Witnessing a Spectrum of Emotions in Sicily
If we aren’t capable of being hurt,
we aren’t capable of feeling joy.
- Madeleine L’Engle, 1918-2007
Noto, Sicily
While on the train platform in the town of Noto, in Sicily’s southeast, waiting to make the short journey back to our hotel in nearby Ortygia, our only companions were members a family camped at the station’s entrance. A skinny boy wheeling an empty baby carriage approached us, his palm outstretched and his eyes rolled back in their sockets, while his father tried to mind two dirty, barefoot little girls as he rinsed his hair at a water pump. Despite being written in a language I couldn’t read, the graffiti spoke volumes, and seemed a sad caption for a melancholy scene.
After being decimated in an earthquake in 1692, Noto was rebuilt almost entirely in the ornate baroque style. The grandiosity of its architecture seemed in forlorn contrast to the crumbling facades, built of soft local tufa stone, not meant to withstand the test of time. The resulting impression was one of ostentation gone eerily awry.
Back in Ortygia, a tiny island connected to the bigger city of Syracuse, we sat in the late afternoon sun at an outdoor café in a small square on the waterfront. Founded in 735 B.C. by Greek colonists, Siracusa was considered a prominent rival to Athens–Ortygia is its citta vecchia or “old city” and has many ancient ruins.
Ortygia is a setting in which numerous Greek myths played out. In one of these sacred stories, Zeus consorted with Leto before he married Hera, whose jealousy over the affair caused her to hunt Leto the world over. Continually on the move, Leto was unable to find a place where she could deliver the twins she carried, sired by Zeus. Lore says she finally was allowed to stop at Ortygia, where she gave birth to Artemis, the firstborn of her twins, and associated with the moon. Artemis then helped Leto across the sea to the island of Delos, where Leto gave birth to Apollo, the sun god.
As we enjoyed our tiny cups of strong espresso, we saw a bride and groom emerge through an ancient archway in the city’s walls, strolling toward us from their weekday wedding, hand-in-hand, beaming at each other. They floated alongside the waterfront in the protective bubble of the occasion’s intimacy; she held aloft the hem of her white gown, and he, in a stiff starched collar, proudly held his head high. Leaving the bistro, we dodged a gaggle of girls in school uniforms, clapping and singing loudly and joyously. From a small bridge, we watched exuberant thrashing and splashing by a squadron of water polo payers, who shouted and laughed while they competed.
Our stay coincided with the semi-autonomous state’s elections, and vigorous old-fashioned campaigning was in high gear leading up to citizens voting at the end of May. Throughout the region’s towns and cities, politicians patrolled the leaflet-littered streets, chatted up locals, and gave impassioned speeches from platforms in piazzas, as campaigners cruised in poster-plastered Fiats, bullhorns blaring. A front-running candidate for president was the sister of a popular judge murdered for his efforts to prosecute members of the Cosa Nostra. While she ultimately didn’t win, her ranking in the polls was evidence of meaningful change in Sicily’s long history of resigned acceptance of the Mafia.
I have always been intrigued by human behavior, and as a kid was fascinated with the idea that at the dawn of civilization, epic tales were told and re-told, in an attempt to explain man’s many moods, his nature–both bright and dark. In the span of a day, in a small corner of this sun-drenched isle, we saw the full spectrum of human emotions, and that, ultimately, pain can be the motivation to change, and to turn to the light.
http://www.thinksicily.com/guide-to-sicily/archaeological-sites-in-sicily/syracuse.aspx
