Section:OBS 2N PaGe:25 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 16:36 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Observer
World 04.08.19 25
sea has a divine nature: ignoring
its laws, for Sicilian people, means
ignoring God. That’s why the fi sh-
ing boats generally bear the names
of saints and apostles – except for
the Giarratanos’, which is called the
Accursio Giarratano.
“He was my son,” says Gaspare,
his eyes swelling with tears. “He
died in 2002 from a serious illness.
He was 15. Now he guides me at sea.
And since then, with every rescue,
Accursio is present.”Will Jacinda come?
Māoris appeal to
prime minister to
save sacred site
Dispatch, Pages 28-2925
Joe Biden’s marathon
Former vice-president
leads Democract race ...
but will he fi nish?
Pages 30-31kind, it was brave. Ever since Italy’s
far-right interior minister, Matteo
Salvini , closed Italian ports to rescue
ships , the Giarratanos have known
that such an act could land them with
a hefty fi ne or jail. But if confronted
with the same situation again, they
say they’d do it all over 1,000 times.
“No seaman would ever return to
port without the certainty of having
saved those lives,” says Carlo, whose
family has sailed the Mediterranean
for four generations. “If I had ignored
those cries for help, I wouldn’t have
had the courage to face the sea again.”
I meet the Giarratanos at the port of
Sciacca , a fi shing village on the south-
western coast of Sicily. I know the
town like the back of my hand, hav-
ing been born and raised there among
the low-rise, colourful homes built
atop an enormous cliff overlooking
the sea. I remember the GiarratanosCaptain Carlo Giarratano didn’t think
twice when, late last month , during a
night-time fi shing expedition off the
coast of Libya, he heard desperate
cries of help from 50 migrants aboard
a dinghy that had run out of fuel and
was taking on water. The 36-year-
old Sicilian lives by the law of the sea.
He reached th e migrants and offered
them all the food and drink he had.
While his father Gaspare coordinated
the aid effort from land, Carlo waited
almost 24 hours for an Italian coast-
guard ship that fi nally transferred the
migrants to Sicily.
News of that rescue spread around
the world, because not only was itLorenzo
Tondo
Sciacca‘Sailors save people
at sea without
asking where they
come from or the
colour of their skin’
Carlo Giarratano
beyond, by those desperate cries .” It
was 3am when Giarratano and his
crew located the dinghy in the waters
between Malta and Libya, where the
Giarratanos have cast their nets for
scabbard fi sh for more than 50 years.
The migrants had left Libya the previ-
ous day, but their dinghy had quickly
run into diffi culty.
“We threw them a pail to empty the
water,” says Carlo. “We had little food- just melba toast and water. But they
needed it more than we did. Then I
alerted the authorities. I told them I
wouldn’t leave until the last migrant
was safe. This is what we sailors do. If
there are people in danger at sea, we
save them, without asking where they
come from or the colour of their skin.”
Malta was the nearest EU country,
but the Maltese coastguard appears
not to have responded to the SOS.
Hours passed and the heat became
unbearable. From land, Gaspare
asked Carlo to wait while he con-
tacted the press. Weighing on his
mind was not only the duty to res-
cue the people, but also, as a father,
to protect his son.
“I wonder if even one of our politi-
cians has ever heard desperate cries
for help at high sea in the black of
night,” Gaspare says. “I wonder what
they would have done. No human
being – sailor or not – would have
turned away.” The Italian coastguard
patrol boat arrived after almost 24
hours and the migrants were trans-
ferred to Sicily, where they disem-
barked a few days later.
“They had no life vests or food,”
says Carlo. “They ran out of fuel and
their dinghy would have lost air in a
few hours. If you decide to cross the
sea in those conditions, then you’re
willing to die. It means that what
you’re leaving behind is even worse .”
Carlo reached Sciacca the follow-
ing day. He was given a hero’s wel-
come from the townspeople and
Italian press. Shy and reserved, Carlo
answered their questions.
He doesn’t want to be a hero , he
says, he was just doing his duty.
“When the migrants were safely
aboard the coastguard ship, they all
turned to us in a gesture of grati-
tude, hands on their hearts. That’s
the image I’ll carry with me for the
rest of my life, which will allow me to
face the sea every day without regret.”
from the days I’d skip school with my
friends and secretly take to the sea
aboard a small fi shing boat. We’d stay
near the pier and wait for the large
vessels returning from several days of
fi shing along the Libyan coast.
Those men were our heroes, with
their tired eyes, sunburnt skin and
ships overflowing with fish. We
wanted to be like them , because in my
hometown those men – heroic and
adventurous like Lord Jim, rough and
fearless like Captain Ahab, stubborn
and nostalgic like Hemingway’s “Old
Man” Santiago – are not simply fi sh-
ermen; they are demigods, mortals
raised to a divine rank.
Fishermen in Sciacca are the only
ones authorised to carry, barefoot,
the one-tonne statue of the Madonna
del Soccorso during religious proces-
sions. Legend has it that the statue
was found at sea and therefore theHaving suffered such a loss them-
selves, they cannot bear the thought
of other families, other parents, other
brothers, enduring the same pain. So
whenever they see people in need,
they rescue them.
“Last November we saved 149
migrants in the same area ,” says
Carlo. “But that rescue didn’t make
news because the Italian government,
which in any case had already closed
the ports to rescue ships, still hadn’t
passed the security decree.”
In December 2018 the Italian gov-
ernment approved a security decree
targeting asylum rights. The rules left
hundreds in legal limbo by remov-
ing humanitarian protection for
those not eligible for refugee status
but other wise unable to return home,
and were applied by several Italian
cities soon afterwards. Then, in June,
Rome passed a new bill, once again
drafted by Salvini, that punished
non- governmental organisation res-
cue boats bringing migrants to Italy
without permission with fi nes of up
to €50,000 and possible imprison-
ment for crew members.
“I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t
think I might end up in prison when
I saw that dinghy in distress,” says
Carlo. “But I knew that a dirty con-
science would have been worse than
prison. I would have been haunted
until my death, and maybe evenSailor Carlo
Giarratano, left,
and his father,
Gaspare, in
Sciacca, Sicily.
The family has
fi shed off Libya
for more than
50 years. Right,
Sciacca harbour.
Photographs by
Alessio Mamo/
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