Northern Italians often speak of Sicily as a Saracenic darkness — the place where Europe ends. The Arabic influence remains strongest in the Mafia-infiltrated west of the island, where the sirocco blows in hot from the deserts of North Africa. When the Arabs invaded Sicily in 831 they introduced mosques and pink-domed cupolas, as well as the sherbets and jasmine-perfumed ices for which Sicily is renowned. The word ‘Mafia’ is said to derive from the Arabic mahyas, meaning ‘aggressive boasting’: for almost three centuries, until the Norman Conquest began in 1061, Sicily was an Arabo-Islamic emirate. The other day in the Sicilian resort of Taormina I watched the Normans oust the Saracens in a puppet show designed for tourists: amid a clatter of marionette armour the paladins triumphed effortlessly.
I had come to Taormina to talk about the Italian writer-chemist Primo Levi, who was born in Turin 100 years ago this July.
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