SU_T_14

[r] My name is [name] and I am of Somali origin. I am an only child, which is not normal in Somalia. I have a daughter who is also an only child. I am a grandmother of 6 grandchildren, all 6 healthy, all beautiful, and have a good Sudanese husband. My name is [name] and I am of Somali origin. The last time I was in Somalia 27/26 years ago I was in Mogadishu to say goodbye to my family and then what happened happened in Somalia the war then I went to get my family and for now they live in Denmark. As for work I graduated and worked in Turin for 17 years as a professional nurse in Turin. Then I left for Denmark where I still live and work with Somali refugees as a nurse, full time. And my job is so welcoming of refugees. But as I said, I have a daughter and my work with the refugees was doubly important to me. I have my 80-year-old father, my 74-year-old mother and 6 grandchildren, so I too have worked hard to carry on this tradition and work that I have continued to do until now. Now I don’t work, but I do volunteer work. There are many Somali refugees with their children, and the Danes have a very strict law. They even take the children away if they miss something at school. These are the kind of things I work on as a volunteer because I stopped working when I turned 65. And then I help Somalis as much as I can. This is the work I do. I’m also interested in politics. I follow it everywhere, both in Turin and in Somalia. I’m here twice a year in Turin, which is my city that I love, and where my life as a woman began. I started in Turin. Turin is my real city even if I lived more in Denmark than in Turin. My friends and colleagues are there, they’re all old, they’re all well. We’re making a mess of things. For now, all we do is talk. There’s a demonstration tomorrow. Maybe that’s what I’m missing. Because in Denmark I don’t lack anything, there’s nothing to fight for here. Because when you have everything you have nothing to fight for, to say this I have discovered why it’s like that in Denmark. But here it’s the ideology that’s missing. To do something here, my old friends like Simonetta and Marina are almost 70 years old, but I lived for these daily things: talking about politics, about this racism that exists in Italy now. I miss these things here: going out on the street, making trouble like we used to.
[i] So, talking to your husband the other day, the person I met said something very interesting, something very important about your journey. He said that you have your body in Denmark but your heart is in Turin?
[r] Yes, that’s true.
[i] Today, what are the ties you have with Turin that have meant that even though you moved to Denmark you have always remained connected and Turin is your home?
[r] You could say that Turin has remained my home, but you are Somali. But I am still Somali, no matter how many years I have been in Denmark. I am Somali, I will always be a Somali woman, a mother, a grandmother, but what I’m saying is that Turin is where I met, where I started my first revolutionary batches, the first batches of femmenilism, the first jobs, the first studies, the first fight, so something has remained the same in my 40 years. So reliving those things from those years makes me feel nostalgic. Talking every day about what happened 40 years ago, but not in the same way as it was 40 years ago. Because 40 years ago what happened was seen as the joy of starting a new way, but now it’s not the same, so we talk about it with a little sadness. And that’s what I miss, and that’s why I love Turin.
[i] Now you are promoting this beautiful book that we have yet to finish. But you chose to write it in Italian.
[r] Yes
[i] And with a publisher from Turin, and to start promoting this book in Turin, what happened in Turin 40 years ago between you and Turin that created this strong bond?
[r] It’s what I told you before 40 years ago I came here when I was 19/20 and the first city that gave me the sense of freedom of being a woman of being a feminist that gave me work that gave me the opportunity to study that’s why the bond remains and I’m happy to see it again my friends from 40 years ago are all alive and well and we still have something in common to discuss discuss it until this Monday evening and I miss that, that’s why I’m coming, this is the bond I have with Turin and then I chose to publish my book in Turin because I have all my good memories in Turin and also the bad ones and that’s why I chose Turin, I also found publishers in Rome and Milan but I chose this publishing house called ‘Donne scrivono’ where everyone is a woman, she is the only female writer and publisher who has won a gold medal from the President of the Republic because she does beautiful things for women and I believe in these things she does. I don’t earn anything from it, I still have a debt, but I’m still glad it exists.
