This episode grows out of a piece of news: while I was visiting Naples, a flight from Sharm el-Sheikh to Rome was diverted there because of a technical malfunction. No injuries, a great deal of fear — on board, alongside the usual tourists, were journalists and members of Giorgia Meloni’s team returning from a summit on Gaza.
I tried to imagine: what if instead of a rerouted WizzAir flight it had been an Italian corvette captured by Khayr ed-Din “Redbeard”?
The Wheel of Fortune suggested the rest: a card that speaks of sudden choices and radical instability, for a story that blends centuries and characters, reality and invention.
On the ship end up Leo Africanus, Casanova, Marcus Aurelius, Pope Borgia, and Albert the Great — all there to spark a reflection on how one might survive conflict, and imagine new escape routes from a history that keeps repeating itself.
It is an episode about war and about play, and about the possibility of negotiating what remains human when the world collapses around us.
Previous episode → Episode 10: The Procession of the Peripatetics
As soon as I leave the Pompeii station behind me, the drizzle that has accompanied my pilgrimage dissipates.
The train is half-empty, luckily for me, and the journey is quick; at Naples Centrale, the smell of brine mixed with frying reaches my nose before the doors of the carriage even open.
I step out of the station lost in thought, until a man in a pale suit, a linen turban and amber-coloured eyes catches my attention.
He stands out among the crowd; he looks at me and smiles like someone who knows he is expected.
When he sees that I turn and wait for him, he comes toward me and begins to speak, in a calm voice and in an archaic Italian only lightly veiled by a foreign accent.
“Lady of difficult dreams,” he says, “the sea is calling for you. The Regina Isabella is ready. The boat still flies the Italian flag—the same it raised against the Beys of Tunis and Tripoli—but not everyone on board speaks the same language.”
He hands me a ticket folded in four. There is no name on it, only a symbol: an eight-spoked wheel, drawn in gold ink.
“And who is the messenger sent to summon me?” I ask, seeking his gaze.
“A friend of the frontiers, who was born a Muslim, was baptised a Christian, and died a traveller. I have had many names, but the one you are most likely to have heard is Leo Africanus.”
My eyes widen, full of admiration: this is the man who managed to recount Islam and Africa to Renaissance Europe — and who now sends me back to the sea.
“We must go,” he says. “Fortune turns, but it does not wait.”
When we reach the pier, the Regina Isabella sways lightly, like a caged animal.
No one is yet visible on the ship once called “the jewel of Bourbon engineering.”
I can hear only the sea, and that golden wheel which seems to gleam inside my pocket.
As Leo Africanus and I approach the corvette, not a soul can be seen on the Naples pier, wrapped in an amber-and-salt light that feels suspended between two seas.
We walk along the gangway, and the planks creak like the bones of an ancient creature.
From afar, the corvette looked asleep—but on the quarterdeck, among the shadows, armed figures move. Some wear red turbans, others display long beards the sea wind makes tremble like seaweed.
“Who are they?” I ask. “They aren’t by any chance…”
Leo nods. “Exactly them: the sons of the Algerian winds. It is a return from the depths of time.
They say Khayr ed-Din Barbarossa and his brothers have taken command, after boarding the ship last night off Crete, while it was returning from the port of Sharm el-Sheikh. All passengers are now hostages of the great Ottoman admiral. But—”
He pauses a moment to look me straight in the eyes,
“—they are not only merchants or tourists. On board there are people who matter, and not only in money. People who were there not for the beauty of the sea or the desert, but for the summit where the fate of Gaza was discussed.”
Meanwhile the sea changes colour, as if it had heard our conversation.
“And what do I have to do with this?” I ask.
Leo sighs. “You are here because, like me, you know a language others have long forgotten. The language of negotiators and of prophets — of which there is immense need in this historical conjunction.”
We climb the gangplank, while I ask myself what this “conjunction” is supposed to be.
The sound of wet wood beneath our feet, the tense silence of the crew, the smell of spices and musket smoke: everything suggests that time has folded in on itself.
On the stern, incredibly, the tricolour flag still ripples, animated by a gasp of African wind.
The upper deck appears as an improbable ark — half shipwreck and half theatre.
A sudden wind gust rises; the tricolour flag swells like a breath held too long, and the prisoners — if one can call them that — appear in the slanting light, each of them carrying a different century on their shoulders.
