SU_T_42

[i] Hi [name]!
[r] Hi, good morning!
[i] How are you?
[r] Fine, everything’s fine, thanks.
[i] Who is [name]?
[r] So, my name is [name], I’m 28 years old, I come from Egypt, from the northern part of Egypt, a more or less large city, between Cairo and Essendria, it’s called Monofia, the city where I’m from. So, I’m here in Italy, I first entered Italy on 9 May 2010, then after a year, a month, I was deported to Egypt, then I entered Italy again on 17 July 2012, after trying eleven times to enter Italy through those ports. Today in Italy I’m studying education science, I’m attending the education science faculty, I’m in my second year, I’m up to date with all the exams. I work with the Gruppo di Abele, in the Gruppo di Abele bookshop.
[i] Tell us [name], what was it like to come to Italy on one of those barges?
[r] Well, it wasn’t very easy, it was really very difficult to get here, especially as we spent ten days at sea, so it’s quite difficult. The last time I arrived, which was the last time I tried to come here to Italy by boat, which was about thirty metres long, there were over 120 of us on board.
[i] Were there also women with you, children?
[r] No, children, more than anything else who were, how do you say, minors, under 18 years old, they were about a third of us, a third of the total number of people.
[i] What are the reasons for insisting so much on risking your life to reach Italy? What drove you?
[r] Well, for sure, those who try to get here to Italy in this way aren’t just looking for a better life, because I can’t risk my life to find a better life, but at least to find the minimum to survive. So in Egypt I was studying Social Sciences, I finished the first two years, then seeing the situation in the country, especially not having the possibility of finding work, then after I finished, I am the eldest of five brothers and we live on my father’s salary, which is about 300 euros. So, considering all these reasons, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to find a job after I finished university, I chose to come here to Italy.
[i] So [name], we can say that if you had found a job in your country, Egypt, you wouldn’t have risked your life, you wouldn’t have come here.
[r] Not work, we can say a fairly quiet life, because surely finding work is not the only solution to all my problems, but we are talking about when before the Arab Spring there was Mubarak and therefore we are talking about dictatorship and a lack of opportunities to live and therefore if I am a child of the rich it was not possible to stay in Egypt.
[i] So we can also talk about political problems, because the situation is very tough, there isn’t much freedom of expression, nor equality, in the sense that if you’re the son of, you have more possibilities than a simple, poor citizen, let’s say normal, in the sense that he’s not rich.
[r] Yes, exactly. Above all, the situation there wasn’t so much that I could find the life I wanted. As I said, here with work and going to university I was more or less able to achieve pretty much everything I wanted in my country. And here, luckily, I found a life that is quite peaceful.
[i] Let’s say that I’m someone who left his country just to have a peaceful life, above all a quiet one. It has nothing to do with the land, we all love our land, but unfortunately the way things are in our country, the way things are going, you are pushed to make choices that maybe your heart doesn’t want to make, but your brain really wants to. Let’s say that in the time you’ve been here in Italy, you’ve managed to integrate quite well, without problems, do you have any friends?
[r] Well, now my only problem is that I can no longer find my Arab friends, because.
[i] You’re integrated quite well, you’ve almost become Italian.
[r] Yes, almost, yes. No, because I’m married to an Italian woman, we have two children, one who is two years old and now, well, three months, the second is six months old.
[i] Best wishes!
[r] Thank you. And so, well, with my wife’s circle of cousins, friends, my university friends, and so on, I don’t have any more space.
[i] So there’s not even room for another Arab.
[r] Yes, yes. Let’s say, this union between an Arab and an Italian, let’s say at home, how is this union going? Have you managed to preserve your Egyptian culture? Do you practice it in your daily life?
[r] Well, especially today, as today is Ramadan, a very important time for us Muslims. My wife has kept her religion, which she still has today, she’s a Christian, and then, well, we’ve made an agreement that there’s always a middle ground. That is, if I want one thing and she wants to do something else, if we argue, we find a middle ground where both our cultures meet. And this, we’ve been together for five years, I’d say we’ve almost always managed to find this middle ground.
[i] So we can say that it’s not only bodies, only people that get married, but cultures and even religions.
[r] Yes, exactly. And this is always, when I talk about this story, my story with my wife, that people always say that the beauty of our couple is the diversity of cultures that we always find. Also of religion.
[i] Of course, because as we can imagine, let’s say, one culture is beautiful in itself, so having another one is just an enrichment.
[r] Yes, also, well, there was this time when Federica, who is my wife, when she talks to me, just for a moment when we’re talking, she says, poor my friends who don’t know what they’re seeing, not to get involved with other cultures. And so by always remaining closed behind my culture, this limits my vision, it doesn’t let me see other possibilities, and others, maybe, it’s not my culture that’s the best, everything else is worthless.
[i] Of course, let’s talk about the food in your house. What do you eat, Egyptian, Italian or a mix?
