January 2019 is starting very positive for my memoir
Destination Freedom. It got two new positive reviews in the Italian Media.
Thank you to Maria Sara Cetraro from Armando
Editore Italy for the English translation.
English Translation
of Review Il Borghese Gennaio
2019
This biography of Lily Amis looks
like a short story by De Sade. In De Sade the clean, naive, confident
characters are deceived, outraged, dominated, and they have to face perpetual
obstacles, such as the story of Lily Amis and her portentous mother. Born in
Iran, members of an excellent family, they conceive the advent of the
Khomeini’s regime as a regression, a mixture of religious fanaticism, male
domination, and pitiful privation of freedom; on the contrary, Lily's family
was open, cultured, and tolerant. Lily's mother, when Iran clashes with Iraq,
decides to escape from war and tyranny. It is very difficult to escape, finally
they leave Iran, at first Switzerland does not accept them and they are
rejected but they can’t go back to Iran. They go twice to Switzerland and they
are allowed to stay.
But, in a precarious and perverse
situation that lasts fifteen years, without a definitive recognition of dignity
and citizenship they cannot find a job, and without a job they cannot settle
once and for all! Many difficulties occur: Lily’s father abandons his wife and
daughter, a second husband reveals as a foolish enemy and deceiver, the
portentous, capable, strong mother of Lily ends up sick, even Lily, aiming to
become Swiss, marries a fool and traitorous man, Sven. The Swiss authorities
seem to get pleasure from mistreating foreign people, keeping them in a state
of insecurity. The story goes on as a modern saga.
Both the bureaucracy and the
injustices of the Western countries and the Islamic fanaticism are recalled in
the story. And it is a sacred concept the one that Lily Amis chooses to
conclude her memoir: foreigners should be totally welcomed or it is better to
not welcome them at all. The characters are described naturally, through their
actions: the maternal grandparents, who are honest and generous, devoted to the
parental bonds, the indifferent father of Lily, Hamid, the cynical husband of
Lily’s mum, Sven, the infamous teachers, ruthless bureaucrats, a degenerate
doctor… Among all these people stand out Sima, the mother of Lily, a moral
sculpture, and Lily herself, in a journey between the privation of freedom and
the courage of being free.
Written by Antonio Sacca for IL
Borghese January 2019
