Bella Figura

by Kamin Mohammadi

  “He is asking me if I think he’s handsome.” Kicca couldn’t stop laughing now. “Darling, these two are the most dramatic plumbers I have ever met. They make me miss my country!”

  Guido snapped curtly at Gabriele and he stopped posing and got busy draining the lettuce leaves and drying them in a tea towel, the ends of which he held together and swung around to absorb the water. Throwing the leaves into the bowl I gave him, he dressed the salad with oil, the juice of half a lemon, and plenty of salt. He indicated for me to taste—it was delicious, the salad leaves crisp and fresh, the dressing just sour enough. I thanked him and he blushed, placing the salad on the kitchen table. He joined Guido in draining the pasta, the two of them throwing the twists of fusilli into the pan of simmering tomato sauce, Guido stirring it all with a wooden spoon to make sure each piece of pasta was coated with tomato, while Gabriele tore leaves of basil into the mixture.

  I fetched a plate and set a place. The men handed me the steaming bowl of pasta, the smell filling my kitchen. They pointed for me to sit down, while I kept repeating “Grazie. Grazie mille!” unable to quite believe what had just happened.

  Guido and Gabriele bowed deeply, Guido taking my hand and kissing it. “Now eat immediately, it’s no good cold! We will see ourselves out.”

  And with that, the Dramatic Idraulici left me with a home-cooked meal on the table, my radiators fired back to life, and the best laugh Kicca and I had had together in ages.

  I decided to try the simple pasta sauce for myself a few nights later. And I managed it okay, by and large, at least after I had put out the fire that flared out of the oil I left on the stove for too long. Throwing in the tomatoes, the flames that exploded from the pan nearly took off my eyebrows. I turned off the heat and flapped at the pan with a tea towel. The fire soon died and, once I had opened all the windows to clear the smoke and wiped up the splattered oil, I managed the rest of the recipe with no further incident, not even overcooking the pasta, which Guido had insisted had to be al dente—with a bite. I may have had to pencil in part of my singed left eyebrow for a week, but I was proud nonetheless of my first home-cooked Italian dish.

  * * *

  —

  I was standing by Antonio’s stall, a still point in a crush of moving bodies at Sant’Ambrogio market, being tutored in the many varieties of tomato. I was now addicted to my bruschetta and pasta con pomodoro, and I had come to Antonio seeking some knowledge on my new love. He took me on a journey of discovery: oblong San Marzanos, the teardrop Roma, small scarlet Pachinoes strung like rubies on the vine, scarlet Datterini miniature plum tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes like tiny glowing lightbulbs. And then there were the ones as large as my hand: round, shiny, and fleshy beef tomatoes and the ribbed tomatoes called Cuore di Bue (beefsteak), which had first stolen my heart, sometimes shot through with flashes of green. There was even a blue one, which Antonio presented to me with as much pride as if he had grown it himself.

  I came here every day, taking home just enough for two days so I could eat as fresh as possible, as Antonio had advised. It was good for me; not just the fresh produce but the walk, the movement, the planning of what I could eat—it helped break up my days and kept the dreaded depression at bay. First of all Antonio had taught me the word “nostrale,” meaning the produce was local—“ours”—not flown in from the other side of the world. “Eh,” said Antonio, miming an airborne plane, his scarf flapping as he flew around his stall, his arms outstretched, “I’m dead after fourteen hours on a plane, imagine how the fruit feels!” He snored dramatically. We had developed our own language, a mix of English, Italian, and gestures that I instinctively understood. “Eh, no!” He wagged his index finger sternly. “No, food should come from here, qui! It is what the land gives you, la terra!” He dug with an imaginary shovel. “The land decides, the season decides, not the aeroplane!” His fingers became snowflakes and he shivered wildly in invisible snow. I laughed, and he laughed too—but I took his point. His wares were grown in local allotments and market gardens on the outskirts of Florence. What Tuscany could not provide was driven up overnight from the south.

