There is me from Contrada Cammaratini, there is the one from Cava Palombieri, but also the other one from Concetto Caschetto, and, last but not least, the old one from Contrada Favarotto: we carobs are the few left standing long enough to remember the Byzantines and Angevins that used to rule these lands. They are all blood of my blood, and we all know how important family is, in these parts; and in the countryside of the Val di Noto, our family, the Caesalpiniaceae, has ruled since we arrived upon Greek vessels, when Christ had yet been born. Of course, our name was already important in those lands that today you call Morocco and Portugal, but my ancestors wondered, why not dominate other lands, and found other fiefdoms, and scatter barons, baronies and sentinels all over the Mediterranean countryside? Do not dare to say that we Ceratonia siliqua don't love this land, because we have shed our blood in sacrifice for everyone here, and still today you can see our severed limbs – showing bloodred wood veined in bundles, like the muscles of mammals – everywhere, walking down the paths that snip and fix the borders between fields. We have been vilified and mutilated as if we were the martyrs of some apostate emperor. How many have we lost, in the last century, when they were slowly forgetting us and preferring steel and glass greenhouses, while more profitable crops demoted our fruits to food for livestock! But we have known so many dark times in the past, and we have learned that sooner or later everything passes. To think there was a time when people believed that Judas had hanged himself from one of our branches, dangling like a strange fruit: but it was only a slander. It was said that, for that reason and from that moment on, our trunk would have bent and twisted, that our sudden flowering that precedes the growth of our leaves would have been a symbol of the Savior's tears, and then again that we would have dyed our inflorescences with that intense red to remind mankind of the shame felt upon contact with the wickedness of the traitorous apostle. Those are legends, of course, even if there are some of us – like that stump from Contrada Favarotto – who, being almost two thousand years old, could have even met Judas, if that damned soul had taken a ship to Sicily to hang himself on a branch. But we have virtue, and we have saved people from certain starvation, fed legions of Christians and non-Christians over the centuries out there, where the soil is arid and stingy, but we know how to adapt and bear fruit. The Baptist, to quote the most famous of our admirers, survived in the desert by eating honey and carob, and so our fruits were once called by most people bread of St. John. Our fruits are sweet and free from caffeine and theobromine, their flavour is reminiscent of cocoa, which some gossips call a deception. Yet we are sincere and reliable people, at the point that our seeds, for all being of same size and weight, were once used as a measure for gold; and even today, with that measure, the purity and value of that noble metal and of the diamond are decided. From the Arabic طاﺮﯿﻗ, qīrāṭ, in turn derived from the Greek κεράτιον, kerátion, meaning carat, or carob, to be precise. And many stories have been told about us, over the centuries. The Greeks said that our lineage was born when a bull's horn accidentally struck by lightning, perhaps inspired to create this legend by our fruits, which seem so dark, long and twisted, look exactly like the horns of some wild beast. And I dare not think what those people said about our inflorescences, spreading out from our gnarled branches all erected and straight and red. As for today, the children of those who left us behind in the race to modernity have returned to us, because they appreciate in our fruits what they are lacking, such as gluten or what has turned out to be a philosopher's stone for medical science: Omega 3, Omega 6, essential fatty acids and antioxidants, but also phosphorus, magnesium and fiber to regulate intestinal functions. And now that everyone praises a low in calories diet, the couple hundred calories per one hundred grams we offer are highly sought-after commodities. Almost as much as the ability to give a quick and pleasant sense of satiety to those who want to lose weight. And if you think that our fruits are foreign and unknown to you, know that ground and reduced to flour, they are at home almost everywhere in the food industry, as a thickener. In short, we have rebuilt our name and position, and this is good because we cannot sit on our hands, we have to do and undo, produce and grow, because although our years are counted in hundreds at a time, our spirit, that one, is always young. About me, I would like that, one day, quoting my favorite book Family Sayings, they would say about me: "«His soul did not know how to grow old and he never knew old age, which is to stay folded aside and mourning the collapse of past», because so am I. carob - Tav. 002 graphite and charcoal on paper, 2020 p. 135 Carlo Pastore for Ossigeno #08 137
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