[i] Well, let’s talk about what you’ve done at a professional level, what has your career been like? Why do you say that you arrived in Italy at 18/19 years old?
[r] Yes, 19 years old.
[i] Exactly, what was your journey like, but also what difficulties did you encounter, if any? Or what opportunities did you have, both on a professional level and in terms of other opportunities you might have had? Maybe you could have been someone important in this city or region. If you gave up on certain things or had difficulties, what was your journey like?
[r] Ok, a little about me. Somali who arrives here. I didn’t even have a middle school diploma here. I had one in Somalia, but I have a 60-70 average. Nobody considers it, but to be able to enrol in the normal general infirmary, I had to have a third grade average, which I didn’t have. I started as an intern at the general infirmary hospital. And I didn’t have my diploma because I wanted to do the vocational one. I went to work, I got up at 5 in the morning, I worked and then I went to evening school in the evening. And when I finished middle school I took the exam and then I enrolled there. And then the most difficult thing was that I saw that my colleagues who had a professional diploma, which was more than mine, had more auxiliary qualifications, so we weren’t at the same professional level. I found 2 jobs in Turin, one of the best was with the son and grandson of Agnelli, the one from Juve who is now 56 years old
[i] [name]?
[r] [name] he was 6 years old, someone who knew [name] his father the grandfather said to me ‘don’t you want to be a babysitter?’ for whom? the grandson [name] told me they will pay you well you won’t want for anything. And I said me? I had this mentality of going to work for the rich bourgeoisie at Fiat. And that in the morning I would go and protest in front of his gate and in the evening I would go to his house to work. It was an ideology that didn’t make sense, my ideology at that time, I denied it, I rejected it. And then I rejected all those things that gave me security, money, and I preferred to get up at 3 in the morning, that’s the difficulty I found. Then at work my head nurse was a nun who didn’t spite me but gave me all the shifts she could and I didn’t accept that I was a black Somali African Muslim feminist trade unionist there was no place for me. But luckily I had all these fellow doctors who loved each other I even made her build the nativity scene for Christmas. I had this mentality, the memory of Africa with palm trees and things like that. She thought she’d spite me, but I was fine. That’s what the pros and cons were.
[i] And then you started a family?
[r] I started a family, I married a doctor I had met when I was a trainee at the hospital. The head nurse used to tell me ‘you mustn’t be too familiar with that doctor’. I looked after the doctor because I was a trainee, but she told me I shouldn’t be too familiar with him because he was the doctor and I was the nurse she didn’t know that we were engaged and she took me away from him and sent me to another doctor And then I got married to this doctor we worked together on our honeymoon we went to Somalia to take him to my parents’ house and my father said “do you have 50 camels for me?” just kidding I don’t have 50 camels.
[i] And then Danese who offers camels to a Somali woman.
[r] It’s crazy, anyway everything went well, and then there was this thing that my husband and I didn’t get along because of jealousy and then because of a bad physical thing that happened and then we broke up I found another boyfriend. And then that thing happened we were thinking of starting a revolution in Italy the red brigade and all that. I was disappointed by what happened the mess and the red brigade. I said now I’m leaving everything, my husband, my job and I’m leaving. And then I went to visit a cousin of mine in Denmark And that’s where my professional life began so I also started working in Denmark. I started as a non-professional nurse because I wasn’t known yet, I had to get the documents to work with the elderly, and then I went to school from there I started working in university hospitals I met my husband. And then what happened happened, I used to come to Turin every year to see my friends from Turin, and when I got married they came to Denmark. And then what happened happened in Somalia in 1992, the war in Somalia.
[i] Perfect, I wanted to understand, you left Somalia when you were 19 years old, right?
[r] Yes, even 20.
[i] Exactly, so which ones were they, if there were any, in your journey from your childhood up to the age of 19, and if there were any figures in your family or in the country in general, figures of women or at a global level, who characterised your journey?
