Chapter 5
On the 14th June of the year 827, a fleet including Arabs, Berbers, Spaniards and Persians, under the command of the jurist Asadibn al-Furat, landed on the coasts of western Sicily, in the zone of Mazara del Vallo, and from there it undertook a long and bloody military campaign with which it progressively put an end to the Byzantine dominion on the territory. Those were the years of the Arabic domination of the island, a domination that lasted a bit more than two centuries, until, starting in 1061, the advance of the Normans begun.
Twelve centuries later, Arabs have made their second raid in Sicily, once again in summer, but this time without any fleet or bloodshed.
A pacific aerial fleet brought a delegation of diplomats and ambassadors with the assignment of undertaking the negotiations on behalf of the emirs.
Since when Sicily had officially been put on sale, many possible buyers had stepped forward. They discussed the conditions of the sale, hypothesized the formalities of the passage of hands, the possible clauses that the interested parties committed to. And while in Palermo and in all of the Sicilian county seats people went down in the squares to protest, and in Sardinia the dawning protest movements extinguished because for them, at least for the time being, the danger was warded off, the north of Italy looked with indifference at the elimination of that pebble that for years had been annoyingly in the tip of the Boot. In Rome, meanwhile, buyers paraded. Among all possible buyers, the emirs immediately showed to be the most interesting, both for the sum they offered to pay – by far the closest to the one hypothesized by the Italian government – and for the advantageous conditions they committed to in terms of times and terms of the trade. Some clauses regarding the conservation of the cultural and religious identity, as well as the right of private property, had to constitute a sort of guarantee for the inhabitants of the island. After all, Arabs had already shown to be broad-minded at the times of their first domination, when the inhabitants of the island were recognized as ahladh-dhimma, that is people of the pact, "protected" as long as they paid a fee. Being protected guaranteed them the right to personal freedom, to profess their own religious belief and to keep their own customs and possessions. For modern emirs, the Sicilian territory lent itself to become a source of new wealth, both thanks to the mineable raw materials and for the potentialities of the natural, historical and artistic patrimony, until then poorly or badly used. Putting an end to the idea of exploiting the resources, and starting to make them produce wealth and comfort, was a rather new logic in the Sicilian reality. But this was not the idea that Sicilians had about the coming of the Arabs. The feelings of distrust and intolerance fed a climate of great contrasts, that made people forget that Arabs, from that distant time in which they dominated it, had already been lodging for quite a long time in the culture of the island.
The sense of humiliation due to the fact that the State – in a time of general difficulty – was turning its back on that comma in the middle of the sea, that for a long time it had considered more like a burden than a resource, prevailed strongly.
Us Sicilians lived it that way, and from that May 13th the situation plunged quickly. For days we found ourselves glued to the TV in an amazed silence. We followed all of the newscasts, the in-depth analysis and the special editions, in the hope to discover that our politicians had made a U-turn and that nothing of what had been said would happen. But it didn't go that way. The negotiations proceeded quickly, in a summer climate more red-hot than ever.
On TV, politicians sketched explanations built according to an exemplary as well as upsetting logic; economy had been paralyzed for too much time and there were no perspectives of recovery on the horizon. Selling part of the patrimony was the only concrete possibility. At the beginning they had spoken about auctioning single monuments, historical buildings, archaeological areas or natural reserves, but this would have dismembered the national territory without succeeding in covering the dreadful national debt. From there a more radical proposal had been born; selling a wider territory, even a whole region. A joke? No, a real possibility, actually the only one. And in an Italy in full economic crisis, driven by a corrupt and irresponsible political class, legitimated by the popular consent thanks also to the absence of reliable alternatives, it was not difficult to modify that part of the constitution that stated the unity and inviolability of the State borders. The choice immediately relapsed on the two largest islands. Even on this aspect politicians tried to sketch reasonable explanations aiming to hide the true meaning of their actions; the worst high treason to the unity of the nation, for which so many people in the past had fought and died.
"A painful but inevitable sacrifice", the head of the state recited, "an action that we are called to perform with courage and firmness, in the belief that it is our moral duty to guarantee to all citizens dignified conditions of life in the respect of the principles of our Constitution".
