According to Istat data of January 1, 2020 on migrants in Italy, residents from Egypt are 128,095 and 68 percent are in Lombardy.
Simona Iurlaro’s reportage makes these data human and real, narrating the daily life of the Leila family. The founders of this nucleus are Kamel, who arrived in Lodi twenty years ago from a small town near Mansura, and his wife Eman, who joined it after the birth of their first daughter, Khadiga. The other daughters are Mariam, Basma and Farah.
To keep alive the link with their homeland, the Leila speak and eat Egyptian at home, educating their daughters to the Islamic religion, without impositions but transmitting to them the values they believe in. Both Eman and Kamel are graduates and have sent girls to Lodi schools since early childhood; they both want them all to go to college.
To carry out the project Beyond the threshold the photographer was allowed to enter the private life of a family that allowed her to witness clear days but also more tense situations. For the Leila “hospitality is a real way of being” writes Iurlaro, a Milanese photographer born in 1973 who made this work by participating in the reportage Masterclass of the Roman school Wsp photography between 2020 and 2021.
.