Chapter 6
We cross the road once walked by the fishermen who, returning to the port at the first lights of dawn, went to the fish market to auction boxes of fresh merchandise. On the road sign, the name of the street is written in Arab, and under it, in smaller letters, "Salita dei pescatori", Fishermen Rise.
«Not all streets have been renamed», Vito explains, «a lot of them kept their old name».
«How many times have we stepped together on this asphalt, Paolo, do you remember?»
I remember perfectly; on bikes we faced the descent toward the sea at full speed, especially in winter when the area was nearly deserted. Going uphill, usually it was him to forerun me, with his strong legs that boosted like mine couldn’t.
Still today I cannot keep his pace, so I stay some steps behind, watching a not-at-all-familiar landscape, where the Islamic wave seems to have marked everything.
Torre was a seafaring village at the time of the sale, a town with enormous potentialities, that boasted a splendid sandy shore a few kilometres from the town, and a quiet and healthy pace of life. But, like many of the small Sicilian towns of that time, it agonized because of its maladministration, unable to understand and use for the best the potentialities of a small natural heaven. Mostly crumbling buildings, so much dirt, a forgotten shore, the heart of the country as old as the largest part of its inhabitants. This way Torre presented itself at the beginnings of the XXI century, this way it was delivered in the hands of its new owners. Looking at it thirty years later, it is difficult to keep sustaining that the passage to the best bidder has been a misfortune, like we said back then. Today in front of my eyes there is a perfectly realized dream. It is the dream of my parents and their friends, it is the hope of us boys who looked at so many other places of the world with envy, wondering why we had had the adversity to be born in that forgotten land, falsely consoling us with the sad thought that somewhere there were even worse things.
Vito shows me the recognizable traces of the past.
«The structure of buildings is the original one in most of the cases. Two-, no more than three-stories buildings, provided with large terraces leaning out on the sea. They played a lot, instead, on the style of the finishing touch, on the choice of colours, materials, decorative lines, clear signs of belonging to the typical Arab stylistic model.»
We stop in front of a low body that expresses well what Vito is illustrating. Blue and gold weave in the arabesques decorating the walls of the white building.
«It is a mahal», he explains, «that is a noble house. Many noble families moved to Sicily after the annexation to the Emirates. They speculated, buying buildings for ludicrous sums, then restructuring them, turning them into luxury houses to be resold for exorbitant prices. You have no idea how much demand they had! They hardly had the time to put them on sale, that already queues of wealthy buyers were at their door, contending for the bargain».
The intensity of the blue stands out in a depth and harmonious contrast on the white plaster of the buildings. The blue of the sky and the sea painted on the shutters of the houses, on the front doors, in some small internal courtyards visible through the cast-iron railings in elegantly rounded stylistic shapes. It is the blue of Essaouria, Vito explains, of its boats, the clothes of its fishermen, the decorated tiles in butcheries, of that Morocco that seems even closer.
«I imagine it wasn’t locals who bought.»
«Especially Arabs; by now they are a large part of the population in the whole island. But there have also been many American and Japanese investors, as well as German and English ones. This became the summer residence of the rich people of the whole world.»
«At least Sicily is known for something that is not mafia.»
«Some things never pass!»
«What do you mean?»
«You think that mafia has nothing to do with all this? You make a big mistake. Once more it found the way to branch out, to enter the sales first, the contracts for reconstruction later. It kept becoming richer, modernizing itself like everything else. Sure, it suffered a remarkable blow, once the State abdicated. Would you like to drink something?»
Vito points at a cafe on the other side of the road. This too is new. Once in this area, that is now very commercial, there were only a few houses and a lot of uncultivated vegetation. We cross the street. There are a few small iron tables, white like the chairs and the two great beach umbrella that serves as hat for them. Big violet flowers dangle from a dark handrail, standing out on the white background of the raw mortar walls. Two huge ochre vases frame the entrance of the cafe. The inside is small but pleasant. The blue of the walls amplifies the sensation of darkness that you get coming in from the road dazzled by the sun. There is an intense aroma of coffee melting with that of the tobacco-scented candles that burn on the two minuscule tables attached to the wall opposite the counter. A woman, sitting alone on a stool, absently sips a cappuccino while skimming through the pages of a densely note-filled notebook.