But why Sicily? The official motivations were the following,
"Because islands are territories geographically more fitting to the political separation, being already naturally separated from the rest of the national territory. Besides, the wealth of landscapes, natural and oil resources, the immense historical and cultural patrimony of Sicily in particular, as well as its strategic position in the heart of the Mediterranean sea, that already made of it an extremely politically interesting territory in the most remote history, make of it the most saleable goods for an extremely advantageous price".
The whole government pronounced itself worn out for the great sacrifice that the Sicilians would have had to make in name of the State, yet certain that from this separation Sicily itself would draw enormous benefits, because whoever purchased it would certainly put into effect "an action of economic restoration unprecedented in the history of a region that, for so much time, has been instead penalized in investments and development".
The opinion of my father was quite different, «We are the garbage of Italy, and what do you usually do with garbage? You throw it away or, at best, you recycle it. They are simply throwing us away, someone else will think about recycling. Hadn’t they already took everything we had? Now they also take the last thing we had left, our belonging.»
Many thought the same, and not only in Torre but in the whole Sicilian territory. Impromptu reunions multiplied day after day; in the streets, in the shops, in the houses, any place was good to discuss, confront, try to understand what could be done.
Even what should have been my birthday party changed, in a totally natural way, into a political reunion. Nobody wanted celebrations. I had invited the whole class, but there was no need to cancel the invitation. My classmates themselves told me, one after the other, that they would not come.
"Considering the situation, my parents don't think that it would be fit", I heard each of them repeat.
The evening of the party my house was full of people anyway, but not for me. Relatives, friends, acquaintances, even some city councilmen, debated animatedly until late at night. A thing was clear to all, we had to make our voices heard, and we needed to be in large numbers. Sicilians had to act together to assert their right to be Italian citizens.
«For years our politicians have found right here in Sicily a faithful pool of votes. We voted and sustained them, now they cannot delete us, or even worse sell us as if we were a commodity.»
It was Santino, the square butcher, who made his booming voice heard. He had always been a convinced supporter of the government, even in the moments in which it had adopted clearly unfavourable policies for the regions of the south. He always succeeded in making their motivations his own, and kept granting trust to the managing class. But the new proposal was indecent even for him. Big worker hands, ruddy face, generous belly, he could change from a butcher into an executioner, such was his anger. Doctor Gentile, family physician of the majority of townsmen, stood up waving a fist in the air. He was a middle-aged man, very tall, always elegantly clothed. That evening he was wearing an impeccably s
tarched white flax suit. But his usual affability had left room, for the first time, to a motion of anger.
«It is too easy to speak like this now, but you all thought differently until recently. Those who are betraying you are those same rulers that for years you kept defending and voting. And don't come telling me that the crisis appeared now, because we have been going on like this for years. Just one year ago we voted to renew the Parliament, and what did Sicilians do, instead of sending all of them back home with a nice kick in the...»
At that point he paused. His fist clenched in a gesture of anger, his mouth shut under the frame of his whitened moustaches. We all realized what he meant, and nobody would have been grossed out if for once the polite doctor had let himself loose. But his great politeness imposed him to behave.
«Doctor, let me interpret your thought; we had to send them away with a kick in the ass!»
A general laughter, followed by a liberating applause, broke the tension for an instant. To say those words had been Biagio Greco, the carpenter of the most ancient artisan shop of the town. A very modest man, so slender as to seem a twig at the mercy of the wind, but with two muscular arms that allowed to imagine the daily effort of working simple wood tables into small masterpieces of local art. His age was a mystery; people said that he had always been there and always with the same old face. He seemed never to have known youth. In reality he was identical to his father, and him to his grandfather Salvatore, whose father was founder of that cabinet-maker family vocation. He never made a secret of his "communist" ideas, those too learned by his grandfather, and he kept sustaining them with strength when, at the beginning of the century, the most radical left wing had stopped existing in the Italian Parliament, without ever being able to return, torn to pieces by fractures and inside inconsistencies. But for Biagio those ideas were still alive, without an affiliation, and he would still support them. He didn't read newspapers neither watched newscasts, but he was nevertheless informed on everything thanks to the chatters of those who gravitated around his shop to commission a job, or at times simply to watch him at work. The embarrassment that his outspokenness elicited in more prudent people earned him the fame of an ignorant man, out of his mind, and many looked at him with compassion. But believing in an idea in a hostile context is for brave men, and in Torre there were less and less of those.
