[ 18:35 friday 28 september – scauri, isola di pantelleria ]

a departure from the usual commentary to bring you a rough translation of an article from tuesday’s edition of “il manifesto”, italy’s rather remarkable mass-circulation communist newspaper. if anyone can verify whether the alleged links between the bush and bin laden families are genuine,please let me know.

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Bush and Bin Laden, Business Partners and Blood Brothers (the never-ending saga of relations between two families in which the Bin Ladens are to lose)

That old pirate Prescott Bush would certainly have been pleased by the extent to which his descendents have inherited his spirit. He who in 1918 raided the Apache cemetary to seize Geronimo’s skull as a trophy for his student society, the Skull and Bones. He who in the 1930s and early 40s trafficked with the Luftwaffe until three companies of which he was a major shareholder were sanctioned for violation of the Trading with the Enemy act. He who dined daily with Allen and Foster Dulles (head of the CIA at the time of JFK’s assasination) and who called upon the head of the Apache Nation for a ceremony to return Geronimo’s skull, which ended badly when he tried to hand over a different skull and deeply offended the Apache chief.

He was certainly happy with his first-born George Herbert, an oil man with little luck but as an agent of the CIA successful at climbing the greasy pole (he was nominated Director in 1976) despite the inglorious result of the Bay of Bigs landing in Cuba of which he was co-ordinator. He showed his Texan roots in oil and family, naming three ships that would make the landing Houston, Zapata (his first ill-fated oil company) and Barbara (his wife). He must have reflected on the strange liason between his son in the 1960s with an Arab constructor who from time to time came to Texas seeking to introduce himself into the local high society. But this Mohammad Bin Laden didn’t last long: falling with his aeroplane whilst crossing the skies above the oil wells that were giving him so little satisfaction. It was 1968 and the world was thinking of other things.

George W must initially have caused consternation. He was a donkey at school (averaging Cs, a whisker away from being kept down a year), he came last in the admission exam to enter the Air Force (just in time to avoid Vietnam), he was an assiduous companion of bottles of bourbon and ski-slopes of cocaine. But in the end even he launched himself into the oil business. In the mid 70s he founded Arbusto (“Bush” in Spanish) Energy, alongside business partners drawn from his Father’s friends (the CIA has many friends). His friend from school and military, James Bath, procured invesments on behalf of Khaled Bin Mafouz and Salem Bin Laden, eldest son of Mohammad and new head of the family. Mafouz was a notable figure. He was banker for the Saudi royal family and happy husband of a sister of Salem and Osama, head of Relief and Blessed Relief, the two Arab NGOs accused of being a cover for Osama’s organisation.

George was unlucky in business. Arbusto failed and became Bush Exploration then Spectrum 7. Inevitably it too went bankrupt. But Salem continued to support him generously and success seemed to smile upon him when Harken Energy bought out Spectrum paying its shareholders $600,000, supplemented by a consultancy contract worth $120,000 a year. In short he ended up with $1m in his pocket whilst Harken lost several. Then he won an offshore oil exploration contract in Bahrain, beating Amoco and Esso. It’s 1991, the Gulf War is about to explode, Daddy Bush is President and a local sheik Khalifa prefers not to take risks.

After all they’re old family friends. Khalifa, Bin Mafouz and Salem Bin Laden were on the board of BCCI when it was transferring immense sums of money for the Iran Contra affair. At the end of 1980 the Republicans had secretly met in Paris with moderate supporters of Khomeini to stall the release of American hostages in Tehran and thus screw up Jimmy Carter’s re-election hopes. Daddy George reached that summit at speed on board Salem Bin Laden’s jet.

George W is unlucky with his business partners. On the same jet in 1988 Salem meets his death (even he) whilst he crosses the sky over the oil wells of Texas. To many this seemed like an excessive co-incidence but the investigation was carefully handled. The conclusions, indeed, were never made public. In the meantime another protagonist from the Paris meeting, Amiram Nir (an agent of Mossad) dies in an air accident but no suspicions are raised: he crashes in Mexico, not in Texas.

Bad luck dogs even the journalists who concern themselves with Bush. Danny Casolaro was writing a book (“Untangling the Octopus”) picking apart the network of large and small scandals surrounding the Paternal Presidency. Before finishing it, though, he decides to commit suicide “like an imbecile”, as reported by Steve Mizrach. The same fate befalls James H Hatfield, 43 years old, who was able to publish “A Fortunate Son: George W Bush and the Making of an American President”. An unauthorised biography which in 1999 revealed how George had covered up his cocaine habit. By the law of poetic retribution he was found dead from an overdose in a hotel in Springdale, Arkansas on the 18th of July this year.

