Feasts of Internal Organs

Here’s a very belated and sort of abbreviated account of my Easter trip to Sicily last month.
Easter in Sicily was certainly an experience I will not forget. I was very lucky to get to experience Sicily within the context of a large and exuberantly welcoming Sicilian family who immediately opened themselves and their home up to me. It was a warm but easy sense of welcome, without any huge gestures or clear statements of ‘make yourself at home’, displayed simply by the way they picked me up at the airport, hustled me into the family car, and immediately starting talking about what we should have for dinner. Emanuela’s mother treated me as she treated her own kids, pushing me off to the bathroom to wash up when it was time for dinner, making sure I was dressed warmly enough to go out at night, and constantly fussing over me to be sure that I was eating enough.
Sicily amazed me with its beauty, its familiarity, and its chaos. Driving around the city with Emanuela, I was stunned by the amount of road rage and unbelievably crazy maneuvers that were executed by the tiny cars and motorbikes that sped and spun throughout the windy and disordered streets. On my first day there, Good Friday (Venerdi Santo), Emanuela and I got up early to take the bus to visit Palermo, about an hour from her hometown, Sciacca, a tiny city right on the coast. Emanuela had, in fact, told me that her home was on the water, but for some reason I hadn’t grasped the fact that it really was literally right on the ocean. When we pulled up to her house, which was perched on this little street on a hill leading down to the water and I saw the huge balcony on top that looked out over the sea, I exclaimed, ‘Ma, Emanuela, qui c’è il mare! C’è mare proprio qui!! But, the ocean is here, it’s really right here!’ She laughed, unable to understand why I was so amazed when she had already told me she lived on the water, something that to her was as normal as breathing or eating pasta every day. The bus ride to Palermo was an interesting introduction to Sicily. On the way to Palermo, the tubby bus driver started smoking a cigarette, opening the window just a little bit. I incredulously looked at Emanuela, asking if he was allowed to do that. She looked at me, shaking her head and putting her hand on my shoulder. ‘Ely, (my Italian nickname), ora siamo in Sicilia. Non è più come Toscana,’ Ely, now we’re in Sicily. It’s just not like Tuscany. That was an important lesson for me to learn right away. Every region of Italy is really so diverse, and you cannot travel around with the expectation of finding the same things in different areas. Eventually the driver got a phone call so he rolled up the window so he could hear better and, holding the phone between his shoulder and his neck, he steered with one hand while puffing away with the other.
We spent the entire day touring around Palermo. Rather than explaining everything we did, I’ll let the pictures do the documentation. But touring with Emanuela was certainly an interesting way to see the city. She knew her way around pretty well, and she also called her mom and dad about every 20 minutes (and they called us every 10 minutes, so we were on the phone with them practically all day) to tell them where we were and to see where we should go next. She took me for lunch to Piazza San Francesco where there is a place famous for making its specialty- a juicy and delicious sandwich made with cow spleen. They basically put these big slices of roasted spleen on a fresh and fluffy roll. Then you can either squeeze lemon over the top or order it with a few generous globs of milky Sicilian ricotta (I opted for the ricotta). I was extremely hesitant to order the innards sandwich, but Emy told me that I couldn’t come to Palermo and not try it. I try hard when travelling to at least taste everything, no matter how nauseous and disgusted it makes me feel (when I read the menu describing the sandwich that was very roughly translated into English and it said ‘cow spleen sandwich with lard’ I almost couldn’t bring myself to do it). It took me awhile to get up the courage to take the first bite, but after I did, I actually liked it. It was cheesy and juicy and had a very rich flavor. I was able to enjoy it as long as I didn’t think about what was actually inside of it.
On Saturday Emy’s mom took us to Agrigento, a town about an hour away from Sciacca. We spent the morning touring through the Valle dei Templi, the Valley of Temples, an archaeological site with the remains of seven Greek Doric style temples. We then drove back along the coast to Sciacca, taking a little time to stop at an overlook with an amazing view of the cliffs and water. I met and spent time with so many of Emanuela’s friends and family throughout the visit. Everyone was very excited and curious to meet the ‘American girl’, and they were especially excited to have me try all kinds of the special food they made. At every house we went to, they brought out continuous trays of food. In Sicily, they are obsessed with the fact that Sicily has the best food in the world, and whenever I would taste something for the first time all of the eyes in the room would be on me, waiting to see if I liked it, waiting to enjoy my reaction. So it was a fun but entirely overwhelming time.
It was really a challenge for me to understand the language. If they spoke in the local dialect, I could barely even understand a word. But even if they spoke in a more standard Italian, the different accent, cadence, and sentence structure made it difficult for me to follow conversations. On top of all of that, most often I was surrounded by huge numbers of people all talking and yelling and laughing, and in order to understand I had to constantly focus really hard, which made socializing highly exhausting. But I was able to communicate without too much trouble and I really enjoyed getting to meet so many people. The worst was that one of Emanuela’s friends continuously talked to me like a child. When the three of us were hanging out, she would turn to me and repeat everything in an extremely loud and slow voice, moving her lips in a really exaggerated motion and pausing excessively between sentences. Emanuela kept telling her that she could talk to me like normal person, that I normally understood everything but that if I didn’t, I would just ask her. Instead, she often would turn to Emanuela as though I weren’t there and say ‘Will she understand if I say _____?’, and then I would just calmly answer her and she would look surprised. I wasn’t too bothered by it until I heard her talk to her demented grandmother who was wandering the house in a pink bathrobe in the same way she spoke to me.
On my last day in Sciacca we went to this place right outside the city called the Castello Incantato, the Enchanted Castle. It was the house of Filippo Bentivegna, a Sicilian artist. While they don’t know exactly what happened, he supposedly moved to Brooklyn where, after falling in love, he went crazy. Some think that the woman he was in love with was actually involved with a Mafia boss and that as a result Bentivenga got hit in the head. In any case, he moved back to Sciacca where he lived in this house, excavating and carving hundreds of faces in the rocks around the area. You can now walk through and see his house and all of the faces that he carved. Apparently he used to sit among them and have long conversations. It was really eerie.
I should write an entire entry just on the food that I ate while I was in Sicily. I cannot describe how wonderful all of the food was. Every morning I would wake up to fresh-squeezed orange juice, bread, and home-made jams and honey. Then they made dish after dish of seafood, eggplant parmesan, so many kinds of pasta, the juiciest oranges I have ever eaten, fresh ricotta with eggplant, the thick pizza with all kinds of toppings, enormous and creamy cannoli, this delicious Sicilian pastry called cassata….it just went on and on. I had to make the seatbelt on the plane back to Siena bigger than it was when I went.

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