Lalla Rocca

 

Evening; Erice, Sicily

 

After a hot day, a drifting evening mist envelops the mountain citadel of Erice with its small town of narrow cobbled streets.

 

As night approaches, lights begin to appear in the little windows of the squat grey stone houses. In the Street of the Merchants stands a larger house, built into the slope; you enter from the street, straight onto the first floor, above a basement kitchen.

Exquisitely tiled floors and archways lead you into small rooms, majles the Arabs call them; rooms with sofas, small stuffed leather pouffes, low mosaic tables.

 

These were the public rooms where guests were received, revived with dark black coffee after the climb up the pinnacle.

 

In the centre of the house is an open tiled courtyard with trees and shrubs in terracotta pots.

 

If you climb the marble staircase you come to other small rooms, one slightly larger than the others - these were the family rooms.

 

Another level again and you come to the bedrooms, one of which has a roof terrace looking down over the port of Trapani.

 

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Texte: alastair macleod
Bildmaterialien: alastair macleod
Lektorat: alastair macleod
Übersetzung: cover typeset in goodfish
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 09.12.2012
ISBN: 978-3-7309-0133-5

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Widmung:
“I have two ways of loving You; a selfish one and another way that is worthy of You. In my selfish love I remember You and You alone. In that other love You lift the veil and let me feast my eyes on Your Living Face” Rabi'a al-Adawiya