Arete e Sharazad. Due maestre del Mediterraneo

n the sea that for centuries has witnessed landings and landings, in the sea wheretheethics of rescuelived, divisions have multiplied and borders have become stiff. On the contrary, in the ancient Mediterranean everything was mixed, complicating and enriching its history. The journey is part of this story, not just an unavoidable dimension of the biographical experience, but the shape of the Mediterranean symbolic experience, the form of its story. Those who traveled asked and intended to give hospitality. Not just concrete hospitality but also “narrative hospitality”, as Ricoeur says. The protagonists of narrative hospitality were women. Among these women, there are two that seem to embody all the welcoming and melting power of the narration, two hospitable women, two guardians and teachers of the story. They are Arete and Sharazade, the heroines of two popular Poems, the Odyssey, and The Thousand and one night, born of the thousand and one voices of the Mediterranean