Now it’s Osama’s turn, of course. Only this time it’s not a business affair but a CIA operation. Maybe his other 52 brothers will soon have something to object to. But, as Prescott would say, in a World War there’s plenty of room to resolve disputes between old business partners.
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(translation by SNERO)

: cH

[ 00:19 sunday 16 september – pietro novelli, from trapani to pantelleria ]

the afterdeck of a sturdy little ship. a windy night. an agitated sea. twenty minutes since we cast off from trapani at sicily’s western tip. the voyage to pantelleria usually five and a half hours. tonight perhaps a little longer.

the maestrale wind arrives, shifting gradually through the afternoon from north to north-west, strengthening a little. there was surf at capaci. gabriele and i were almost the only people in the water, plunging ourselves into the toiling spume.

for tonight’s passage i’ve taken a berth in one of the ship’s 18 tiny cabins. i adore sleeping in a vessel under way, preferably in a slightly lumpy sea.

sebastian and karen will have arrived on the island by air this afternoon. i’m looking forward to seeing them both again. sebastian is, of course, ecstatic at the prospect of meeting me at the port at quarter to six in the morning.

[ 18:50 tuesday 18 september – scauri, isola di pantelleria ]

impressions from two days. bouncing a fiat panda along miles of steep dirt track. neat terraces of vines, olives, capers, palm-nuts, squashes and figs cramming every conceivable inch of mountain, plain and cliff alike. swimming in perfectly clear water around lava outcrops. hitching a lift across the island with two non-english-speaking lads from trapini. sinking into three feet of soft mud in a wide turquoise crater-lake surrounded by sulphurous hot springs. landscapes peopled by squat tufa-built dwellings with inward-sloping walls and gently domed roofs. the chatter of the maestrale winds in the grass, delivering fresher air from france, switzerland, the alps. a house in the middle of a farm by the sea. extraordinary tranquility. being once again on an island with karen and sebastian.

[ 10:37 thursday 20 september ]

overnight the wind backs round to the south and drops to a whisper. this is the scirocco, bathing the island in hot, dry air from north africa.

: cH

[ 19:42 tuesday 11 september – ortegia, siracusa, sicilia ]

a table in a small bar in this unbelievably lovely town. a tv brings apocolyptic images from new york, the volume turned up high. the other three people don’t look like locals.

something appalling has happened but it feels distant and i am reluctant to know the details. i heard the news around half past four from a friend on stromboli. dad called a little later and craig phoned a few minutes ago.

the only people who will benefit from this are those who seek to augment the powers of the police, the military, the intelligence services. those whose goal is total surveillance of society. those who believe that the liberty of individuals is less important than the security of political and commercial establishments. those whose vision of society is one in which everyone experiences fear, all the time.

i am sad this is what came into my head, rather than sympathy for those who died, their families, their friends. tens of thousands of people will have been directly affected by this tragedy. but i fear that tens of millions will be oppressed by the responses which are to come.

the tv replays the collapsing tower, with a big caption: ATTACCO AGLI STATI UNITI. then we are shown the aeroplane flying into the tower and exploding. current affairs producers dream about footage like this. i feel sick.

pictures of jubilation in an islamic community somewhere. our fury as an audience must have a target, there must always be an enemy. the name of osama bin laden is uttered, a talisman for everything we fear in the world.

[ 17:56 wednesday 12 september – piazza duomo ]

ettore sottsass, the great designer, walks past and takes a seat at a nearby table. i want to tell him how much i admire his writing (i’m not crazy about his furniture). i wonder if designers get pissed off by this sort of thing?

siracusa is so beautiful it makes me laugh. ortegia is the ancient city, confined to an island in a large bay with two bridges connecting it to the mainland. it is a labyrinth of narrow streets, a palimpsest spanning greek austerity and baroque exuberance. i’ve been here for four days. tomorrow i leave for palermo, and then pantelleria.

a burst of applause from a crowd on the steps of the duomo in front of me. a freshly-wed couple emerges from inside. corks pop. a corpulent man in a shiny powder-blue suit and ill-judged pink sunglasses drives them off in a roofless mercedes.

unless i am mistaken the duomo has at its heart an original greek temple. the ancient columns are still exposed, though the gaps between them have been filled by walls. the interior is plain and awe-inspiring, with the usual pastel-hued pieties mercifully reserved to side chapels. the front is baroque. the piazza is an ellipse of diverse but harmonious structures.

my days alternate work with swimming off rocks just round the corner from where i am staying. it’s a productive rhythm.

since last writing i have been in catania, at the foot of mount etna, and in noto, on a hill near the southern tip of sicilia. catania is an exciting place. a small city, but full of energy and possibility. noto seems to have been built from scratch between 1700 and 1750, replacing a roman settlement a few kilometres away which was destroyed in an earthquake. it is probably the most perfect baroque theme-park in the world. every building is a perfect confection. it must have cost a fortune. it feels like there’s still a lot of money around. i didn’t like the atmosphere very much in fact. it reminded rather of erice, its perfectly-preserved mediaeval sister on a mountain above trapani, the other end of sicilia. something a bit too self-satisfied and ordered.

