A STING IN THE TAIL OF OUR JOURNEY

Hamu and Ali, our guide and driver, got out of the 4x4 and went seaching for scorpions in the stony terrain around Fort Bou-Jerif on the morning of our return to Agadir from our tent on the edge of the Sahara. There they are in the background, searching diligently for scorpions, while we tourists view and shoot the scenery. 

    They overturned many stones before they found a scorpion. Hamu said it was female and pregnant. The scorpion’s carapace was yellowy green; it looked semi-transparent and full of poisonous pus. It was three or four centimeters in length. 

    Having found one scorpion, Hamu quickly found several more. All of them were pregnant. He nudged the scorpions with his shoe, but each of them was intent on slithering back in under a stone. I was very careful to keep my sandalled feet away from them: their sting is fatal, unlike that of the black scorpions I encountered around a fireplace in an Italian farmhouse. 

    Our guide told us that the mammy scorpion carries her young on her back, and that they slowly eat her. By the time the mammy scorpion is dead and well eaten, the young ones are ready to face the world on their own. Sounds like a good metaphor for the relationship between some human mothers and their offspring. Like the sons who never leave home or get a job, for instance, or the children who spend ages in college living it up and repeating their exams year after year. Until one day they get a terrible shock. Help! There’s no one to make my breakfast any more. How do you boil an egg? Oh well, nothing for it but to head for the café...

A scorpion uncovered.

Ali, our driver, and Hamu, our guide, by the 4x4. Ali is a brilliant driver, and we felt completely at ease with him. Hamu is an informative and friendly guide. They were both smokers, like ourselves, which made things even easier.

LEONARDO SCIASCIA

Here I am with Leonardo Sciascia in his home town of Racalmuto, near Agrigento, Sicily. Not very well known in English, Sciascia wrote novels exposing the Mafia and their infiltration of politics and police in Sicily and Italy. His most famous novel is 'Il Giorno della Civetta' (The Day of the Owl). He also wrote political commentary, plays and poetry.

And here is a rather cubist view of Caltanisetta, taken from Enna, the Sicilian capital.

Enna is located high on a mountaintop almost in the exact center of Sicily, affording a panoramic view overlooking the scenic valleys of Sicily's rugged interior. 
Caltanisetta is a city located on the western interior of Sicily, capital of the province of Caltanissetta. It lies in an area of rolling hills with small villages and towns, crossed by the river Salso.

I'M A DRANANET!

A strange fact: on my birth certificate my second Christian name is 'Drananet'; and when I went to the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths to get a copy of the certificate for the rector of the boarding school, the woman at the counter told me that she could not alter 'Drananet' to 'Francis', which it really was, which it was intended by my parents to be. She could not alter Drananet to Francis because the people in the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths had to go by what was entered in the church register. Apparently, what the distracted parish priest of our town had scribbled for my second forename looked more like Drananet than anything else. Therefore my name on any birth certificate issued by the Registry would have to be Ciaran Drananet O'Driscoll - unless I lodged an appeal, which would take about 5,000 years to conclude. 

And so, it appeared to have been decreed by fate that I was a Drananet, which sounded like some kind of minor monster: a small dragon (dragonet) or a lesser version of Count Draco, of Dracula (draconet, draculet), who was born to breathe fire or suck blood if the conditions were right; which they never were, of course, and so I had to be content with sucking my own blood or burning myself up inside.

From memoir in progress, 'The Hungarian for Cheese' © Ciaran O'Driscoll 2010

SAD AND GLAD

The damned don't seem to be having such a good time in this frieze from the facade of the Duomo in Orvieto. Ha ha lads, ye did the dirty on yere fellow human beings in life and now look at ye. And good enough for ye. Fuppin' Backstards!

On the other hand, Chagall's window in Chichester Cathedral is a scene full of joy and joyful beings. Enjoy yereselves there, lads! The party just goes on and on, and there's no such thing as gettin' bored.

DUCKS AT DUSK, LAKE TRASIMENE, UMBRIA

THE STRANGE LAND

Our son Conor and my wife Margaret outside our faux Berber tent.

I remember a book set in Morocco which I read in boarding school: 'The Strange Land' by Hammond Innes. Having finally visited Morocco fifty years later (setting my foot on the African continent for the first time), I can vouch for the accuracy of that title, at least as far as my own first impressions were concerned. Maybe my perceptions were heightened because I was recovering from a fever and gastric flu. In the above photograph, taken at the ruins of Fort Bou-Jerif, I seem to be on the mend, though I still felt shaky at the time. The best night's sleep I have had for ages was in that Berber tent. It was strangely comforting to be in a strange land, in the middle of a wilderness, in a tent that flapped from top to bottom in the morning wind as I woke.

ON THE EDGE OF SAHARA 2

Scene at Fort Bou-Jerif, ruins of a French Foreign Legion stronghold (left) where nasty things were done to Berbers and lots of wine was drunk by the officers.