He came over to her, standing so close she could feel his warm, sweet breath. He wanted to thank her for the book she had recommended. He didn’t know what to offer her in return, and so he had brought a small bottle of olive oil from the cooperative where he worked. Giulia was touched. She looked at him, saw a mixture of gentleness and dignity that moved her deeply. It was the first time a man had made her feel that way.

She took the little bottle in surprise. He told her he had gathered and pressed the olives himself. He was preparing to leave, but Giulia stopped him. She felt quite brazen now. Perhaps they could take a walk together? The sea was close by, the sky was clear …

The stranger hesitated, then agreed.

His name was Kamaljit Singh. He was very quiet – which surprised Giulia. Sicilian men were talkative, they enjoyed making conversation with one another. The woman’s role was to listen, as her mother had told her. The man must be allowed to shine. Kamal was different. He didn’t open up easily. But he agreed to tell Giulia his story.

He was a Sikh. He had left Kashmir at the age of twenty, fleeing the violence against his people. After the events of 1984, when the Indian army had crushed a Sikh independence movement and massacred the faithful in the Golden Temple, their fate had been sealed. Kamal had arrived in Sicily one night, in the icy cold, without his parents. Many chose to send their children to the West once they came of age. He had been welcomed into the island’s large Sikh community.

Italy had taken in the second largest number of Sikhs in Europe, after Great Britain, he said. He had found work through the caporalato, the traditional system for hiring cheap labour. He told her how the caporale recruited undocumented workers and arranged their transport. The gangmaster covered the cost of this, and the bottled water and meagre panino he provided for his workers, by taking a percentage of their earnings, sometimes as much as half. Kamal remembered working for one or two euros an hour. He had picked everything that grew on the island: lemons, olives, cherry tomatoes, oranges, artichokes, courgettes, almonds. The pickers’ working conditions were non-negotiable. They could take what the caporale offered or leave it. His patience had finally been rewarded: after three years as an illegal immigrant, Kamal had obtained refugee status and a permanent residence permit. He had found a job working nights for a cooperative that produced olive oil. He enjoyed the work. He described how he combed the branches of the olive trees with a kind of rake to pull down the fruit. He liked the company of the trees: some were over a thousand years old. He was fascinated by their longevity, he said. The olive is a noble foodstuff, he concluded, smiling. A symbol of peace.