Mission to Palermo

"Nine out of ten people here are jerks."

Such is the sanitized translation of what the cab driver said as he took us to the train station in Palermo. Himself Sicilian, his actual comment was more colorful, related as it was to the human anatomy.

“See what I mean,” he said with resignation as he blew the horn at a driver blocking a long line of waiting traffic.

“Nine out of ten.”

Our sojourn from Milan to Palermo was necessitated by yet another a crucial document in a mountain of forms, papers and seals I need to get married, help start a small company in Italy and actually do the work. Palermo was the only U.S. consular office the country that could get me in right away.

I got the document as planned, so it was a success. An added bonus was the string of characters we encountered from the moment stepped off the overnight ferry from Naples. I wouldn’t call them jerks, but I would describe some as odd. It was if we were sometimes actors in an absurdist play.

The first was an elderly gentleman who wanted to provide taxi services. When my fiancée Mariella told him we wanted to go to the U.S. Consulate, he replied with an address different than the one given earlier by the consulate itself.

As we mulled the meaning of that, another man appeared.

He would, he said, get us there. We were on a very tight schedule – the consular office is only open in the morning, and its document must be in turn certified by the local Italian registrar – so we threw our lot in with him.

“That man is demented,” he said of the first self-styled taxi driver. “He has plenty of money, yet comes down here every day to get people. But he doesn’t know where places are – his mind is gone.”

 “I get in fights with him.”

I pictured us being driven around the ancient city of Palermo by a well-meaning local suffering from senile dementia as precious time ticked away.

The second driver showed no outward signs of dementia, but he was no real taxi driver either. After stops for directions and changes in course, indeed he got us there. We were actually 30 minutes early. It was the entry to an apartment/office building with the American and Italian flags discretely flying from a second-floor balcony.

We were immediately approached by two Italian soldiers in camouflage uniforms, bullet-proof vests and pistols on their hips. An armored army vehicle was parked nearby – this far from discrete – as they manned their post.

I showed my passport and the first nodded, signaling all was well. I then noticed he could be a surpassingly handsome man, though am happy to admit I am an imperfect judge of that. Mariella later noted “he is a very good-looking Italian guy”. With just bits of grey in his jet-black hair, swarthy complexion and piercing eyes, he appeared the noble good guy straight from Hollywood central casting. There really is something striking about a handsome warrior.

Then a pot-bellied fellow in a too-tight t-shirt began shouting at me from across the street. He was, it seems, telling me where to stand so I don’t get water dripped on my head from the drainpipe above. He then went back to his usual activity of telling people where to park along the curb in this seemingly quiet neighborhood. I don’t know if he was self-appointed or not. Maybe the curbs and sidewalks really are under his official purview.

And all the while a silent man in aviator sunglasses standing nearby would get a phone call and write something on a piece of paper pasted to the doorframe at the entrance to the building.

The consulate itself was the most human I have encountered in my long years of residency overseas. Many consular officials have a well-deserved reputation for arrogance bordering on hubris. The guy from Wichita is suddenly a baron in Barcelona.

But not so in Palermo. It is no doubt a somewhat dangerous posting with floods of immigrants arriving from North Africa to a city rightly infamous as a birthplace the most brutal Italian mafia on earth, but the consul seemed relaxed and helpful. And did it with an authentic Brooklyn accent. I didn’t notice the paranoia that percolates through the air in many U.S. embassies and consulates.

Mission completed, we then had to go to the local government office and get yet another stamp – to certify the consul’s signature was genuine. The office is actually located within the fortified walls of an ancient church. Access is through an archway complete with a wrought-iron grate that could easily pass as a mediaeval gateway. And perhaps it actually was at one time.

Inside, following hallways with occasional anti-mafia posters on the walls, we found the office. A gruff fellow inside wearing a too-tight sports shirt that stretched across his pot belly – it is something of the fashion look of the city – took the document and told us to come back at 11 am.

We then returned and were handed the precious double or triple-stamped, supremely official document, which I immediately placed in a plastic sleeve. The lady who dispensed it smiled kindly as she handed it to me. She had previously promised Mariella by telephone that she would open the office in the afternoon if need be to process my paperwork. You can’t really ask for more than that from a bureaucrat.

Unlike some countries where I have lived, it’s clear that Italians have a genuine affinity for Americans. Perhaps it’s the shared experience of all of the Petrillos and Pettruciones  that went before and did good in the once-Land of Opportunity. When you really take a look at it, there are so very many Americans of Italian descent who are prominent in the full range of professions, and millions of others who simply made a good productive life.

Mission to Palermo, Part II