THE THIRD SCIROCCO

I looked it up in my diary today. This is the third scirocco in two weeks. I also looked up in an Italian dictionary how to spell this word since I had spelled it 4 different ways in that diary. Using a “c,” it is Italian; without the “c,” it is English. Both languages double the final c. It is an Arabic word. A “sciroccata” is a south east gale. These winds are warm and sand-filled and come from Africa.
Recently I read that sciroccos occur in Sicily six or seven times a year. Then this is an unusual year, as our recent frequency is way different than normal. Each recent scirocco lasted for less that 2 days, but we have experienced ones that have lasted for 3 or 4 miserable days. The problem with them is that they are truly strong winds that seem to blow from every direction, so you are surrounded by wind in a very disorienting way. They are usually warm and they precede rain, which almost always contains African sand. We have had still, sunny days in between, and then suddenly, there starts another blow.
For me, this third Scirocco started a massive migraine headache which only worsened with the pounding and noise of Accursio and his brother-in-law as they worked on replacing the tile and the holes punched in the walls from yesterday. Why were the walls and tiles damaged? Well, our neighbor with an adjoining wall was here for the May 1 Labor Day celebration and noticed that her wall that we share has a water stain that ruined the new paint job. So being good neighbors and recent property owners, we did what was responsible and allowed their plumber to talk to our wall man (muritor-everyone has cement walls, so everyone has their favorite to work in stone and cement) to come in on a Sunday afternoon and prospect for problems. Did I say I had a headache??