Takoua Ben Mohamed Confronts Anti-Muslim Prejudice in Rome Through Comics
Photo of Takoua Ben Mohamed. Courtesy of Rizzoli Libri.
In a provocative yet sweet graphic novel titled My Best Friend Is a Fascist (Il mio migliore amico è fascista), Italo-Tunisian artist Takoua Ben Mohamed highlights the many contradictions of growing up in mixed, racialized communities in the low-income neighborhoods of Rome. Here, nothing is black and white, she tells IMPULSE, and contrary to the mainstream narrative, the opposites often collide to form unexpected and unusual friendships. “It’s a true story,” she says during a long Google Meet call, just a few days after her honeymoon.
“It happened in my first year of high school,” she says, referring to the ideation of the graphic novel. “Me and the boy lived in Tor Bella Monaca [a high-density, low-income neighborhood]. He took pride in being a nazifascist, he used to say. We were both 14.” Unexpectedly enough, they grew closer with time. Hate subsided, and a friendship blossomed. But even then, the boy kept justifying his xenophobia by singling out the author from other immigrants. “After the book came out, I found out I was not the only one [immigrant] to befriend a fascist,” she says. School girls came to her to tell her that they also had classmates defining themselves as such. “He thinks that all foreigners are bad, but that I am different,” said one girl to her, Ben Mohamed recalls. Maybe exposure to mixed friendships and diversity will change their minds over time.
Takoua: “But what will this guy have to stare at?” Fascist: “I absolutely need to find a solution to this curse.” Then to Takoua: “Look, I have an idea, I might have found a solution to our problem.” Takoua: “Oh really, you also have a brain to think with then.” (our translation) From Il mio migliore amico è fascista (My Best Friend is a fascist) by Takoua Ben Mohamed, 2022. Credit: Rizzoli libri.
Ben Mohamed, 33, has spent almost her whole life in Rome. She moved to the city in 1999 at the age of 8. Her parents were two political dissidents and refugees opposing the Tunisian dictatorship of Ben Ali. She would later describe this in her graphic novel The Jasmine Revolution (La rivoluzione dei Gelsomini). This October, Ben Mohamed’s work was on display at Europe’s biggest comic-con, Lucca Comics & Games, as part of the exhibition Kalimatuna, our words of freedom, which also included other celebrated international artists: the Moroccan artist Zainab Fasiki, whom Time magazine listed as one of the Next Generation Leaders, and Egyptian artist Deena Mohamed, who is considered by The Washington Post to be one of the five women changing the world in 2017.
From the left, cartoonists Deena Mohamed, Takoua Ben Mohamed, and Zainab Fasiki at the opening of Kalimatuna at Palazzo Ducale, Lucca (Italy), during Lucca Comics & Games 2024. Credits Riccardo Bonuccelli. Courtesy of Lucca Comics & Games.
Kalimatuna at Palazzo Ducale, Lucca (Italy), during Lucca Comics & Games 2024. Credits Riccardo Bonuccelli. Courtesy of Lucca Comics & Games.
Despite receiving much recognition in Italy and abroad for books like Beneath the Veil (Sotto il velo—none of her graphic novels has been translated into English) and her Al-Jazeera documentary Hijab Style, Ben Mohamed did not become an Italian citizen until 2021. “It was only because my family was not wealthy enough to be granted citizenship,” she says. In fact, in Italy, you need a high income to qualify, a requirement Ben Mohamed describes as “highly discriminatory.” “We had to wait for my graduation because my father’s salary wasn’t enough, and as soon as we finished high school, each of us took on a job to contribute to the family income,” she recalls, adding that she has six siblings. Ben Mohamed also worked while studying in Accademia Nemo.
Absurd questions: “But if you are in Italy, why do you wear the veil? Does the color matter? But now that you wear the veil, does it mean you are married? Oh please, no! But can you hear me beneath the veil when I speak to you? Yes and I can see just fine too.” (our translation) From Sotto il velo (Beneath the Veil) by Takoua Ben Mohamed, 2022. Credit: BeccoGiallo.