[r] In Somalia?
[i] Both in Somalia and elsewhere, in short, in your childhood did you have role models of people you thought, okay, I’d like to be like this person or follow in their footsteps?
[r] As I told you, in Somalia everyone is Muslim. In Africa it’s the parents who decide who you should marry, how you should live, in short, it’s the parents who decide. I had this model from the age of 8. I had Somali neighbours because in the 70s there were many Somalis who had left the country. Professors, doctors, medical doctors, they went to Russia, to Italy and their children were my peers, they were the same age as me, they were neighbours and I used to go to their house to listen to music, they used to bring little magazines about Italian love, Albano and Romina, and we would sit there dreaming about this beautiful thing called Italy, thinking that one day I would go to this place. I couldn’t accept that my cuoi tani (close friends) who were already married and had children at the age of 15/16, were like that. I tried to escape so as not to be like them, but like those other cuoi tani who went to high school, I had the example of this girl here, and then when I came to Mogadishu I also took up the example of American politics. The first book on politics I read when I was 16 was about Che Guevara. I didn’t even know where the world was. All these things gave me the right to not see myself where I lived. I didn’t want that future of being a mother with many children, but I saw this model of being free. I followed this girl, we went to buy photos, novels written in Italian, we listened to music, I went to her house and my dream was to be like this model, not like the traditional Somali model. And that’s when the trouble with my father started.
[i] Ok. And why did you decide to come to Italy?
[r] I didn’t decide, because I got involved with a movement called ‘21 October’ in Mogadishu. It was left-wing in ‘70. I was working with some friends from Turin who worked for the “21 October” newspaper in Mogadishu. And then the first delegations from left-wing Italy in Emilia Romagna began. I had contacts with these people, I took them around to introduce them to the new revolution, they talked about many important things about Somalia, about how they could help us, there were women’s movements and they said to me ‘you’re very active and you believe in the revolution, you’re left wing, why don’t you come to Italy to study? Sure, OK. From there I started and I had the opportunity to come to Turin. They suggested Emilia or Romania but I chose Turin. And then I had the problem of my daughter, I couldn’t take her with me because her father said that my daughter shouldn’t become like me, unfaithful, so forget her. He didn’t even give me a divorce, but he also changed her mother’s name, he gave her his wife’s name and as far as I’m concerned she’s not my daughter, so I came.
[i] And where does your daughter live today? And if you have grandchildren, how many are there?
[r] I have 6 grandchildren. My daughter lives in London. First she took them to Denmark with her 4 children and then she got remarried and had 2 more children who were born in Denmark. And then she moved to London because she chose to and she likes it there. And that she feels more Somali there. I respected her choice but she didn’t respect who I am and how I am in many ways. I’m in touch with her but sometimes we don’t agree on things because when she came to Denmark with 4 children from the war, she was alone. Plus I had to take care of my parents, my father was 86 and I had to take care of everything. I had the council job and I had my children who were like refugees so I had to look after them too and I told her not to have any more children, you don’t have enough with the 4 children you have? And she told me that I had become Danish by following their culture and suddenly one day she said to me we’re going to England, let’s leave. Fortunately, we still have a good relationship, even though she doesn’t accept who I am, but I accept her and we respect each other. When I go to London, I dress like a real Somali, I cover up completely so as not to upset her. That way they don’t consider me an infidel, so as not to do her this injustice, and when I go around the Somali shops in London people ask my daughter ‘but who’s this, is she your sister?’ And she replies she’s not my mum. If I went out like that without covering myself you would have made her lose respect because there is this crazy religious movement, okay.
[i] Good. So what I wanted to understand maybe you could start by answering the question your connection with Somalia this time I’m going back to the cultural side how much do you miss Somalia? Especially when you’re at home and you miss Somalia what do you do? Do you listen to music or do you go to the kitchen to make a Somali dish? How do you manage to express these moments if they happen?
