We arrived the day before the Mafia blew up Judge Falcone. And the Sicilians were telling us it was a joke, that there was no Mafia in Sicily. The next day they were all in shock and not laughing. We saw the signs of the Mafia, the rough looking guys who arrived with whores in tow. In one little town we visited the people ran away from us to hide. When we took the plane to Rome, there was a ‘don’ with his body guards. He told me to get up so he could see the view form my seat. I told him no… Glad to get out of that place. Do not forget Catania, a place which has been destroyed by the volcano Etna several times over the centuries; some streets are surrounded by walls of lava…
Not that Sicily has its charms. The people are the most varied I have seen anyplace; blue eyed blonds, swarthy Arab looking and black Africans. It might be explained because in Roman times it was inhabited by slaves, then later it was conquered by the Saracens then the Normands. At the cross roads of the Mediterranean it has seen everything. A Sicilian told me once that they were Africans who were ‘good swimmer’.
The countryside is spectacular; Taormina has been a wonderful vacation destination since Roman times. Syracuse used to be the most populated city in the Ancient world. And Agrigento is home to the valley of the temples, a dozen or so Greek and Roman temples like the one in the photo above. A dangerous beauty.
The crator marks the place Judge Falcone car occupied, before it was blown to smithereens.
“All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is, for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the enigmas of nirvana.”
“Cambiare tutto perché niente cambi.” "Change everything so that nothing changes."
"We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth."
