A journey around the world among the Tuscan hills: a holiday in Florence, Part III

FATIMA, THE SPICE WITCH (from the book "Vivo di gusto! - La cucina creativa toscana secondo Jamal Amin")

During my stay I had promised myself to visit Alnif, a town in central-eastern Morocco, known for its henna and - more interesting to me - for its cumin, famous for its particularly intense aroma. I knew of a market held there on Fridays, where, among various products, the most varied spices were sold, and among these the famous cumin. So I went there one Friday morning, waking up early so that I could enjoy my visit without the typical bustle of street markets, which I knew would distract me from my goal. On arriving in Alnif, looking for directions to reach the market, I was several times directed towards the house of an elderly lady named Fatima. I decided that perhaps this woman, so well known in the town as to be the subject of advice and at the same time already, in my eyes, the keeper of a sort of secret, of a magical aura, was worth a brief digression from the market.

After all, the market would still be there later, but I could not be as sure about the lady. I had myself accompanied to the entrance of her house and, once on the threshold, I hesitated for a single second, afraid of disturbing the peace of a gentle lady of advanced age. Setting that feeling aside, I plucked up courage and knocked at the door, a splendid little door the colour of burnt Siena earth, in rough wood. She, Fatima, arrived after a few seconds, immediately opening up her world to me with one of the liveliest, toothless and most genuine smiles I had ever seen. "Welcome, foreigner!" were the first words she said to me. They were enough to make me feel at home, as if it were the house of an old grandmother, never seen, yet always known.

She immediately led me into the heart of her dwelling, which I discovered was also a workshop, in which she used spices as the basis for medicines and "ad hoc" healing practices. Over a cup of good mint tea, Fatima - whom everyone called Witch Fatima because of her activity - told me a little about her world and her way of healing people. What she told me astonished me: I had never heard anything like it before, and I was fascinated by her story and her secret. Fatima explained to me that she had always dealt with spices in her life. At first, when her father traded in them and she often gave him a hand in carrying the sacks, she had developed a certain nose, growing used to recognising their aromas, from the most intense of cumin and chilli to the most delicate, the simplest and best known.

As she grew up, she had then developed a passion for their use in cooking, but at the same time also for their healing virtues, devoting herself to presenting ancient remedies, but also to creating new ones. She had therefore tried to unite the two things in a marriage that had found enough love and devotion to grow and last over the years. What astonished me was the way Fatima created her remedies: people went to her, without her ever having seen them before, and she, just as she had done with me, took care of them from the very first moment, offering them excellent tea and inviting them to talk about themselves, their needs, dreams and passions, problems and hopes.

From their words and their faces, from the gazes that stumbled into her bewitched world - oh yes, it was truly bewitched, but in the most magical sense of the word - Fatima drew as if from a well, to gather as much water as she could, and uprooted their secrets, as well as their deepest hopes and anxieties, like a gardener uprooting a harmful plant from a garden, easing their sorrows. After consoling them, reassuring them and putting them at ease, she would take leave of them, promising to receive them the following week to give them the perfect cure. And so it was. Always. There had never been a person, not once, who had not been healed by her therapies, her miraculous ointments, her soft creams with their velvety scents and miraculous effects.

All this thanks to the love she put into it, to the way she saw people inside, through the surface, under the skin, down deep, as far as the underworld. As I listened to her, there came back to mind a book I had read some time before, in which an orphan girl had found herself working for a florist, at first as an outside observer, when at the back of the shop she arranged the compositions, while the owner prepared bouquets and assisted customers, advising which flowers to use for this or that occasion. One day, however, when the owner was absent, she had had to serve a customer who wanted to win back his wife during a period of crisis. The girl, following the trail of the gentleman's emotions, had translated every sensation, every feeling into the choice of a flower, composing a magnificent bouquet that had fully achieved the customer's goal.

The same passion, the same depth in reading inside others, beyond the gaze, I had found in the two women, one the fruit of a writer's imagination, the other in flesh and blood, there, before me, giving me all her knowledge, her being. Never had I felt so naked before someone, as I felt then. And never so at ease. I cancelled all the commitments I had that afternoon, I forgot all the things I had promised myself to do, places to visit, shops to go to. Because nothing, no restaurant, no road or encounter, could have enriched me as much as Fatima did in those few hours we spent together. Having immediately understood my need to learn, to be able to absorb new knowledge for the love of the Agriturismo, she offered me her help in exchange for a small and simple whim: to be able to taste a dish she had never eaten before.

I immediately seized the opportunity that this splendid woman offered me, almost as if it were a challenge. Although I was not very inclined towards this kind of thing, I told myself that after all such an opportunity would not easily come my way again, and I accepted. I knew the undertaking would be anything but simple: to manage to astonish Fatima, cooking something that would be new to her, yet without straying too far from her tradition, was almost a gamble. Calling on all my knowledge, I brought to mind the dishes that best represented the land I was in: I therefore cooked couscous, in the form of stuffed rolls, with swordfish and tuna, and I prepared the typical cereal bread, using the same ingredients as Tina's tasty focaccia with yoghurt cream.

Finally, combining sweet and savoury, I prepared the pastilla, a pastry filled with chicken or pigeon meat, dusted with cinnamon or icing sugar, which can be replaced by ravioli filled with quail meat with a sweet onion cream. Fatima, after tasting all the dishes, confided in me some secrets about spices, making me the keeper of a knowledge that I still preserve and jealously guard today, and that has enabled me to transform every one of my creations, even with the use of a single one of those spices, which with her I learned to know and to look at with new eyes. Mine, and deep down a little hers too.