Malocchio
(The Evil Eye)

The belief in an "Evil Eye" stretches from North, Central, and South America to across the Atlantic Ocean along the Mediterranean and Aegean coastline to Turkey, Russia and the Continent of Africa. Today, the evil eye is believed in and practiced by millions of people worldwide.

We live in a modest Italian neighborhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia. We are fortunate in that there is a park across the street from our house on Green Street. All of the kids in the neighborhood hang out at the park. It's the day after the last day of school, the start of summer vacation, and I'm looking forward to ten weeks off of school before starting my senior year in high school.

At the end of our block is a house that is owned by an old Italian woman. My parents have warned me to avoid going anywhere near this house. "Do not even walk in front of the house. Walk in the street if you have to, but avoid the house". They call it the "fatura" house, which means bewitchment in Italian. The woman that lives in this house is believed to be able to cast an evil eye on anyone she wants. She has a long-standing feud with my family because of a falling out that our ancestors had a long, long time ago.

Because of where we are from, Sicily, the evil eye plays an important role in our lives. Sicilians are superstitious by nature and we take the evil eye and all it brings very seriously. When someone gives you the evil eye, it could be something as benign as just bad luck or as serious as an illness or even death. The people that can do this are called "Jettatores". The old woman that lives down the street is believed to be a Jettatore.

We wear horns around our neck to protect us against the evil eye. My mother and aunts test to see if the evil eye was put on us at least once a week. My aunts bring over olive oil and they place three drops of the oil into a small container of water. If the oil stays together then we are safe. If the oil breaks up, then someone has cast the evil eye on us. There have been many times when the olive oil has broken up. When this happens the woman go down into the basement, pray, and perform a ceremony to break the spell.

A bunch of my friends got together one day to play baseball in the park. We usually challenged one of the other neighborhood teams to a game. This was not organized baseball, but baseball like the way we liked to play it. Which usually meant we ended the game in a big fight.

Halfway through the game, the other team smacked a ball over my head, out of the park, and into the yard of the fatura house. I figured that I could jump the fence, grab the ball, and be out in less than a minute. As I jumped the fence, I saw the drapes open from a room on the second floor. The Jettatore was watching me in her yard. I found the ball, jumped the fence and headed back to the game. As I jumped the fence, I felt a cold chill on the back of my neck. As a precaution, I touched the horn that I wore around my neck and put my thumb between my index finger and my thumb while making a fist. This was a gesture my mother taught me to protect me from the evil eye.

It was late in the day and we had lost the baseball game. We all decided to head home, grab something to eat then meet at the park later to hang out.

Just before dinner, I heard a commotion outside, "Hey mom, there is something going on outside". Everyone ran outside to see what was going on. An ambulance was in front of the fatura house. The caretaker of the house came running out screaming, "She's dead, she's dead". As the emergency personnel rolled her body out on a stretcher, her right hand made the sign of the horn and a picture of me was in her left hand. My mother grabbed me and quickly pulled me home. She told my father what had happened and he began calling people. They told me to lie down, but it was too late. I could feel my legs beginning to go numb and I was nauseated. They rushed me to the hospital. As we walked into the emergency room, my father told the doctor that I had Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). The doctor looked at him and said, "How do you know that sir"? "I had it, my older son had it and two of my uncles had it", he said. "Nurse, get a stretcher here stat", he said.

Sure enough I had the disease. GBS is a disease that paralyses the deep tendons of the body. Left untreated, you could die if it reaches your lungs. The hospital had me under a twenty-four hour watch. I was in the hospital for six weeks and it took another three for me to fully recover. I learned a very important lesson that summer. Despite of where we think we are technologically, and what we think know medically we still don't fully understand what humans are capable of.

Ralph M. DeFrangesco is currently with Accume Partners, a consulting organzation, where he works with fortune 500 companies developing security programs, assessments, strategic and enterprise architectures, and disaster recovery programs. He also teaches for Drexel University as Adjunct Professor in their Computer Security program. He holds a BSCS, MBA, and is currently a PhD condidate. He has written a novel and a self-help book on time management as well as several technical papers, poems, and short stories. He lives in Harleysville, PA with his wife, two children, two cats and two dogs. His hobbies include furniture building, martial arts, and rock and ice climbing.

Email: Ralph M. DeFrangesco

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