a form of modesty. “Folks are like trees, no real difference! We bud, we grow, we break, we bear children… Sometimes we are born somewhere and die somewhere else. Sometimes we can bear a child as beautiful as that orange of mine, and then no more, and maybe all it takes is a graft: a change of home, family, friends, and start bearing fruit again. If the plant is good, if it accepts the graft, you understand! So? What d’ya reckon, d’ya like this plant of ours? Because truth is, ye’ve already taken root in our hearts!”
Farah understood perfectly all nonno Francesco’s talk, she was deeply moved by it. “But… what about the differences?”
“Yeah, the differences…” the elderly man observed, not offended, though saddened. “That almost reminds me of those two gossips of my granddaughters… What, Giuseppe, now you have an Arab girlfriend? They are different folk! They told’im. And now they’ve met ye, they’ve fallen in love with ye! What d’ya believe, that I didn’t see that?”
He smiled, well knowing he had revealed a risky confidence, though for a good cause: now that everything had turned out for the best, prejudice was merely a brilliantly overcome obstacle: further proof of the robustness of his arguments.
“Ye don’t look convinced…” He slowly shook his head. He had watched the doubt veiling the face of the fine woman while her eyes followed little Omar at play. Her reaction was understandable: the child was her primary concern, and whatever decision she might make, would affect him too.
Nonno Francesco understood perfectly the turmoil stirring inside her and decided to unlock another old chest of his, one of those secret drawers that elderly people always carry within themselves: experience chests crammed with well-worn garments, put away in the attic waiting for them to become fashionable again so they can be brought out once more. “Ya wanna know what I told’em when I heard’em say that?» His voice dropped lower, to the tone of a secret.
“I told’em: What? Then yer cousins, yer brothers too, who went North, should feel ashamed? Ya ashamed of me too, then? That’s what I told’em.
“And they: Nonno, why’d ya say this, now? Our brothers were good at nothin’, that’s true, yet they got busy and now they are rolling in it! But what about ya? Why should we be ashamed of ye?
“And I: ‘Rolling in it…’ If they were rollin’ in it, they wouldn’t be always whining about how much this or that costs. They don’t want us to know, so that we don’t worry, but stay assured they aren’t as fine as they say. Yet they work, have good families and are good God-fearing folk — no offence meant, miss — that’s all that matters!
“Nonno, they replied, then we’re saying the same! But what d’ya have to do with any of this?
“Then I reminded them of a matter they had never paid any mind to. Aye, what do I have to do with this… Because, I told’em, have ye forgotten that my father too was a Moor who came here during the war? I can never forget that! You don’t know, poor mother of mine, how much she had to suffer, just because she had fallen in love with that good man!”
Farah was stunned at the revelation. “Nonno Ciccio” indeed! That man could just as easily be called “nonno Khalid”, just like her own in Jordan!
“So, miss, what d’ya tell me? D’ya still see these differences? A woman as learned as ye’re tells me ‘bout differences? My orange tree now always bears me so much fruit that it looks like it was born just for that!”
Farah pondered silently those words. No, the old man wasn’t urging her to bear as many children into the world as she had once feared it was her own family’s dream. Rather, he was reminding her that, out of fear of prejudice, of what bad things might have befallen her, she was casting aside the chance to live her own life, to explore the opportunities that her own nature still had to offer her.
“Yet”, the elderly man added, after a while, “I get that some things have to be done as one feels them right. But this is easy: d’ya love my grandson?”
“Truth is”, Farah replied blushing, “yes, Giuseppe is an excellent man, and yes, I ‘care for him’ deeply. But I’m still coming to terms with my previous marriage, to open my heart to another man”.
“Why, did this orange tree branch change its colour? Has it started bearing mandarins? Ye never forget some things, they are part of what we are, no one can take’em away from us. But we mustn’t allow them to prevent us from living our own life! Ye’re young, don’t ya wanna make a life of your own?”
They both turned toward the plant: whatever came from it would be unique, different: if orange, never entirely an orange.
“Yes, I would”, Farah replied. “But Giuseppe ought to make his move too, don’t you think?”
“Eh, ye’re right there!” the grandpa agreed, almost laughing. “That grandson o’ mine — always so careful, so responsible… Who knows what goes through that head of his…”
Just then Omar skipped in front of nonno Francesco, dodging Buck who was playing with him. The big Maremmano bumped right into the elderly man catching him off guard.
“Oh, ya big rascal!” the man said jokingly, barely keeping his feet. “Buck! What’s all this?”
The dog froze, sat down and flattened his ears begging for forgiveness. Omar stiffened too, fearing he had maddened the elderly man with the dog. After all, the animal had just been playing with him.
“Off ya trot, run along, ’tis a grand day!” nonno Ciccio spurred them, and the boy darted through the rows chased by the white shepherd.
From the driveway beneath the plane trees came the sound of tires crunching on the gravel; perhaps Giuseppe was back.
A shout came shortly after in Italian: “I’m here!”
“He’d usually belt out Sto’ ccà! It’s ye he’s addressing, now”, nonno Francesco observed in a hush, almost laughing to himself. They slowly walked the long row of trees toward the homestead, the elderly man leaning on Farah’s arm.
“Hey Pe’, so? Is the ‘mergency over yet?” he called from afar to his grandson, who was running to meet them. Whenever these incidents happened, Giuseppe usually stayed far longer than strictly necessary.
“Nonno, all’s well! We did what had to be done and I came back!” as if it was his habit to do so.
Farah caught in the corner of her eye the grandfather smiling like someone who knows better and yet isn’t about to speak. “Oh, okay, so much the better! I thought ya had left something behind…” the elderly man said, not letting his thoughts show.
“No, I hadn’t left…” his answer trailed off: Farah, in the glow of the evening sun, was radiant.
- aFamiliar for Francesco.
- bThe starting line of “Torna a Surriento”.
- cFamiliar for Giuseppe, its diminutive is Peppino. In Neapolitan, it is also abbreviated in Pe’.
- dRustic Neapolitan sourdough bread.
- eThe queen of Neapolitan traditional pastry for Easter.
This tale is the English version of Innesti published first on BraviAutori. It is also published on Medium.
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