We order our coffees; Vito proposes me a Baklawa, a layered pastry stuffed with walnuts and dipped in a syrup of honey and lemon.
«Maybe you would have preferred a Sicilian dessert, who knows from how long you haven’t eaten one!» he tells me.
Actually it’s a lifelong abstinence. Nothing of what I ate in these years, bearing the forged name of Sicilian pastry, is remotely comparable to the sweets of our tradition.
He lights up another cigarette while asking two glasses of water to the waiter.
While we are taking place at one of the tables on the road, I hazard a question.
«What happened to Calogero’s pastry-shop?»
Calogero was the owner of the more frequented cafe of the country. In summer it was the sanctuary of Palermo people, who, before going back home, after a day at the sea, stood in line to taste its handcrafted ice cream. In winter, instead, it was the Sunday meeting place of the town, with the two long counters covered with every specialty; cannoli, cream puffs, almond biscuits, ricotta rolls, sphinx of S. Giuseppe, martorana fruit and much more. Every good Christian countryman, on Sundays, could not refrain from twos duties; mass before, Calogero’s cafe after.
Vito drops his cigarette with care on the edge of the ashtray, removes his sunglasses and methodically puts them on the table, next to his phone. I smile and make him notice how messier he was when he was younger, and he left his things everywhere, despairing afterwards because he wasn’t able to find them again.
«I learned, almost maniacally», he comments, scratching his uncombed nape.
He tells me that the cafe has stopped existing a long time ago. In its place there is now a jewellery.
«Rich people don’t eat much, but their jewel caskets are always full!» he remarks with sarcasm.
«There are other pastry-shops I suppose, but surely few can be at the height of our best tradition, right? I remember the words that uncle Gino always repeated to me on the telephone, "everything changed, Paoluzzo, cannoli don't even have the same taste anymore, it’s the ricotta that is not the same it was once!"»
«Yeah, your uncle Gino. He is one of those who paid a high price in this historical passage», he pauses and greedily inhales from his cigarette. «I thought you would come with your father when he died. But, on the other hand, you didn’t even come for Enzo... yet you were like brothers.»
«I would have come for Enzo, but it was a particular period. I had to sustain three examinations, I could not skip that session, I would have stayed far behind schedule.»
«Nice justification.»
Vito stretches the angles of his lips, that flatten, conferring him a sceptical expression of pity.
«Don’t think that I didn’t care. I brought with me for so long the sense of guilt for not having been there», I justify myself.
«Crumbs of conscience, better than nothing.»
Vito lifts his shoulders, then looks at me and says, «Come on, I’m joking.»
But I’m not so certain about it.
«What happened to the chemist?» I change subject.
«At the beginning it passed to the management of that relative of your mother, but this you know. He continued the activity, leaving everything as it was. Then, after some years, he sold the license and left. But the chemist is still there, although it passed through two new owners. Medicines are always needed, and who owns a chemist is never without a job.»
There is an implicit accusation in these words.
«My father didn't see it this way. We would not have left otherwise.»
Vito grimaces. He grabs the glass of water and gulps it all in a single sip, then puts it down with a sharp gesture.
«Your father really loved you.»
«...»
«I mean that I don't believe he was really worried for the fate of the chemist, rather for yours.»
He lights up another cigarette, takes a puff, then lays it down on the ashtray with a slow gesture and starts a monologue. I think he has had it ready for an eternity, patiently waiting to be able to pour it slowly on me, without hurry.
«When you and I joined that resistance movement, your parents envisioned a much worse scenery than the one drawn by the sale of Sicily. They feared for your life. We were stuffed with wrong ideas, in that organization. Violent ideas aimed to produce hate, to sow terror. We might have ended badly, as happened to some of our friends after you left. Your mother and your father would not have left Torre; they fought to make it a better place, when they lived here, and I am convinced that, after the initial dismay, they would have rolled up their sleeves and done everything for their land, just like many others. everything, except putting you at risk. And when they understood what you had involved yourself in, they decided to leave everything and go away. You were risking to wreck your projects of studying, besides what was happening. They didn't want you to forfeit your dream. They expected so much from you.»
