Parallel Lives – Finding a home across the Mediterranean 

By Elise Kieffer and Ruben McCarthy

On the west coast of Sicily lies the small fishing town of Mazara del Vallo, a home across the Mediterranean for over 3,000 Tunisians and 48,000 Sicilians. Since the 70s, Tunisians have arrived in search of  jobs, settling alongside the local Sicilians. As the population ages into second and third generations a conversation has emerged around identity, cohesion and cultural coexistence. 

In Piazza della Repubblica – a vast sandstone cathedral casts shadows onto large blocked cobblestones in the town’s centre. The Mediterranean sun beats down onto locals strolling through the square on their way home from work. Two women walk down the street – one a Tunisian and the other Sicilian. They do not exchange a word.

The cathedral, built on the foundation of an original mosque, dates back to the 9th century when Mazara del Vallo became the first Arab settlement in Sicily. Built after the end of the Norman conquest, the landmark, adorned with gilded sea green tiles and a gold plated roof can be seen from the surrounding land and sea. 

Although Sicily is now a mainly Catholic region, signs of Mazara’s Arab heritage are seen in the inner walled neighbourhood of the Casbah. Where the streets are decorated with Arab-style tiles and the aroma of Tunisian and North-African restaurants fills the air.

The crumbling sand coloured buildings and churches show signs of the town’s past. The once prosperous trading centre whispers of bustling business across the Mediterranean centuries ago. 

Throughout the last 30 years, the town’s economy has crumbled away like the dusty brown stone walls in the historic centre, known to locals as the medina. 

Although the region is less prosperous than in its past life, it is still recognised for its fishing industry and as an accepting port for migrants crossing from North-Africa into Europe. 

“As the community grew, the fleet grew. In the first years of the 60s, you had five Tunisians in town. Then in the early 2000s, half of every crew of every boat were Tunisians,” says Naor Ben-Yehoyada, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University.

Although Mazara’s relationship with Tunisian fishermen started in the 60s, it became intensified in the 1970s and 80s with the emergence of the so-called Fish War. The conflict arose from disagreements between Tunisia and Italy over fishing territories, quotas, and unsustainable fishing practices.  

Although the tense Fish War led to harsh economic consequences for both Tunisia and Italy, it also led to a social change, with many Tunisian fishermen leaving Tunisia for western Sicily in order to seek out bigger catches. 

Many Tunisian families decided to settle in the affordable Casbah neighbourhood of Mazara, which had been abandoned by Sicilians following an earthquake in the 1960s.   

Caption: Fishing nets on a fishing boat in Mazara del Vallo old port. Photo: Elise Kieffer

Today, the majority of fishing conflict in the region occurs between Tunisia’s neighbouring countries – Libya and Italy, primarily revolving around territorial water disputes between Italian and foreign fishing fleets. 

In the recent decade, local fishermen, who rely on the sea for their livelihoods, have dealt with a significantly diminishing  fishing economy, pushing them into deeper waters and tempting many to find their catch in disputed territory. 

“Today, fishing is the biggest industry for the town, but it also has many issues due to overfishing and an over competitive fishing market. Fishermen in Mazara have to compete with the cheaper prices of the North African fish markets and have to adhere to stricter laws in the EU,” says Salvatore Quinci, mayor of Mazara del Vallo.

The loss of the fishing industry has extended beyond economic implications. In the past 30 years, it has caused increased tensions between local fishermen and foreign crews, often leading to acts of aggression and violence. 

Caption: Children being pick up by local school buses in the Piazza della Repubblica, Mazara del Vallo. Photo: Elise Kieffer

As more Tunisian families followed the fishermen who had already moved to Mazara for work, the Tunisian government started to show interest in providing education for the young generations of emigrated Tunisians in Mazara. 

The solution was for the Tunisian government to open a branch of a Tunisian school in the Casbah starting with a professor, being sent over from Tunis with an Arabic curriculum in hand.

As new generations of Tunisians are born in Mazara, families must decide to send their children to the Tunisian Arabic primary school or go immediately into the Italian primary system before their inevitable switch to the Italian high school system. 

Recently, this has led to the decline in the enrolment of students in the Tunisian school, which now currently educates fewer than 20 students.

“The Tunisian school had an original objective of educating young Tunisians in Mazara, so they had the ability to stay connected to culture and language. But it has failed, as it has made social and academic integration into mandatory Italian high schools more difficult for Tunisian youth,” says Mayor Quinci.