A young Giacomo Casanova stands out in the small group like a diamond in the dark.
Sitting on a crate of spices, his hands bound but his back straight, he looks like someone who considers every chain the prelude to a delight, his gaze that of a complicit confessor.
When he sees us, he smiles — that smile that seduced half of Europe and a dozen convents:
“Madam, do you not fear losing your head in the midst of all this spinning fortune?” he says, without really looking at me.
He is instead observing my feet, as though to understand how I keep my balance.
That is where, after all, falls begin.
“If you have come to negotiate,” he adds without lifting his eyes, “I recommend you start with the wine. No one is reasonable while sober.”
A little further on, standing firm against the wind, is the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
His purple cloak is worn and stiff with salt, but his bearing remains that of a sovereign who has seen too many empires collapse to bother stirring now.
His arms are crossed behind his back, and his eyebrows do not move even when a splash of seawater hits him full in the face.
Leaning against the rail, in elegant pose and with an air of boredom, stands Pope Alexander VI — the Borgia himself — broader than he is tall, wrapped in a scent of myrrh and sin strong enough to overpower even the stench of the port.
He has a sharp nose, long gloved hands, and the gaze of one who has already absolved himself of whatever sin he may commit after dinner.
“My daughter,” he says, looking at me sideways, as though measuring my defiance.
“The sea is like politics: it slaps you when you least expect it. These are strange times, when pirates fear God more than the gallows.”
All I can do is offer him a small bow.
“My lord,” I reply, “perhaps they have simply learned to negotiate better.”
Then a metallic groan breaks the noise of the sea.
A little off to the side, in a cage hanging from a rope as thick as a wrist, is the medieval theologian Albert the Great — teacher of Thomas Aquinas and patron saint of scientists.
He swings like a human pendulum, his beard falling in tangled clumps across his chest; despite the unmistakable aura of charisma surrounding him, he looks like a prize-winning exhibition hen.
He clutches a bundle of damp papers to his chest — notes, formulas, perhaps prayers — and every time the cage sways he screeches, somewhere between a sob and an imprecation:
“Anathema! All this is a dream sent by the devil! And you, you have all cursed me!
I, who studied angels and stars!”
A rope groans, and he shrieks even louder:
“If this cage falls, half of Western scholasticism falls with it!”
The crew bursts out laughing, and each time the deck rocks, the cage sways with poor Saint Albert, making him look like a living piñata, scented faintly of incense.
A leather-skinned pirate with a black patch over his left eye sits beside the cage.
He laughs a metallic laugh, and at his ear glints an earring shaped like a Coptic cross.
“I say we should throw him overboard, this Jonah!” he shouts.
“He brings storms, I swear! Ever since we took him aboard, the wind’s gone mad and the wine tastes like iron!”
This is One-Eyed Willy, legendary for having served five courts and no homeland.
Leo Africanus, standing next to me, raises a hand to restore a measure of calm.
“At sea you may cast gold into the waves, but not wisdom,” he declares firmly.
“To throw a philosopher overboard is to blaspheme against the wind.
And a German priest… that’s what truly attracts tempests.”
Willy fixes Saint Albert with his single eye.
“But he… he’d deserve it this time.”
Albert the Great lets out an indignant howl as the cage swings wildly.
Around us the sea growls, the sails snap, the wood creaks under our feet.
And in the middle of this chaos, Khayr ed-Din Barbarossa watches us from the quarterdeck like the host of some perverse game show: a predator’s smile, arms crossed, his eyes studying each of us as if we were game pieces to be played.
The Wheel of Fortune, I realise, is already spinning.
Willy turns his lone eye on me and bursts into laughter.
“Then this Jonah is your responsibility. For now he stays alive, as the lady and the little lion want. But mark my words — if the wind turns to sirocco, it’ll be the two of you keeping him company among the fish!”
Leo glances sideways at me, and for an instant I think I glimpse a spark of understanding between us, as though we had shared a hundred journeys before this one.
Meanwhile, not far from the cage, Casanova begins humming a Venetian refrain;
the Borgia fingers a rosary from which hangs a gold tooth, absorbed in a mystical expression that does not suit him; while Marcus Aurelius murmurs incomprehensible words with his eyes closed, as if meditating on the eternal folly of humankind.
Above us, in the still sky, a seagull lets out a cry that sounds like a warning.
