“Uallai!”, an expression in Arabic which means “God is my witness that it is all true” is the title of the book written by two workers at the Caritas of Udine, Sandro Lano and Michele Brusini. The theme is immigration, but not the drama of the sea crossings, the death of countless migrants or the moments of emergency, and the book does not use the epic or dramatic tomes of a certain kind of journalism which takes advantage of the grave situation of those people to make sensational headlines, to then forget that, for those who are lucky enough to survive, there is an “after”.
Uallai! tells of the “after”, when these people arrive in the immigrant reception centres and begin their journeys of “integration”.
The tone is amusing and wry, if not downright comical, born from hilarious linguistic misunderstandings, reasoning which pushes the boundaries of logic and paradoxical anecdotes from which emerge human profiles and stories which concern both the refugees and the people who are trying to help them: from those who, in order to convince the workers that their father is dead, ask to be able to call him so that he can confirm the story himself, to the “magnificent rector” who takes advantage of an illiterate refugee for electoral purposes by enrolling him in the faculty of medicine at his university.

Alongside the authors, taking part will be Moni Ovadia, who will be performing at the Teatro Grassi from 22 to 27 September with the show Il registro dei peccati.