By Leanne Tory-Murphy April 7, 2011

Originally published at clpmag.org

A protester carries a sign depicting Moroccan immigrant Noureddine Adnane, who died in Palermo after lighting himself on fire in an act of defiance against the Italian police.

Photo: Leanne Tory-Murphy

Sicilians and North Africans protest the death of 27-year-old Moroccan immigrant Noureddine Adnane in Palermo, Italy.

Photo: Leanne Tory-Murphy

The sign reads “Solidarity With Noureddine: Liberty and Dignity For All.”

Photo: Leanne Tory-Murphy

PALERMO, Italy — I thought I had arrived in paradise when my train pulled in to Sicily. I was awestruck by the purple mountains and the sea of this volcanic island at sunrise. I came to Sicily to address a typical American identity crisis. This is the land that some of my ancestors called home, but the extent of my Italian identity is takeout pizza and sometimes moving my hands around a lot when I talk. I’ve never even seen the Godfather.

When people here ask me where I am from, I say New York. Inevitably, they ask me where my family is from, and I say Sicily. Without fail the response is, “Ah, so you are looking for your roots!” It’s kind of embarrassing. Is that why I am here? And what is a “root”? What does it mean to have roots?

Generations of American tourists have flocked to Sicily for similar reasons. But its central Mediterranean location — think of it as the rock being kicked by Italy’s “boot” — has made it a prime gateway to the European Union for a very different kind of traveler: North Africans fleeing poverty and, more recently, unrest in their home countries.

The small Sicilian island of Lampedusa lies just 70 miles from the coast of Tunisia and 120 miles south of the Sicilian mainland. According to the Guardian, since the ouster of Tunisian president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in mid-January, almost 22,000 Tunisians have boarded boats and made a run for Lampedusa — at times more than doubling the island’s resident population of 5,000.

The BBC reports that Lampedusa’ s only migrant holding center, reopened in response to the massive influx, is hosting 3,000 migrants in a space designed for 800. More sleep in makeshift shelters before they are sent to processing centers in Sicily and in mainland Italy. Many apply for political asylum, though few receive it.

Despite regime change, Tunisians are still seeking political stability and economic opportunity in Europe. What has changed is the nature of the Tunisian border. It was closely watched under the Ben-Ali regime — with financial support from the Italian government — but the new transitional government has lost control.

African migrants are arriving in a very different Italy than the one I’m visiting. I was welcomed with open arms. The border control officer at the Rome airport barely glanced at my passport. But almost all the Africans I saw while waiting for my luggage to roll down the belt had their bags searched. Many did not even wait to be specifically stopped. They wearily presented their papers and bags for inspection, seeming familiar with the routine, while European and American passport-holders walked right on by. Immigration is a hot-button issue here, and North Africans are frequently cast as potential terrorists by right-wing politicians angling for EU border protection funds.

That fear erupted here in Palermo, Sicily’s capital city, on Feb. 12.

Noureddine Adnane, a Moroccan immigrant, was 27 years old. He made his living as a street vendor, a common job for immigrants here. Adnane had a permit for his table, but two police officers confiscated the toys he was selling. When they refused to release his goods, Adnane went to a gas station and covered himself in gasoline. He threatened to kill himself in front of the officers who reportedly did nothing to stop him. Adnane then lit himself on fire in an act that may have referenced the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation is credited with setting off the recent Tunisian revolution.

Adnane was admitted to the hospital with burns covering 80 percent of his body. He died eight days later, leaving behind a wife and young daughter back in Morocco.

Adnane was one of Sicily’s 23,000 African immigrants, most of whom only stay here for a short time, working as street vendors or in the agricultural sector to earn enough money to move on to other parts of the European Union.

The day Adnane died, I joined a crowd of hundreds — Sicilians and North Africans — at a rally in his honor. The women in the crowd led an impassioned march down the commercial corridor of the crumbling and elegant historical center of Palermo.

“He was an honest man trying to eat honest bread,” said one young man wearing a red scarf printed with white letters reading “Tunisia.” Some protesters cried and others spoke in hushed tones. The atmosphere was heavy with grief and rage. Police were present but peaceful.

Lamia, a Tunisian woman who has lived in Sicily for more than 10 years, described the paradox of immigration in Italy: “It seems that the Italian government is in need of immigrant labor, and so, on one hand, there will be people willing to work and on the other hand, manifestations of intolerance.”

The debate is often framed as a culture war, one in which African immigrants refuse to assimilate, coming to Italy only to make money and commit crimes. These tensions may have increased with the influx of people fleeing unrest in North Africa, but Italian mistrust of new arrivals feels more permanent. Even the word used to describe non-European Union citizens — extracomunitari, or “outside the community” — seems to signify they will always be “the other.”

As I marched with the protesters in the falling dusk, my search for “roots” started to feel a little silly. The belief that I have more of a right to Italian identity than a person who has lived and worked in the country for years seemed absurd. As more undocumented second-generation African-Italians come of age, the state will be called upon to revise its immigration policy. Currently children of non-Italian descent born in the country are not entitled to citizenship and are expected to go “home” at age 18, even if they’ve never left Italy. Although many stay, they remain unable to secure legal work without papers.

I hope — perhaps naively — that the state can explore its identity crisis in a way that doesn’t penalize people for trying to make a better life for themselves. As for me, I don’t think I can find my roots in Sicily. My claim to bloodlines and my lust for takeout pizza just aren’t holding up. But my time here has helped me understand my family’s history of immigration — how hard it must have been to leave this sea and purple mountains. And it may help me understand debates in my own country a little more, as I depart Italy with a deeper empathy for those who have had to leave home to survive.

I don’t know what to do with beauty.

Even before my eyes it seems somehow not Real.

I am living on a small educational farm on the northern coast of Sicily.  The place is backset by mountains whose valleys contain goat neighs and ringing bells.  In the distance lay the serene blue of the sea.  Citrus trees dot the front yard, and the vegetables seem to grow themselves in dark moist soil.  Anytime I exert myself in work, even minimally, I am told to rest.  There is always tomorrow.

Border. Nicosia, Cyprus.

In Cyprus, an island divided by conquest and a U.N. secured “dead zone” running through the center of the capital city, the sky is blue, the palm trees sway, and the sun always seems to be shining.  Many social photographers have been criticized for aestheticizing violence.  What can one do in an image-based medium when things are not as they “seem” and what is perceptible is indeed pleasing to the eye?  The shrapnel in a young boys leg may be the color of sunset, but it is not the sunset.

Beauty permeates me with disquiet.  It makes me anxious, provokes a search for the violence that must (must!) be hiding in the shadows.  

I want to accept beauty on its own terms as a part of my reality.  I do not want that acceptance to be conflated with escapism.  How to reconcile the two? 

I suppose it is a love of beauty that inspires me to want to create more of it.  Violence is an interruption of beauty.  Beauty is not a cover-up for violence.  Sometimes the landscape appears more bleak than serene, hence the confusion.

Cappadocia, Turkey