The deck is a creaking stage, the air thick with iron and old sea.
Leo Africanus guides me between ropes and swollen sails, through voices clashing against each other.
Night is already dense, as if too many thoughts had been poured into it.
Albert the Great is locked below deck, and every hour that passes eats a little more of his hope.
“If we don’t get him out soon,” Leo says quietly,
“we risk turning him into a martyr — and therefore a symbol.
And symbols never die.”
Casanova listens to us while caressing a dagger as if it were a fan, and smiles.
“Exactly. Symbols are burned to keep stories warm, but inevitably they rise again from their ashes.”
I look at them both.
“We can’t leave him to rot down there. And we can’t fight everyone.
We need a plan — something just foolish enough to seem brilliant.”
Casanova tilts his head.
“A diversion, then.”
“A diversion that keeps him alive,” I say. “Here’s the idea:
we send him away as an emissary — a messenger of peace.
We send him to the Genoese Andrea Doria, Khayr ed-Din Barbarossa’s eternal rival,
with a proposal no one will take seriously,
but one that sounds just enough human, just enough provocative, to be righteous.
A way out.”
Leo nods slowly.
“An ancient move. Send the most compromised one to negotiate with the enemy,
and in doing so save him from the blade.”
“Yes,” I answer, “and we fill the parchment with something that resembles a vision.
Not a political treaty — an act of compassion.”
I pause.
The sea always has something to say, and when it falls silent, you must listen.
“There’s something I must confess, Leo,” I say. “I’m tired of endless war.
Of wars that never end because no one really wants them to end.
Look at Palestine: it’s the people who are disintegrating, not the maps.
Right now Palestinians have no voice. No choice. It is a moral madness. And Israelis are paying a terrible price too: they’re turning into a terrified, fanatical people, backed by a genocidal army disguised as a defence force.”
At the word genocidal, Casanova raises an eyebrow. Africanus does not move — but a small muscle trembles in his cheek.
“In Italy, this war is already destroying our public discourse: Islamophobia is rising, antisemitism is rising. Two sides of the same coin — the same white supremacist logic that must dehumanise someone in order to feel alive. But it’s the same poison.
The same fear. Whiteness devouring everything, including itself.”
Leo stares at me, silent — the gaze of someone who recognises a language of despair because he has spoken it too.
“Let’s admit it: everybody wants ‘dialogue,’ as long as it costs nothing. But that’s not how it works.
A ceasefire costs money. A humanitarian corridor costs money. Reconstruction costs money. And most of all… giving life to hope costs money. Always.”
I feel their eyes on me — not judging, not agreeing, not yet — just weighing my words.
“I would tell Andrea Doria this,” I continue: “if you can no longer defend a land, you defend the lives. At the very least, people should be given a choice that is not simply the choice between death and misery in the rubble, or death and misery in a refugee camp. Because that is not a real choice.
So here is my proposal: do they want Palestinians gone? Fine — then at least give every one of them, man, woman, or child, a universal visa.
Let them rebuild their lives wherever and however they choose — and give them the means to do it. Because when you can move freely, you can breathe. And when you breathe, you can think. So along with the visa, give each person two hundred and fifty thousand euros.”
The ship seems to tilt by a millimetre.
“Two hundred and fifty thousand because it’s the budget of my Marie Curie fellowship,”
I add, with a bitter smile. “The one I’ve already won, yes… but which may never arrive, for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of my work.”
A seagull shrieks above us. Casanova opens his mouth to speak, but I stop him — I already know where he wants to go:
“Is it madness? Of course. But it’s proportionate madness. Do you know how much Europe spends on walls, weapons, drones, surveillance?
Much more.
They’ll give the same answer they always give: ‘there are no funds.’ But it’s a lie.
There are always funds — we just choose to spend them on something else.”
The sea booms, as if in approval.
“And the point is not only the money. It’s what the money would mean. ‘We have failed you, we have betrayed you, we have stripped you of land, water, air, future. We cannot return what was taken, but we can give you a possibility.’
No one deserves to die in a cage. Some would stay, some would leave — but at least they could choose what to do with themselves. Whether to remain in a defeated homeland, or live in an exile that contains a real opportunity. And choice, gentlemen, is the first form of dignity.”
Casanova is no longer smiling. He looks at me the way one looks at an oracle speaking out of time.
