How Sicily has celebrated its range by the centuries

Dust swirls in a quiet kasbah, stirred by the sirocco — the desert wind that carries gentle Saharan sand throughout the Mediterranean Sea, its purple grains falling in a blood rain. In the fortified central quarter, a shutter is brightly painted with the hamsa, the image of an open palm inset with a blue iris, believed throughout North Africa to discourage the evil eye. A girl in a slate-grey scarf and abaya robe-dress sweeps previous, providing a shy ‘salam’. The crimson crescent moon and star of the Tunisian flag flaps within the breeze above a powder-blue door, standing tantalisingly ajar.

It feels for all of the world that we’re in a North African medina, not the western Sicilian coastal city of Mazara del Vallo. But then, as native information Paolo Ayed is fast to remind me, “Sicily is the gate of Europe.” He gestures past the half-open door, the place girls stir vats of fish broth, greens and couscous — that Maghrebi staple that’s been absorbed, like a lot from throughout the ocean, into Sicilian tradition. “I’m half Sicilian and half Tunisian,” Paolo says, his eyes electric-blue, his face olive-skinned. “And the fragrance of our kitchens is the same.” His excursions are all in regards to the interaction between the Tunisian and Sicilian communities in his hometown.

Mazara del Vallo, 55 miles south west of Palermo, is house to Italy’s largest Tunisian neighborhood, which makes up round 4,000 of the city’s inhabitants of fifty,000. Most arrived after the Sixties, when a inhabitants increase prompted excessive unemployment in Tunisia, with an answer offered by labour shortages in Sicily’s fishing business. But this was simply the newest wave in a historical past of immigration from North Africa that goes again to the Ninth century CE, when a Tunisian-led military invaded Sicily, turning it into an Islamic emirate for the following 200 years. Mazara’s kasbah was constructed then, and it was later sacked by subsequent Christian rulers. Today, it’s been restored and is as soon as once more house to a majority Tunisian inhabitants.

The dialog round modern-day multiculturalism in Sicily is usually outlined by the island’s place on the vanguard of the trendy European migrant disaster, with many refugees from throughout Africa and past discovering their first landfall right here as a consequence of its place within the coronary heart of the Mediterranean. But immigration will not be a footnote to Sicilian historical past; it’s a part of the essence of an island formed by outsiders, from Phoenicians and Greeks to Vandals and Normans.

We stroll by the kasbah, the place Paolo grew up within the Nineteen Eighties. The partitions are embellished with vibrant ceramics depicting scenes from the Islamic conquest of Sicily, alongside the winged head of Medusa that adorns the Sicilian flag. We peer by the wood shutters of a squat constructing right into a brilliant white room, its flooring laid out with neat rows of prayer mats and its partitions adorned with Arabic calligraphy. This is Mazara’s fashionable mosque — the unique having been destroyed to make manner for the city’s cathedral. Today’s mosque sits side-by-side with the Church of San Francesco, a looming Baroque edifice of pale sandstone. “There aren’t many places where you can hear church bells and the call to prayer at the same time,” says Paolo, beaming. “Not competitors. Friends.”

I bid farewell to Paolo and climb into my rental automotive. I’m embarking on a highway journey to find extra about Sicily’s multicultural heritage, heading eastwards into the inside earlier than ending within the capital, Palermo, on the northwest coast, the place the island’s cultural patchwork is at its most vivid. It’s a heat, sunny June day, however Sicily is greener than one may anticipate for such a dry place, the place the mercury often rises to 35C in the summertime months. As the countryside flits previous my window, it appears lively: silvery olive groves shimmer like shoals of fish, and vineyards erupt in verdant terraces on the hillsides. This greenness is thanks largely to Sicily’s medieval Muslim rulers, who irrigated the island utilizing aquifers and underground channels known as qanats, remodeling its agricultural potential.

