Going Native

[The view I now have from the front door/main window of a studio I’ve rented for this month at Piazza Kalsa in the old part of Palermo. There’s a small homeless encampment just below and to the right of the cars and truck parked here: two or three men who appear to be part of the migration taking place from Sub-Saharan Africa. The Mediterranean coastline is only about another hundred yards in the same direction. In between is a renovated swath of public garden now lined with street-food vendors and young locals doing things vaguely athletic under perfect - and perfectly hot - Sicilian skies.]

For another three weeks, I expect to be where the photo above places me, in the venerable Kalsa neighborhood of Palermo, Sicily’s capital. Palermo also happens to be the home of the national archives for Sicily with its immense collection going back at least to the 14th century. While those Archives are a place of solemnity if also of bibliotechnical chaos, I can already tell that the piazza of my current apartment will be even noisier than was the one I stayed in last autumn. Ergo, later this morning I’ll go out and buy a small desk fan (ventilatore piccolo) to provide a white noise at night. As with most places across the Mediterranean region in year 2026 - over a quarter of the way through what some of us still call “the new century” - even such a modestly priced little apartment has a wall-mounted air conditioning unit. It blows too cold at night for me (odd reaction for an American?) despite efforts by the landlords to get it to function more moderately. I’ll plan to turn the unit off by around 10 pm (done with a key here) before opening my one large window and running the ventilatore instead.

[The Mediterranean coast not far from my summertime apartment: grasses have begun to dry up, as is typical of July, although there’s still lot of green, and the area is now well tended. At some distance looms one of the giant cruise ships that, even here in western Sicily, cannot be escaped. I wonder if any travelers with excellent vision can see the young Africans who have made it this far into the European Union but then must sleep rough next to an ancient wall located about 50 yards behind where I stood to take the photo.]

The unhoused young men who are living near me seem unlikely to have the option of getting even a tiny apartment, let alone their choice of nighttime white noises. One of them has a dog with him - typical of Palermo, and the dog does not appear to be ill-treated or malnourished, also the usual story here. Life for these guys is certainly difficult, probably very difficult by the standards of blog readers; but they do have a life, and one never knows what was going on back in their native countries. Did they run from the law? from war, addiction, or a form of physical abuse? We still prefer to tell an inspiring story about such migrants, that they are “out for a better life” or “only want a chance to work.” Those things may be very true, yet we should probably not guess or make too many presumptions. What we can say is that the housing crisis of the West can be found nearly everywhere that there’s money or economic development taking place. This writer is here in part due to that crisis, although the people I’ve met, the wonderful food, and those wonderfully chaotic archives are appealing as well.

In the age of the internet, it’s not difficult to keep up with various news organizations back in the USA even as their range of reporting can now of course feel quite limited. Getting a traffic report from I-495 is easier being sure of information about what’s going on with housing proposals for the millions like me who now find that they cannot afford to be “home” where home long was. Several of the friends I’ve made here in Sicily during the past three years are London-born, and they face an even grimmer prospect. Staying far away from Mayfair or Paddington is pretty much assured for nearly all of them. Some also face difficulty even in visiting the UK now due to status changes that resulted from Brexit.

[Modest London rowhouses, referred to as “terraced” by locals there, will now often go for well over one million pounds if in modernized condition. The one shown above is in Hackney, famous for its old taxicabs, and within a neighborhood that would have been described as lower-middle class two or three generations ago. The asking price for this nine-foot-wide gem is 1.3 million.]

I type this as the big new housing bill passed last month by Congress has become law in the US after a petulant President refused to sign it; yet he was also clever enough not to write Veto across it either. This issue is bigger even than his ego. What is an ordinary person to do? I’ll be thankful for my new white noise, the friends I’ve made here, and the superb food. The city government in Palermo assures that tap water here is safe to drink, yet nearly everyone uses bottled. Tonight I’ll have the chance to give one of those guys sleeping down below the wall a liter of acqua naturale and offer a buona notte greeting from an aging Americano who knows that he still has a few good things going. Such a bottle can be had for less than a quarter the price of London or Washington.