Then he sighs.
“An idea so absurd,” he says quietly, “that it could pass for the word of a saint or a madman. And therefore perfect for him.”
“For the Great Albert,” I say. “Exactly. We send him with this madness. Let him tell Andrea Doria it is the message of God, or of reason, or of humanity — it doesn’t matter.
As long as he believes it.
As long as he survives.”
We go below deck. Albert is pale as a sealed moon. I explain the plan in a firm voice:
“You will go to Andrea Doria. You will carry a peace proposal: ransom for all hostages,
and alongside it, an idea — freedom as opportunity, not concession.
Tell him the world can no longer bear the weight of blood, that human dignity is worth more than flags. Take no side. Ask only for mercy for all. They will think you mad —
but madmen often pass through doors the wise keep shut.”
Albert stares at me, astonished. Then says: “And if I don’t return? If they mock me?”
“Then at least you will have shown someone that it is possible to dream of not hating.”
Casanova places a hand on his shoulder.
“And remember: when you don’t know what to say, stay silent. Silence, used with grace, is more eloquent than a thousand treatises.”
We give him a parchment, a cloak, and one of Leo’s rings — a seal that means nothing, but looks important. When I see him climb into the small boat, I think we are sending our last spark of faith into the dark — faith in the word as refuge, not as weapon.
As the boat drifts away, Casanova murmurs:
“See? The maddest ideas save themselves. Like men.”
I look at the water and reply:
“Or like peoples who learn to choose life instead of martyrdom.”
On the deck of the Regina Isabella, the wind carries the smell of iron and tobacco.
In the captain’s quarters, Willy the One-Eyed has unfolded the board of a game: El Grande.
A map of fifteenth-century Spain, colored regions, little wooden figures that look ready to make war.
“It’s a kind of Risk,” he explains, staring at the map, “but instead of stealing territories or killing each other, you… pile up on top of one another. Whoever gains the majority in the greatest number of regions wins. A truly beautiful war game.”
The eldest of the Barbarossa brothers — red-bearded indeed, eyes shining with hunger — nods: “This is no game of mercy.”
The middle brother, keeping score with a broken quill, adds with a laugh:
“Bring out the knives!”
Casanova smooths his jacket and moves his caballeros with theatrical elegance,
while Marcus Aurelius studies the map as if it were a real campaign.
Pope Borgia cheats without being noticed, slipping an extra wooden man into Toledo.
I — the blue player — choose purely by instinct, without counting.
At first I bet everything on Granada, drawn to the name, to the memory of a last frontier between Islam and Christianity. But when the scoring phase comes, I discover I only hold the majority in Catalonia.
“All right then,” I say laughing, “I’ll take Barcelona and let Seville go — they snatched it from under me at the last minute anyway.”
I don’t win, but I’ve placed more pieces on the board than anyone. All the cards that kill pawns — epidemics, revolts, court intrigues — ended up in my hand.
“Why?” Khayr ed-Din finally asks, intrigued by my choices.
“Because winning the game wasn’t my priority,” I reply. “It was saving as many of my people as possible. I lost in points, but I won in life.”
A brief silence.
Then Barbarossa laughs, shifting one of his caballeros into Navarre: “So you play like the sea: not for conquest, but for the pleasure of moving the tide.
I like it.”
Leo Africanus watches the scene with his deep, steady calm, his voice low: “It is the difference between dominion and presence. Dominion fears the void; presence inhabits it.”
The pieces keep moving, but something has changed: the game is no longer a war for territory, but a dance of density and proximity. A reversed Risk, where power lies not in striking but in coexisting — in accumulating without destroying, in dueling without wounding.
I look around, proud of my little blue army: clustered, confused, alive.
“In the end,” I say, “there’s no moral difference between fleeing and staying.
What matters is not disappearing.”
*To the Berber diplomat al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān (c. 1494–1554) — known in Europe as Leo Africanus — we rightly attribute a major role in shaping early modern European imaginaries of Africa. Less often discussed is that this imaginary also contained stereotypes about African peoples that today we cannot hesitate to call racist. For instance, he described the Barbary Coast as the most ‘civilized’ part of Africa because its inhabitants were white and governed ‘by reason and law,’ whereas sub-Saharan Africans were, in his words, ‘without reason, without skill, and without practice.’
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