Just underneath an hour’s drive later, I attain Al Ciliegio, a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city of Salemi. Once used as a mafia hideaway, it was seized by the federal government within the early 2000s and is now a restaurant and agrotourism enterprise run by the San Vito Onlus Foundation, a neighborhood enterprise serving to to settle immigrants from North Africa. I’m ushered into the restaurant’s eating room, which overlooks its winery, and am seated at a communal desk with a dozen different diners.

A succession of plates is served that mirror the age-old multicultural influences on Sicilian delicacies, together with pasta alla norma, considered one of Sicily’s nationwide dishes, made with tomato, basil and aubergine, a vegetable delivered to the island by the conquering Islamic armies within the Ninth century. Next there’s couscous, ready with seafood within the Tunisian fashion, the blue crabs laid on prime of the piled grains as in the event that they’re crawling on dunes of sand — however given a Sicilian twist, with the addition of garlic, parsley and spicy peperoncino peppers.

After lunch, over cups of sweetened mint tea, I get speaking to Amna Said, a smiling girl sporting spherical glasses and a blue hijab, who’s been a daily customer since arriving in Sicily from Tunisia within the mid-2010s. “My husband would go away for three months at a time fishing, so I’d walk here to the foundation,” she tells me. “They helped me learn Italian and taught me to sew. It gave me another life.” This will not be a one-way road, nonetheless, however a dialogue. “We share our skills with our teachers, too — how we prepare our tea, how to cook baklava,” Amna says. “It goes both ways.”

The double-headed eagle

Later that day I start the drive north east, in direction of the Sicilian capital of Palermo. But first, I’m making a cease at probably the most distinctive cities on the island. From the skin, Piana degli Albanesi — an hour’s drive east of Salemi — seems like an ideal Italian scene: a medieval city of red-roofed buildings clustered beside a cerulean lake, fringed with forest and hemmed in by a hoop of mountains. But I’ve an uncanny feeling, as I wind alongside the mountain roads in direction of the city, that one thing’s completely different. The highway indicators have grown longer, and now function Balkan-sounding translations beneath the Italian names. Corleone turns into Kurjuni, Palermo turns into Palerma, and my vacation spot, Piana degli Albanesi, turns into Hora e Arbëreshëvet — which interprets, actually, to the City of the Albanians.

I pull up beside the city’s essential sq., the place the double-headed eagle flag of Albania flaps from balconies and large, vibrant murals are splashed on the facet of buildings, honouring the city’s cultural heritage. There’s a portray of a girl in conventional gown, a white shirt and a royal purple tunic, brocaded with gold.

Piana degli Albanesi was based within the late 1400s by Albanian Orthodox Christians, fleeing persecution by the Ottoman Empire of their homeland. The majority of the city’s 5,500 inhabitants right now are of Albanian descent, and converse the language I’d seen on the highway indicators — not fashionable Albanian however Arbëreshë, a diaspora dialect that’s much like the medieval language of the settlers, combining parts of Albanian and Ancient Greek. This contrasts with the remainder of the island, the place near 4 million individuals — greater than 70% of Sicily’s inhabitants — converse the Sicilian language, which is influenced by Arabic. The conventional Sicilian greeting ‘sabbinirica’, as an example, derives from the Arabic ‘salam alaikum’.

There are round 100,000 Arbëreshë scattered throughout Italy. Perhaps one third of that quantity dwell in Sicily, and Piana degli Albanesi has the island’s largest Arbëreshë neighborhood. There’s a saying in Sicily that illustrates its detachment from the mainland in issues of nationwide identification. “I’m Italian by birth,” you could hear someone say, “but Sicilian by the grace of God.” In Piana degli Albanesi, there’s one other layer. “We’re Arbëreshë first, then Sicilian, then Italian,” says dark-haired tour information Francesca Incao once I meet her within the city sq. later. She was born and raised in Piana degli Albanesi.

