Teresa has gone to buy bus tickets. Giuliana is glued to the showcase of a shop, admiring Gucci purses, as if she had never seen one before.
Teresa waves the tickets in the air from afar and hastens toward the bus that brakes at the stop, vomiting a human load to immediately swallow an even more substantial one.
«Maybe we could wait for the following», I say while the others are climbing in, but Giuliana freezes me with a "Come on Dad, let’s not waste time" that leaves no room to answers.
In my family I am the only one who faces Paris in a car. Teresa and our children are subway people. I need to know that my car is parked a few minutes from where I am, wherever I am, because when I have to go somewhere, be it at the hospital, home or any other place, I want to be immediately able to. I hate the wastes of time, the rarefied air of the underground tunnels, the idea of being quite a lot of meters under the ground, the expressionless heads suspended to flabby bodies hanging and jolting to the rhythm of the movements of the train. So the bath of sweaty and compressed flesh to which I am not quite accustomed bothers me. I feel the eyes of my children on me, I perceive a certain amusement in their looks. They don't ask me anything, while I am trying to find myself some shelter from the unknown and foul-smelling bodies that crowd this orange pipe, loaded well above its possibilities.
«Palermo is a city rich in monuments. The area in which we are now is the historical core, and it is all a sequence of artistic jewels. It’s interesting, isn’t it?» Teresa says casually, looking beyond the glass door that opens on the landscape of churches and monuments of the city centre.
«NoussommesParisiens!» Giuliana says, looking up with her neck stretched, her eyes half shut, then she deflates and smiles, and goes back to looking out.
«Sure, for you Parisians grandeur is the norm», Teresa mocks them.
«Mom, come on, Paris is a beautiful city, it is refined and elegant as few others, it fears no comparisons. And sure it doesn’t lack monuments. Nevertheless... this one doesn't seem bad at all to me.»
Cramped in the thin space between the ticket machine and the window, I look at the spellbound faces of a group of elderly American tourists, their ecstatic expressions, the satisfaction for a trip reserving them something good.
Farther on, I am captured by the look of a man my age, his forehead glued to the glass in a position of abandonment, of surrender. It doesn't seem that he’s looking at anything, nor acknowledging what is happening around him. He’s lost in who knows what thoughts, same as Marco. I wonder what man my child will be, self-confident and satisfied as I am now, or confused and depressed like that man down there. The answer, in both cases, scares me.
«Dad? Dad?» Giuliana saves me from my own thoughts. «Has it really changed so much from the past?»
«Quite a lot, so much so that even for me it is difficult to recognize some places. Everything is very... thought of. There is an obsessive care for details; nothing seems to have budded spontaneously in this deluxe living room», I remark laconically.
«This city is a showcase, by now. It’s normal that there is so much attention, the same one with which you assemble a good business card», Teresa says.
«The emirs don't make throwaway investments. They spent quite a lot of money to buy the whole island and naturally they wanted to earn from it», Marco says.
«I would say that they have succeeded. Thanks to their investments, they made the value of everything rise. There is an unbelievable wealth, once unthinkable», Teresa adds.
Via Maqueda is the crossroad of internationality, a multiethnic crowd methodically walks on the sidewalks. It’s hard to distinguish tourists from residents. Jewelleries follow one another at little distance, their windows overflowing with gold and precious stones; shiny silverware stands out on large candid draperies of embroidered flax. High fashion ateliers alternate to deluxe department stores. It seems that there is no room for normal standards of living.
People walk at sustained steps, like in the big European cities; even slowness, a typical philosophy of the southern lifestyle, maybe had to surrender its pace to the frantic rhythm of an international city. We stay in silence, our noses up to look, in the background, at the peaks of the ultramodern skyscrapers, competitions of power and wealth among emirs. Certainly this is not the first time we see any, but finding them here surprises both my wife and me. As she says, we still have to get used us to this Sicilian Dubai. What surprises me more than everything, however, is the wise miscellaneous of old and new, modernity and classicism melted in a game of approaches and contrasts with amazing results.
Giuliana and Marco would like to visit each of the department stores that we meet at each step. We end up finding a compromise; they will get off at the next stop, and from there they will go on alone. So we separate for a few hours, with the promise to meet again for supper. Teresa hands the map of the city to Giuliana and reminds her to keep the mobile phone at hand, to stay in contact. They greet while the bus moves on. Seeing them disappear among the crowd strikes Teresa dumb.
«Be calm», I tell her, «they are adults».
«In Paris they regularly go alone, but here...»
«But here it’s easier. Palermo might have changed, but it’s still smaller than the big Paris.»
Yet I too feel as if we let them go late at night in the heart of the jungle.
Some more stops later we decide to continue afoot too. Teresa makes her way moving in a slalom in the thick of backs and arms that interpose between us and the exit. Tightening my shoulders, I follow her, holding my breath.
