Tuesday 9 July at 7 pm at the Pin-In pine forest in La Spezia, Manuel Bonomo Morzenti presents his new book entitled “Abu Avrahàm. Incontrarsi oltre la storia”, published by Enrico Damiani Editore. Introduced by Maria Laura Spinogatti. The event is organized by Libreria Ricci. Free admission, until seats are taken.
The story is inspired by a true story. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when everything is Ottoman and there is still no distinction between Palestine and Israel, a stubborn and dreamy Arab child named Yussuf runs away from his village and arrives in Jerusalem. In the Holy City he is welcomed into the house of a Jewish merchant and falls in love with Leah and her green eyes: a family of mixed blood is born. But after the Second World War, the fracture caused by the birth of the State of Israel pushes Yussuf to flee again. And to return “home”, to his village of origin. There he will build a second family, with an Arab wife, Maryam, and equally numerous descendants. Of his previous life, only rumors and the kunya will remain, that particular Arabic name that links the father to his firstborn: Yussuf will be Abu Avraham for everyone, the “father of Avraham”, the first of the children – Jewish on his mother’s side – left in Jerusalem. The two lineages will thus live apart for over half a century, divided by an inclement history. It will be Ismail, the first-born Palestinian stationed in Rome, who will pick up the threads of Abu Avraham’s story and reveal the enigma imprinted in his name: children and grandchildren, including the restless Sami, will end up meeting and, in spite of themselves, recognize each other, in a game of timid approaches and painful distancing. What unites them, despite everything, will always be the undeniable awareness of sharing the same blood, the same memory.
Manuel Bonomo Morzenti is a teacher, journalist, writer and traveler. He currently teaches English in a high school in La Spezia. He has written for the Brescia edition of the “Corriere della Sera” dealing with culture, immigration, travel and mountains. He has published Germogli americane (SVI, 2011), a linguistic research carried out in the field in Karamoja in northern Uganda, the travel diary Gelataio a Bombay (Gam, 2014), in which he recounts his experience working at the counter of an ice cream shop in the Indian capital, and the essay Nel segno della Cometa. Brescia e Betlemme: storia di unaamicizia (Gam, 2020), which reconstructs the history of the relations between the two twin cities.
