Andata senza ritorno: an ode to Sicily

An idol of mine, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, once declared that going to Sicily is better than going to the moon. Whilst I have not yet been lucky enough to experience the latter, I can say with some certainty that it does at least come close. Four months was enough for me to fall incandescently in love with the scorching heat of Sicily and its effervescent people. In fact, my first weekend in Palermo alone, was sufficient to tell me all I needed to know about the islanders, who are always so quick to separate themselves from age-old generalisations of mainland Italy and Italians, and rightly so.

I had barely walked through the gargantuan 16th century doors of Palazzo Lanza Tomasi, which was to be my home for the duration of my stay, when I was whisked away to a villino tucked away on the hill far above the iridescent waves which lapped the glitzy Mondello coast, for Pasquetta – Easter Monday celebrations. What could have been described as a baptism of fire, with my limited Italian serving no apparent use in the face of incessant Sicilian slang, in hindsight resulted to be one of my fondest memories of all. My host Carlo, who did not even know my name until he picked me up that afternoon in his battered red Cinquecento, made me feel entirely central to the Easter festivities which resemble such an intimate and sacred occasion in the Sicilian calendar. Later that same day, Carlo gave in to the pleadings of the football obsessive that I am and dropped me off at the stadium for what was to be a defining match at the climax of Palermo’s Serie B season. Despite arriving halfway through the first half, I desperately circled the locked gates until a security guard came over. After informing him of my ticketless predicament and my aching desire to see the rosanero in action, he handed a ticket through the bars which he had reserved for

his absent son and slipped me into the reverberating cauldron of pink and black noise free of charge. Aimlessly wandering the quickly emptying streets after a tense Palermo victory, I was then invited to a typical gelato in a brioche bun by the boss of a nearby gelateria, who then proceeded to drive me home once he realised I was at the wrong end of the city on a bank holiday, when the buses were most definitely not running. The kindness shown to me that day by Carlo, the guard and my fellow ice-cream loving capo, has, for me, only ever been matched by those whose paths I crossed in remote parts of South America – a continent in which, looking back, I see multiple similarities with Sicily.

Akin to my Pasquetta adventure, the next four months were a blur of sheer excitement and adoration for my senses, interspersed at every turn with bursts of intense colour and fragrant smells, the like of which I had never experienced. Whether I was watching the sun lay to rest from the crumbling roof of the magnificent abandoned lighthouse in Capo Gallo with someone I had just met in the nature reserve, or careering round the perfectly chaotic Palermitan streets with Giorgio on the back of his Yamaha racing bike - the one thing which was always present at the core of each and every experience, was the Sicilian people.

The person who proved to be my roots and my rock throughout, as crazy as she was kind-hearted, was Giorgio’s younger sister, Sofia. During my first week, my Palermitan colleague Asia invited all of our Erasmus cohort to her best friends’ birthday. Whilst everyone before me declined, I cast aside my longing for bed and accompanied Asia to a piazza where the uneven cobbles delicately glowed and notes of questionable Italian pop danced in the muggy night air. In the midst of frenzied gift giving, my ears were blissfully paralysed by the unmistakeable melody of the Spanish

language. I swivelled on a sixpence and asked a taken aback Sofia if she was Spanish. Needless to say, she was not, but in that beautifully spontaneous instant was born an enduring friendship based on the unflinching foundations of Spanish and tequila. And one which might never had existed if it weren’t for my willingness to banish my English inhibitions and mindlessly accept every quirky proposition which came my way.

The lonely days which you experience in a city which is not your own is an inevitability of travel. But it was on these days most of all, when I felt vulnerable and alone, that my phone would ring. Every time it was Sofia, each time with a more ludicrous plan than the last, from sleeping on Mondello beach for her birthday - huddled like new-born puppies alongside 20 of her friends - to privately taking a boat out to explore a network of caves despite our common inability to drive even a go-kart. In fact, driving anything in Palermo represents a near impossible task, with the sea of cars at times appearing to subconsciously zig zag like lizards in the Sahara.

