Settembre 2013, on the way to Chios, Greece

The impression is that people here enjoy their time without hurry, even though modern‑day Smyrna is a city of three million souls.

Busy, buzzy, a bit grimy here and there, overheated, sweaty and oily just enough—but scented with sea, jasmine, roasted lamb, and spices. In short, very Palermo style, if you know what I mean.
My kind of town.
Truth be told, there was no real reason for this Turkish detour. I had never been to Izmir, and landing there only to leave again seemed like a waste. Besides, it’s a stone’s throw from Ephesus. Unless Obama’s missiles arrive first…

So, to cut it short: at landing it was me, Cruise, the god Pan, and Bashar al‑Assad with his spray cans… “England, through David Cameron, has already announced a defined military plan and that Thursday an attack could begin. Italy—who knows what it thinks (when does it ever!)—will wait for events. Russia insists on its vetoes in Assad’s favor, and Israel has no doubts: to any provocation, respond with fire.”

Hooray…
😑

I don’t think I had ever seen a tank in real life before, and it’s not a pleasant effect. A pity, because in Turkey—for reasons I can’t explain—I’ve always felt at home…

The photo above isn’t mine, anyway. My lovely shots got lost during one of the many moves from one domain (or webmaster) to another, so I had to recover a few from the web—otherwise, without photos, who would read you? This one below isn’t even Turkish; I grabbed it from a Cypriot newspaper in honor of the 59th anniversary of Cyprus’s declaration of independence from Britain.
Did you know? I didn’t.

The host and the guest

“Home” in Greek is σπίτι (spíti). And although the Greeks were (and still are) unbeatable in hospitality, the word itself comes from our Italian parts (I wonder what happened to all the rest…).

Guest instead comes from Latin: hospes, perhaps from hostis—stranger, foreigner, pilgrim—whose other derivations would take on a negative meaning, as in hostile.

In all Romance languages this curious ambivalence still exists, where “guest” means both sides of the coin—even if in modern Italian the emphasis seems to fall more on the one who receives hospitality than on the one who offers it.

But from this confusion we can draw a very clear suggestion: an invitation to observe this inclusive phenomenon, this solidarity, this ancient rite in its unity—especially in light of its ambiguous origin.

The guest is the stranger who, yes, could also be the enemy, but to whom—by sacred and tacit agreement—hospitality is granted. Thus hostility dissolves into hospitality: reciprocal exchange, atavistic and supreme value of civilization—an inviolable one. For, as the Greeks and Latins repeated, the guest knocking at our door might be Zeus or Jupiter in disguise.