For others, the school serves as an example of the complicated questions of identity that those part of the Tunisian community in Mazara have to navigate in their daily lives.

Caption: Tunisian mother and daughter walk through a shutter street in the Casbah followed by a Sicilian women with her dog. Photo: Elise Kieffer

“I am Mediterranean, I am not just Tunisian and not just Sicilian and equally half and half, split down the middle,” says Seyma Chemli, looking up while sipping on an espresso in her traditional Tunisian tea room. 

The 35-year-old mother of one and post office worker grew up in Mazara after her parents moved from Mahdia, Tunisia for better work opportunities. She considers herself to be part of the second generation of Tunisian children in Mazara and became an Italian citizen at the age of 18. 

“Language is how we convey ourselves and our culture. That’s why it’s important to learn and keep learning our languages. Language is not just words, but the way you talk with your body too,” says Chemli, sitting on a blue embroidered couch cushion that she proudly explained she had made in Tunisia.

For many in Mazara the phrase, ‘I am Mediterranean’, is more important than a consideration of nationalities. 

“There’s an Arabic word ghorba – which means a feeling of a lack of home when you’re in a foreign land, for me there are two places I don’t feel this, Mazara and Tunisia,” says Chemli. 

These feelings are echoed by Leila Hannachi who now works at Casa della Comunità Speranza, a community centre that provides support for migrants living in Mazara. 

“I’m both Italian and Tunisian, I’m equally both. I was raised in a family where there weren’t two separate ideas, same with the religions of both cultures. Why there is a need to separate it or choose between, I don’t know,” Hannachi says. 

Hannachi was born in Mazara to a Sicilian mother and Tunisian father. Her family is one of the first mixed families that settled in Mazara. She explains that Mazara has become more accepting of mixed marriages and children, compared to when she was a child. 

“When I was a child, adults around me would ask me about my religion. Was I Muslim? Was I Catholic? Was I Italian? Was I Tunisian? Why did I have to choose? I am just Leila, that’s it. If I exist in all of the parts – why do I have to pick?” Hannachi says. 

According to Hannachi, Mazara has turned into a different place in the past 10 years following a rush of migration to the area. Since the Fish War, the establishment of a new set of languages and traditions have emerged from new generations of children born in Mazara to Tunisian parents. 

Even if there is a growing mutual acceptance between Sicilians and Tunisians in younger generations, it doesn’t mean that integration is easy. 

“There is a higher acceptance of people marrying each other from different cultures.  For sure it’s considered because of religion in the marriage process but it is normal,” says Hannachi pointing down the street. A young boy runs ahead of a couple pushing a stroller and cradling a toddler, “look there is a family where the husband is Tunisian and his wife is Sicilian right there”. 

According to Hannachi, it has become more common to see Tunisian men marrying Sicilian women in Mazara. Unfortunately it hasn’t changed as much for Tunisian women. Cultural and religious differences make marriage one of the hardest components of life in Mazara.  

The tradition of Tunisian women returning to Tunisia to marry still has a stronghold on the majority of the population in Mazara. 

According to Columbia’s Naor Ben-Yehoyada, inter-Sicilian and Tunisian marriages often occur less due to issues of culture but because of religious differences. 

“The issue of marriage stems more from religious beliefs that differ between strongly Catholic and strongly Muslim populations than the cultural difference of Italy and Tunisia,” Ben-Yehoyada says.  

For the younger generations of Tunisians in Mazara, marriage hasn’t modernised as quickly as other aspects of society have progressed greatly in terms of tolerance. 

Chemli was one of the first women in the Tunisian community of Mazara who attended university. She left Mazara to attend the University of Siena in 2010.

She went on to complete a Masters’ on the experience of youth language trauma, caused by the transition from the Arabic speaking Tunisian school to the Italian speaking high school in Mazara. 

“I based my Master’s research on my own experience as a Tunisian. I was at a disadvantage. How was I expected to complete high school classes in a language I had never studied in before? For me it was traumatic,” Chemli says. 

Since Chemli graduated there has been a shift towards Tunisian women in Mazara leaving to pursue further education in Italy. This has started to occur due to globalisation, as well as due to the failing economy of the fishing industry. 

“Now it’s just as common for Tunisians in Mazara to go to an Italian university compared to a Mazerai. I feel good about being one of the first to move away from home for university because now Tunisian girls can use me as an example if their parents are hesitant to let them go away,” Chemli says. 