«They wanted to go away as much as I did.»
Vito tells me about an afternoon in which my mother, together with his, went to him in tears, imploring him to pull me out of the group we had joined. There had been violent clashes with the police and it was known that the resistance organization was planning a non-peaceful march on Rome. From their side, my father and her had decided that going away was the only way to prevent me from getting involved in violent actions.
Vito’s words surprise me. I had really believed that my parents wanted to leave Sicily. I made their displayed refusal mine, to the point of breaking all bridges with my past and with the people that had been part of it and that, unlike us, had accepted the surrender to the foreigner. But had I really been mistaken, or had I just preferred not to understand, not to forfeit the dream of my life – becoming a heart surgeon – not to have to marry a cause that after all was not really mine but theirs?
Followed by these considerations, I start walking again in the streets of Torre, while Vito tells a series of anecdotes that I listen to intermittently.
«You are really informed about these matters. I don't remember you to be so good at the time of school», I remark at the end of one lectio brevis on cosmopolitanism and civil cohabitation between different cultures.
He became a local tourist guide. He escorts visitors around Torre, explaining its history from the origins to the upheavals we know well. He tells them who we were and what we have become. He prevents our past from going entirely lost, he tells me. At the beginning it was difficult, he explains, because he felt like a tourist himself. He was looking for some explanations himself, then he started to grow interested.
«The world grows continuously, and changes, and we have to be ready to change with it. We had two possibilities: keep feeling bad for ourselves or try to learn something from what happened. I chose the second.»
«Explain better.»
«Look around», he tells me.
His right hand moves the air all around us.
«What do you see?»
«Something I don’t know», I answer with bitterness.
«Yes, but how is it?» he insists. Now he stopped walking and he’s trying to lock my gaze.
«Beautiful, but... artificial. It doesn't belong to us. I feel like I am in a country that is not mine, as much as I find it beautiful.»
Vito becomes impatient. Who knows how many times he has already faced the same discussion with others who left like me and then, once they came back, felt my same dismay.
«You don't realize, but don’t be afraid, you are not the only one. You feel estranged because you weren’t here and you keep remembering Sicily like it was back then. It makes me angry to think that you would have been happier to come back here, after so much time, and find that everything was still the same. You would like to have your posh vacation in the best hotel, go to the beach, the best beaches of course, nostalgically breathe your past, your golden childhood, and then return to your evolved worlds. And us? We should keep living in the deepest backwardness in order not to make you feel estranged when you remember to come and visit us.»
«I didn't mean this.»
I keep looking at the tip of the light leather beige moccasins Teresa bought me before leaving. They are so comfortable that it seems like I am walking on soft ground. They would have been perfect for a cultural trip, one of those in which you walk for hours, with only short breaks between a visit and the following. Vito realizes that I am distracted and goes on.
«We remained, Paolo, to keep being Sicilian, but in a better way. Italy sold us, sure, but this was the rebirth we needed and of which we would never have been able on our own. This is the really sad aspect of the story. When would have we been able, alone, to transform our cities and our small towns like this?»
He pauses, as if to garner all of his ideas, while he lights up another cigarette.
«Look at Palermo. It became another city, but this is not a bad thing. What were we proud of, tell me? We were boys then, and we didn't realize what didn't work. Adults, those who had been born and grown in the culture of welfare dependency, of the decline risen to a form of art, in that backwardness proud of itself, they would have been able to go on like that forever, to them it was normal... it was simply the reality, and they didn't complain. Then there were those who complained, yes, sure, but they only went through the motions, without believing that they could do something themselves, demand themselves – before than others – to change things.»