  Mornings at the market had converted me to the sensual pleasure in the feel, look, and smell of a leaf of lettuce so newly out of the ground that it was still speckled with earth, or the beauty of a particularly fat, well-formed fennel, excitement at the arrival of the season’s radishes, a blush of magenta on white. It was an excitement that transported me to my grandmother’s kitchen in Iran; I could see her now walking in with an armful of radishes, us crunching our way through them with every meal. Antonio quickly laughed me out of my desire for things I couldn’t find, such as avocados, telling me I could probably get one in the larger supermarkets, imported from South America. “But they are sad.” He pulled a long face. “They suffer, they jetlag!” I was disappointed, but mostly because it had taken me so long to figure out how to mime “avocado” in a way that Antonio would understand.

  Not since leaving Iran had fruit and vegetables tasted so good. The Florentines were right: English produce had been a poor substitute. As a child, I had been accustomed to the cornucopia that was typical in Iran. Every home displayed a bowl with so much fruit piled in it that I used to wonder if invisible wires were keeping them in place. Tiny sweet golden grapes, white juicy peaches, small cucumbers we ate cut in half and sprinkled with salt. The taste memories had never left me—nor had the shock of arriving in the drab England of 1979, where we stood in the supermarket behind lines of people buying one orange, one apple, and one banana each. Fruit in England seemed to mean just those three things. At my boarding school, I had experienced canned fruit for the first time—things I had been used to eating fresh were now pitiful, in syrup so sweet it made my teeth hurt. Although the ensuing two decades had changed the food culture in Britain for the better, I still had not tasted a tomato in London that bore any resemblance to those we had consumed in Iran, biting into them like apples. Now those taste memories had come flooding back and I couldn’t get enough.

  Luckily it was all very affordable, as the prices in my notebook showed me. I whiled away whole mornings just enjoying the market: strings of red chilies and bulbs of garlic hanging like charms, bunches of herbs as pretty as a bouquet of flowers, the sound of the banter, the colors of the day. On the walk over the river I got to know the streets, the state of the cobbles, the potholes to avoid, inhaling deeply the smells of the city in winter—the faint hint of mossy damp in the narrow streets, a whiff of cologne left in a deserted alley by an Italian man. It rained frequently and I danced my umbrella around other pedestrians on narrow pavements. I ceded them to old Florentine ladies in their furs who would not give way even an inch. It was easier to step off into the street and risk being run down by a bus than try to budge them. They owned their city completely, as immovable as the massive stone walls of the Renaissance palazzi in the center, with their huge blocks of pietra forte, solid and obdurate.

  * * *

  —

  One lunchtime Kicca peered at my groceries across the continent and listened to me rave not just about tomatoes but blood-red oranges too—so dark they were practically purple. She asked me if I had any fennel, and when I said yes—the exquisite delicacy of fennel being another new discovery—she told me how to make a ruby orange and fennel salad, a seasonal dish that she herself loved.

  I followed her instructions, the oranges staining my fingers red. With two thick slices of Tuscan bread on the side, Kicca also eating her lunch on the screen, I savored the mix of sweet orange and crunchy anise flavors, feeling very pleased with life indeed.

  * * *

  —

  Something curious was happening. My jeans were loose. Used as I was to the monthly vagaries of my waistline—bloating with certain foods, swelling with the monthly cycle—I took no notice at first. But it persisted until there was no ignoring it.

  I had spent most of my life on a diet. But here in Florence, I had given myself permission to stop counting calo
ries. In fact, I had been committing the ultimate sin: living on carbs, sleeping with (or rather devouring) the enemy. Dr. Atkins would be spinning in his carb-free grave.

  For the first time in years, I was reveling in food. And much as I awaited my punishment, all this joyous indulgence was having the opposite effect. It was all the walking, I decided: each evening I climbed the steep steps up behind San Niccolò to watch the sun set over the city, and as I went up and down the four flights of stairs to the apartment several times a day, I no longer puffed or had to stop to rest halfway up. I was exercising more than when I used to force myself to go to the gym, feeling out of place as all around me muscle-bound types in tight Lycra gazed at their own reflections doing biceps curls, worshipping intently at the temple to the body beautiful.

