What a relief it is to meet our new neighbor, C. She grew up in Scotland, is thirty years old, and teaches fourth grade at the nearby American Overseas School of Rome. These days, she's reading Rudyard Kipling to her students, and doing her best to skip over the racist bits.
I take refuge in C's spacious apartment, where she lives all alone. I sink into her sofa, and happily speak my native tongue. Unlike C, who is proficient in five languages, I am a humble monolingual. Despite seven years of French classes, my French is poor. My Italian is barely there, and my Farsi is only developing.
With C, I soak up the intellectual stimulation of real conversation, much like the repartee that I enjoyed in college. When she asks if I'd like "real espresso, or that watery stuff that you Americans drink," I of course choose espresso.
C is average looking, with pale skin and freckles, and yet she fancies herself to be sexy and outrageous. Told with her fun sauciness, I hear all about C's many failed love affairs, and about the Italian movie directors with whom she hobnobs. Too bad I don’t know enough about the Italian cinema to be impressed, though. Franco Zeffirelli is the only name that I recognize.
We have two weddings to attend this summer. Even though I have no extra money for shopping, I get into the spirit, and buy a simple cotton red skirt and black blouse.
F explains to me that for an Iranian wedding, you need two outfits—one a bit conservative for the afternoon ceremony, and then something flashier for the evening party. K says that this a bourgeois custom, and that one outfit is fine. Though they both sound convincing, I’m pretty sure that F speaks the truth.
My simple outfit is a bit too simple, I realize, and it will probably elicit some pity when I wear the same thing to parts A and B of the two weddings. But it will have to do.
The Persian women know so much about fashion. The Italians all around us are extremely stylish too. With just a few accessories, young Italian women—ravishing, tan, and perfectly groomed—manage to make a humble T-shirt look glamorous.
My hippie-inspired, west-coast wardrobe clearly doesn’t work here. If I’m going to fit in, I'm going to need a lot of fashion consultation. So when Khanum G asks if she can pluck and shape my untouched eyebrows, I welcome her attempt to beautify me.
