Tunis, Tunisia – Night time had nearly fallen in Halq al-Wadi, also referred to as La Goulette, a balmy coastal suburb of Tunis, when the Virgin Mary emerged from the native church, Saint-Augustin and Saint Fidele, right into a packed sq..
Carried on the shoulders of a dozen churchgoers, the statue of the Virgin was greeted with cheers, ululations and a passionately waved Tunisian flag.
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A whole lot of individuals – Tunisians, Europeans, and sub-Saharan Africans – had gathered for the annual procession of Our Woman of Trapani.
A lot of these taking part within the procession, and the Catholic Mass that got here beforehand, have been from sub-Saharan Africa.
“It’s the Holy Virgin who has introduced us all right here at the moment,” Isaac Lusafu, initially from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, informed Al Jazeera. “At present the Virgin Mary has united us all”.
In a big, packed sq. simply past the church gates, the statue moved in a circle as individuals prayed and sang hymns. It was all below the watchful eye of a mural of Claudia Cardinale, the famend Italian actress born in La Goulette, a reminder of the distant previous when the district was dwelling to 1000’s of Europeans.
A melting pot
The Catholic feast of Our Woman of Trapani was delivered to La Goulette within the late 1800s by Sicilian immigrants, within the days when the port city was a hub for poor southern European fishermen in the hunt for a greater life.
Immigration to Tunisia from Sicily peaked within the early twentieth century. Almost the entire fishermen, together with their households and descendants, have now returned to European shores, however the statue of the Virgin remained – and, yearly on August 15, it’s carried in procession out of the church.
“It’s a singular occasion,” Hatem Bourial, a Tunisian journalist and radio presenter, informed Al Jazeera.
He went on to explain how, within the procession’s heyday within the early twentieth century, native Tunisians, Muslims and Jews alike, would be part of Tunisian-Sicilian Catholics in carrying the statue of the Virgin Mary from the church right down to the ocean.
There, contributors would ask Mary to bless the fishermen’s boats. Many residents would shout “Lengthy stay the Virgin of Trapani!”, Bourial mentioned, whereas others threw their chechia, a conventional pink cap worn within the Maghreb, within the air.
In addition to its non secular significance – for Catholics, August 15 marks the day that Mary was taken up into heaven – the feast additionally coincides with the Italian mid-August vacation of Ferragosto, which historically alerts the excessive level of the summer time.
Silvia Finzi, born in Tunis within the Nineteen Fifties to Italian mother and father, described how, after the statue had been introduced right down to the ocean, lots of La Goulette’s residents would declare that the worst of the punishingly sizzling Tunisian summer time was over.
“As soon as the Virgin had been taken right down to the water, it was as if the ocean had modified”, Finzi, a professor of Italian on the College of Tunis, informed Al Jazeera.
“Folks would say ‘the ocean has modified, the summer time’s over’, and also you wouldn’t must go swimming to chill down any extra”.
European exodus
The primary European immigrants started to reach in La Goulette within the early nineteenth century. Their numbers quickly elevated after 1881, when Tunisia grew to become a French protectorate. At its top within the early 1900s, the variety of Italian immigrants – who have been largely Sicilians – throughout the entire of Tunisia is estimated to have been greater than 100,000.
Within the decade after 1956, when Tunisia gained its independence from France, the overwhelming majority of its European residents left the nation, as the brand new authorities pivoted in direction of nationalism.
In 1964, the Vatican signed an settlement with Tunisia, transferring management of nearly all of the nation’s church buildings – now largely empty – to the federal government to be used as public buildings. The settlement additionally put an finish to all public Christian celebrations, together with the procession in La Goulette.
For greater than half a century, August 15 was marked solely with a Mass contained in the church constructing, and the statue of Our Woman of Trapani remained motionless in its area of interest. The date remained essential for La Goulette’s much-reduced Catholic inhabitants, nevertheless it largely ceased to be an essential occasion for the broader group.
Nostalgia
In 2017, the Catholic Church acquired permission to restart the procession, initially simply contained in the church compound. This 12 months, when Al Jazeera visited, the procession left the church property however solely travelled so far as the sq. exterior.
Many attendees have been younger Tunisian Muslims, with little connection to La Goulette’s historic Sicilian inhabitants.
A significant cause for that is undoubtedly the excessive standing accorded to the Virgin Mary in Islam – a whole chapter of the Quran is devoted to her.
