I sat down to write this month’s letter of everyday life in Sicily, as I always do. I was thinking I would tell my subscribers about a birthday lunch in the Sicilian hills near Corleone. I did tell them that story. But it led me back to a village we visited years ago in South Africa, which in turn reminded me of Borgo Parrini, not far from Palermo. I told them how Parrini had come back to life after years of abandonment, and how we went into its bakery looking forward to buying bread but left empty-handed after spotting flies beneath the glass counter. I reported on the eleven new…