Incognito Experiences that defy identificaion

This book is about living in hiding. It pierces the darkness and leaps into the secrecy of the incognito, a parallel dimension in which even what could be said often is not. Out of excess of tact, fear or because one thinks it is not relevant. Or, in certain milieux and in the worst cases, due to mere political tactics. But, even at a glance, the world of clandestine people is not a desert land; on the contrary it is populated by living beings, experiences and ideas that are very close to ours, in both the most miserable and the most fascinating aspects of our lives, close to our most ardent desires and passionate daydreams.
The following contributions tell of this world. They are the voices of people who have lived or are still living in hiding, voices of different tones and emotions, each bearing their own message. They tell their experience of a clandestine situation, which can derive from personal choice or causes beyond to one’s will. For some this experience was a result of their revolutionary struggle; for others, the many who, along the road of exploitation and the atrocity of borders have nothing more to lose, not even ID, this experience is a result of their social condition.
If the names of the authors are not to be found in this book it is not out of caution or ideological choice. It is more a question of, let’s say, good taste. In fact, we prefer the clandestine experiences to speak for themselves, rather than the identity of those who are talking about them. Nevertheless, as identity is not just a question of personal data, these written lines will inevitably reveal traces leading to the author of the text.
When we decided to write this book we thought that would be the most genuine and direct way to present the uniqueness of the experiences it would contain, rather than a theoretical or historical discussion on living in hiding as intended by revolutionary movements. On the contrary, we chose a form that expressed the most personal aspects of the clandestine dimension in complete freedom: the situations that the authors of the texts had had to face, their reflections and proposals, their practical and theoretical considerations.
With a great effort that often tore at our hearts and penetrated our inner being, we managed to obtain a series of data and emotions that can offer the reader a ‘guide’, also concerning ‘technical’ suggestions, in the eventuality that he or she might one day face conditions like the ones described in the pages that follow.
So it is, a ‘guide’; but it is also a lens through which to look with more sympathetic complicity at the nameless exploited, bandits, refugees, and all agitators who run to ground and who still pursue, in the links of the chain that grasp the planet, desire and the reality of a free life.

INTRODUCTION
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT
KEEPING ONESELF OUT OF THE WAY
FROM SETBACK TO PROSPECT OF LIFE
TRAVEL NOTES
RUNNING AWAY FROM THE PRISON SOCIETY
GETTING RID OF FRUSTRATION
A TRAIN IN THE NIGHT
NOMAD FOR SOMETHING PRECIOUS
THE MAN AT THE WINDOW
EXPERIENCES OF BANISHMENT

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