A lack of citizenship has impacted her life and that of her siblings. One of her brothers could not become a lawyer, even after successfully finishing law school. Another could not play professionally in top-tier soccer teams until finally receiving citizenship. For 17 years, her brother had to go to the immigration office to renew his paperwork despite having been born in an Italian hospital just a block away from their family home. Ben Mohamed herself could not attend the state exam to become a professional journalist. A recent petition to hold a referendum to lower citizenship requirements and make them transmissible to migrants’ children was a popular success. The new citizenship law would affect 2.5 million people in the country. However, one of Italy’s ruling parties, the right-wing Forza Italia, founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi, tried to push for a counterproposal that would allow for citizenship after attending 10 years of school. While welcoming the referendum, Ben Mohamed is instead skeptical about Forza Italia’s bill. “It’s too little compared to what should be done to better the lives of young people born and raised in Italy. It’s their future we are talking about; they are one hundred percent Italian,” she says.
Despite the hardship, Ben Mohamed has always found the time to do what she loved: drawing. She has been taking commissions since a very young age. “I was 14,” she recalls. “At first, it was small things, free gigs. Nobody pays you at 14, especially in Rome,” she laughs. “I held my first exposition in my dad’s mosque.” Her father is an imam in Centocelle, a left-leaning neighborhood on the eastern periphery of the city.
Courtesy of Takoua Ben Mohamed. All rights reserved to the author.
Ben Mohamed drew but also volunteered. Since the age of 10, she has attended non-profit events and peace rallies, carrying on her parents' legacy of political activism in Tunisia. “In the last year of primary school [...] I was going to rallies for Palestine in Rome’s center,” she says. In this way, being always around, Ben Mohamed developed a strong relationship with the city. “When I say home, I mean Rome. Here, I grew up, I matured, and I’m grateful for that. But at the same time, all the things I tell in my comics—the racism and the prejudice—I experienced in Rome, but I’m also grateful for having lived through them, as I wouldn’t be the same strong woman without them,” she concludes.
Takoua: “And then I notice it: a man sitting next to me, he's stubbornly staring at me // He’s strange.” Man: “Hey you, girl, what’s in that bag? // You're not hiding a bomb, are you? Like those terrorists who did that attack today.” (our translation) From Il mio migliore amico è fascista (My Best Friend Is a Fascist), by Takoua Ben Mohamed, 2022. Credit: Rizzoli libri.
Ben Mohamed believes that Romans are increasingly directing their frustration over the city’s many problems toward immigrants, fueled in part by a climate of intolerance under Giorgia Meloni’s government. A few things, though, are changing. Almost every Saturday afternoon, like in many other cities around the world, Rome has hosted vocal protests in support of the freedom of the Palestinian people, even defying police blockades. The Israeli destruction of Gaza sparked what Ben Mohamed describes as an “awakening of conscience.”
“You couldn’t speak of Palestine before,” she says, “and then this year, here, I was [talking about it] in schools. Do you know how big it is to do that in Italy? It’s a giant step, really.” Ben Mohamed recalls that when she was invited to a school in Rebibbia, a low-income Roman neighborhood, the girls stormed her with questions: “They felt really close to me, even though we don’t share anything [in common], not religion, not culture; the only thing we had in common was being Italian. But they came to me and told me: We want to be like you.”
Courtesy of Takoua Ben Mohamed. All rights reserved to the author.
At the end of our call, Ben Mohamed touches on another noteworthy topic: media representation. “Social networks have given a chance to many second-generation kids to have their own mediatic space, to have a following, and to be protagonists of their own life, story, and professional career,” she says. But in mainstream media, things were different. “When journalists interviewed me, I was either the girl with the headscarf that does comics, or, when terrorist attacks happened, they called me to say: Look, there is something good too, take this girl with the headscarf doing comics!”
Tokenism is still widespread. Before parting, Ben Mohamed shares a last anecdote. Once, she got invited on TV, and the show producers refused to call her a cartoonist, a graphic journalist, an artist, or even simply an author. She could only be presented as an activist. “That’s because this face cannot have a career on TV. It can only be that of a student or an activist,” Ben Mohamed grimly says.
Courtesy of Takoua Ben Mohamed. All rights reserved to the author.
