‘My love affair with Ireland is random, but the flirting started in childhood’

It's four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon and the Forty Foot is crowded. The tide is high, the water is choppy, a few kids swear as they jump from the rocks. Donál, who is a regular, notices I am new to the bathing place and I tell him I moved to Ireland last summer. "Fáilte, fáilte. Where are you from?" Sicily, I say. "And can you put up with the cold?" Barely, but, having grown up by the sea and then endured in landlocked territories for about 20 years, my reunion with water now is sheer nurturing, no matter how cold.

My love affair with Ireland is random, but the flirting started in childhood. As I learnt English in school, Ireland was the island of courageous heroes and superb writers. I was spell-bound by the events of the Easter Rising and enchanted with the sound and images of Irish poetry and short stories. Two years ago by chance, in Berlin where I was living, I found myself surrounded by Irish expats who rekindled a curiosity for their nation. I told nobody where I was going, but I used my summer holiday to explore the island for myself. From Waterford and West Cork, through Kerry and up to Galway and the Aran Islands, I followed the narrowest roads, stopped to notice every whim of the colour green, toasted and traded stories with strangers. Nature was divine, the people kind, the accent fetching.

So I kept visiting and exploring. I met more people, started to make professional contacts, relished being surprised. From afar, I listened to Irish radio, brushed up on traditions, literature and history. Until, on my next trip to Dublin, for the first time in my life, history unfolded before my eyes. The sky unbreakable and the sun giving on a May Saturday afternoon, I stood among the thousands of people who hugged, shivered, beamed and cried as the victory of equal love became palpable at Dublin Castle. Even if I’m not Irish, it was the best day of my life. I quit my job and I came here as soon as I could. The generosity of an entire nation became one of my earliest memories in my new prospective home, and the most abiding.

So many reasons can prompt us to move to a different country. Job, family, study, health, war, the biggest love of our lives. In a year that was particularly difficult for migration in Europe and saw human beings lose their lives in the Mediterranean or their dignity at borders, I was grateful to have relocated to Ireland out of inclination, not necessity.

Just a couple of years ago, had anybody asked me would I consider moving, I would have said no in an instant. After changing four countries and attempting to understand four different cultures, I was ready to settle down where I was. But then, every migrant knows this, the desire for a fresh departure may suddenly grow urgent again, and stronger than any reluctance. Where I grew up is lower in latitude than Tunis. From the Southern depths of Europe, I have now reached one of its most Western corners. Ireland is the farthest I have ever lived from home and yet where my Sicilian self is most lucidly mirrored. As I consider Irish, I impulsively utter words in Sicilian, especially proverbs and jokes we fondly recited at home, because there was no other way of saying what we meant. Though I suppose I’ll never possess a sense of humour like the Irish, the optimism and the wit here tally with a familiar habit of approaching life, especially its tragic twists, with a pinch of fatalism and mirth. An affable relaxed front, at times wrongly mistaken for indolence, hides a gusty passion to surmount any obstacle. Finally, there is the broader circumstance of being an islander, which is not just a geographical element, but a sentiment that is impossible to escape, a uniform for life. Constantly torn between staying and escaping, we grow up with an obsessive curiosity for what makes us different. For islanders, diaspora is an impending shadow.

One of the most blatant effects of big life transitions is to vividly experience a personalised passage of time. Things once thought eternal prove surprisingly short-lived. Others, previously overlooked, suddenly stick. Past and future touch each other in an endless moment of shift. In this rare dimension, we raze and mint versions of ourselves. Every day becomes an opportunity to confirm the old or register the new, to strengthen or revise habits. Being in flux means to be particularly soft-skinned. No matter how smooth and enthusiastic a start may be, moving to a new land is invariably disorienting and at some point we will encounter a dip. This is exactly where I registered the exquisiteness of my new hosts. If I should mention one unconcealed feature among the Irish people I have met, that is for sure empathy. Be it for a laugh or a tear, I know that I can count on their solidarity, which is tangible yet discrete. My Irish friends don’t wait until I ask for help. They observe and, without words, they act suitably. They always know what to say to make you feel welcome and flattered.

From strangers heartily greeting me on my way to the public library to breath-taking views along the DART line and the aesthetics of piers and bilingual road signs, at the moment there’s nothing I don’t like about being here.

Aldous Huxley said that travelling is "to discover that everybody is wrong". Places that at a distance may seem superior, prove "on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect". I certainly don't mind imperfection. Delightfully self-deprecating as they are, some of my Irish friends have warned me that, for one reason or another, I will soon come to loathe their beautiful island. I doubt it, but I am prepared. Serial migrants develop better sight and learn to focus on the core beyond appearances. I also have a trump card. Should doubts over my decision of moving here emerge, it will be enough to retrieve the memory of that sunny afternoon in May and remember that this is a state of loving citizens. I will know again that I am in a good place.

As I settle in Dún Laoghaire, Forty Foot has become a regular spot for me -if not to swim, at least to breathe the sea and meet the locals. It always reminds me of Jamie O'Neill's novel At Swim Two Boys. It was actually when I first plunged into the water that I set the seal to my new life. There's something uncanny about the act of diving. A small turn of audacity, it's a short-lived sensation of triumph, a bet won, a promise fulfilled.

At the end of our swim, Donál asks me how long am I staying. Comu veni si cunta, says my Sicilian voice. We'll tell that story after it's happened. Given the splendid welcoming, the longer the better. I have also heard wakes at funerals can be memorable here, so it wouldn't be that bad if I stayed until the very end. I like it when family and good friends have a good time at my expense.