Across the way lives Alfredo. He’s often outside, wearing a work hat made of folded newspaper, and making repairs to the building. Each time we pass through the courtyard, he waves excitedly, and makes pleasant small talk with us. Even though we can barely follow what he’s saying in Italian, it's not a deterrent for him.
Alfredo, his wife, and their only-child Franca invite our entire household, seven Iranians and American me, into their home. Also present are our Scottish neighbor, C, plus Franca's Saudi boyfriend and his Arab buddy. Alfredo is eager for all of us - Middle Easterners, Europeans, and North American - to sample his homemade champagne, and to toast to Franca’s eighteenth birthday.
Each time Alfredo sees one of our glasses even halfway empty, he jumps up, smiles broadly, and fills it to the brim. If we finish a cookie, his wife heaps two more onto our plates. And when the champagne is gone, it's not a problem. Alfredo opens a bottle of grappa (distilled brandy), and begins to pour.
We squish into a wooden rowboat that's loaded with other tourists from every corner of the globe. We bob up and down on the turquoise water—the most intense, shimmering blue-green that I’ve ever seen—waiting for our turn to enter Capri's Blue Grotto.
Our oarsman, a white-haired Italian with deep lines in his forehead, asks where we are from. When we say Iran and America, he is taken aback. “But you’re supposed to be enemies! How is this possible?”
Our governments hate each other, it's true, we explain. But that doesn’t mean that we the people hate each other. He nods his understanding. La guerra (war), he says, shaking his head with a knowing sorrow of World War II in Italy, is awful.
He directs us to lie flat in the rowboat, so we can clear the low opening into the sea cave. Just before our passage, he expresses his hope for pace (peace) between our two countries. World War III, he says, is too dreadful to contemplate.
