Dearest Grandmother

Carissima Nonna

I have visited you for the best part of 20 years: a few days at first; then a few months a couple of times; and now the months which are turning into years. Of course, you are far older than me, but I have been growing old with you as well.

I call you my dearest grandmother which is, of course, absurd: a community, let alone a food market in Palermo, cannot be my grandmother.

But perhaps you can be, in strange ways. So this is my love letter to you, my dearest grandmother, my beloved Vucciria.

The night of the feast of the Immaculate Virgin has just passed. Next week it is the feast of Santa Lucia. Befana is only weeks away. Still strange, more than three years on, living in a community where seasonality is cultural rather than secular: the last days have been amidst greetings of ‘Buona Madonna ’ or ‘Buona Immaculata ’. We hardly welcome each other in Australia with ‘Have a good Grand Final day!’ or ‘Have a good Melbourne Cup Day!’ or ‘Best wishes for Self Government Day!’ unless it is with mind to getting on the piss. And unless you count suburbs or footy clubs, we don’t have saints, let alone patron ones such as Palermo’s la santuzza, Rosalia.

I am far from turning religious, but it reminds me so much of times in Arnhem Land or the Victoria River Downs or the desert where the seasonality of ceremony is far stronger than secular markings of time. As I have been told the Australian painter Tony Tuckson, when talking of bark paintings, referred to the ‘inspirited’ nature of life – and it applies here in Palermo as much as it does on Aboriginal country. Same but different.

But, Nonna, it is the way of things here. I have a neighbourhood here in the Vucciria which is about people and community in a way that is so rare in Australia, my other home. That, too, is an ‘inspirited’ thing.

Relative strangers will greet each other on their way past. Kids run around in the back streets much as they would have done more than 1100 years ago when Arabs started the first markets here. Laughter and jokes – and arguments and gossip – echo from balcony to balcony up and down the alleyways. Everything is public for those who know – even secrets.

And of course you give me a hard time. Wherever I am, you are telling me ‘mangia! mangia! ’ – ‘eat! eat!’ – as food is placed in front of me in bustling market stalls. But that is your way, and the way of your people, and has been forever. You look after palermitani and stranieri – foreigners – alike, as you have done since ancient times.

The importance of family and kinship here is so strong. Where I live, down a crooked alleyway, a kid might yell out ‘Zia! ’, and seven or eight women will put their head out of the windows in response to their niece or nephew. Kids are named for their grandparents before anything else – with a plethora of nicknames to distinguish one from the other. At that level, when I think of you as a grandmother, it is of a relationship – grandparent and grandchild – that is said to be the strongest in every society, and the most nurturing in lots of ways. And you have taught me to nurture, and much about respect. And, of course, I have collected a few nicknames on the way.

I’ll tell you a story, Nonna, before I sign off. One Monday, a couple of months back, an old man I know (we have always had a couple of beers together before lunch time) was telling me that the next Wednesday was going to be his 50th wedding anniversary – he himself had just turned 78, as he told me a few weeks before. He didn’t have to tell me that, but he wanted me to know. On the Wednesday, I bought 12 red roses for his wife. He was as happy as I’ve seen him, and told me the next day his wife had placed the roses in a chapel at his church. It’s something I can’t imagine doing back home in the past, but perhaps I now can.

Sadly, the old man has left the fruit and vegetable stall he labored at for so many years: he injured his back only days after his anniversary, and is unlikely to return … the site of his stall now a lonely gap over the dark stone pavers of the Vucciria market. No one seems to know where he is. I miss him, Nonna, as I will miss you and everyone else when I have gone.

But as the old saying goes, quanno i balati ra Vuccirìa s’asciucanu … that won’t be any time soon.