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January 15, 2010
Baroque Sicily is
stone the color of fresh-baked bread;
scary souls in spectacles;
Sirens and
saints;
seraphim and
spirals and squiggles and
Ah, Sicily. See-chee-lya. Sikelia. *** Please Subscribe. It’s Free! January 12, 2009
A reader emailed to ask me about Arab influences in southeast Sicily—in addition to the majolica mentioned in my last post. There are so many leftover traces! I want to share a personal story. Do you see the man on the left, in the baseball cap? That’s Emanuele, assistant to my beloved (new) stonemason, Giorgio, the cap-less fellow, who warbles Sicilian love songs as he works, though that’s beside the point.
Here is a typical exchange between Emanuele and me: Me, shaking his hand: A domani! See you tomorrow! Him: Se Dio lo vuole, if God wills it. Me: I think you’ll be able to finish tiling around the bidet. Him: Se e la voglia di Dio, if it is the will of God. When I first met Emanuele, I’d just returned from Morocco, where Inshallah, God willing, is a constant refrain. The fact that he used the same refrain astonished me. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked if he was Muslim. His eyes bulged from their sockets at this suggestion, and his head jerked back on his thick neck (an Arab gesture for no.). Gianna, no! Ma che dici! Sono cattolico! Sono proprio, cento percento, cattolico!”
Scratch a Sicilian, I heard somewhere, and you’ll find a Saracen. Never mind that the two-plus centuries of Arab domination of the island ended more than a millennium ago. ***** NOTE: There’s a new book written by Alfonso Campisi, Ifriqiyya and Sicily: A Mediterranean Twinning, that retraces Sicily’s Arab history, but I haven’t been able to find it online. For a good summary on Arabs in Sicily click this link to Best of Sicily Magazine. January 10, 2010 In my new incarnation as a siciliana, I look around wide-eyed. Then I mimic copy follow ape echo.
Above is my version of the famous staircase at Caltagirone. The 25 tiled steps are disturbingly steep and narrow, a sheer cliff that I scale like a mountaineer. The real deal in baroque Caltagirone is wide and grand—142 steps high and the size of a two-lane highway.
The old scala—tiled in the 1950s—bears motifs from as far back as the 10th century and bursts with vivid Caltagirone colors: sunny citrus, shiny indigo, acid green. There are mythic birds and beasts, nobles, flowers, and geometric designs. Sicilians learned majolica production from the Arabs, who had a “monumental influence” on Sicily, and many of the Escher-like designs of North African zellij found their way here. My tumbledown staircase turned into an ordeal, the way these things do. The work dragged on for a year and a half, longer than it took to tile the entire grand staircase at Caltagirone. Come è possibile, you ask? Well, I measured only one step before placing the entire order for 100 hand-painted tiles, assuming the steps were of equal size. Oh, you naïve straniera you. My stonemason shook his head sadly and managed to grind down some of the tiles without spoiling the designs too much—and even chink-chinked away at some of the too-small steps. But for the too-big steps I measured again, ordered again, waited again, dashed back and forth to Caltagirone, waited some more. Not only that: I had to sack the mason for an unrelated disaster in the middle of things (a blog topic for later if I dare). In the end, though, my pesky staircase has gotten hold of my heart. It’s sweet. “Nun si mancia meli senza muschi,” as Sicilians say. You can’t eat honey without flies.
November 2, 2009 A few years ago, I wanted to buy a ruin of a house on a solitary road out beyond the Ragusa cemetery. Sicilian friends (perfectly rational, well-educated ones) said I was matta, insane, that I’d be visited at night by dead souls. “What do you mean?” I hollered. “I live two blocks from a cemetery in the US and I’ve never seen a ghost!” They looked at me mournfully and insisted that the danger was real. They themselves would absolutely never pay me a visit there! So I gave up the idea of that house with its faded pink walls, shocked at how alive the dead are in Sicily. Sicilian cemeteries are always set well outside of town behind imposing walls. Below is the Scicli cemetery, full of mausoleums, magnificent pines and tall cypress.
Cemeteries here are well-tended, with custodians and on-site florists. They seem to be open most of the day, even during the long lunch break.
Many of the tombs show pictures of the dead.
Streets have names, just like in a real town.
Today is il Giorno dei Morti, Day of the Dead. Sicilian families flock to cemeteries—arms overflowing with lilies, mums, roses, and daisies—to spend time with their dearly departed.
October 12, 2009 Fog comes like a ghost to Ragusa Ibla some mornings in autumn. It shrouds the village in soft silence and mystery—or should I say more mystery, for there’s something inherently secretive and mystifying about Sicilian hill towns.
That otherworldly feeling evaporates well before mid-morning in Ibla, when the sun comes burning through. The ghost may settle much longer in the low places, though.
My neighbors tell me that the fog is new, that it first rolled in when la diga, the dam, was built outside of town several years ago. The mist lifts off the water of Santa Rosalia Lake, a beautiful place on the Ragusa Ibla-Giarratana road (SS194). I recommend driving along this charming, curvy little road (but not when it’s foggy!) and stopping at the lake for its wonderful vistas. I hear the fishing is good too. |
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