Chapter 1
I remember that moment perfectly.
The exact sensation of the plane beginning its descent, the slight pressure in my ears, and above all that foolish smile I couldn’t stop. The kind you wear when you know you’re finally in the right place, even before you arrive.
Palermo was waiting for me beneath the clouds.
I knew it. I felt it. This city never needs to be seen to exist. It asserts itself first through the air—through the smell of salt, sun-warmed stone, coffee brewed too strong. Through something raw and alive that grips your throat and reminds you where you come from.
I was coming back.
Not to run away.
Not to hide.
But to breathe.
My fingers tightened slightly around the armrest as the plane shuddered. I wanted it to land faster. I wanted to already be outside, on the tarmac, to hear Italian roll off people’s tongues, to feel the heat fall on me without asking permission.
My Loulouji had to be waiting. I could already picture her—standing straight despite the years, eyes too sharp for her age, ready to scold me for having stayed away too long and to kiss me as if I’d never left. Tía Coco would speak too loudly, too quickly, pretend not to cry. But she would still end up holding me a little too tightly in her reassuring arms. Papa would smile without saying a word, as always, with that quiet pride that had followed me all the way across the ocean—far more sentimental than he ever let on.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
I had left Palermo young, with suitcases that were too heavy and a certainty that was too strong: the belief that you had to leave to succeed. I had studied law far from here, in cold buildings, in a language I had mastered through sleepless nights and sheer will. I had become a lawyer the way one forges armor—serious, upright, efficient.
But nothing—nothing ever—had erased where I came from.
I had grown up in a modest neighborhood, without gold trim or illusions. Here, you learned early how to watch, how to endure, how to hold your ground. I had drawn a pride from it that no one had given me. It was mine. Like Palermo.
The plane tilted further. The sea finally appeared—vast, indifferent, a blue almost insolent. My heart sped up.
I didn’t know yet that this return was not insignificant.
I didn’t know that some lands don’t welcome you back without reminding you of what they took from you.
But in that precise moment, I was nothing but joy.
A simple joy. Almost naïve.
I was coming home.
