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Rating: Outside the house, the silence astonished by the roar was followed by the screams of people terrified by the earthquake.
“God of the Heavens! Have mercy on us …”
“Allah! We will invoke your ninety-nine names …”
“One God, Patriarch God, your vengeance will fall upon our heads …”
Everyone called upon their own God: Christians, Muslims, and Jews implored, in different languages, to be saved from the fury of the tyrant mountain.
There was a place (Sicily) and a time (brief) where understanding among various ethnic groups and different faiths reigned supreme. A golden oasis where the knowledge of Arabs, Jews, and Greeks mingled and life was a delight.
But, as is known, man, created for this, cannot keep faith with his own humanity: the loss of reason caused by the greedy pursuit of power and blinding madness has always played a fundamental part in human affairs. The Normans, under the orders of Roger of Hauteville, defender of the Roman Papacy but only for self-interest, had in mind the goal of expanding their territories of Calabria. From distant Canossa, Matilde, known to history as a Christian mystic, is instead consumed by a thirst for power. A sect holds the veil anointed with the blood of Saint Agatha: whoever possesses it is destined for invincibility and undisputed dominion over the lands of Sicily.
In fifty years (1047-1097) of betrayals, blood, and intrigues on the shores of the Mediterranean, the various characters of the story meet, love, and hate each other in the shadow of events destined to change the course of centuries: the first crusade and the birth of the Templars, whose mystery is passed down to this day.
The story that binds the entire novel is a love story. The protagonist, the Byzantine of noble family Agata, pines with love for the qadi and emir of the city, Ibn elThunna (Benavetto). But there is another who longs for Agata, the knight Bohemond, a classic romantic hero with blond hair, ready to rush to the defense of his beloved and devoted to ideals.
In these days when human madness repeats itself and a good part of humanity uses religious diversity as the origin of conflict, this pleasant historical novel came to my mind, read in the summer of 2009 during a vacation in Pantelleria. Those who, even today, speak of war for religious reasons do not realize they are the first to fall victim to the distortion of the human need for spirituality into the "opium of the people."
In the preface to the work, a short tale concludes: “In the centuries that followed, many landed on the island's shores devoid of any hope, as happened to Sicily. And also for them, every time the miracle of life and fusion into a unique lineage, the result of a thousand crossings, was repeated”. Tales, tales, tales …
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