Crossroads Of The Mediterranean

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Crossroads Of The Mediterranean - book excerpt

August 2018

Café Amadeo

Leaving my sociology students behind, I booked a flight to the island of my forefathers. I was cheered by them, envied by some, and I have to admit that I experienced a pre-trip sense of glee and anticipation as the day for departure arrived.

      The plan was to rent a car and circumnavigate the island, mostly sticking to the coastline cities that I had read about in the guidebooks. One side of my father’s family was from western Sicily, so I decided to begin my sabbatical there.

      And “sabbatical” it was. The trip was set for summer so I wouldn’t miss any classes, but to explain my extended absence to the university administration, I wrote an essay about roots and how I planned to combine research in my genealogy with a cultural study of the people of the land. I figured I could go back to the late-19th Century, when the movement by the Fasci Siciliani rose to counter the influence of the government. The fact that our family tree only went back this far was additional reason for me to begin there.

      Arriving in July in Palermo, I did as my plan called for. I rented a car and drove around the coast to Trapani, a city that shared my family’s roots with a place on the eastern shore, Siracusa, spelled Siracuse on many American maps. I assumed that since our surname was Siragusa – a rough transliteration of the city’s name – that might be an important place for me to go and pour through church records and official files to unearth more details on the generations of my family before their emigration to the United States.

      Since I intended a return to Trapani, I didn’t hang there very long and continued the drive around the coastline, arriving at Mazara del Vallo on the southern coast at about the right time to stop for the night. I settled into Hotel Grecu, a little hotel just off the main square and enjoyed a light supper at a nondescript café in the piazza before turning in for the night.

      In the morning, I went for a walk and found that I liked the little seaside city. It was large enough to have businesses, shops, schools, and lots of cafés and restaurants. I even walked by a public library that was large enough to exceed my expectations. But then, I thought, what expectations did I have?

      I decided to stay in Mazara del Vallo another night, take advantage of what the city offered and use it as the starting point for my sojourn on Sicily. I also figured that the library would be an asset, one that I would spend some time in throughout the afternoon and get my scholarly “feet wet” as they say.

      The walk did me good so, upon returning to the hotel, I retrieved my notebook and began scribbling thoughts. I had a laptop computer and knew that it would be better for collecting data, but I also knew that I could carry my notebook in my backpack and always be ready to capture some item of interest.

      In the morning, I was anxiouis to begin. Walking around the streets of the city to take in what it offered, I made small notes of government buildings, shrines to the Catholic saints, and churches that I intended to return to. Noon approached and the coffee and fruit of the morning breakfast left me hungry, so I ventured out and found a seat at the same café where I had supper the night before. The food was excellent, far better than the informal appearance of the establishment. I ordered frutta di mare, fruit of the sea, since Mazara – in fact all of Sicily – was known for seafood. The assortment of little fried fish arrived on a plate inscribed with “Café Tramonte” printed on its edge. Along with a glass of wine, some fresh bread, and olive oil for dipping, the meal was the perfect remedy for my hunger.

      I spent that first afternoon at the library that I had discovered on my morning walk. It was a beautiful old building that housed tens of thousands of books, most of them in Italian. More specifically, I must say that they were Florentine Italian, the official language of the country. I knew from my family stories that Sicilian was a bit different from mainland Italian. More than a dialect, but not quite a different language. I had learned the official Italian language but picked up numerous words and phrases in Sicilian from family gatherings. I was thankful that this library’s contents were not written in the local language, although there were some volumes that were clearly that, including a local version of the internationally famous Il Leopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

      The time spent in the library was very productive. I knew I wouldn’t uncover anything about my family there – unless by some wild chance someone in my genealogy had a claim to historical events – but I also knew that the books on these shelves would undoubtedly offer a broad and deep understanding of Sicilian history and culture. I relied on the librarian’s advice in finding the right books with which to begin, a tall, kindly gentlemen whose pale complexion suggested that he spent most of the sunny days indoors at his “high court” of learning. He pointed to two shelves with books that were written in English, but I soon discovered that these were mainly novels, and I was in search of history.

      When I explained this to him more carefully, spicing my request with what Sicilian jargon that I possessed, it was as if a light went on for him. Brightening up and raising his right index finger as if he was pointing to the light that had suddenly illuminated, he took my hand and guided me to another row of shelves. Pointing very deliberately, he said that these books were just what I was looking for.

      He was right. The shelves he had led me to were about Sicilian history and were written in Florentine Italian. Just what I had hoped for. I spent several hours piecing together a chronology of the island working backward from the present time to the 1800s. Upon completing my afternoon work, I stacked up the five books that I had pulled from the shelf. But when I stood to return them to their place, the librarian appeared at my elbow, smiling, and took the books from my hands.

      “I will do,” he said in accented English.