Seeing him in that terrace, hailed and applauded by everyone, seemed impossible. That evening he could even have become their leader! His words shouted with strength and determination overwhelmed the participants, dragging them to a collective venting in which nobody felt anymore like having to defend at all costs what was clearly indefensible. After all, who doesn't really believe in anything easily marries the idea of those who cry louder.
«We have to make ourselves heard. We have to go to Rome with my wood planks and hit their heads, or stuff them in their...»
And there laughter and applauses drowned the rest.
Leaning out from the window of my room, I watched the informal group that had gathered under my house. People who, hearing the lively discussions coming from our terrace, had stopped to comment, creating a sort of spontaneous meeting. There were the usual faces you met every day in Torre, faces that exchanged regards and gossips, arms that dragged shopping bags, hands that held those of children at the exit of the school. For the first time they seemed to be a lot more than this, they seemed to be a people, a collective conscience.
«For years we sold our votes to mafia, each of us to safeguard their own little interests. Shame, shame.»
Those were the words that lawyer Spadina launched from the terrace to the participants, and not only to them. But he had dared to say too much, maybe, and many were not yet ready to talk about this. My mother tried to cool the red-hot minds offering fresh drinks and pastries, but it would have taken a frozen rain to dissolve the red-hot climate of that evening.
From the road someone shouted, «Shame on you, wasting time to give these useless speeches without understanding anything. Do you think that it is better to starve? Not to have a job anymore, not to be able to pay bills? I say that it is better to survive, and this choice, as much as it seems unpopular to you now, will help everyone».
It was easy for everyone to understand that who had spoken those words certainly wasn’t a compatriot. Judging from his accent, he was a Piedmontese on vacation who, going for a walk with his wife and two twin daughters about three years old, had thought of saying his opinion without any modesty. He risked being lynched. Insults of every kind flew from my terrace, and not only from there. Someone would even have launched himself from up there if they hadn’t been restrained. My father tried in vain to re-establish calm, but by then the limit had been passed. There was no more room for reflection; emotions, uncontrolled, had taken the upper hand. Fortunately for him, the provoker succeeded in running for it, and the crowd, who had gone down in the street to pursue him, slowly ended up dispersing and going back home.
It was May 19th 2016. That was the party for my eighteenth birthday.
In the following months in our town, as well as in the rest of the region, two opposite lines of thought arose. On one side, the most substantial, there were those who deemed necessary an action to prevent the sale. On the other those who were starting to appraise its advantages, as it was a possible engine of change. The tension increased until it flowed in a real social clash that my father defined "a war among poor."
We faced the high school exams in a surreal climate. Teachers were more confused and impatient than us, wondering what the meaning of all that was.
Even more surreal was the atmosphere in which the football world championships were played, with the embarrassing ritual of the national anthem, sung by the team in which there was also a player from Catania. But the team soon removed us from embarrassment, by failing to qualify for the quarterfinal.
Meanwhile the government went on. In spite of the several demonstrations of protest, strikes, collection of signatures to submit the matter to a referendum, the proposal was submitted to the Parliament and voted. Few abstainers, a certain numbers of contrary votes, an overwhelming majority standing up for the sale.
It was done, the map of Italy had to be redrawn, and with a hit of its tip, the Boot kicked Trinacria down to the south-east.
«At least you have not changed», I tell Vito who, apart from the grey threads among his hair, is the same boy he always was.
«They wanted to restructure me too, according to the canons of Arab architecture», he jokes, «but then they renounced. I am a desperate case!»
His family is one of those who stayed in Torre despite everything. His father would not have known how to live in any other place.
«Going away was hard; everything happened in such a hurry. We found ourselves abroad, with the awareness that there was only foreign land for us, no homeland in any place», I tell him.
I feel pity in the look he turns to me.
«Do you think that staying was easier? It was difficult and painful, but at least we could defend our history, what we are.»
We stay in silence for some time, while we leave the waterfront behind us to go toward the centre of Torre. Vito takes a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his faded jeans. He pulls one of them out and hands it to me. I push it away with a slight gesture of my hand.
«I haven’t smoked in five years», I explain him. «I am a heart surgeon with heart problems».
I smile, and he smiles with me.
The oranges of Dubai Page 6
