Sicilian Flag
Daughter, Caroline, chose a visit to Sicily as part of her 40th
birthday celebration. Her birthday was
in June; she and her sister, Andrea, enjoyed an early birthday celebration on
the El Camino in lower Galicia in May.
Mother and daughter left London for Sicily September 20th. What a perfectly beautiful time to arrive in
Sicily: delightfully sunny days in the mid 20’s, warm waters, few tourists. We would have 10 days.
The Birthday Girl
We chose to locate on the west side of Sicily, south of Palermo in
the little town of Trapani (pop. approx. 64,500). Andrea (our family travel consultant), found
us an apartment in the old section of town, on the narrow peninsula. It was a bit of a shock when we entered. It was 10pm and we found ourselves engulfed
in a dark cavern-like dirt floored basement.
This large set of apartments with inner courtyard was partially
gutted. It was under renovations. To her
credit, our very gracious and helpful landlady, Francesca, used her flashlight
to direct our eyes to the ceiling motif in the vestibule. A 9th century coat of arms
designed in a white rococo-type plaster motif was being preserved.
Ceiling motif
The building looked like 19th century, but obviously
there was more to know about it. We
were a bit disappointed to have an inner apartment with no outside facing
windows, but it was two bedrooms with bathroom, kitchen and seating area; and
we were very comfortable. It was easy to
see that the renovations would create a graceful preservation of 19th
century town living.
.JPG)
.JPG)
Inner views of apartment
Out on the narrow streets one could look to either end of a cross
street and see the Mediterranean on both the port side of the peninsula, as
well as, the breakwater side. A cool
breeze kept this old section of town, with its old buildings (typically 4
stories) cool and very livable.
View of Trapani
Tourists love it. The three
main streets are lined with shops; bakeries cum coffee or gelato shops; and
restaurants. Lingering along the
streets is a favorite activity. Real
red coral is a product of Sicily and is to be found in very beautiful jewelry
settings. Food holds a special place in the hearts of Sicilians, making a visit
an epicurean delight. My favorite dish
was a Sicilian pasta with a tuna roe sauce… the rusty, red roe was pressed,
dried, then grated.
“[Old] Trapani is a town of a thousand balconies. There isn’t a house, it seemed, that doesn’t
have a box of wrought-ironwork festooning its façade; some of the boxes are
straight-sided and straight-laced some bulging and blousy, some with geometric
diamond shapes, some with filigree as delicate as lace.”
.JPG)
.JPG)
Buildings in the old town
In our tromping around we discovered: “[a] Trapani of cultured Europe, with
handsome, wide boulevards… lined with palaces that dated from anywhere between
the 16th and the 18th C.”
Some of the palaces lining these streets are large and imposing, others
are “more like town houses dressed up”.
Old Trapani is wrapped around a coil of narrow streets, as tangled
as the mesh of the fishing net. This
tangle of narrow streets is the old Arab section. As we exited a restaurant one
night early on in our visit, we stumbled into these alleyways. It was an immediate, “Where are we?” “It has the unmistakable feel of a suburb of
Marrakesh or Tangier.”
.JPG)
The Arab quarters
It seemed centuries earlier than our own neighborhood, and its
lighting acted as a lure into a mysterious labyrinth. Don’t you just love to wander in new places
and discover the unexpected all on your own!
It was only afterward that I came across a description of these
alleyways.
Clearly Sicily is not just European. It is actually closer to Tangiers than it is
to Europe and like in Andalucía, Spain, the Moors held power for several
hundred years in the early Middle Ages.
While I have not visited the rest of Italy, I wonder if this positioning
and history is instrumental in creating the perils of Sicily. Unification with Italy has not worked for
Sicily. Sicily grew in poverty whenever
the power rested in Rome or northern Italy, as it does today. History shows the Mafia as a natural
outcropping of this disenfranchising authority and poverty. I have no doubt authority had run amok too
many times for Sicilians.
.JPG)
Remnants in Palermo of the
authority of Rome
The Sicilian has a “level
of kindness, of generous daily decency, of thoughtfulness, of simple grace” that
is truly distinctive. I expected the caricature of the
typically dramatic Italian. Not so: “Whatever their suspicions of the wider
world, and the elliptical way in which they relate to it, when dealing with an
individual, with a stranger, Sicilians seem unfailing in their warm-hearted
kindness. I don’t know whether this
makes Sicilians a good people, but it makes them a civil people, instinctively
thoughtful and kind, with an inborn generosity that is extra-ordinary in its
spontaneity.” This is such an apt
description of Francesca, and many of the shopkeepers. I was also reminded of Joe, a fellow
administrator I used to know; and a Sicilian.
