Love Has No Limits by Pirooz Ebrahimi
LOVE HAS NO LIMITS
by Pirooz Ebrahimi
Finally I had finished high school so I had started to look over the “student guide” to decide what course to choose. What I really, really saw in my mind was the image of a man in a military uniform.
So after having convinced my family, I enrolled in the military academy. The next four years passed with studying hard and finally graduation day arrived. I had won a scholarship that gave me the chance to spend three years in Italy. I’d attend a three year course to get a diploma to be a hovercraft pilot which was not yet present in my own country.
Eleven other pilots and I from the Persian Gulf left our homes and arrived in the Livorno port. On our arrival we had to sign a declaration stating that we would return to the country of our origin at the end of the course. The only exception to the return was a clause that stated marriage to a girl who was an Italian citizen. After having gotten our rooms assigned and settled we immediately started our intense Italian language course. The course lasted four months and gave us a chance to join the other cadets that came from all the other countries in the world and the Italian cadets attending the hovercraft course.
Livorno was a really beautiful city. From the terrace of my room that I shared with Ahmad I could see the people strolling on the avenue; girls with colorful dresses, children with big ice cream cones. The lessons started at eight o’clock in the morning and my desk mate was an Italian boy from Livorno named Sandro. Sandro was tall, thin with big intelligent black eyes, a really friendly man with a big generous heart. We almost immediately became friends and it was he who took me around and showed me the real Livorno, her streets, her small cafès where the young people met, her Italian fashion and all the other aspects of the city that only a native boy could know.
Christmas came, it was my first Christmas, I didn’t know this holiday it wasn’t part of our tradition so I went around with Sandro visiting all the small shops where he could find little special gifts to give to our friends and his family. Sandro’s family had been very kind and had invited me to share their Christmas Eve supper with them, full of excitement I arrived with my sparkling little packages. Sandro’s dad opened the door and shook my hand and welcomed me with a big smile. He started to introduce me to all the family members the grandparents, the uncles and aunts and then Alba, Sandro’s sister. When we met I was petrified, I shook her hand and I said, “Plaisir de faire votre connaissance mademoiselle.” They all laughed, I had confused the languages, my mistake passed as a compliment of a cultured man.
“Reza shut off that light!” My roommate said, “And stop staring at the ceiling, its three o’clock in the morning.”
“Oh! Excuse me Ahmad,” I didn’t add anything else, I just wanted to think all by myself with Alba’s image in my eyes and in my heart. I shut off the light and rolled over in my bed... what a beautiful name Alba ... and how she was beautiful ... I fell asleep.
I saw Alba again on New Year’s Eve at a party Sandro’s and I had organized with some of his old friends and the new cadets. We rented a small place to dance and to treat ourselves we ate“Panettone” the typical Italian Christmas cake and drank champagne. I drank two glasses of “Martini”, an almost bitter wine with bubbles, I felt like I had wings and I could fly. I decided to stick with non-alcoholic drinks as I didn’t want to give a bad impression. I, a Navy officer, didn’t want to make a blunder in front of Alba and her friends. Regretfully my off duty hours, were not so off, as a navy officer I had return home at two o’clock.
Time passed and it became a habit to spend my free time at Sandro’s house, the family had gotten used to seeing me and often I had Sunday dinner with them.
“Ahmad, I have decided, I have to speak to her, I have to speak to Alba, I’m in love with her and she has to know it.” I had opened my heart to my roommate.
“Are you kidding, do you want to be expelled from the course and return home without the degree? We are halfway, you can’t risk all the efforts spent in all these years...for a woman...oh! Come on, you don’t even know if she wants you.” Ahmad was really worried for me.
“You are right my friend, that is why I have to tell her about my feelings then it will be up to her, we shall see!” I said, convinced.
“Well then don’t tell me anything else. I don’t want to be involved in your adventure, I’m going to finish this course and I want to finish it in peace!” He left the room slamming the door.
Poor man, he was right to be worried, but love had no limits, and most of all I wouldn’t listen to reason. So I called Alba.
“Hello! I am Reza, how is it going?” I nervously coughed and continued, “I have to talk to you, alone, I’d like to see you soon.”
An instant of silence and then she answered me, “Well...ok... but not immediately. At half past five we can meet in the small café at the beach.”
As soon as the course was over I didn’t take the bus I just started to run, jogging to release my tension. I got there in a sweat, panting, with my legs like jelly. I sat down and ordered a coffee. Alba arrived fifteen minutes late, while waiting I had eaten up the nails of my left hand. She saw me, “Hello,” and got seated huffing and laughing to trying to explain her tardiness. I didn’t let her speak, I started almost at once with a solemn tone, “Well I want to marry you”- my declaration of love was finished.
“Yes,” she answered very simply, like she had always known, as if she had been waiting for nothing else but that. Our families were informed but our engagement had to remain a secret till the end of the course and after my return home with my degree. They were hard times to get married. It had to be done by proxy and it wasn’t easy to get all the papers in order, but we overcame all the difficulties and finally my bride came to me.
Here we are now at our daughter’s wedding, she is twenty years old and a really beautiful girl. I look at Alba and see that a tear is coming down her cheek, she is a beautiful mother and still a beautiful wife, I smile kissing her temple and then run to my baby, I have to be the first one to kiss the bride. After the ceremony the married couple will run to the airport to catch a plane for Italy. Their first stop will be at their grandparents in Livorno and surely they will take a walk along the avenue where her parents’ love was born. Maybe they will have a “cappuccino”, the famous Italian coffee known all over the world and that her mother and I sipped the day I declared my love for her in the little café on the beach.