By Salvatore Battaglia
U scirocco
Strange the taste of this land – I feel my heart beating – The only thought
Of this pain… – Chian chian – Scinni Scinni – Ghiove…
This wretched wind – Screams of pain… on the ravaged – sweaty earth
china i sango – christians beaten – and then scanned… all slaughtered
bow down the grudges – revenge – without a peace… – even the wind leaves us
sturduti – ‘na vote ni vasa – and ‘na vote ni duna la murti… (Giuseppe Bellanca).
It was the year 1980, it was our first holiday in the new family summer residence a few meters from the sea and with us it had arrived. The “Ventu di menzujornu” when it arrives in Sicily envelops it, taking possession of the very lives of us Sicilians: after the first day it began to confuse us, to alienate us; on the third day it made us lose our will and feelings.
They were the “three days of the Sirocco” they were days of penance and upheaval, of illness yes!
The only known solution is absolute immobility! Immobility waiting for nightfall, welcomed even in its warm humidity as a small rebirth, a return to life… nights that – when fans and air conditioning were luxuries for the few – were to be spent on a deckchair open on the balcony, or on mattresses spread out on the floor in the coolest part of the house. On sirocco days you would hear people say when you spent the summer in the city… “lucky the lucky one who has the sea within reach, who could say: tonight you’re going to sleep on the beach”.
On the sirocco days there were no commitments to make or obligations to respect, not even those due to profession or kinship. Everything had to stop, everyone had the moral obligation not to move too much so as not to move ventu cauru; lives destined to wait, united in the pity of the condition of “sick”. People, things, animals: in those days there is mutual understanding and pity.
The Sirocco was not a wind for us Sicilians, but rather it was a mysterious entity, it was said that it was loaded with heat and sand in the African desert … the doubt is that it was born directly inside our volcanoes, among the boiling lava. The Sirocco reminded us that life can be difficult, that in the face of divine will there is “no semu nenti”.
Even things were sweating, as much as people, and the curtains at the entrance to the old bars – with their long plastic filaments – seemed to become octopus suckers. Speaking became an unspeakable effort, strangely the word seemed to weigh more than the gestures… perhaps due to the emission of hot breath, or due to the impossibility and effort that even formulating a thought required in those days. During those three days she gesticulated slowly, with movements of the eyes above all, with small and measured nods of the eyebrows or fingers; this meant that our speeches became almost incomprehensible to a non-Sicilian… gestures that we keep hidden in our DNA, assimilated over the millennia, used in ancient times to not make ourselves understood by the rulers of the day (but probably sometimes also to make ourselves understood), communication which was instinctively useful precisely in the days of the Scirocco…
The Sirocco arrived like a great “ciatu cauru chi n’arrivava ncoddu”, humid and suffocating… Days when you gorged on lemon granitas and salt lemonades late at night, when wandering like a zombie you found those open kiosks that seemed like the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
So this writing of mine served as a warning to all those travelers who in that distant period found themselves in Sicily in the fateful “three days of the Scirocco”… they had to be merciful, they had to have no demands, they had to not take it badly if they saw the usual hospitality and availability of us Sicilians… they had to understand and welcome those three days as experience and teaching, which would always come in handy in the adversities of life.
Today, as then, the warm Sirocco wind comes to visit me in my beloved seaside residence… but air conditioning is now part of us… and even if its name “Fujitsu” is not exactly of mythological derivation, it still manages to make me dream of good worlds unknown to most…
