On the kitchen table today… last of the season’s figs – backyard grown by an older Italian fellow nearby. (No, I didn’t pilfer them, 😄 he sells them to our local fruit shop). However, talking of figs, it did make me think of Nonno Anni taking those ones from the cemetery…
“During a trip back to Fossa, Nonno Anni and a friend were out walking one day when they came to a grassy clearing and a fig tree laden with fruit. Instinctively, Nonno Anni went towards it, struck by mouth-watering excitement but his friend pulled him back.
‘You can’t eat those! This used to be a cemetery. The roots of that fig tree…’ his voice lowered, ‘plunges into graves.’
Nonno Anni knew it was the old cemetery, his grandparents were buried there. The cemetery had been used and reused so much over the centuries that in times past, after fifty years, the bones would be dug up and placed in an osso sala or bone room so the graves could be reused. Not wanting to upset his friend, or cause a scandal, Nonno Anni refrained, but those luscious plump figs stayed in his mind.
He executed his stealth mission, solo. The next day, when most people were at work or shopping, he carried a bag, his step jaunty, out for an innocent morning walk… Concealed in the bag was a basket. When he came to the heavily laden tree, he first tasted the figs. They were spectacular. The tree hadn’t been touched for years and gave up its load with particular sweetness. Nonno Anni was still kissing his fingers to his lips at their deliciousness as he told me thirty years later. ‘The best figs I ever tasted.’
He filled the basket, hid it inside the dark bag and nonchalantly walked back into the village. His step was indeed even jauntier. Nonno Anni didn’t take the usual lane up to the house, he took the lower, darker route, threading through twisting, tunnelled walkways to get to his stalla. Inside the stable, the air is cool and dry, perfect to store fruit. He didn’t tell anyone at the time but occasionally, he’d steal away to have a fig or five. I’m sure that they were clandestine made them all the sweeter.”
Adapted from, Mezza Italiana
Still, it’s lovely to look back, especially to see Nanna Francesca and Nonno Anni next to me on the front steps the day I arrived as well as beautiful Fossa when there was no hint of the earthquake to come more than a decade later. And I still can’t get over the rich blueness of the sky some days up there in the Apennine Mountains! No filters or tricks on these photos, just nature at its most exquisite. Thank you for taking the Mezza Italiana journey with me and for sharing your stories too. Grazie infinite cari amici! Zoe xx
Walking around Fossa, along lanes that become so steep and narrow they merge into steps or descend into tunnels, I began to notice all the different doors I passed. Some with stylised, door furniture of lion heads or dragons and beautifully varnished wood, others crude, weathered timber, or painted mission brown.
The steeple of Santa Maria Assunta in Fossa… the church that sits opposite my family’s house in Abruzzo. It was lovely to walk along the lanes below and listen to the bell tolling the time of day or to hear it from afar when you were on your way back to the village.
This window in the small house in Italy, that has sheltered different generations of my family for centuries, is my favourite. It is the tiniest and gives a view out over the village of Fossa like peering from a cubby house. I also love that it shows how thick the stone walls are.
Zoë Boccabella 