While Vito talks with great fervour, the comments of the elders, the conversations between adults, the discourses of my relatives in which there was always a sort of resignation for an unsatisfactory but inevitable reality, come to my mind. The State was to blame, the politicians were to blame, the ignorance of other people was to blame... but nobody ever felt directly or indirectly responsible for what he was complaining about.
«Do you believe that the real reason for which people rebelled was patriotic pride, or the shame for the betrayal? They were just afraid of losing benefits and guarantees. Here they always reasoned this way; I give you a vote, but you have to favour me, you have to protect me, and who cares if this damages the overall good? The country can stay underdeveloped as long as a few people have great advantages.»
«And now is it no longer this way?»
«We are all much better. The general conditions of life have improved, many of the problems that limited the development of our territory have been resolved. Just think about the completely different way in which naturalistic resources are managed, things that made of this island, in the last ten years, the most demanded tourist attraction.»
Without me realizing it, we reached Piazza Vittoria, heart of Torre, as well as place where my house was. Vito, who sees me groping in search of a recognizable benchmark, grabs my shoulders and turns me in direction of my old abode. It is clutched between two buildings that weren’t there back then, and this probably makes it seem smaller than I remembered it. All the rest, in spite of the turquoise colour of the tiles framing it and the more rounded geometry
of the fixtures, is still the same. In the terrace I see two women who, with their backs to the street, are leaning on the parapet and discussing animatedly. They speak very quickly, accompanying their words with an exaggerated mimicry of face and hands. One of the two is very old; they are Arabic.
My father sold our house to an acquaintance who had no intention of leaving Sicily in spite of the great upheavals. He wanted to buy it for his only son, so to have him close. His son too, who had just married at the time of the sale, was deeply rooted to Torre and had no intention to leave. He wanted to restructure the house, thinking about moving there with his wife in a few months. The information I had ended there, Vito updates me about the rest.
«The young owner was involved in a clash in Palermo. He wasn’t with the revolt. He had gone to the city to work, like he did every day. He had a clothes shop in the centre. He was overwhelmed in the fights; a club hit him on the head, by mistake, then the crowd was over him, again and again, but still by mistake, without intention. So ended his life, folly in the folly of a world that had completely lost direction.»
He looks down, shakes his head, because he still hasn’t digested the anger for all those innocent lives lost.
«His wife sold the house to a Tunisian and left. The sale of Sicily had brought away in a single blow her homeland and her husband. There was nothing left holding her in Torre, as well as nothing attracting her elsewhere.»
Another pause, another shaking of the head, another ancient anger.
«The house changed hands many times before reaching those of its latest owner, who has been living there for about ten years, by now.»
«I am happy to not to have seen anything of all this. In that terrace I can see no other face than that of my mother, who smiles at me and greets me. It doesn't seem to me that our past happened here.»
«Excuse me if I say this, but yours is quite a cowardly attitude. Good that I wasn’t there, good that I haven’t seen... but things happened, Paolo, you cannot turn your head the other way and pretend that nothing happened. So many things are no longer like they were, but others are still intact. Our heart is still the same, my friend, nobody can change it. The ones who remained did that so that the better part of Sicilians wasn’t lost.»
He raises a hand to his chest in a melodramatic gesture, that seems pathetic to me.
"Preserve and convey it, Vito, preserve and convey it." Many elders of the town told him these words when they entrusted him with their stories, before dying. Stories of people who never moved from here, who fought and won, because you can rebuild the façade of a town without depriving it of its identity. Of those stories he made a book, he tells me. "Really Sicilians."
We leave the square and go back to the Norman Tower, choosing a route that crosses the town.
I recognize Via delle Ortensie. Here, every Thursday morning, there was the town street market. My mother went there every week, and in periods in which there was no school it was my duty to help her carry the bags. In winter I didn’t mind, but in summer the scorching sun and the crowd compressed in those airless tunnels, stinking of a mixture of sweat and food, were totally unbearable to me. Crossing my friends, they too forced to lend their arms to their mothers to carry the shopping, we looked at one another with sorrowful expressions, thinking about where we would have rather been at that time.
