After four months of "processing" my documents, photos, and paperwork, the Agrigento Questura office granted me my "permesso di soggiorno." It is a pretty little card with my photo and lots of shiny magnetic strips and fancy pants numbers and codes, etc. So, for eleven days I am a legal resident of Favara, Italy. Hallelujah!
The Questura office is an interesting place. Sitting in the wooden chairs waiting for my number to be called, the scene around the windows is as colorful as a Maira Kalman painting. The characters are truly right out of a drawing. Gypsies, North Africans who made the treacherous trip across the Strait of Sicily to Porto Empedocle (the infamous port where all of the illegal immigrants land, about ten minutes from Favara) on little boats, overcrowded and hot. Then there are the Italians, frustrated that they don't take precedence over the others, being Natives! and the grumpy immigration officers, who hold supreme power over the lives of so many.
I got a few photographs of the scene, but was disappointed to be denied entry into a room where I went the last time the Questura office beckoned me that held a really creepy and fascinating poster of mugshots from the forties and fifties.
It is sticky hot out, just talked to Mom, who is upstate, and Dad at home. All is well.
Zander in Sicily
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