Igiaba Scego was born in Rome in 1974 to a family of Somali origins. She is a writer, journalist and academic, and her novels published in English include Adua (2015) and Beyond Babylon (2019). This extract is from her nonfiction title Roma Negata. Percorsi postcoloniali nella città (Rome Suppressed: postcolonial tours of the city), published in 2014 by Ediesse, featuring photography by Rino Bianchi.