#sicilians

The area of Capaci Grande, locally pronounced “Gabadji el-Fougani”, was the historical home and maritime heart of Italian immigration to Sousse during the colonial period. It stretches slightly uphill toward Sidi Bou Jaafar beach, and took its name from the town of Capaci near Palermo, Sicily, from where the majority of the families who settled there originated.

Inhabited almost exclusively by Sicilian fishermen and Maltese sailors. Daily life there was marked by a lively atmosphere, with the rhythm of the narrow streets governed by the cycles of the sea: the return of boats, the repair of fishing nets, and the drying of fish under the sun on doorsteps.

Although the French colonial authorities mockingly nicknamed it “Brigand-Ville” (“Bandit Town”), the neighborhood was in reality a space of solidarity and integration. Sicilian immigrants lived side by side with the Tunisian Muslim population, sharing the same precarious economic conditions, which led to a unique cultural blending. One of its most notable expressions was the emergence of a hybrid language mixing Tunisian Arabic and the Sicilian dialect, which transformed the Italian name “Capaci” into its Arabicized form “Gabadji.”

After the Second World War and Tunisia’s independence, most of the Italian families left.

Note: The neighborhood began to be established between 1895 and 1905.

DH Lawrence

When he pushed his bush of black hair off his brow: When she lifted her mop from her eyes, and screwed it            in a knob behind            —O act of fearful temerity! When they felt their foreheads bare, naked to heaven,            their eyes revealed: When they left the light of heaven brandished like a knife at            their defenceless eyes And the sea like a blade at their face, Mediterranean savages: When they came out, face-revealed, under heaven, from            the shaggy undergrowth of their own hair For the first time, They saw tiny rose cyclamens between their toes, growing Where the slow toads sat brooding on the past.

Slow toads, and cyclamen leaves Stickily glistening with eternal shadow Keeping to earth. Cyclamen leaves Toad-filmy, earth-iridescent Beautiful Frost-filigreed Spumed with mud Snail-nacreous Low down.

The shaking aspect of the sea And man’s defenceless bare face And cyclamens putting their ears back.

Long, pensive, slim-muzzled greyhound buds Dreamy, not yet present, Drawn out of earth At his toes.

Dawn-rose Sub-delighted, stone engendered Cyclamens, young cyclamens Arching Waking, pricking their ears Like delicate very-young greyhound bitches Half-yawning at the open, inexperienced Vistas of day, Folding back their soundless petalled ears.

Greyhound bitches Bending their rosy muzzles pensive down, And breathing soft, unwilling to wake to the new day Yet sub-delighted.

Ah Mediterranean morning, when our world began! Far-off Mediterranean mornings, Pelasgic faces uncovered And unbudding cyclamens.

The hare suddenly goes uphill Laying back her long ears with unwinking bliss.

And up the pallid, sea-blenched Mediterranean stone-slopes Rose cyclamen, ecstatic fore-runner! Cyclamens, ruddy-muzzled cyclamens In little bunches like bunches of wild hares Muzzles together, ears-aprick

Whispering witchcraft Like women at a well, the dawn-fountain.

Greece, and the world’s morning While all the Parthenon marbles still fostered the roots of the cyclamen. Violets Pagan, rosy-muzzled violets Autumnal Dawn-pink, Dawn-pale Among squat toad-leaves sprinkling the unborn Erechtheion marbles.