Twenty-two year old Amani Alaya left Mazara to study art as part of her post-secondary education and dreams of returning to either teachers college or to pursue a Masters to allow her to become a fine art professor. 

Her dreams of going to an Italian post-secondary school were supported by her parents who say that education is the only way to break out of the failing generational fishing industry in Mazara.  

“I always liked school. I loved going to an Italian post-secondary school and would love to return to get some sort of degree that allows me to move away and teach as an art professor,” Amani Alaya says.

Her father, Nejib Alaya who has always worked as a fisherman, moved his family to Mazara from Mahdia when Amani was eight. Her mother Fathia says that she doesn’t want her daughter to end up working on a fishing vessel. 

“There’s no place for young people in the fishing industry. No money and the safety is horrible. I worry everyday about my husband, I don’t want to worry about my daughter as well, she must go to study,” says Amani’s mother, Fathia Alaya. 

Now, it is becoming more common for second or third generations of Tunisians in Mazara to leave to attend further education and university programs, although this trend is not equal for men and women in the region. 

Sister Alessandra, a Catholic sister who works at Casa della Comunità Speranza, says there is a trend for the young men in the town to not attend university. 

As a result, Casa della Comunità Speranza has been working to provide job opportunities and further education programs for youth and young adults, particularly men, to support a transition to living independently in Mazara. 

Many of the members of Casa della Comunità Speranza are first and second generation migrants from not only Tunisia but other areas of the Middle East, North and West Africa. The centre not only provides support for youth and children but also independent migrants in the area. 

“For us the migration crisis has never been a crisis, it’s been a recently politised movement of people across the Mediterranean that has been happening for centuries,” Sister Allesandra says. 

Sister Allesandra has been working for the past few years helping with Casa della Comunità Speranza and has witnessed many cultural changes and shifts in the recent years but she says they relate more to a globalised and educated younger generation than a change in mindset of older generations.

“Everyone is online, things are changing because you can see how someone 7000 km away lives,” Sister Allesandra says.

Although a shift in youth has been naturally occurring with the globalisation and the internet, community support still plays a huge part of the Tunisian journey in Mazara.

Due to the high volume of recent migrants that pass through the city, many support centres for migrants have been set up semi-permanently or permanently within the city and region. 

Some of them such as Casa della Comunità Speranza, Caritas, COREIS and San Vito provide support in terms of Italian lessons and cooking classes for new migrants, as well as for Italians wanting to learn Arabic or North-African cooking. 

NGOs and other centres, especially Caritas, serve as a learning space to form a community outside of the home. For many Tunisian women Italian classes, cooking courses and weaving set up by Caritas are the only places they are able to socialise with other migrants, as well as Italians in the area.  

For Tunisian men, relationships are usually formed on barges where a group of fisherman can spend between 12 to 120 days working as a group. Due to close quarters integration is a necessary part of surviving on the open deep blue water. 

According to Leila Hannachi, this is not always a good thing, “A lot of time Tunisian men do not want to know or do not know what the community centres in Mazara do. We have many wives who are open to more modern ideas but lack support from men in their households,” says Hannachi. 

“Mazara boasts about integration, but what really is integration? For us in Mazara there is no such thing as integration but a peaceful co-existence,” says Sister Allesendra while asked. She went on to explain that this is one aspect of life in Mazara that has not changed. 

For the Sister, integration is a two way conversation. 

“We have cases of Tunisian mothers not wanting to send their kids to Italian birthday parties because the food might not be Halal,” says Sister Allesendra. 

Leila Hannachi agrees, adding that although friendships between Sicilians and Tunisians are common, it is not like there is a complete intermingling of the groups. 

“There’s really nothing that’s truly integrated here, we’re not interwoven but co-existing,” Hannachi says. 

For Chemli this is a reality that is lived with everyday. 

“You can be neighbours with someone Mazerai and speak to them privately and then walk in a street beside them and not exchange a word – even though you see them every single day,” Chemli says. 

For some locals like Leila Hannachi, hope of intercultural discourse is not lost. “Women, men, children come here because they have to, because they have the right to be happy, to find dignity and a better life. For me, this kind of argument – it’s easy. Firstly, I’m a world citizen, then I’m a European citizen, then I’m an Italian citizen, then I’m a Sicilian citizen, then a Mazerai citizen. That’s it”.

Translation of Italian interviews provided by Paulo Ayed

Translations of French interviews provided by Elise Kieffer