It is enough to read a few paragraphs of Madre piccola to switch to emotions and sensations, imbalance and unreason. “How can a woman or a man put down roots again, find their center of gravity in a world where they have lost all bearings? asks writer Ubah Cristina Ali Farah in the opening pages of the novel.
Rustling with multiple voices which in turn express themselves, Madre piccola resonates the trajectories of lives disrupted by exile. In the middle of this kaleidoscope stand out the stories of three protagonists, Domenica, Barni and Taguere, two women and a man who invite us to follow their traces in the different spaces where they lived, as well as to listen to the memory of the loved ones, crossed, disappeared or miraculously found during their journey. In the background of this romantic chorus, Somalia, like a fantasized point of departure and return, plays the martial rumble of the political forces which, since the 1990s, have destabilized the country, causing the flight of thousands of people from the stranger.
First cousins, Domenica and Barni spent their childhood in Mogadishu, raised in complicity under the gaze of Barni’s mother, Domenica’s aunt or madre piccola (“little mother” in Italian), who treated them like sisters. When civil war routs families, the two girls find their lives drift apart; their bond would not be re-established until twenty years later. Based in Rome where she became a midwife, Barni is called upon as an interpreter for a young injured Somali.
A quest for identity
The emotion she feels then brings back to life in her the past years that she revisits in the light of her relations with the Somali community in Rome. “My story goes up and down like a wave. I wish you could follow me, despite everything,” she comments, aware of the complexity of her story.
Domenica also remembers. Although Italo-Somali – her Somali name is Ahado – she did not settle in her mother country but first went through years of uncertainty and turmoil in different countries. “We were constantly going from house to house. We could be anywhere. For me, for all of us, it didn’t matter. You just had to get used to new signs, to a different currency to reconstitute a map: that of relationships with others and places to meet, call, make purchases, as if perpetually transported inside the bubble of atmosphere that held our music, our smell. »
This journey was also equivalent to a quest for identity for the young woman constantly between two languages, two geographical spaces and as many ways of thinking. When she miraculously reunites with Barni, Domenica has become a documentary filmmaker and is making a film – this is no coincidence – on the Somali diaspora. The promise of a childbirth to come will end up anchoring its stability.
Faced with these two strong figures, Taguere, the former playmate of the neighborhood, “delicate boy, a little showy, but delicate”, for his part became an unemployed refugee, stigmatized by public opinion, separated after a first marriage and unable to care for her offspring. Part lament, part reproach, his voice symbolizes that of exiled Somali men whose life in migration has stripped them of their traditional status. They turn out for many of them unable to find their place in the new world where they ended up.
deep humanity
In Madre piccola, memories call for memories, faces multiply, fragments of life intertwine to the point that there is sometimes something for the reader to feel confused about. Thus, Domenica prefers to tell herself in writing: “It will prevent me from losing the thread and following the current of a thought which ends up going around in circles. I understood it thanks to you: this flaw is common among those who have faced the shock of migration. »
However, one emerges from the reading fascinated by the deep humanity that emerges from it. Because little by little is composed over this narrative polyphony, an impressionist and moving picture of the Somali diaspora. Like a consoling and protective matrix in the face of the fragility of exile, forming a community – speaking one’s language, connecting through food, being able to count on one another – turns out to be the ultimate recourse for all these emigrants.
Born in 1973 to a Somali father and an Italian mother, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah finds herself, by her very origins, at the crossroads of these dispersed populations. She composes in her own way, through the focal point of interbreeding, a new map of the world.
Released in 2007 in Italy, Madre Piccola has already been widely acclaimed by critics. This first novel has finally just appeared in French in the translation à fleur de peau by J. François-Michel Durazzo. We also hope to soon discover his next two novels and this unique writing that throbs like a heart.
