This post was inspired by a blogger whom I only know as "The Sicilian Housewife". I really recommend reading her blog as it has me laughing with every post. She recently posted about the concept of privacy and I have reblogged her post below - with her permission of course. But here is my story of privacy in Cianciana.
I have already blogged about my favourite restaurant in Cianciana, but it is not the only place to get delicious food when you don't want to cook. Even the fast food places make great food.
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| Ciancianese Fast Food Place |
I should clarify "fast food". The menu that sits in the window lists all kinds of wonderful and taste tempting delights:
- verdure grigliate (grilled vegies)
- insalata di polpo (octopus salad)
- insalata di mare (seafood salad)
- tabule' di cuscus freddo (cold couscous)
- pollo allo spiedo (grilled chicken)
- cotoletto alla Milanese (Milan-style cutlet)
- scaloppine ai funghi (mushroom scaloppini)
- arancini (Sicily's fast food gift from the gods)
But below the mouth-watering list it says: Ricorda questi piatti solo su ordinazione!! Remember, these dishes are by order only!
So, in other words, fast food in Cianciana means ordering it ahead of time and coming back later to pick it up. One of the dishes they offer is roasted chicken and chips but it is only available on Tuesdays and Fridays and only if you order the day before.
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| I met Maddelena (the proprietress of the fast food joint) while shopping for veggies) |
Nick and I decided that we would try the chicken and chips one Sunday. As directed by the sign, we ordered on Saturday. On Sunday, about 5pm (which is far too early for the 9pm dinner hour in Sicily) we dropped by the shop to see what time the chicken would be ready. The shop was not open yet, but as we stood outside discussing when we should come back, the neighbour came out on her balcony and shouted down to us in Sicilian, "Are you here for your chicken? Maddelena isn't open yet!" Nick called up, "Do you know when she is open? We just wanted to know when to come to pick up our chicken?" Thus began a long discussion across three balconies (the neighbours had come out to see what was going on) with both husbands and wives as to what would be the best time to return and pick up our chicken. Maddelena, who lived with her husband above the fast food shop, was out and therefore could not be consulted. After this prolonged and very loud discussion, it was decided that we should return at 8pm. Which we did. I will say that the chicken and chips (and everything else we picked up from her shop last summer) was delicious. Another big difference between North American fast food and Sicilian fast food.
But the story doesn't end there. The next day, we were heading out to get "il cafe'" at our favourite bar. We were stopped by our landlady who asked us how the chicken was. We were a bit bemused as she had not been part of the discussion the previous afternoon. We told her it was wonderful. As we started down the street, we were stopped by one of the ladies from the 'consultation'. "Come e' andata la cena di pollo?" she announced to the street. "How was your chicken dinner?" "Molto bene, grazie. Very good, thanks." Off we went towards the bar. On the way (it was only two blocks) we were stopped twice more and asked about our chicken and chips. Later, I told the story to the waitress in the Canadian Pizza restaurant (I am not joking, there truly is a Canadian Pizza restaurant in Cianciana). She snorted and replied, "Of course they asked you. There is nothing else to do here but gossip!" While I don't agree with her sentiment (we found lots to do), clearly gossip is an important part of daily life in Cianciana and privacy has an entirely different meaning there than it does in Canada.
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| Arancini - Mmmmmmmmmmmmm |
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| The Canadian Pizza Restaurant |
And now, I hope you enjoy this post by The Sicilan Housewife.
Yesterday,
someone in Belarus hacked into my Facebook account. What did the Slavonic sod
want? What did he find out about me?
I
have images of him in my head, in his standard-issue East European shell suit
trousers, toasting his friends with a bottle of Stolichnaya in one hand and a
samovar full of beetroot soup in the other, dolefully singing “Kalinka my
Love” together to celebrate the fact that they finally have the password to a
valid Amazon account, and can order their suicidally depressing 8,000-page Russian
novels online from someone else’s bank account.
Or
is he a pedophile who downloaded photos of all my friends’ kids? and now
knows where they live?
Of
course we don’t need to be hacked to have our privacy invaded. Facebook
does it for us. You keep saying “No Thanks” to Timeline and, next thing you
know, you have it anyway.
Suddenly
all your comments about your Mother-in-law’s fetish for sausages, and photos
documenting the time you accidentally emptied an entire ice-cream cornet down
your cleavage, are viewable by “public” instead of “friends only.” One of
your contacts comments on a photo you’ve posted, so now all their
friends can see it too.
You
decide to politely click “like” on a random article you read online, about how
to write a novel so bestselling it will leave Stephenie Meyer in the gutter,
and mysteriously there’s an announcement to all your Facebook contacts that
“The Sicilian Housewife likes The Twilight Saga” accompanied by a photo of a
topless, oiled Taylor Lautner smouldering at the camera (or possibly having
contact lens trouble, it’s hard to tell.) Not only this, but the author of the
article is now one of your “friends” and can read everything you have ever put
on Facebook.
Sicilians
have a totally different way of doing privacy. An excellent way. Read on for
instructions.
At
first sight they don’t understand privacy. The Italian language has no word for
it. In an Italian-English dictionary, you are offered words which mean intimacy,
isolation, or solitude as a translation for privacy. The Italian
solution to this linguistic shortfall is simply to use the English word,
pronounced very badly with an Italian accent: praaaivasee.
It
is a trendy buzz word in Sicily these days. This is probably because of La
Legge Sulla Privacy, or ‘The Law About Privacy,’ which is what the Italians
call their version of the Data Protection Act. Sicilians love this law because
it gives them a universal, infallible excuse for laziness and incompetence. “No
I can’t give you your blood test results because of the Legge sulla privacy.”
