As for my big adventure of the year – my trip to Sicily – there were a lot of surprises there. I learned a lot. I didn’t prepare much for the trip. I decided to just make it a spontaneous junket without boning up a lot on Sicily in advance. I don’t know if that was wise. I sort of wish I had learned more before going, so I would have known what to look at, what questions to ask. And I certainly wish I had boned up on the language more. Every shred of Italian I ever knew totally escaped me when I was there on the ground. The one time I tried to communicate with a native in full Italian sentences was at the Post Office, and I ended up getting ten postcard stamps for twenty Euros – over twice what I should have paid. So something went wrong there. They saw me coming!
I did read a few books before launching off though, including one written by Lawrence Durrell (who also wrote the Alexandria Quartet and other become-PBS-Masterpiece-Theater-productions). In the 60’s-70’s he wrote this journal account of a bus tour he took around Sicily called Sicilian Circus. He made almost exactly the same circuit I was scheduled to make.
Durrell’s observations were generally out of my league, and well, to be frank, a little precious. He was very versed in classic mythology and found frequent likenesses between phenomena such as a lowering cloud formation and “the brow of Zeus as he was chastising Hera for her inconstancy.” Like that. Also, much of his book wasn’t about Sicily at all. It was a reminiscence of his bygone and again slightly too refined-for-my-tastes friendship/love affair with a beautiful, highly cultured woman – recently deceased when he wrote the book. She had lived in Sicily and frequently urged him to visit her there. But he never had, instead buying palazzos in Greece, and particularly on the Island of Corfu. Now, too late, he was heeding her call and visiting her beloved Sicily. As his little tour bus with its motley set of passengers made its way around the Island, Durrell recalled conversations he’d had with his friend.
He recalled how they had sipped wine under the stars of Corfu and exchanged anecdotes about Aristophanes. It all made me wonder – are there really people who converse like that? Could there really have been a man and woman, lovers, whose pillow talk consisted of reveries about what the ancient Gods meant to the Greeks? “Where the women come and go, speaking of Michelangelo.” That sort of relationship seems to exist on another planet, no - in another universe altogether from the one I’m inhabiting.
But getting back to Durrell’s Sicily – he did alert me to the long, multinational history of Sicily. The ancient Egyptians were there, although they didn’t leave any pyramids, as far as I know. But I did get to see some of their steles of hieroglyphics in the Palermo History Museum. And even at that, the ancient Egyptians weren’t the first to leave an imprint of their culture around Sicily. That Museum also had representations of some of the Paleolithic cave paintings to be found around the island – some almost as spectacular as the famous Lascaux paintings.
I hadn’t realized – Sicily is only 100 miles across the Mediterranean from Africa. I never really bothered to understand before why Patton and our other Generals were fighting in Tunisia during WWII. But Africa is only a rowboat away from Italy. So no wonder. This was brought home to me during what was perhaps my most memorable day in Sicily. Our group was touring Ortygia, an Island off an Island. It’s a southern projection off the Sicilian city of Syracuse. Some of us stopped there for lunch at an off-the-beaten-path restaurant. It was a hole-in-the-wall place with barely room for our party and the one other party there in an alcove. We glanced over at this other group, a panel of three distinguished-looking men who had little flags placed on their table. We didn’t think much of it at the time. We ordered, and gazed around the place, at the wine barrels and red-checkered tablecloths.
It was very homey. But there was near disaster waiting in the coziness. Two men on our tour were celebrating their 5th anniversary by making a present of this trip to themselves and to an accompanying pastor friend. One of this interesting couple was rather tall, and when he came back from the bathroom – he bashed his head into a low stone archway. He fell, briefly unconscious, bleeding. It was quite dramatic. Cold compresses were rushed to him and he was quickly revived. He was soon back in his seat, eating spaghetti. But he continued to seep blood onto his compress, and in his gusto over his food, he continued to drool a little rivulet of spaghetti sauce from his mouth. He was twin rivers run red.
The meal was delicious – prepared to order for each of us by the daughters of the restaurant’s Tunisian owner. After we finished, the daughter who had waited on us came up and shook hands and embraced each of us in turn. She had a mist of tears in her eyes as, in her halting English, she wished us all a good trip. We looked at each other sadly, realizing we’d probably never see each other again. This was the one moment when I experienced a really different way of being in the world from anything I typically find in the U.S. Here was someone putting human contact ahead of business. It was a truly touching moment.
When we got outside, our tour leader asked if we had recognized that other party behind us had been. What? No. She said the man in the middle of the group, the one who had nodded over at us and graciously said “B’giorno” – was none other than the Prime Minister of Tunisia – Mohammed Ghannouchi. It seems the restaurant owner was head of the Tunisian ethnic minority in Sicily, and so Tunisian potentates dined there often. But we’d really hit the jackpot of VIP’s that day.
We all shopped some more until night fell on Ortygia. It got a little chilly, at least chilly by the standards of long-time Sicilian residents. It was slightly comical, the way the tour leader would rush up to me worriedly and say, “Oh Rosalie, button your sweater. You’ll catch cold!” whenever the temperature dipped even a notch below 65 degrees.
Especially on such cool evenings, chestnut vendors came out in force along the lanes and in the town squares. Their metal cylinders sighed gusts of aromatic smoke up towards the starry skies. Our tour leader bought a big bag of chestnuts, and we all stood around munching, our sweaters buttoned, while we waited for our tour bus to pick us up and bring us back to our hotel in Syracuse.
While that may have been my favorite day in Sicily, there were many good days.
(To be continued...)
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