Dozens of stands, arranged in two long rows, filled the whole road, except for a narrow central corridor, overcrowded of people for the whole morning. Clothes hanging from the metallic arms of the big beach umbrellas fluttered in the wind, waiting for their buyer. A little farther, sellers of fruit and vegetables howled the occasions of the day. The moment I preferred was when we passed in front of the mobile delicatessen. It was a very tall truck, with a counter on which cheeses and cured meats of every kind were exposed. The perfume of the provole, of the slices of primosale, and of the smoked caciotte, attracted the customers in its direction. Mr. Mario, the owner of that itinerant shop, with his well-sharpened knife ready to sink in the white and tender paste of the fresh cheeses, welcomed every customer with a sanguine smile and a, "What can I give you today?" He regularly filled the tasting bowl with tuma, scamorza, pecorino. Everything was absolutely delicious, especially in that moment of the late morning in which the stomach began to demand lunch. But the jubilation of odours and colours was a little further, when we passed in front of the counter of Enzo and his appetizers. On a long wooden table covered by a waxed, white-and-blue chequered tablecloth, delights of every kind imposed on the senses of the passer-bys; green or black, big and smooth or small and wrinkled olives, natural or seasoned with oil and rosemary; dry tomatoes, salty sardines, smoked herrings, dried salty cod, «Ladies and gentlemen, here for you the perfume of Sicily».
«This is one of the many things that survived the change. The market exists in every part of the world, every country has one, and certainly for Arabs it is characteristic at least as much as it is for us», Vito says, inserting himself in my thoughts, «the most famous markets in Palermo were originally Arab suq. For example the suq al buhariyya, the vuccirìa, was the market of least noble meats and vegetables. You should see it now that it has been returned to its former splendour, like in the famous painting of Guttuso. And ballarò? it was the suq al balhara, where they sold fish and the noblest meats instead. And so also for the Capo, which takes its name from "caput seralcadi", but originally was the suq al badik, that is the market of gramaglie».
"It’s maybe one of few true elements left of this artefact country", I would say, but maybe it’s better not to. Vito, however, reads my thoughts.
«Everything seems false to you in this new Sicily, if you think at it like it was once. But when you walk in a market you still find us, like once, because we are not extinct. We donned new clothes, we refreshed our makeup and had some retouch, like an old wrinkled lady who finds a surgical and unnatural new youth with some cut of a scalpel, but our heart still beats in these roads and survives in the simplest traditions.»
Today that the market isn’t there, the road is travelled by cars going toward the waterfront. It’s a beautiful road, quite different from the memory I preserve of it. If, in fact, in the days of the market it seemed a rich place of many colours, in the others it was decidedly anonymous and bare, populated above all by all the garbage that the peddlers left, sad testimony of their passage.
«Today the market is richer and with more colours than ever, because their products joined ours», Vito keeps saying, «the spices counter is a clear example of how the fusion among the two people is not only possible, but actually happily happened, giving life to a new people, that unites all of those who fall asleep and wake up again every day under this part of the sky. Without either us or them anymore.»
When we part, Vito holds my hand for a few seconds.
«I am really happy to have seen you again. Maybe I have been a bit brusque in some things I said, and I hope you won’t hold it against me. It’s just that, after you left, I was angry with you because I would have liked you to stay here. I missed you, Paolo. I felt alone, when you left. But luckily it’s always possible to move on.»
«Yeah.»
I look at him vanishing in the crowd, another cigarette in hand, walking slowly. "I missed you too", I would like to tell him, but he is already on the other side of the street.
I retrace the path to the Torre Normanna, finding again a certain familiarity with the places I just saw with Vito. I stop at a pastry-shop; I have a tray filled with typical sweets to bring to Teresa and our children and I don't resist the temptation to immediately taste a small cannoli. I walk pondering Vito’s words. He’s not wrong, there is so much improvement, so much wealth in this new version of Sicily. But, while chewing, I smile thinking about poor uncle Gino... neither he was wrong... not even cannoli have the same taste anymore.
The oranges of Dubai Page 7