i’m sorry if what i wrote yesterday evening seems inappropriate. but it’s always been my habit to be honest in these despatches. there are things afoot in the world which we may discern only from their echoes.

here in siracusa people don’t seem too concerned about yesterday’s events. life goes on as usual and the snatches of conversation i overhear in streets and caffes are still dominated by food, football and love. today’s copy of “il manifesto”, italy’s snappily-designed and widely-read communist newspaper, had a cartoon on its front page depicting a panicky statue of liberty with the flame of her torch setting fire to her clothes. this seemed to me to be on the borderline of taste.

hehe! sottsass was a bit startled when i sprang on him. he shook my hand and allowed me to take his photo. he’s got a splendid jowly, unshockable face and a rakish plaited ponytail. he looks like a disgraceful old man.

on friday it’s my thirtieth birthday.

: cH

[ 18:07 Wednesday 5 September – Palermo, Sicilia ]

Sitting in a sleak and sparsely-populated coach, just departed from Stazione Centrale, on my way to Catania on the east coast. With splendid Sicilian perversity this is a faster way to make the journey than the train.

This afternoon I finally got my Italian email services working properly. I thought I was being very efficient by setting up an account before I left London, but of course it didn’t work. While I was in Ginostra there wasn’t much chance to rectify the situation.

Meanwhile my Motorola uber-telefonino developed severe personality problems as soon as it tasted the Palermo airwaves. Perhaps it remembers the traumas of last year? It now turns itself on and off at random and has completely lost its appetite for recharging. Yesterday I was quoted a ridiculous sum for repairing the wretched thing, with the ominous prediction that it might have to go off to Milan. About half an hour ago I acquired a device which should allow me to recharge the battery externally, which will at least allow me to continue using the thing. It’s a damn nuisance though. I should have stuck to Finnish engineering…

Castel di Tusa was a fabulous experience. Antonio Testi is a fully-fledged maverick, a large man in his forties with a deep voice and bone-dry humour. He inherited one of the largest construction firms in Italy but at his father’s death he refused to deal with the Mafia and instead devoted himself to contemporary art. Over the last decade he has commissioned a series of huge open-air projects in the north of Sicilia. Most of these have been undertaken without planning permission, which has resulted in a succession of complex legal proceedings with the Messina public prosecutor. On each occasion Antonio has secured support in Rome and succeeded in getting the law re-interpreted to his advantage.

He bought the hotel in Castel di Tusa ten years ago. It has forty rooms, fourteen of which have been created by major artists. This amounts to rather more than slapping some pictures on the wall. I spent the night in the room designed by Renato Curcio (who I am informed is a terrorist in the Brigata Rossa). The bedroom is completely empty except for a sweeping plaster installation incorporating panels in a variety of ancient scripts. I swoke to alpha and omega picked out in red above me. The bed sits in the middle of the room with a cover continuing the pattern. The bathroom is a kind of cave. Twisting a little iron figure causes water to trickle down the walls. Another lever activates a shower, splashing hot water off a rock ledge. The loo is cased in corroded steel.

The other rooms are equally dramatic. One has a massive cylindrical bedroom with a circular rotating bed. Turning a crank on the wall opens the ceiling to the stars. Another room consists entirely of triangles, inspired by the shape of Sicilia. You can probably see some pictures at http://www.ateliersulmare.com, though I have not yet looked at the site.

Antonio’s next project focuses on a poverty-stricken area of Catania called Librino. He plans to invite world-famous photographers to work with residents of twenty massive tenement blocks and to cover one side of each building with giant portraits, rather in the manner of the Armani posters in Milano. By turning the neighbourhood into a public gallery in this way he believes the inhabitants will rediscover a sense of their own beauty, by which he means not just outward beauty. As a vision of regeneration I find this inspiring. I have offered my support. It was a slightly intimidating experience sitting on the roof of the hotel with Antonio and his associates on Sunday night as they interrogated me about my plans in the south of Italy. It is a frustrating disability that I am not yet able to converse in their language. But I hope I managed to avoid saying anything too offensive.

For the last couple of days I have been once more with Gabriele, which has been a great pleasure. Miraculously I survived this time in palermo with no theft. My computer has scarcely been out of my grasp.

This afternoon Gabriele introduced me to his friend Vincenzo di Leonardo, a hydraulic engineer who now wishes to devote himself to social projects. He wants to establish a scheme providing opportunities for disabled or miscreant youths to learn sustainable agricultural skills.

As I write we are driving through rolling hill-country. To my left a long concrete road bridge spans a valley. But it stands in curious isolation, with no road attached to either end. I keep coming across abstract pieces of civil engineering like this, which I fear are probably the result of Mafia financial logic.

Or perhaps the bridge is just another of Antonio’s projects.

: cH