Sicily, Aboveground
I decided to go to Sicily on a whim. My friend Katie from Rome had just filmed an episode on Sicily for “Cities of the Underworld,” and she sent me a few email addresses of people to contact in Palermo. The original plan was to stay three or four days, check out some old Arabic aqueducts, maybe a mafia escape tunnel, then be on my way. I ended up staying for three weeks.
To travel by train to the island of Sicily from mainland Italy you must take a ferry, but not in the way you might expect. When the train approaches a port at the southern tip of the mainland, it does not stop at a platform, but continues directly to the edge of the Mediterranean. It follows the tracks up a ramp and through the open doors of a large boat. Once the train is fully onboard, the boat raises the access ramp, enclosing train and passengers in its bowels, then sets out for the island. For the passengers, the clacking rhythm of train ties is subsitituted for the gentle rock of waves. Upon arrival in the port of Messina, the front end of the boat unfolds, the train edges out, hooks back into the tracks and continues on its way. This surreal conveyance ended up being an appropriate passage into Sicily.
During my first few days, I met Ellie and Daniella, who would become the center of my time in Sicily. First, an artist from Brooklyn, Ellie, who had just returned from six months on a sailboat locked in the ice at the North Pole. She had been the artist in residence on a scientific expedition called Tara (I would later see the boat in port on the Seine). Ellie had come to Sicily looking for solitude while she worked on a video piece about the expedition. Ellie’s best friend was Daniella, a born-and-raised Palermitana who assisted an American artist living in Palermo. The three of us hit it off and were soon spending every day together. Daniella was our guide. She is a woman of indefatigable energy and magnetism who has a way of becoming the nucleus of every social situation (walking through Palermo with Daniella is like being escorted by the pope). She took Ellie and I on expeditions all over Sicily. We called her Virgilio. Walks along the beautiful mountainous coastline or junkets to a favorite gelato shop. At the time, I was re-reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which is all about travel and perception of place and how a single place contains many different incarnations and can transform according to one’s perspective. It is impossible to know how I would have experienced Sicily had I not met Daniella and Ellie. It seems like I fell for a version of Sicily as created by the three of us. In any case, something about this strange little island struck a chord with me and I look forward to returning.
A few of excursions:
We took a little boat out to a small island off the northwest coast called Mozia to see some Phoenician ruins going back to 800 BC. In the little archeology museum on this sleepy island we saw a two-meter-tall marble statue, called the boy of Mozia. We commented on this beatuiful statue to a man sitting in the same room, evidently a security guard. He told us that he had personally discovered the piece during the original excavation of the island. The man was small and quiet with a humble smile; I imagined him unearthing the statue while digging in his garden. There was something beautiful about him standing in an otherwise empty museum, keeping this 3000-year-old statue company as though spending time with a friend. He had a peaceful glow about him, as though in discovering such a treasure one attains enlightenment.
We visited Erice, a city perched on one of Sicily’s mountaintops. One can travel to Erice by a long winding road or by fifteen minute gondola ride. According to the myth, Erice is where Daedalus landed while his son Icarus continued flying towards the sun. It was a city of medieval stone and narrow cobbled streets. The air was crisp and the cobblestones were covered in moss, which seemed to muffle all sounds, leaving the city eerily silent. The view from the castle in Erice sprawled to the ocean on one side and, on the other, deep into a green countryside lined with roads like ribbons.
We had ate spanish salami-and-cheese sandwiches at Gibellina, a small village in the rolling highlands outside of Palermo which had been completely demolished by an earthquake in 1968. After the catastrophe, the mayor of Gibellina commissioned an artist, Alberto Burri, to build a monument in the village’s honor. On top of the ruins, the artist poured concrete. Then, retaining the original plan of the village streets, he sculpted six-foot-high uniformly shaped concrete slabs where the blocks of houses had been. It is the skeleton of Gibellina. The geometry of the village in-tact, the village itself a wasteland of austere concrete. On this gray day, with wind coming off the swelling hills, it seemed like the perfect memorial.
I also went to a place on the southern coast of Sicily called Agrigento (this is actually where I met Ellie). A cluster of dusty golden hills, Agrigento overlooks sweeping green valleys dotted with a patchwork of olive groves. Nestled at the bottom of one small canyon were the gardens of Kolymbetra. Here we found criscrossing streams and brooks and flora from all over the world, massive palm trees and ferns that seemed Jurassic. It almost unnerving how lush this place was; it felt unnatural, which is a sort of paradox. Especially we found trees laden with oranges and mandarins and lemons of every strand or blend imaginable. An embarassment of citrus. Sweet oranges, sour oranges, oranges blended with lime. We ate til we felt sick. Along the spine of the hill in Agrigento were three ancient greek temples, massive 2500-year-old columned structures of a golden clay color. Temples for Juno, Concordia, Olympian Zeus. Called ruins but still standing in almost perfect condition. We felt dwarfed standing next to these temples, as though their age added somehow to their bigness.
The terrain of Sicily is strange and beautiful: rolling, swelling, dramatic hills, one stretch seemingly incongruous to the next. I read The Leopard by Guisseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa while I was there. He describes the landscape: “comfortless and irrational, with no lines that the mind could grasp, conceived apparently in a delirious moment of creation; a sea suddenly petrified at the instant when a change of wind had flung waves into frenzy.” The irrationality of the landscape is reflected in the culture. Every day I spent in Sicily, it seemed I encountered another poignantly ironic or absurd wrinkle of Sicilian culture. Two fat, open-shirted, gold-chained Sicilian men get off their motorcycles, lift dark-visored helmets and kiss each other on the cheek. Palermo’s zona sacra (sacred zone), a grotto up in the mountains overlooking the city is ‘chiusa per caduti massi’ (closed because of falling rocks). A man sells street food sandwiches comprised of some meat that he takes from a basket covered with a blanket. He slips his hand under the blanket and fishes around for the meat, as though it were still alive. ‘No one knows what it is,’ I am told by one of the ten people waiting for their sandwich. Too many of these moments to recount.