Despite this unfortunate shortcoming, the burning heart of what it means to be Sicilian is so infectious that anyone who spends time there is immediately transformed into the altruistic, accepting and inclusive human being that all of us carry inside us but so rarely show. This was never truer than for a tightly knit group of Senegalese guys I met early on. As I meandered through the dense maze of alleyways in the historic centre, ducking under brightly coloured, breezy washing lines as I went, I came across a dilapidated cage in a stunningly derelict square where my soon-to-be friends were playing football, clad in kits from all over the world. Noticing my Arsenal shirt, they called for me to join, and despite my initial attempts to interact with them in French, their mother tongue, they insisted we speak Italian, or rather, Sicilian. After playing with them twice a week for four months thereafter, I realised that they unequivocally embodied the essence of the fiery, unselfish Sicilian spirit as much as any lifelong resident. In fact, much of the beauty of the island’s identity originates from its wistful ability to seamlessly merge with the international community. Languid evenings are spent on rooftops at bossa nova jazz concerts under silk blankets of stars, whilst South American folk dancers grab you by the hand and twirl you round under the ancient city gates.

In this vein, the person who for me most accurately incarnates Sicily is originally from Venice. It is fair to say that my boss and Duchess of Palma di Montechiaro, Nicoletta, is a force of nature in every sense of the phrase. All that she asks of her piccoli, which translates as ‘little ones’, or interns in standard English, was that we looked after her home and her guests as if they were our own. In return, she took us in as her children. During our first meeting, she remarked at how thin I was and asked whether my parents fed me. Despite my assurances, she messaged me every evening to go to her kitchen, convinced I was unable to cook for myself, and made up delectably simple plates of bread, cheese and homemade soups for me to take back to my flat. She also demonstrated the Sicilians extraordinary capacity for forgiveness, when after one infamous night in the Vucciria with Sofia, I woke up six hours late for work. No words were uttered when she called me into her office that evening, but I knew the importance of regaining the implicit trust which forms the bedrock of any relationship amongst her people.

Now, it is impossible to breathe a word of the Sicilians without a mention to the lifeblood that runs through their veins – food. Each and every person who cooked for me did it with such a warm sense of pride, from Nicoletta to the characterful owner of Bar Bruno, a tiny eatery just a stone’s throw from my home, whose nonna would cook pollo alla palermitana (not Milanese – you only make that mistake once!) and aubergine alla parmigiana day after day. Regardless if it were in the chic Michelin-guide restaurant opposite my residence, or in the nearby cioccolateria adorned with Arabesque tiling, with one bite I became part of their intimate culinary family. The chefs and waiters would call out and wave as I raced past on my favourite bike each day. There were many better bikes at the Palazzo, but I chose mine for its uncanny resemblance to Guido’s steed in La vita è bella, complete with brown leather furnishings and basket.

It is easy to overuse the word family in any discourse about Sicily, but it is impossible to underestimate the profound sense of closeness you are made to feel there. The old man, with leathery wrinkles etched into his skin from the Mediterranean sun and salt, had nothing to gain when he pulled over in Catania to throw me on the back of his rusted sky blue Vespa and race down the seafront to get me to my Daddy Yankee concert. Likewise, the young fisherman from Trapani who took me to the ruins of a decaying tuna factory to climb as he discovered I so love to do. From each of these fleeting adventures, I learnt to be a little more open and a little more free. In four short months, the venerable city of Palermo had become my home, and the cracked tarmac of the Sicilian roads, electrified by the heat of summer, traced my adventures like the roots of an oak tree. The wondrous island of Sicily is an enchanting chaos of possibility, though it is one that can only be truly understood when embraced with the same enigmatic and serendipitous gioia di vivere expressed by all Sicilians as they welcome you into their hearts and homes.