  But what if it wasn’t just the walking and the stairs? I looked around my kitchen and it struck me with the clearness of San Niccolò’s church bells—everything I was eating was fresh and natural.

  In London, I had existed on prepackaged “health” foods, full of ingredients so adulterated they bore no relation to their original state, filled with preservatives and additives, packed in enough cellophane and plastic and cardboard to build a shanty town. I had had no time or energy to cook for myself.

  Now I carried a large straw bag I’d found in the cupboard to the market every morning and Antonio filled it with fruit and vegetables, no plastic bags or useless packaging needed. I snacked on fruit and vegetables (and daily celery) instead of power bars or sugar-free gluten-free cookies for no other reason than pure taste sensation. And pleasure. The concept that was so alien when Isidoro had talked of it in my first week in Florence had become my main motivation.

  From the earliest age I had learned to think of myself as fat. I had been a chubby child, and my mother, who I have never known not to be dieting, preferred to feed me instead of herself. It was her way of showing love, and I, wanting to please her, had eaten it all up. I remember her denying herself the delicious fare that she heaped onto our plates: she was the hostess and her slim figure was important. She had always been keen on exercise, and in the 1980s she had followed the Jane Fonda aerobics craze. I made my friends laugh by ridiculing Fonda’s calls to “go for the burn!” but I pinched what I thought was fat around my waist and did Jane Fonda’s workouts in secret. Although we did enough sports at school to keep us in good shape, as we journeyed through our teens, we all competed for who could hate their body more. The only thing we didn’t learn was how to be satisfied with ourselves, to see the dazzling beauty of our young skin and firm, high breasts. Looking back at photos of myself at the age of seventeen, I see a perky young woman with luscious curves and great legs. But at the time all I could see was a body that did not resemble in any way that of Christie Brinkley or Cindy Crawford.

  When I had binged on beer in my first year at university and, happily in love with my first serious boyfriend, also gorged on takeout, I really did start to get fat. Following my mother’s lead, I went on a diet. I discovered iron self-discipline—I had been trained by the best, after all—and started to see the pounds fall away. After two weeks I was so delighted that I stayed on the diet for three months and added a gym routine to the mix. When my hip bones were jutting and my eyes were twice their size in my sculpted face, my mother finally regarded me with approval and took me out shopping to buy a whole new wardrobe of skin-tight clothes.

  By the time I had landed my editorship in my early thirties, I was a happy size eight who probably drank and smoked more than I ate, but I was so proud of my slim figure I didn’t care what it took to maintain it. Once the weight started piling on, I pursued all the diet fads going—the Hay Diet, the Dukan Diet, the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, the blood type diet, the maple syrup diet, even the baby food diet. When none of those worked—I had regular dizzy spells at my desk like some nineteenth-century heroine from Russian literature—I turned to nutritionists and alternative health, trying out allergy tests, this time eliminating “bad” foods. I gave up sugar, wheat, gluten, and yeast. I gave up whatever that month’s nutritionist or diet book told me to give up. When I had so restricted my diet that even bananas were out of the question, I took to my bed for a whole weekend until Kicca let herself in with her key and cooked me up a plate of gluten-free corn pasta, which, despite her best efforts, tasted like glue. It was Kicca’s love and concern that really fed me that dark weekend and coaxed me up and out to face another week.

  In stark contrast, I was now surrounded by abundance. A small notice in the bakery said lievitazione naturale, which, Kicca explained, meant that they didn’t use yeast but a natural raising agent, a centuries-old Tuscan breadmaking practice—a traditional sourdough. In London, bread had been my enemy. The indigestible “health” loaves—wheat-free, taste-free—I had chosen, the shelves of bread I had seen in American supermarkets on business trips, every single one of which contained added sugar, the white sliced loaves that turned into paste in my mouth. In London, artisan breads and traditional methods had to be marketed and turned into a movement headed by a celebrity chef. Here, it was just part of the fabric of daily life. This Tuscan bread, made as it was from clean traditional ingredients, did not paralyze my gut with spasms or bloat me so much I looked five months pregnant. It simply nourished me.