When we weren’t weaving through the dramatic hills of Sicily in Daniella’s little car, we were in Palermo. Palermo captivated me in a way few places have. The schizophrenic concoctions of Arab, Norman and Spanish architecture, mosques alongside gothic cathedrals. The shells of buildings left crumbling from the war that lend the city a feralness. The deep fried rice balls full of cheese and proscuitto called arrancine – eat one and you need a nap. The fountain in the middle of the city which generations of Palermitani have called the fountain of vergogna (shame) because of the lascivious glances exchanged by the nude sculptures seated on the fountain’s rim. The narrow streets patrolled by packs of vigilant street dogs. The hostel where I was living: an enormous tumbledown Liberty-style mansion in Capo with ill-lit tile hallways and many terraces and balconies. The fresh olive oil. The Sicilians’ elaborate lexicon of hand gestures, two-thirds of which are pantomimes for balls and assholes. The canoli. The Sicilian love of mythology – a recent Mafia sting was called Project Perseus, after the man who beheaded Medusa. The buzz of the markets. The Spassimo, a former church, now open-air ruin with a massive sumac tree growing at its center. The restaurant we went to every day, which, due to the visual prominence of the restroom, we called the Toilet Restaurant. Four euros for an appetizer, wine, and a big plate of pasta. The ceremony of Sicilian culture: the extended greetings, the unrushed pace of everything, even the bureaucracy has a charm (frustrating as hell, but charming). The city’s patchwork history: founded in 800 BC by the Phoenicians, ruled by the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans, a number of Germanic tribes, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish, and, briefly, by the Austrians. Remnants all of these periods are layered in the streets (or sometimes beneath them). The anti-mafia store down the street, with a sign on the door announcing that they do not pay tribute to anyone. The city’s relationship with the mafia became a real fascination for me, especially after one day while walking through the market with Ellie, when I saw this (a snippet from a journal – excuse the punctuation):
ellie and i are walking through the market and we see a helicopter overhead. we ask someone what’s going on, a firefighter, and he sort of turns his back with an evasive shrug. we turn a corner and find a police blockade. carabinieri – who are like state troopers – are lined up, forming a cordon linked by batons, their backs to a crowd of people five or six deep. police cars parked everywhere haphazardly with siren lights pulsing, two helicopters circling. there are men wearing badges on dog chains and ski masks pulled over their faces. we wonder why these men are masked – hiding their identity from whom? there are people leaning out of apartment windows. on the edge of this square is the teatro massimo, the largest opera house in europe, which was closed for 25 years because for ‘renovations,’ (read: the mafia wanted it closed). when it opened this year, people were ecstatic, seeing it as a symbol of the ebb of mafia power. people are framed in the massive windows of this theater, watching whatever is happenings. i think about whether mob movies imitate life or if life imitates mob movies. within the area that has been cordoned off are reporters with microphones and tv cameramen, all in a frenzy. at the center are three large blue buses. ellie and i bounce on one foot then the other, trying to see what is going on. the most unnerving part of all of this is the silence. despite all the chaos within the circle no one in the crowd says a word. ellie and i are whispering to each other and feel self-conscious about disturbing people, or being overheard. ellie asks a few nearby men what is going on. in response, we get stoicism, always evasiveness. finally, we see all of the tv cameras turn towards the door of one building. apparently, this is the carabinieri headquarters. one man, old, grizzled, swarthy with a sneer on his face and his head bowed, is escorted in handcuffs by three policeman out of the building and onto the bus. staggered over the next twenty minutes, ten more men, each in cuffs with three police escorts. similarly ugly, gruff-looking. these, we find out later, are palermo mafia bosses. if the rest of the scene feels cinematic, this part has been miscast. no sign of henry hill; no tony soprano, tony montana. these men don’t look charismatic. no new jersey sweatsuits, no flash here. they’re brutes, their features are dark, disfigured, but not in any remarkable way. they are pedestrian in their ugliness. they walk to the bus without grace, shlumpy men in cheap clothes. they could be drunks picked off the street. they are remarkable only in their non-descriptness, their lack of distinction. men in the crowd wave to the men in cuffs. very subtle, almost delicate waves. no more than lifting a half-limp hand in the air. the kind of gesture from bidders at an auction. this seems to be their way of quietly saluting these bosses – certain people are here to support them. at one point, a woman in a velour tracksuit comes up behind us, fights her way to the front and starts sobbing. a man in long hair, unshaven, comes out in cuffs and she screams to him. ‘hansel! hansel!’ she moves in this sort of jarring, exaggerated, overwrought way, but maybe it just seems this way against the backdrop of so many people standing like statues. she starts speaking to him in sicilian gesture language, even as he is being put on the bus. again, this feels too cinematic to be real. another fifteen men are escorted onto buses. with all of their police escorts, they fill three buses. finally, when the third bus pulls away, everyone recognizes that this procession, this ceremony – for this is ultimately what it feels like – has reached its conclusion. people button their jackets, shake hands with the people nearby and move about their day. within ten minutes, the square is deserted. we find out later that this transportation of prisoners is the result of an anti-mafia sting called project perseus. the men escorted out of the carabinieri station were representatives of the three main mafia families in sicily. the police had caught word that the families were trying to consolidate or organize a bloc in order to reassert themselves. the sting was preventative. we found out later that the first man who was led out, who had bowed his head to evade tv cameras, was one of the main bosses. he had hung himself by his belt in jail that night.
