By: Syed Raiyan Abu Zafar

Once upon a time, there lived two friends right on the old river through which passed beautiful boats. Every day the two friends, Anderson and Juliet, watched men from their balcony, from where they could look down to the river and see the top of the boatmen’s straw hats.
“Hello Aunty Garcia,” they used to call out to their aunt in a coat made of brown feathers, and oh! how lovely was her red gown flowing like the river. “Oh! hello dears. How are you? I’ll give your bags of pasta to the boatman and on his way back, he will give it to you.”
True to her word, Aunt Garcia would fill two or three bags full of pasta and give it to the boatman, who went with her into the narrow alleys of the bazaars of Venice, which were covered in a canopy of green mint leaves, just like an enormous umbrella.
Soon after the boatman returned, he would throw up one end of a rope to the waiting kids and tie the other end to the bags of pasta.  What a big rope they had to pull! Poor Anderson and Juliet. As they finally got the big bags full of pasta, they rested till evening, dreaming of their pasta.
In the evening, a big man in black attire and green goggles came to cook the pasta. “Delicious! Zio,” both Anderson and Juliet would cry out to the man in black, who would only smile and add some anchovies and delicious pepperoni to the pasta by snapping his fingers. As the sky darkened, Zio would fly into the river and disappear like a mist.
This story of pasta went on for years and years, and is still going on as you read about the two friends.