Women’s work

One only knew the start of women’s work, perhaps at three in the morning in winter, when they went to the novena, and then it continued from there. Always outside, for the tobacco outside, for the figs outside, for the olives, they were outside, always in company, always next to someone to talk to, to joke with, laughing, or to confide in. The secret to so much “fatìa” (work), the secret of the women, was that: finding themselves and each other in the stories, in the songs, in being together every day, proud of their work that was gradually being done. And so they passed on knowledge and skills, so they managed to make everything that needed to be made, from bread to soap from spinning cotton, to dyeing it with the “crusts of the silks” (of the pomegranates). until weaving it into sheets with “Turkish” motifs, sheets to be carefully preserved, which hold together the memories of a lifetime.