By Syma Sayyah, Tehran

Mrs Felicetta Ferraro
 

Once in a while one comes across people who truly enjoy what they do and knowingly or unknowingly set high standards to be lessons to others. One such lady is Mrs Felicetta Ferraro who as the cultural attaché of the Italian embassy in Tehran has been doing this for the past 8 years. During her time here she has supported many cultural events and has always tried to promote good understanding between our two nations. I came to know her about 4-5 years ago through an Italian journalist friend of mine and I was delighted to learn that she was one of my readers.

Her tenure is soon coming to an end and sadly she will be leaving us at the end of this month. But before leaving she agreed to sponsor a wonderful project. This project was proposed by Mr Ali Boozari and the idea was to publish a book of Italian cuisine in two languages and the artwork for the book was done by 20 young Iranian artists, some graphic artists, some painters and some both or more. The work was done in a 3 day workshop which took place in one of Iran's most wonderful Persian gardens, at the Italian Residence with the permission of his Excellency Mr Roberto Toscano.

We visited the workshop on the second day, which was a lovely spring day, and enjoyed the garden ever more. We met Ms. Alessandra Cimatoribus who had come from Italy to oversee this project and also talked to most of the participants. It was a very friendly working atmosphere and everybody was happy to be part of this project, and everybody I talked to said how much they were learning from working together. Each had a few recipes with ingredients and was drawing or painting a black and white illustration for the book.

The book is to be published by Mr Shafiee from Mosalas Publishers in Tehran. We stayed for lunch, which was at the dining hall of the Italian school across the road and enjoyed the lovely Italian food cooked by the resident lady cooks there.

After the workshop, everybody got together to receive a certificate and thanks from the deputy Italian ambassador in Tehran Mr Alessandro Monti and to enjoy the most wonderful  food and cakes prepared by the best Italian cook I know - Ms Ferraro's dear husband, Mr Mario Vitalone.

Although Ms Ferraro who is fluent in Persian is leaving Iran, her heart will stay and from a distance she will continue to be in touch with the Iranian artists and the cultural world.

We wish Ms Ferraro and her good family bon voyage and hope that she will come back to Iran soon.

There will be an exhibition of the works in this book at the Artists Forum on 31st May.  For your information the artists who took part in the workshop are:

Banafshe Ahmadzadeh
Ali Atayee
Neda Azimi
Ali Boozari
Atie Bozorgsohrabi
Negin Ehtesabian
Golriz Gorgani
Hoda Haddadi
Sahar Haqgoo
Sharareh Khosravani
Maneli Manouchehri
Atie Markazi
Fatemeh Radpour
Pejman Rahimizadeh
Mahnaz Saboor
Faranak Salehi
Mahkameh Shabani
Farshid Shafiee
Seyed Mohammad Mehdi Tabatabaie
Marjan Vafayian
Morteza Zahedi