Mafia ....

The mafia has always fascinated me. I have read Puzo's "GodFather" about 50 times and can remember almost every dialogue in the book.

Today, I met an interesting person - X, who is the grand-nephew of one of the leadings mafiosos in Rhode Island, USA. Although the FBI has been largely successful in decimating the influence of the mafia - The "Five Families" of New York are no more for example. However, there are pockets of mafia influence in the US ...

• Philadelphia
• Chicago
• Florida
• Rhode Island
• Michigan

X looks like a character out of a mafia movie - Chewing on an unlit cigar all the time, a silk suit, a jowly face, flushed all the time and a tendency towards exaggerated gestures and boisterous welcomes ... He told me something interesting - He says that Mario Puzo wrote the book "Godfather" sitting in a library and that he personally had no contacts at all with the mafia - Amazing !

The origin of the word mafia is interesting ... Former U.S. mob don Joseph Bonanno provides an origin that was a refers to the Sicilian Vespers, a patriotic uprising in Sicily against the French in 1282. Bonnano claimed that French soldiers had violated a Sicilan girl. The girl's distraught mother ran through the streets of Palermo crying "ma fia" ("my daughter"), causing the young men of Palermo to kill the French in response.