The Streets of Palermo

The first night in Palermo (Sicily), my colleagues send us a WhatsApp message to see if we want to join them for street food.  I'm not sure what this means, but I've heard that Sicilian food is delicious, and street food is cheap.  I want to go, but I'm tired, troppo stanca.  Daniel, Mary and Sebastian go.

Mary is proud of herself: she's eaten sausage which looked undercooked, so she didn't look at it as she ate it.  Sebastian loved the sausage, the grill, the eating outside.  The director tells Mary, "If you bring this guy fish you buy at the market, he'll cook it for you one night for dinner."

All week Mary tells me, "I want to get the fish."

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Friday morning, our last day in Palermo, the director calls me, "I'm going to get my fish.  Mary there?"

Mary's out playing freeze tag in Piazza Garibaldi with her siblings while Daniel finds a laundromat and I read student blogs.  I go with the director.  Twenty minutes later we repeat the ritual with Mary and Hannah.

The Sicilian man selling the fish talks to Mary, and the director tells her the various kinds of fish.  Mary winces as the man holds up the fish for her inspection.  I can see her cringe but not look away.  She gets one whole fish and one deboned, and the fish seller (fisherman?) throws in another (for free?).  He weighs them, and I pay.

Next stop: the cook.  We walk fifty feet, see the cook who grilled food two nights ago, and deliver our package of fish to him.  Now he has so many fish from SYA students that he needs to label each new bag of fish.  He labels Mary, "Famiglia."

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That evening we sit outside in the sort of piazza -- three faculty, Daniel and the kids, seven students -- at white plastic tables set up by the man who is grilling the students' chicken, Sebastian's sausage, the three fish Mary's selected, and the fish for other SYA folks.  Cars blare music, though not as loud as they do hours later when I'm trying to go to sleep (director: "I wondered about calling the polizia so they'd stop at midnight."  Italian colleague: "I was thinking that the only way to get that music off was going to be cultural: we needed some nonna to come out from her apartment and yell at them.  That's how it has to be done.")

Mary, Sebastian, and Hannah don't like fish.  But they've come for the Palermo experience (Connor is up in our hotel room and has texted us requesting pizza; last night we bought pizzas for 2.50 a pie.).  I've done the same.  Food and talking with people seem the biggest activities in Palermo.  Palermo has litter everywhere, overflowing trash, tall apartment buildings, a run-down feel.  There's food being sold in bars, but also in outdoor markets.  (When I read the student blogs, I am thrilled to hear that they love the lack of polish in Palermo and the in-your-faceness of life and people.  They could have gone to Turin, which, I've gathered from the blogs of the students who are there, is shiny and clean and modern and had an outstanding coffee museum, Lavazza Museum.

Two Italian boys come by with some SYA girls and get introduced to the director.  The day before, when students were heading to Solanto to see an archaeological site, they got on the train to Solunto by mistake, had to walk to Solanto, found the site closed, and instead spent the afternoon fishing with some Italian teenagers they met.  These boys are back to visit and hang out, and no matter how much the director insists, these boys, with poise and ease and politeness, do not sit down.

We pull out Mary's chedro to share with everyone.  It looks like a huge lemon -- think size of mini watermelon.  It's cut into slices, and we put Sicilian salt on it (from the salt museum in Trapani!), and share it with everyone.  We all eat the fish, even Mary and Sebastian.  It's delicious.

"C'mon, Ms. Keleher, you gotta eat a fish eye!  Try it!"

I don't usually give in to such dares.  But I'm in Palermo, eating fish and drinking wine on a busy street corner.

The eye goes down easily.