“No I can’t give you any money out of your bank account because of the Legge
sulla privacy.” “No I can’t move my car out of the way of your garage door
because of the Legge sulla privacy.”
One
of my neighbours, Mrs. Greenfingers, planted a row of luscious leafy
plants along her railings last summer, which created a bit of dappled shade and
reduced the x-ray view passers-by had into her living room by about ten
percent. Everyone in the street praised her on this wonderful idea for
obtaining a bit of privacy. Sorry, I mean praaaivasee.
My
Mother-in-law (rendered internationally famous by this very blog, under her
alias The Godmother) liked it more than anyone. Every time she came to visit
us, she would stop, bend over and peer through it, looking for a suitable hole
through which to check whether the neighbour was at home. The Godmother wanted
a good look at her privacy. Mrs. Greenfingers was usually in her garden,
peering back out.
If
not, The Godmother would push some leaves aside and shout out at the top of her
voice until she emerged, and responded to The Godmother’s friendly greetings
and enquiries into her private life. Indeed, the Godmother asked her for
gardening advice on cultivating such a succulent screen, as she had decided she
thought her newly installed privacy was so enviable they would like to have
some praaaaivaseee of her own. Don’t run away with the idea my mother-in-law is
a particularly prying person. Oh no, everybody peered through that plant
screen, all the time.
Last
time I was at The Godmother’s house, she carefully explained privacy to one of
her neighbours. Since privacy is so trendy, she was certainly not going to
pass up her chance to show off a bit.
“My
daughter-in-law is English, and they think privacy is very important,” she
boasted from her balcony, her tea-towel fluttering in the breeze. “They have a
terrace outside for doing barbecues, but there’s a solid wall between them and
the neighbours, so they can eat in privacy. That’s the new way of doing it,”
she explained, switching into Sicilian conspiratorially. “Capisci?”
She
pronounces capisci as capeesh, and it means “do you understand?”
Sicilians only use this word at the end of a detailed explanation of something
precious, a titbit of information for the select few. Getting “capeeshed” is a
priviledge that, I am proud to say, The Godmother has bestowed on me
several times.
The
next day, The Godmother turned up unexpectedly at my house with a special kind
of Sicilian sausage that is about three yards long and all coiled up into a
spiral. If you’ve ever been on one of those up-the-jungle holidays in Thailand
and tried to avoid malarial encephalitis by taking a rucksack full of moist
mosquito coils with you, you’ll be able to visualise it quite well. You usually
slap it onto a barbecue, but The Godmother did the other great Sicilian thing,
frying it in orange juice.
Since
the sausage tasted simply divine, the processed pork product of the gods, my
husband decided to make the neighbours try some. Sicilians do this whenever
they cook something that turns out particularly delicious. We happened to be up
on the roof terrace: you know, that one with solid walls that gives
us our wonderfully trendy privacy.
Hubby
hammered on The Wall of Privacy till he established, with disappointment, that
the immediate neighbours were out. Then he climbed up onto the wall, so he could
peer past the immediate neighbours’ roof terrace, and into the terrace
of the neighbours beyond them, Mr. and Mrs. Greenfingers, to find out if
they were at home.
I
should explain here that The Wall of Privacy has a slippery marble top, which
slopes downwards towards the outer wall of the house. After springing up onto
it, with his bum hovvering over a sheer drop of at least 30 feet, Hubby spotted
Mr. Greenfingers and started telling him in Sicilian about sausages. Actually,
he had to attract his attention by shouting rather loudly, at an estimated 700
decibels - another Sicilian cultural tradition. I’m pretty sure, by this
time, they even knew about that sausage as far away as Catania and maybe even
Naples.
Mr.
Greenfingers was so excited about tasting the porcine ambrosia that Hubby
grabbed some and climbed over The Wall of Privacy, the one that looks like a
chute made for whooshing you off the terrace and down 30 feet to a splattery
death, all the while holding the plate of sausage in the air like a silver
service waiter. His legs flailed over the precipice, his buttocks dared to defy
gravity, and finally he plopped to safety on the other side. He walked
across the immediate neighbour’s roof terrace, commenting that their new
barbecue looked nice, and handed some sausage to Mr. Greenfingers. Whilst he
ate it on the spot and broke into poetic eulogies about The Godmother’s
culinary talents, I was having a hyperventilation attack. I had almost
been widowed.
While
Hubby climbed back (my head was in my hands by now, I couldn’t look), The
Godmother and Mr. Greenfingers engaged in a chat about the wonders of
praaaaivaseee.
I
think all this makes it abundantly clear that Sicilians just don’t comprehend
privacy in the English sense of the word.
They
know how to keep secrets, though. One of the harshest criticisms a Sicilian can
make of anyone is “Da troppo confidenza!” This means, “He confides too much”,
or “He is too open”. You’re supposed to keep your personal stuff personal, no
blabbing. Capeesh?
I
hardly know a single Sicilian who uses their real name on Facebook or their
email address. They all invent an alias, so you can only identify them if
they have revealed it to you. Their profile photo is a wacky image of a cat or
some boobs or a big piece of cheese. They use Facebook to play games like
Farmerama or pass on silly jokes and cartoons. They never write about their
families or anything else personal.
The
neighbours can peer through the plants or look at their new barbecue all they
want. Online, they’re anonymous and untraceable.
Who
cares if the neighbours have climbed into their garden and seen their barbecue?
At least they know that no future employer will ever find out what they do when
they’re drunk, no hacker will ever use their bank account to order the complete
works of Tolstoy bound in de luxe leather, and no pedophile will ever see a
photo of their kids in their swimming trunks.
In
the modern world, isn’t that real privacy?
