Accademia Europea di Firenze is proud to announce that one of its students, Fayrah Stylianopoulos from Elon University, has participated in the second edition of the literary competition “Grand Tour: Stories About Florence and Italy,” promoted by AACUPI (Association of American College and University Programs in Italy) in collaboration with the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux.
The competition invites international students studying in Florence to share their experience in Italy through a narrative or autobiographical text, written in both English and Italian. It’s a unique opportunity to intertwine personal experience with the cultural, linguistic, and human discovery that defines a study abroad journey.
Fayrah’s story is an inner journey through the Florence of rain, fleeting beauty, and unexpected encounters. It is a tale of transformation and recognition, where the city becomes a mirror of the soul and a keeper of memories resurfacing through the folds of the present. With an intimate and poetic style, Fayrah reveals what is often invisible: deep emotions, quiet connections, and the subtle details that make each moment unique.
We are pleased to share her story here, a testament to the evocative power of language, art, and culture when experienced from within—as only a student living and learning abroad can truly convey.
Dopo tutta la bellezza di ieri: piove, piove, sempre piove.
With astonishing clarity, this refrain surfaced, gasping, from the sea of my thoughts. The
heaviness of wet air and earth whispered it to me again, as it had done for months whenever it
rained. The sentence was sacred because it had been the first to occur in Italian. It had dawned as
I pulled out of my lousy parking spot and watched the windshield wipers slash away sheets of
rain with energetic fury. I had still been in America then, in love, pining, smiling. English
thoughts came down in torrents: passions, reactions, or preoccupation about what was or should
be. My thoughts in Italian were by necessity deliberate poetry. It took longer for the words to
reveal themselves, to emerge from the womb of my subconscious.
Now I was curled in a chair, sipping from a mug of steaming tea. Despite the late
afternoon hour, the line for the schiacciateria below coiled down the street, winding through the
haze like a serpent. There was congestion in my nose, the dull ache of sinus pressure lingering
from early mornings, full days, and late nights. I felt like a foreigner in my own skin. The door
opened and pulled me from my reverie. Laura was back from her errands, her bag still wet from
the rain. At her suggestion, we decided to wander a while before class in search of something
sweet. Along narrow streets slick with rain we passed gleaming shops, and street vendors
peddled their wares. What should I buy? I thought of gelato piled atop cones—perilous towers of
chocolate and stracciatella—more beauty for sale. Laura asked me where I wanted to go; the
weight of the decision was like an anvil. I told her I felt like crying.
What I saw next was marvelous. Beneath the open sky, an old man sat cross-legged on a
drenched blanket. A paperback rested in his hands, and he turned its sodden pages with careful
reverence. One gloved hand held it steady; the other glove lay beside him, with rows of 10 and
20-cent coins neatly arranged atop it. When I saw him the rain fell around us, but not between us.
I expressed a wish to give him something. Laura smiled, and from her coat, produced a coin. I
placed it on his glove, and we went away.
Later, Laura and I enjoyed a walk home under a dark sky that swelled with sound. The
singer performed the same arias several times over, pouring his song into the night. How
wonderful for the tourists, what a quintessential Italian Friday night for them, how quaint. What
a perfect stay in Italy must be beginning, or ending, or transpiring for them. Could such beauty
ever exist for itself?
Nothing cures a heavy heart like a good meal. Laura and I cooked and ate, and played
cards, and passed a very pleasant evening together. Then, I remembered the coin, and I earnestly
offered to pay Laura back for it but she would not indulge me. Adamant, I dashed inside her
bedroom and thrust a whole fistful of coins into a vase on the shelf. Laughing, she retrieved it.
To our delight, its contents included various treasures; among these was a tiny key. The key was
an object of particular fascination to us and we searched diligently for a promising keyhole but
none were found. Discouraged, we retired for the night, but I kept the key.
I lay in bed, clinging to the last remnants of coolness in the sheets before they dissipated.
I stared at the ceiling, turning the key over in my mind. Where could it belong? I, too, was a keywithout a lock, or else I was the lock, waiting silently for whatever lost artifact might one day
open me.
My every muscle tensed. I rose as though in a dream. Key in hand, I walked into the hall.
There was the table. There was the table, and I pulled back the tablecloth, and in the table,
concealed by the cloth, was a drawer, and carved into the drawer was a tiny hole. The key fit and
clicked. A voice within screamed with triumph. Inside were pages upon pages of letters tucked in
envelopes. They were each addressed to Fiammetta I., and were dated from decades ago. I seized
the first one I saw:
My Darling Fiammetta,
It rains as I write to you; the sky makes love to the sea. I think of you in their embrace. I
do not know how to love you from a distance. But the rain will keep falling, and I will keep
writing. But the rain will keep falling, and I will keep writing.
I longed to continue, but my eyes grew so heavy. I read the same sentence twice and
finally resolved to return to it on the train to Lucca the next morning.
When I awoke, about three sleepy seconds passed before I remembered the letters and
that day I carried some to the station. On our walk there, I felt the leering gaze of men on Laura
and me. I had never felt such a prickling awareness of my body. Here I was in this city of
incredible beauty, beauty that I bought and borrowed, but now I wondered what I was selling.
Pretty American student girl, what do you contribute to the legacy of these ancient transactions,
where beauty and desire change hands like florins. What is your offering?
But to my amazement, there was the reader again! He was accompanied by another
homeless man, hunched over beneath an awning, holding leashes looped loosely onto two of the
most beautiful dogs I had ever seen—well-groomed and glossy, tails wagging, mouths open in
lazy smiles. Their master extended his plate to them, and they gratefully accepted it. As they
shifted, I noticed a sign against the wall.
I am sick. Please help. :)
We missed the train. As we walked home again, I read a letter aloud:
My Love,
Let me sing to you, bride of mine, as the night sings to the stars.
We again passed the reader, and the dogs, and their master.
You are all things gentle and wise. What would I give to be the air that touches your skin?
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm. For love is strong as death. Many
waters cannot quench love, and neither can floods drown it.
Riveted, I emptied my wallet of the day’s spending money allotted for Lucca and gave it
all to the sick man. As I read, I saw the reader’s eyes leap to meet mine, and when I turned back,
they were fixed on the letter.
The Arno to my right, I remembered my namesake and these same steps she took flanked
by her ladies in waiting. In a painting I had once seen, Dante Alighieri gazed at her, captivated,
with a stoic expression made yearning by the hand clutching his heart. I imagined Beatrice as she
must have appeared to Dante when they were nine years old on some fateful spring day, and
wondered what it meant to be Florence’s lover. Beatrice was not the object of eternal love, but its
eternal subject, and I realized that I had all the love in the world to give.
On Sunday, I woke up to shouting from the nightclub outside. As I was brushing my teeth, I
suddenly realized it was quiet. There was a moment every morning, just a few seconds when the
partiers had gone to bed before the shops opened when everyone slept. I cherished it.
At church that morning, the icons beheld me with serene expressions. Incense filled my
nose. I left with a renewed sense of joy. And there was the reader, standing just outside, book in
hand. He saw me, and his countenance twisted with poignant recognition.
“Fiammetta?”
And the raw weight of it all crashed into me like a wave. I gathered the letters in
trembling hands, my breath shallowed, he took them from me. In that moment, all the time past
was laid bare in the pages. He read and his eyes filled with tears.
