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bunkers. Unliked most of the beutiful, clean lines of fascist architecture of that period, these bunkers are right off the set of Dr. Who: the concrete imaginings of someone who designed modern warfare to look forbidding.

The military ruins are impossible to eneter; their broken steps steeped in pee and human shit. I wonder whoe--maybe refugees on the lam? Who else would hike out to these desolate trenches to micturate?

• There’s a sign in the new port addressed to journalists like me. A lefty youth organization posted it a couple of years ago. Eileen and I translate aloud: A smile for the press: While you follow aid and immigrants, Lampedusa runs the risk of discounting this emergency, which you compose of summary information that’s reductive and sometimes false. You present the immigrants’ arrival as an aggression, a threat we should fear. Furthermore, you have no respect for those who arrive in inhuman conditions, and suffer in vain. This includes the economic/touristic effects on the inhabitants of Lampedusa, despite their tireless work. Stop the reality show.

• Everyone here is an immigrant. Everyone came from somewhere else.

• The man-made cave is a hollowed-out boulder scorched by centuries of fire. Fig and olive trees, paper bougainvillea blossoms line the walkway between the grotto and a nearby church. From Christian to Muslim to Christian again, this island has changed its religion as empires have risen and fallen since the third century.

At the grotto, our unlikely tour guid is Jaafar Kriden, a Tunisian refugee who has just ben granted political asylum in Italy. Eileen and I meet him by accident in frton of a hair salon near the old port when we stop to ask him directions. He proposes a tour of the island, and we accept.

He describes his plight as a political refugee, assuming that we will find him sympathetic. He sees himself as a victim of history. If he goes hom to Tunisia, he might be targeted as a former lackey of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the country’s recently overthrown dictator, who held power for more than twenty years. Jaafar Kriden served as the party’s treasurer in his town.

To save his skin, once revolution broke out on January 14, 2011, Jaafar