      I smiled back, thanked him, and left the library. It had been a fruitful day, with intermittent visits by my new patron who guided me toward books that fit the research I was doing. I had mentioned to him only that I was delving into Sicilian history – not my own family – and that my aim was to present the findings to my students back in America when the fall semester began. He smiled and seemed to understand most of what I was saying, and I concluded that his English was better than my Sicilian.

      That evening I found another place to eat, perched on the edge of the main piazza, and I enjoyed another wonderful meal. I wasn’t actually in the town of Marsala but I ventured to order the Vitello alla Marsala, assuming that this – one of my favorite dishes back home – should be an unmatched pleasure here in Sicily. I was right. It was an intensely flavorful dish, but not what I had come to expect when that recipe is made by an Italian-American in the States. The veal was very tender and the sauce was richer, a little sweeter than the American version. Wine came with the meal and although I didn’t immediately recognize the style, the owner of the little trattoria proudly showed me the bottle and proclaimed that Nero d’Avola was Sicily’s own hidden gem.

      After dinner and a walk around the piazza that seemed to draw dozens of locals for the evening passeggiata – meaning a walk around with friends and family – I retired to the hotel and fell fast asleep.

      By morning, I was refreshed and ready to go again, still considering my schedule and itinerary, and how long I should spend in Mazara del Vallo. I packed my notebook, pens, and water bottle and headed out.

      I hadn’t had any breakfast before leaving the hotel, which sported a nice little dining area with coffee, hard rolls, and fruit. I was regretting having passed up the breakfast, meager though it was, and then I spied a glass-walled café on the corner, Café Amadeo, and slipped inside to supply the nourishment that I had forsaken at the hotel.

      Here, I met Vito Trovato, a man of indecipherable age although clearly into his eighties or nineties. He walked with slightly stooped shoulders but without the aid of a cane. He had a full head of gray hair, deeply wrinkled cheeks, and hands veined and curved a bit, seemingly by arthritis. But his eyes shown brightly with a liveliness that was out of sync with the age of his body.

      Vito knew immediately who I was although I was certain that we had never met. He slipped into a corner table as if he owned it, signaled once for the barista to bring coffee, and then crooked his finger at me, inviting me to join him at his table.

      “You are Luca Siragusa,” he said as I approached, although I couldn’t understand how he knew that. He proceeded to question me, my plans for research, and my present knowledge of his “country,” Sicily. And then he launched into a long discussion of the history of the island, going much farther back than my departure point, into the thousands of years that passed and the changes that occurred on the island.

      He said that the librarian was a friend of his and that the two men had shared a dinner the night before, the librarian telling Vito of the stranger from the United States who was here, in Mazara del Vallo, to study the Sicilian people.

      It will take all the pages of an entire book to describe Vito Trovato with fairness. His depth of knowledge and intensity of feeling for the island of Sicily made an indelible impression on me. Over our many meetings, I became convined that he is the greatest historian and culturist of Sicily, and I spent several weeks in his company learning about the island, the people, the culture, and how the dozens of countries had invaded it, leveraged it for their own purposes, and subjugated the people and their industries to foreign purposes. The earliest times – from tens of thousands of years ago – Vito described almost as if he had lived them. I captured his comments, anecdotes, and explanations in my journal, but then had to buy extra copies of blank books to continue to absorb all that he was telling me. From ancient geologic eras that defined the Mediterranean basin by tectonic shifts, droughts, floods, and migration, to the political uprisings that refined and defined the Sicilian culture, Vito kept me rapt with his stories.

      My earliest conversations with him dealt with the thousands of years before the common era, from the Zanclean Flood in the Pliocene Era and the millennia of volcanic eruptions that built and then sculpted the collection of islands around Sicily, to the invasions of developing cultures who claimed the island as the way station and battleground for exploration of the region. These notes filled three volumes of my writing and I planned to explore those times in a separate volume about Sicily, treating the events and passage of time as the birth of the island.

      But I couldn’t tear myself from Vito and remained in Mazara del Vallo for the weeks that I had planned to spend touring the island. Instead of seeing Siracusa, Agrigento, Enna, and Cefalù, among the cities on my itinerary, I remained in Mazara del Vallo at this Café Amadeo, sipping espresso with Vito every morning and at times enjoying some wine with him at Trattoria Bettina, recording all that he was telling me about his island.

      When the time allotted for my trip was expiring, I pleaded that I should go back to the States but, by that time, my mentor had only reached the time of the Roman invasion of Sicily in the first century before Christ. I knew that my studies were only just beginning, and I knew that I would have to remain in Mazara del Vallo even longer. I calculated the beginning of the fall semester and decided that I could squeeze in another two to three weeks here.

      And, so, with Vito’s patient – and may I say, eager – acceptance, I stayed in Mazara del Vallo studying with him to learn about the Sicilian people from the time of the Romans to the present day.