We enter the pedestrian walk; we are in the heart of the city, an artistically rich zone where churches, ancient buildings and chapels follow one another in a quite small area. Wherever you look, you find charm and beauty. Once passed the Quattro Canti, we reach Piazza Pretoria, also known as Piazza della Vergogna – shame square – because of the marmoreal nude statues framing the monumental sixteenth-century fountain. Teresa, who loves to take pictures, seems to want to immortalize every detail of this part of the most authentic Palermo.
«Once that was the Town hall», I tell her when she points the lens to the southern slope of the square, where Palazzo delle Aquile stands.
«Today it is still the seat of the new city administration», she adds, consulting her inseparable guide.
A few more meters later, from the height of a terrace, two of the churches I remember more of Palermo dominate a second square. San Cataldo is a small cube overhung by three lined-up domes that shine red on the clear background of the sky. Cleaned from the dark stains of mould and smog, they seem to shine, and today, more than ever, they underline the familiarity of foreigners with our history. They furnished our city, leaving deep prints and suggestions, making our culture already soaked in orient. The last years are but yet another chapter of a novel that began many centuries ago.
On the same terrace, in a more rearward position, there is the Martorana, another monument symbol of the city. With Teresa’s arm around mine, we climb the narrow and steep stairs that lead to the two churches. From above, leaning on the iron parapet, with the side of San Giuseppe dei Teatini in front of us, we stop to refresh our faded memories.
«Human will is a powerful weapon, it can create beauty or destruction as it wishes. And this city with a thousand faces, marked by such a deep change, is an extraordinary example of it.»
These are the words I ear spontaneously in my mind, where prejudice is starting to surrender to evidence.
«I didn't expect to see again the historical monuments and discover that everything is intact, everything is still alive, in this city that I thought irremediably violated.»
«Palermo is an enchanting city», the tourist guide of S. Cataldo – a woman with unnaturally red hair in harmony with the stripes on white background of her elegant suit – tells me. She is distributing leaflets to the visitors and narrating the story of the church, shifting boldly through a wide range of languages.
«The history of Palermo», she continues, ?
?is that of a city that lived alternate events, moments of great shine alternated to dark periods, but that in these last years is living a new flourishing, exceeding every expectation. It is a very rich city, although many consider it enslaved to new masters. But there is a lot more dignity and respect in the current condition than we had when we felt free. This is the new Palermo».
We go up Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Here too there is a series of memories and new discoveries that accompany us up to the cathedral first, then to Palazzo dei Normanni.
«That woman was right», I tell Teresa, «everything is still here, it’s just that now things have the significance they deserve. It’s nice to see that the future we imagined difficult and declining is luxuriant instead. Sicily is better now, while Italy lost an immense wealth potential. But it’s sad for me to think that it had to happen this way».
We decide to dine in one of the characteristic restaurants of the historical centre. I convince Teresa to get a taxi to reach the meeting place with our children. In the car there is a sour odour, a mix of sweat and environment deodorant, that nauseates me a bit. The taxi driver is a brawny man, with plump cheeks and fingers made even more swollen by the heat. He seems stuck in his seat, I wonder how he can leave it at the end of his shift. He has a slight Palermitan inflection and a happy and contagious laughter; he talks ceaselessly and he immediately guesses that I have roots in Palermo province, but I don't dare ask him how he did, in spite of my great curiosity to know which indelible mark I unconsciously bring on me.
«How was it living as a Sicilian abroad? Not easy, I think. Here we suffered too, but at least we were home. Arabs helped us, I am thankful for what they did. Now there are rules for so many things that once were completely unruly. But don't delude yourself, they have their anarchies too; we are more alike than you can imagine.»
«But how do you feel? I mean, you are no longer Italian, and you are not Arabic by birth, like...» but he doesn't let me finish.
«Free, not free. This is one of those things I have never understood. Maybe I am a little ignorant, I never wanted school too much, but I never understood this thing about liberty, really I don't understand it at all. But why? who prevents me from living my life my way every day? Were we free with mafia? Were we free with a state that always made so many promises and never kept them? Freedom is a word that can mean everything and its opposite. For me in fact it doesn't mean anything at all.»
Teresa quickly locks her eyes with mine before plunging them beyond the dark glass of the car window. I know her and I know that she would like to start a weary debate, to jolt a way of thinking that she cannot bear. But she also knows that in two minutes we will reach our destination, a time too short to meaningfully affect such a rooted way of thinking.
On the horizon our children appear, revitalized in spite of the tiredness. Giuliana convulsively tells us about an artificial heaven of luxury in which they immersed. In the rare instants in which she stops to breath and drink a sip of water, her brother takes advantage to add something of his to the story. He seems relaxed, less dark than usual. We order spaghetti alla carbonara and eat at will, while Giuliana keeps listing all of the marvellous things around us.
Taking turns, Teresa and I refresh old memories of our existence in Palermo, making comparisons between the two faces of this same city that we end up calling "Palermo pre- and post-sale".