Gallicianò, Calabria
The road climbs through dust, rock, prickly pear. A man rattles past on a Vespa. A white sheepdog is wedged between his knees, barking as if the road belongs to him.
At a lookout, sunlight flashes on a roadside Byzantine mosaic. Beside it, an inscription I can’t read. I trace the letters with my eyes.
Gallicianò clings to a small plateau of oak and olive trees, holding on in the Aspromonte.
In the square, I order a coffee. The barista nods. “Wait for Mimmo. He has the church keys.”
I wait.
As we climb the narrow lanes, Mimmo tells me that Calabrian Greek was once spoken across the region. “Here,” he says, “we all grew up with it.” He pauses. “Grecanico.” Then, softer: “The people on the coast laughed at us.”
At the top, the Orthodox church catches the light. Mimmo rings the bell five times. “For a good omen,” he says.
The air smells of wax and stone. Silence presses close. “We were Orthodox,” he says, almost to himself. “But we didn’t know it.”
From a nearby house comes the smell of hot bread. An old woman dressed in black climbs the steps with a bundle of branches. I watch until she turns the corner.
“Only thirty of us left,” Mimmo says, looking away.
On the way back, I stop at the lookout. A local translates the inscription for me:
Welcome — here, alone, among mountains heavy with pain and song.
Now it fits.