This city is known not only for its language, but in addition its meals. Classic native dishes that mirror the jap origins of the Arbëreshë embody cuccìa, a Byzantine-origin porridge of boiled wheatberries and sugar; and bukë, a spherical bread cooked in a tandoor oven. Still full from lunch, I’m undecided I can stretch to the native signature dish — bucatini pasta with salted sardines and the wild fennel that sways within the fields, making the air right here aromatic with anise all summer season. But I haven’t but had dessert, so I gladly settle for Francesca’s suggestion of a cannolo, the archetypal Sicilian pastry, in a city sq. cafe. The Albanian flag sways on a flagpole close by, above previous males taking part in dominoes within the shade of a aircraft tree.

The origins of cannoli, the worldwide icon of Sicilian delicacies, are disputed. Some say that Piana degli Albanesi is the house of the candy deal with. Yet some historians consider the roots of the dish return to the times of the Arab rulers, who introduced with them a penchant for pastries, candied fruit and pistachios. This is only one of a number of Sicilian meals influenced by migration from the Islamic world. Ice cream, as an example, arrived courtesy of Sicily’s Muslim rulers, who flavoured the snow of Mount Etna with sweetened fruit juice, mimicking the frozen sorbets of historical Persia. To today, caves known as neviere, designed for storing snow to make frozen desserts all year long, may be visited on Sicily’s excessive hills, comparable to Monte Lauro within the south east of the island.

My cannolo arrives, and I do a double take — it’s the scale of a kid’s arm. Francesca smiles and nods encouragingly, explaining that their nice dimension — in addition to the addition of wine to the pastry combine — are attribute of the native recipe. An earlier cautionary remark, made to me by the waiter at lunch, when the huge plates of couscous had been heaved onto the desk, echoes by my thoughts: “Sicilians will try to kill you with food.”

Born from music

Bidding farewell to Francesca and this Albanian exclave, I make the ultimate hour’s drive to Palermo, which has traded and hustled and sweated beside the Tyrrhenian Sea for greater than 2,700 years. The solar is starting to set as I wind by the streets of the Old Town, and the town is glowing like coal. As the warmth of the day fades, life begins to flood in.

As lately as a decade in the past, Palermo’s mafia exercise made the town so harmful after darkish that the streets had been largely abandoned by 8pm. Now, because of the work of anti-mafia former mayor Leoluca Orlando, it’s a a lot safer place, and the evenings are when the town feels at its most Italian. Walking by the streets of the Albergheria, the oldest district of the town centre, I’m quickly joined by neatly dressed {couples} on their passeggiata, that time-honoured Italian custom of dressing up and going for a night stroll. In the piazzas, youngsters kick footballs whereas sporting the black-and-pink of Palermo FC; the sound of music carries on the nice and cozy breeze from the open home windows of eating places and bars.

One such institution is Moltivolti, a restaurant, music venue and social enterprise in Albergheria devoted to cultural alternate. Wooden boards painted with waves swing on motors forwards and backwards from the ceiling, depicting the tough sea passage of migrant boats. An enormous map is pinned with purple threads, displaying patterns of human motion in direction of Sicily over the centuries. “Everything we do is geared towards fostering diversity,” says co-founder Giovanni Zinna, a gesticulatory man with glasses and a beard.

Since its opening in 2014, Moltivolti has turn out to be a hub for migrants from everywhere in the world, however notably from Senegal, Mali and Ghana. It works by serving to them settle, giving them jobs, serving their cuisines and taking part in their music within the restaurant. The place is packed tonight — a wholesome combination of locals and travellers — and on the menu is mafe, a Senegalese peanut and lamb stew that fills the air with its candy, earthy aroma.

On stage this night are the Doudou Group, a Senegalese-Sicilian four-piece band led by the charismatic singer-guitarist Doudou Diouf. Dressed in a striped, vibrant garment with a belt and headdress embellished with cowrie shells, Doudou barrels by an lively set of songs that mix the syncopated rhythms, bouncing basslines and slinky guitar patterns of Senegalese and Malian folks music. Much Messina beer is consumed by the gang, and shortly sufficient most of them are on their toes, Doudou dancing amongst them, an enormous grin on his face.