[r] I miss Somalia because I have to, because I’ll tell you, up until 4 or 5 years ago I had contact with my parents because I’m an only child. I haven’t lost any cousins, the war ended a year ago and the house that my parents left behind after they left it to me, but according to Muslim law I have no right to it, but his brother and his son, who lived and were born in my house, have the right. It’s crazy, I have 6 grandchildren, my daughter, Muslim law says that I have no right before him, my father’s brother and his son, and nothing. So I also get angry, oh God, all the things I’ve done for that, he didn’t just miss me, oh God, and then these ‘Alshabab’ guys what happens and who do they kill all the family members and those I know I said one day I’ll be old that I can’t walk who knows maybe I’ll go my daughter will return to Somalia I know she will return to Somalia one day Who knows if one day I’ll go back there but I miss Somalia people send me photos of the beaches I have to wear a swimsuit in Mogadishu yes they send me photos of the beaches and I dress to go swimming in Mogadishu, they
[i] Well, today, considering everything you’ve done in Turin, how satisfied are you with your personal journey? Today, if you had to, what would you change?
[r] First of all, I think despite everything I’ve been through, I’m satisfied with my life. I’m happy that I’ve achieved my number one goal, which is when I lost – no, not lost, but we took two different paths, my daughter and I. What I dreamed of, what I prayed for, was that my grandchildren wouldn’t become like my daughter or like the others who hate me, who hate the way I am. Oh God no, feminists hate democracy. This is what I’ve achieved, it’s been the best gift I’ve given myself, not because they have to be like me, they’re all beautiful, polite, democratic, they believe in the right to life of Somalis, of all people. . This is the gift I gave myself, I’m very happy with it.
[i] On the other hand, if there are things you should change or redo today? Or rethink how to do it in your path, it can also be in the political struggle, it can also be in comparison with what is happening today in Europe in general but particularly in Italy? What would you do?
[r] You will have changed, we experienced the left-wing revolution very closed we are feminists we are this but to be able to open up more, because now if you see our very tough policy that we made 30/20 years ago to be able to open up more because if Europe is isolating the right wins, perhaps in a wrong way our left-wing policy that has made this Europe for which we are now paying become like this I would say that we could have faced it in a different way instead of doing this political scheme
[i] Instead, perhaps it is one of the last questions I would ask you today, starting from the link that Italy has had with Somalia throughout history. And comparing it with the current immigration situation and above all the laws and uniforms that are also taking shape in this country, what interpretation do you give today in comparison with that era and today? What interpretation do you give to this link between Italy and Somalia? And above all in comparison with what is happening today in this country?
[r] I would say that Italy hasn’t helped Somalia, it hasn’t done anything, it’s done nothing but disaster. In fact, I remember my father worked with the Italians, he was one of those who built the roads, they said they built the roads to wage war, they passed through with their lorries or I don’t know, they did nothing. As King Umberto II said, his son, his grandson is buried in Somalia. All the tourists who go to Somalia ask where the tomb of King Umberto II is? Graziano also was buried in the country where I was born they did nothing. They didn’t build schools, they did nothing. It’s just stupidity when they say that the Africans don’t even need a third grade what the Italians said in Somalia they did nothing. And instead of playing politics now, sending all the Somali refugees back, it would be better if they built things that are useful and that give work to people, schools and education, instead of treating them like slaves here in Italy. Send him and do a job that helps you economically, study instead of bringing him here, this is what is missing.
[i] What are your future plans apart from promoting the book?
[r] Yes, I would like to do the book, in fact I would like to write it and then see it around. I do this voluntary work hoping to see that the world changes, that women are well and that they are no longer slaves, that what is happening in Italy no longer happens and that there is more peace and more freedom in the world.
[i] Well then, I thank you for your time and I think we will have other opportunities to do a longer interview. Anyway, thank you
[r] Thank you