[r] So, Italian until my mum comes back from Egypt.
[i] Help!
[r] Yes, no, but, oh well, and this at home, oh well, because of so many things, my cooking, I cook Arabic and Egyptian cuisine, not everything, but the little I’ve learnt watching my mum trying to burn food here, throwing it away, after all these practices I can more or less cook the things I want to eat the Egyptian way too. But also many Egyptian dishes, when my mum came here to Italy to find her grandchildren, she cooked for me and my wife, and she always invited us to where she lived, and there my mum discovered many new flavours that maybe she hadn’t tried in her life, and before she would say no, no, no, I didn’t want to try, but then after…
[i] But you just had to try, in fact let’s go back to the fact that until you know your neighbour, until you know things you can’t judge, so you just have to try to understand.
[r] And nowadays she’s the one who asks me to cook the things my mum used to cook. I’m not as good as my mum is, but at most I’m similar.
[i] You’re getting closer. Let’s talk about the music you listen to. Do you listen to Egyptian music, Italian music, where do you orient yourself the most?
[r] So, apart from 8:15, which my wife always watched for her, I want to watch A Place in the Sun, which is a TV series that has been running for, I don’t know, twenty-three years, no, thirty-five years, I can’t remember, I’m not sure, but what I understand is that she has been following it for many, many years, and so after this is finished, maybe sometimes we put films on a new programme, like Netflix and Audio TV, and then maybe sometimes I also put Egyptian things, films, music, etc., which is especially for my children, who maybe they want to have a taste of my culture too, and let’s say that Egyptian animated song is my son’s favourite.
[i] Talking about the children, in your opinion, let’s say, your culture, would you like to pass it on to them, are you passing it on, or do you let them live it like this, giving them the chance to choose what they want?
[r] Well, it’s a bit of a delicate point, but I can explain as long as I can. Well, for the religion thing, we’ve said that they practice, or maybe they come with me, either to the mosque, or maybe we all go to church together for Christmas, for Easter, for all the religious events, either one or the other, but they have freedom of choice. Yes, I would like them to become Muslims, it is my wish, but this does not prevent them from choosing. Once they have decided, when they are old enough to decide which side to be on, for me it will be a very important thing at this moment, but whether it is one choice or the other…
[i] The important thing is that they are convinced of their choice and let’s say that they are also happy. As an immigrant, as a refugee, how do you see this mass immigration, these girls who come on the boats, how do you see this thing, in this period, how can it be managed?
[r] Well, I don’t know about all the other countries, but I can talk a little about mine. Well, most of the people who come here, whether from Egypt or from another part of the world, because if we see the mass that is coming now, they are more Syrians because of their country and also from the southern part of Africa, because I believe that nobody knows what is in southern Africa. And so I feel sorry for all these people who come here and also for the people who unfortunately don’t manage to get in, because maybe they come here and then they spend 18 days in the sea, closed off, they’re not European Union countries or maybe they’re not countries in the world, he wants to let them in for reasons of…
[i] Politics, borders…
[r] Frontière que … I believe that when the Earth was created, God didn’t just draw a border, and they are not borders that can be seen. It is the border that human beings have put there, mainly so that they can be closed off behind these borders and no longer care about what is on the other side. And this, in my opinion, is wrong.
[i] Of course.
[r] Above all, let’s say that some have migrated, and this number is increasingly high, and they manage to add to this country, not only taking a life that I believe everyone should have, but they can add, because they are new ideas, new workers, new people that perhaps we should not look at only as a point of need, because…
[i] They can, let’s say, enrich us on a cultural and economic level…
[r] Because they are a carrier of knowledge, experience, ideas…
[i] Language too.
[r] Yes, language too. And so in my opinion it’s just a question of searching, as we have a saying in Egypt, which is that gold is always said to be hidden under the dust. And so we have to find the gold of the people who are here, who have arrived, under the dust that there is. And I believe that when these people arrive here, new, yes, they have many difficulties, which are first of all linguistic, and this is something that more or less many people manage to overcome by learning Italian. Then the second difficulty is trust, because when I arrive as an immigrant I don’t have much trust in the people in front of me. Above all, a glance is enough, which is not… a glance without malice, but this can renew the… excuse me because I’ve already messed up. And so a glance is enough to destroy the relationship that was about to be born. But this glance can really make the relationship uncomfortable, even if I want to help the person who has just arrived. Oh well, first you have to know that these people are not carriers of disease.
[i] Of course, or of delinquency.
[r] Yes, also… but we must also see them as people who have the possibility of having a life of their own.
[i] Of course, we can say that we just need to look at them with a human eye.
[r] Yes.
[i] And put ourselves in their shoes to understand why someone would risk their life, which is the most precious thing they have, fleeing from a country full of poverty and war, and rightly wanting only a better life, something that is obviously different from what they have.
[r] Of course.
[i] Thank you [name] for being here, thank you for answering my questions and… thank you.
[r] Thank you.