When the set finishes, I strike up a dialog with him on the bar. He tells me he initially got here to Sicily from Senegal 13 years in the past on tour, settling right here after falling in love with a girl within the crowd at considered one of his concert events in Catania. In addition to his work as a musician, he now runs Ciwara, one other Palermo restaurant that, like Moltivolti, helps migrants settle and discover work, and can also be a venue for African musicians. “We encountered some racial prejudice at first, but music and art bring people together,” he says. “When people share a stage, links are born — African-Sicilian relationships, marriages, new families born from the music.”

Culinary adventures

The subsequent morning, I’m feeling worse for put on, the revelry of Moltivolti transitioning right into a creeping hangover. I’m hoping it is going to be cured by the salty morsels on provide at La Vucciria, a historic Ninth-century market close by the place I’ve booked a road meals tour. “It’s only 10am,” I protest when tour information Cettina Spotto, an elegantly dressed Palermo native, approaches our desk with two big glasses of Grillo, the archetypal Sicilian white wine. “That’s why we need a little snack,” she says.

Cettina leads me across the small market sq., between tent-covered stalls with scorching steel grills. The snacks in query don’t instantly stoke my urge for food, although they show to be scrumptious. First up is pani câ meusa — cow spleen sandwich — a dish that originated with Palermo’s Jewish butchers round 1000 CE and is now a basic Palermo road meals. It doesn’t seem like a lot — slices of gray meat stuffed inside a sliced roll — however it’s wealthy, barely candy and fewer rubbery than I feared. Following that is stigghiola — grilled lamb’s intestines — that are chewier, however no much less scrumptious, and lent a herbiness by the addition of parsley, their fattiness reduce by by a squeeze of lemon. It’s an satisfying culinary journey, however I’m nonetheless relieved to complete on a extra acquainted observe: arancini, deep-fried rice balls whose crunchy shells collapse to unleash a flood of wealthy ragù and stringy mozzarella.

Arancini are one other dish believed to have its origins in Sicily’s Arab-ruled period, and one other instance of how the island’s multifaceted previous is written in its meals. The Phoenicians introduced the fig, the Spanish the prickly pear, the Greeks olives and wine — all now mainstays of Sicilian delicacies. “Sicily has one of the world’s first fusion cuisines,” says Cettina. “It’s reflected in the people, too. A lot of Sicilians are blonde with blue eyes, because of the Normans. I’m a little bit Jewish, a little bit Arab, a little bit Phoenician. And all Sicilian.”

We depart the market and stroll down the Cassaro, a protracted thoroughfare lined with cafes that is likely one of the oldest streets within the metropolis. We go road indicators in Hebrew and Arabic, in honour of the Muslims and Jews who had been as soon as the bulk inhabitants on this a part of the town. Palermo was house to 200 mosques, however these had been all destroyed after the Normans conquered the island within the eleventh century. The complete medieval Jewish inhabitants, in the meantime, was expelled by the Inquisition when Sicily was dominated by the Spanish in 1493.

We pause exterior Palermo’s palm-framed cathedral, maybe the town’s most opulent monument to Sicily’s previous. Formerly the location of a Byzantine basilica, after which a mosque, the cathedral was constructed by the Normans within the twelfth century, however utilizing native Arab builders and architectural strategies — a fusion fashion discovered throughout Sicily often known as Arab-Norman, that includes pointed arches, Islamic geometric patterns and honeycomb-like muqarnas vaults. There’s even a Qur’anic verse etched into one of many cathedral’s outer columns.

It’s a sense of co-option and adaptation, of cultures feeding and folding into each other over chapters of historical past, which one finds all through Sicily. “In many places, people say, ‘You’re different — go away!’” says Cettina. “In Sicily, we say, ‘You’re different. What can we learn from you?’”