So, along with my young and faithful interpreter-friend, Gino, I set out to find someone who could enhance my still-neophyte understanding of local mores and customs. “IT WAS DIFFERENT from village to village all around here. We were like separate kingdoms then. Fifty years or more ago. The idea of ‘Italy’ being one country was still strange. We all spoke different dialetti. Sometimes even different parts of a village would speak differently. Sometimes there was an Albanian part or a Saracen rabatana, and then it was very difficult to understand anything. So, one place would treat the death of a loved one one way and another place another way. But…” Giulia Colucci paused and lowered her wrinkled face, foxy lean and wrapped tightly in a dusty black scarf. A little tighter and a little more cloth around the mouth and eyes and you’d have had an Islamic burqa. And this was the way our conversation went: Sudden deluges of recollections and information followed by long reflective silences, sometimes accompanied by moist eyes or even tears as her memories jostled and her brow became more deeply furrowed, and sometimes a gentle chuckle to herself.