Only now do I understand his quiet way, even in times of emotional or
political turmoil.
These qualities make the Sicilian vulnerable, I think. There is also a story about their not really
wanting independence. Their history
shows them thriving when the land has been well managed. Unfortunately, the traditional economy was
feudal and only the elite held land. A
feudal structure lasted until WW 1.
Imagine! How to reconcile this
gentle vulnerable Sicilian with the violence of the Mafia? It was much too short a visit to come to
grips with the phenomenon. I am left
with the knowledge that Sicily is perhaps one of the world’s most desirable
patches of land, but with something quite nasty lurking in the shadows. It is surprising to note the thoughts that so
easily trickle through your mind when you see a gathering of rich, showy people
in a restaurant. Your mind immediately
says, “Mafia!” Note the picture of the
burnt out car in Trapani.
.JPG)
Burnt out car
It is a small town. How
could this possibly happen? Read the
books on the Mafia like MIDNIGHT IN
SICILY – On Art, Food, History, Travel & Costa Nostra by Peter Robb (1998).
Burning a car at the front door of an
apartment is a common tactic. Then there
was the ship of African immigrants that was burnt off the coast of Sicily this
week, which I was convinced was not accidental.
However, newspaper articles were very clear on the details of an
accidental fire. Paranoia or intuition
on my part? I cannot say. Another famous author on Sicily, Leonard
Sciascia, once said that Sicily is a metaphor for the modern world.
Onward. Like the rest of
the land bordering the Mediterranean, Sicily has layers of history thrusting
itself forward into the present day.
Trapani lies at the foot of a craggy hill, used throughout the
millenniums. History on that mount
starts about 6000BC. In the guidebooks
they call Erice a Medieval town.
.JPG)
.JPG)
Erice
That hardly tells the story.
While the guidebooks lead you toward the castle, what you find when you
get there is simply a shell of a castle.
The innards, which they have preserved, are the remnants of an Aphrodite
Temple! Caroline and I would be tickled
by the synchronicity of coming upon a dove as we walked our first few blocks into
the old town. There it was cooing on a
window ledge of a medieval home… we were to find out that it is a major symbol
of Aphrodite.
We took 2 excursions: one down to Agrigento about 80 K to the
south, to explore the ‘Valley of the Temples’… LOOK! It was stunning to walk amongst such triumphs
of the past.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Temples at Agrigento
Our second excursion was out to the Egadi Islands part of the
marine reserve a few miles off the coast of Sicily. We visited the islands of Favignana and Lerganzo. Both islands showed off cave dotted cliffs
that were inhabited in Paleolithic times.
A distinctive cave on Lergazo depicts markings showing the transition
from random scratchings to actual drawings.
While our boat stopped at the two islands so we could explore their port
towns, it also stopped for us to swim off the boat! An oh-so-memorable Mediterranean day.
.JPG)
Caroline clambering onto the boat
Before visiting, I asked friends what they thought of Sicily. Every one I talked with had thoroughly
enjoyed it. But this I came to discover,
nowhere near was an adequate guide. It
certainly is beautiful; it’s history is daunting in it’s capacity; and the food
is ‘to die for’, as my British friends say.
But I wonder if I would go back.
I think not. While our short
visit only scratched the surface on one side of the island and there is so much
more to see… the city of Syracuse was said by Cicero to be the grandest of the
Classical cities and rivaled Constantinople; the world’s largest site of
ancient mosaics and frescos are revealed in a 32 room Roman villa near
Agrigento. Yet, I think I have had
enough. It has so much potential! I would love to be part of its
re-development. Those palazzos on the
peninsula in old Trapani are begging to be refurbished!
.JPG)
Old Trapani
.JPG)
Old Trapani port
But I cannot imagine living for any length of time under the
threatening possibility of Sicily’s lurking, violent underbelly. One is left wondering if it will ever shirk
this persistent trauma. Oh Sicily! I cry for you! YET…
“I thought that maybe Sicilians,
by and large, had a more profound understanding of what it means to be human
than any other people I had come across…”
* It is interesting to note that both Caroline’s birthday
celebration locations held the ‘trikelion’ image of the interlocked
spiral. Both the image on the Sicilian
flag, with its’ 3 legs spiraling around a center head of Medusa; and the old
Celtic image of the 3 interlocking spirals found all over Galicia are ‘trikelions’ images. Caroline and I saw the same 3-legged, Sicilian
flag image on early Greek coins displayed in one of Erice’s museums. (Must ask
Caroline her interpretation of such the synchronicity!)
All quotes are from SWEET
HONEY, BITTER LEMONS – Travels in Sicily by Matthew Fort. Thomas Dunne Books. 2009.
