Mis-understandings (Fra-intendimenti)

In 1986 when her father – one of the leading political figures in contemporary Somalia – had been in prison for the last four years, Kaha Aden left her country, escaping the war that would ravage Mogadishu and the whole nation. In Fra-intendimenti the author tells us about the shots that announced the civil war, the meetings of the wise men beneath the oak trees, the perfume of ginger and cardamom in a cup of tea, child soldiers in khaki trousers, armed to kill. The foundations of her new life in Pavia, where she studied, are those documents of an identity that knows nothing about poets, bloodthirsty warriors, ancestral spirits and tribal legends. A world of domestic servants, catholic boarding schools, immigration offices, mistrustful landlords, a world in which black was the colour of prostitution. These stories give voice to a Somalia of extended families, of matriarchs, of wise old men, set against an Italy of contradictions, bureaucracy and ambiguous welcome. A new writer, a new eye describing the difficult passage between two worlds that has become characteristic of our times.