Different contributors gave the impression to be drawn by a sense of nostalgia for La Goulette’s multiethnic, multireligious previous.
“I like the procession”, Rania, 26, informed Al Jazeera. “Plenty of individuals have forgotten about it now, however European immigration is such an essential a part of Tunisia’s historical past”.
Rania, a scholar, informed Al Jazeera of her love for the 1996 movie, Un ete a La Goulette (A Summer time in La Goulette).
That includes dialogue in three languages, and evocative photographs of sunlit courtyards and shimmering seashores, the movie is an ode to La Goulette’s previous.
Directed by the famend Tunisian filmmaker Ferid Boughedir, it follows the lives of three teenage women – Gigi, a Sicilian, Meriem, a Muslim, and Tina, a Jew – over the course of a summer time within the Sixties.
The movie ends, nevertheless, on a bleak notice, with the outbreak of the 1967 Warfare between Israel and a number of other Arab states, and the next departure of virtually all of Tunisia’s remaining Jewish and European residents.
New migrations
As Tunisia’s European inhabitants declined, the nation has seen an inflow of latest migrant communities from sub-Saharan Africa.
Nearly all of these new migrants, who quantity within the tens of 1000’s, hail from Francophone West Africa. Many come to Tunisia in the hunt for work; others hope to search out passage throughout the Mediterranean to Europe.
Lots of the sub-Saharan migrants – who face widespread discrimination in Tunisia – are Christian, and because of this, they now make up the overwhelming majority of Tunisia’s churchgoing inhabitants.
This reality is mirrored in a mural within the church in La Goulette, impressed by the feast of Our Woman of Trapani. Painted in 2017, it depicts the Virgin Mary sheltering a gaggle of individuals – Tunisians, Sicilians and sub-Saharan Africans – below her mantle.
The air across the Virgin within the mural is filled with passports. The church’s priest, Father Narcisse, who hails from Chad, informed Al Jazeera that these signify the paperwork that immigrants throw into the ocean whereas making the journey from North Africa to Europe within the hope of evading deportation.
The mural highlights the truth that the Madonna of Trapani, as soon as thought of the protector of Sicilian fishermen, is at the moment known as upon by immigrants of much more assorted backgrounds.
“This celebration, in its authentic kind, marked the deep bonds between the 2 shores of the Mediterranean,” Archbishop of Tunis Nicolas Lhernould informed Al Jazeera. “At present, it brings collectively a extra numerous group – Tunisians, Africans, Europeans; locals, migrants, and vacationers.”
“Mary herself was a migrant,” Archbishop Lhernould mentioned, referring to the New Testomony story which narrates Mary’s flight, along with the kid Jesus and her husband Joseph, from Palestine to Egypt.
From a Christian perspective, he instructed, “we’re all migrants, simply passing by way of, residents of a kingdom which isn’t of this world”.
The spirit of La Goulette
La Goulette was as soon as dwelling to ‘Little Sicily’, an space characterised by its clusters of Italian-style residence buildings. The overwhelming majority of those buildings – modest buildings constructed by the newly-arrived fishermen – have been torn down and changed, and little greater than the church stays to testify to the world’s as soon as important Sicilian presence.
As of 2019, there have been solely 800 Italians descended from the unique immigrant group left in the entire of Tunisia.
“There are so few of us left”, mentioned Rita Strazzera, who was born in Tunis to Sicilian mother and father. The Tunisian-Sicilian group meets very hardly ever, she defined, with some members coming collectively for the celebration on the fifteenth August, and holding occasional conferences in a small bookshop reverse the church.
Nonetheless, the spirit of Little Sicily has not solely vanished. Traces of the previous La Goulette linger – in reminiscence, in movie, and, Strazzera informed Al Jazeera, in different, extra shocking methods as properly.
“Yearly, on All Saints’ Day, I’m going to the graveyard”, mentioned Strazzera, referring to the annual celebration when Catholics bear in mind their deceased family members.
“And there are Tunisians there, Muslims, individuals who perhaps had a Sicilian father or mother, or a Sicilian grandparent, and have come to go to their graves, as a result of they understand it’s what Catholics do.”
“There have been plenty of combined marriages”, Strazzera added, “and so, yearly, there are extra of them visiting the graves. After I see them, it’s like a reminder that Little Sicily continues to be with us.”
