How a stray dog called Nino changed my life

I’m just back from Sicily. Here’s how I met Nino

Have you been to eastern Sicily? I have. The huge, violent surges of rock give way to dry olive groves and lemon trees that carve their way up into the thick white slopes of dust and sand. If you stare out under the hard blue sky, you can see a seam of the sea blurring white and green on the horizon. This is Morgana’s island, a strange, forbidden place of impossible things. Oranges and lemons spring up from the dead land, almonds grow hard and thick from trees in a land of no rain, and the sun burns until your skin swells red in spring. This is Sicily, and it is, in a funny way, home.

Nino, before a storm

I can’t claim any Sicilian heritage, or at least none that I know of. But I feel at home here, calm under that unforgiving blue, at peace in the thriving beat of the shore, at one at the chattering of the sparrows in the quiet of the valley and bark of guard dogs. Out of anywhere in the world, I’m…