War and Peace

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.