January 15, 2012
Who is this guy?
What’s in his arms?
I screech to a halt.
What’s in his arms is a bundle of dreams.
But I don’t care about that yet. I just want to know what he’s picked alongside the road because Sicilians are always picking stuff alongside the road, and dammit, I wanna know how to survive on wild edibles, too.
It’s fennel. I breathe in the sweet licorice-y scent.
“It grows wild year round in Sicily,” Alfio says. “I make pizza with fennel, and pasta con le sarde. Come on over sometime and I’ll make you pizza.”
Right there on the road, with my emergency lights flashing, Alfio (pet name for Alfredo, he says) recounts his life and his dreams. He’s an out-of-work chef. Italy’s economic crisis has hit Sicily hard. But Alfio hopes to open a macrobiotic restaurant, a fancy-pants one, with a Mediterranean twist and plenty of fennel.
“Non vedo l’ora” I say, I do not see the hour (meaning: “I can’t wait”), and climb back into the car with a sprig of fennel pressed against my nose.
Good luck, Alfio!
***
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January 10, 2012
My husband died a month ago, the woman says.
 @J Huizenga Do you know how long we were married? Fifty-four years.
You are surprised? Yes, because nowadays such a long marriage is rare.
 @J Huizenga And do you know why? Because people today are egoists. They think only of themselves. They want what they want.
How did Paolo and I stay together for 54 years? I cooked him whatever he wanted. If he had a hankering for spaghetti carbonara, I made it.
And Paolo never ever complained about anything I cooked.
 @ J Huizenga Click to subscribe to BaroqueSicily.
December 5, 2011
Giuseppe is peering at the Gazzetta del Sud in the doorway of the circolo for war veterans in Monterosso Almo. He invites me in.
“Guess my age.”
The inevitable question asked by every Sicilian over the age of 70. “I don’t know, signore. Seventy?”
“Eighty-eight. I was a soldier in the Italian army in the Second World War. I was in prison in North Africa.”
I don’t ask him who imprisoned him. I think I know. George Patton during the North African campaign.
“For how long?”
“Six months.”
What do you say to someone who, almost 70 years after a war, is still haunted by it?
Giuseppe suddenly starts talking English.
“I learn English in prison, and later in England. A commander he take me to England. Then I come back in Sicily in 1945.”
Our conversation is interrupted by a new arrival. I say goodbye, so sorry there is no time to ask the many questions on my mind.
***
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November 11, 2011
“Signora!” called out a red-faced man in baroque Scicli. “Come here!”
I sauntered over, and he beckoned a young priest to his side.
“Please take our picture.”
I obliged.
Afterwards the man said, “Do you know why I asked you to take our picture?”
“No, why?”
“Because,” the man beamed, his face reddening even more, “this priest, he is my son.”
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October 30, 2011
Here comes the fisherman.
L’America! he crows at me.
Enzo has intermittent teeth and eyes to warm your heart. He’s taking his holiday here in Ragusa Ibla, 16 kilometers inland from his home.
He is staying in a convent, a retreat for anziani, old people. “Because I’m sixty,” he says.
“Sixty is not old!”
“In Sicily, sixty is old.”
I tell him to go to America, where he’d be middle-aged.
“I have relatives in New Jersey. They tell me, ‘Enzo, you should come to America!’ But I’m scared of flying. I like to be on the sea. I spend the whole day alone, fishing in my 7-meter boat. There aren’t many fish, though, because the fishermen in big boats throw their nets further out than mine, and they catch most of them.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“Yes, but in Sicily, that’s how it works. No one controls the lawless. But I love my job. I eat lunch on my boat. Raw fish. Just like the Japanese. It’s good.”
He pats his stomach and smiles his quirky smile.
***
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All photos and text on BaroqueSicily are Copyright of Jann Huizenga ©2009-2015, unless otherwise noted. Material may not be copied or re-published without written permission. All rights reserved.
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