Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Alfonso Campisi
Published on 2024-03-25 09:35:58
For the past decade, the revaluation of the history of Sicilians in Tunisia or Tunisians of Sicilian origin has gained unprecedented momentum. Foundations, university chairs, associations, scholarly publications in Tunisia, France, and Italy, doctoral theses, international conferences… have emerged, sparking a great interest among Tunisian, Italian, and French readers and researchers.
The history of Sicilians in Tunisia is a typically Mediterranean story that belongs more specifically to these three countries bathed by this wonderful “salt lake.”
We also know that leaving one’s own country is not easy at all: sufferings, sacrifices, humiliations… befall the migrant head-on, without wanting or being able to spare them. This was the case for thousands of Sicilians who left their island and settled in the early 19th century in countries in search of unskilled and cheap labor.
Unfortunately, history repeats itself!
Lorenzo Bonazzi’s book “Al di là del mare” (Beyond the Sea), published in Italy by the publishing house “ae affinità elettive,” traces an Italian story between the two shores of the Mediterranean: Sicily and Tunisia.
The author gives a voice to his grandmother, “nonna Ida,” courageous and of strong personality, born in Tunis in 1920, the real heroine of this book, always questioning her with finesse, affection, sensitivity, and admiration at the same time, about memories of a childhood lived in Tunisia, until the sad departure to Italy.
It is an engaging narrative, very well written, that is read in one go, arousing in the reader a curiosity about the “after.”
“Al di là del mare” is not only an unprecedented autobiographical testimony, it is also a document providing necessary information for any researcher working on this rather complex field of Sicilian presence in Tunisia.
Important historical information, narrated and experienced in first person by Lorenzo’s grandmother, are described with great precision, very well detailed, often with immense modesty: the sad fate of Italian institutions such as schools, for example, closed by colonial authorities, the Second World War, fascism, the arrival of the Americans in Tunis, the great exodus after independence and the sad departure to Italy, a country often unknown to the entire Sicilian diaspora in Tunisia, lead the reader into a whirlwind of sensations, moods, emotions, joys, and sorrows.
The life of “nonna Ida” spans eighty years of history of the Sicilian-Tunisian community, present in Tunisia since the 19th century. A life like many others, quite normal, but with particularities specific to the Sicilian community, unique and representative of the complex multiculturalism present in Tunisia, born from the interaction and daily exchanges between different customs and traditions, between Italians, Tunisian Muslims and Jews, French, Maltese…
A transcultural experience that could allow us to analyze and better understand migratory phenomena in the Mediterranean between past and present.
Read the original article(French) on La Presse Tunisie
