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Ravioli Revelation

La Camelia Ristoranteof Carrara is owned by two sisters who prepare local delicacies from their garden tola tavola. They make their own wine, hand roll their pasta, and serve cheese made from the milk of their own goat. Their restaurant has the scents of flour and vanilla, like Grandma Cap’s kitchen, where we hung strands of fresh pasta on wooden laundry racks. The sister-chefs have prepared a feast of delicate tortellini in a light cream sauce. They stuffed pumpkin blossoms with a filling of sweet pepper and duck.

Professoressa Adeel pours me a glass of wine and one for herself. She examines the bottle. “Oh my, this wine is twenty years younger than me! I’m fifty-three years old. Ancient ruins.”

“My mom says never tell your age because then people think you look every day of it. It’s a thing in my family. Instead of pitting women against one another, we’re taught to pit ourselves against ourselves. At least in the end, we know who to blame for our misery.”

“Familiar in my culture. I’m Muslim.”

I raise my hand. “Catholic.”

We laugh.

“Do Muslims get the guilt-and-shame platter to go? They hand it to us with our diploma when we graduate from Catholic school.”

“Oh yes. I own that platter.” Farah laughs. “You see, I am convent trained. I had the Maryknoll Sisters in my school in Pakistan. We had our religion, they had theirs, and they taught us everything else.”

“The nuns pushed me toward perfection. You can never achieve it, but they insisted I try. When I draw a rendering, the first thing I do once I get up in the morning is revise it as the sun rises. There’s something about that early morning light that helps me see the flaws,” I tell her.

“That’s how it is on the mountain,” Farah says. “There’s a reason the quarries are close to the sun. God could see what he was doing.”

“Will you show me the quarries? Conor says you go up quite a bit, and I wondered if I could go with you sometime.”

“Of course. It’s the only family business in the world that has lasted for centuries. The Massa family owned most of the quarries until about ten years ago. The Vatican purchased most of the marble from that mountain. You know the stories of the great sculptors who went to the mountain to choose their marble. Today, productivity is as it was during the Renaissance, except instead of building cathedrals, we’re building mosques. Some of the quarries have been sold to my people in the Middle East,” Farah explains. “Tell me about your work.”

“I’m in the family business. It’s in flux at the moment.”

“I was curious about why you came to Italy.”

“The truth is, I had no place else to go. I had run out of options in New Jersey.”

“What do you hope to find here?”

“Everything.”

Farah smiles. “You said you’re renting a place?”

“From Signora Strazza on the piazza. Angelo’s mother.”

“Is that how you found my lecture? Angelo invited you?”

“No, Conor knew of your reputation.”

“He’s a good man. Not a lot of those to go around,” Farah says.

“Men are so strange sometimes.”

“Do you think so?” Farah smooths the napkin on her lap.

“Don’t you?”

“I used to be one.”

I put down my fork. “I don’t understand.”

“Eleven years ago, I became a woman. Although, I assure you, I was a girl from the beginning; I just wasn’t allowed to be one.”

I shouldn’t be surprised; there is something about Professoressa Adeel that is so calm and centered, it could only come from an inner knowingness, an irrefutable belief about her place in the world. She knows who she is, and the self-knowledge seems to come from her soul. “Forgive me. I would have never guessed.”