  In Florence, bread returned to its essential life-giving self.

  * * *

  —

  On one of those misty days when Florence wrapped clouds tight around herself like a stole, I was coming home from the market when I saw Old Roberto on the street corner. I took a deep breath and crossed over. The mist was icy, and the damp felt like it was seeping into my bones.

  “You look tired today,” he said, his rheumy eyes raking my face.

  Usually when people tell you that, what they mean is “You look terrible” or “You look old.” Whichever way you read it, “You look tired” is never a compliment.

  “Huh, well, I slept ten hours last night…”

  “Ah,” he said, “that’s the problem. Too much sleep. It’s not good for you. Too much alone in bed.”

  I blinked at him, dumbfounded. It seemed unthinkable that he could be making some kind of advance—surely he was over a hundred? Perhaps he was showing grandfatherly concern. Misplaced but well-meaning.

  I excused myself, beating a very English retreat up to the nest.

  Was it possible that Old Roberto believed me somehow nearer his age than I was? As was becoming usual when I had a dilemma for which I needed the advice of a good girlfriend, I rushed down to Luigo’s.

  “You don’t look a day over thirty-seven, bella mia…” Luigo grinned at me, winking. For the second time that day, I blinked at an Italian man in dismay.

  “Bella,” he pronounced, “at a certain age, a woman has to choose between her arse and her face. Okay.” I gasped at this pithy truth. “Don’t be too impressed, I know it sounds like one of Luigo’s gems, but Catherine Deneuve beat me to it.”

  “Define ‘a certain age’?” I asked defiantly. Luigo ignored me, dipping a little bread into a saucer of olive oil, soaking it thoroughly and popping it into my mouth.

  “Now, take your medicine like a good girl. At least four times a day. Olive oil is the secret of youthful skin. You should see my mother…”

  “But Luigo, I can’t go around drinking oil! I just lost a bit of weight…” I protested.

  “Oh, shut up with your calorie-counting Anglo-Saxon cazzate.” Luigo was stern. “Now, go and look it up on your beloved Internet—you are the journalist. I have customers to attend to.” And with that I was dismissed.

  I did go and look it up. And I found out that extra-virgin olive oil is full of antioxidants such as vitamin E (hence the great skin Luigo had mentioned), carotenoids (the colorful plant pigment that the body turns into vitamin A), and oleuropein—the enemy of free radicals. I already knew that antioxidants were the holy grail of health foods, able to capture and destroy those pesky free radicals who, I’d alw
ays imagined, raced around one’s body like a malign Che Guevara, blowing up collagen bridges and causing general aging chaos. I just didn’t know olive oil contained so many of them. It was also packed to the rafters with monounsaturated fat—the most sought-after of “good fats”—which lowers cholesterol and controls insulin, avoiding the sugar highs and lows caused by spikes in the hormone. I also unearthed research that suggested that consuming more than four tablespoons a day of extra-virgin olive oil could lower the risk of having a heart attack, of suffering from a stroke, or of dying of heart disease, as well as protect against a bunch of different cancers and delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.

  My research introduced me to the Mediterranean diet with its cornucopia of fresh vegetables, oodles of olive oil, and even regular shots of coffee, and all the statistics that backed up its health-giving benefits. Tomatoes, I learned, increased their lycopene (a cancer-fighting antioxidant) when cooked, and especially when combined with the good fats contained in olive oil. So even a can of tomatoes combined with pasta—as I did in making Guido’s pasta dish—was filling me with good health. Coffee, I discovered, contains more than twice the amount of heart-friendly polyphenols than virtuous green tea. Good skin and less chance of getting sick? It was a no-brainer. I was converted.

  I asked Antonio’s advice the next morning at the market. Good olive oil, it turned out, was his favorite subject—after the goodness of tomatoes and the importance of fresh seasonal food. “La qualità non ha un prezzo!” he said decisively.

  I made a sad face, pulling out the insides of my coat pockets.

  “Pah!” Antonio wagged his finger. “No problem. Devi semplicemente comprare meno!”