‘We were elsewhere people,” André Aciman writes in this memoir of the year he spent in Rome in the mid-1960s. Aged 15, he left Egypt with his deaf mother and younger brother while his father remained in Alexandria to sell whatever they couldn’t take. Aciman’s Jewish family were part of diaspora forced to leave during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s two decades in power, refugees who attempted to start again in Europe and the US.
When they arrive in Rome, the Acimans must rely on the generosity of André’s great-uncle Claude. “I’m no ogre,” he protests (never a good sign), while keeping a record of every lira he gives them. He installs the family in a flat in the working-class Appio-Tuscolano district, previously one of his brothels, and sets about finding a school for André and his brother.
