A few tens of meters from a gazebo displaying the slogan "Italians first", walking through the historic center of Trento you come across narrow streets full of pizzerias and focaccia shops, often run by foreigners. One of these has a special story: it's called Ibris, from the initials of its founder Ibrahim Songne, a 26-year-old boy born in Burkina Faso but raised in the Trentino capital from the age of 12, so much so that he unlearned his mother tongue, French, and spoke a very correct Italian with a markedly Nordic accent. "I also speak the Trentino dialect", says Ibrahim proudly, who dreamed of graduating in Economics ("but studying cost too much for my family"): 9 months ago he decided to take the plunge and open his own restaurant . “After years of working in a pastry shop, I was fed up with desserts – he confesses, with a big relieved smile-. My passion has become pizzas and focaccias: I began with patience, as a self-taught person, to experiment on my own doughs and leavenings and my ex-girlfriend, a girl from Brescia, encouraged me to open a business”.
The result is that his products are surprisingly successful, especially the focaccias and porridges that have little to do with Trentino but, if anything, with Liguria: “Actually, I have no ties to Liguria. Yes, I've been there, but it's a coincidence that I'm passionate about the typical products of that area". Ibrahim has always lived in Trento, where he joined his father, who she left Africa when he was just a month old and who now works as a tanner in a nearby valley: “In my opinion, there is no place in Italy like Trento. I'm not saying that other cities aren't beautiful, but here you have a unique contact with nature". In this mountain region, where he loves trekking and running (and where his two brothers also live), Ibrahim has even managed to bring the flavors of a distant land and sea: "In the past I was used to working more on quantity rather than quality, because there is a tendency to prefer the pursuit of profit. Instead, my goal was to offer a product that was above all healthy and digestible. In the focaccia dough, water usually represents 60% of the potato flour, with the addition of brewer's yeast. I tried using 90% water, Type 1 flour and sourdough”.
And then a lot of natural levitation, as in the textbook to enhance fragrance and crunchiness: "At the beginning I respected the optimal 48 hours, but after a week the place started to go well and I had to shorten the times, passing to 24 hours", he admits Ibrahim. The work for him, that uses only Italian raw materials ("All from Trentino, apart from the flour") and has among its employees an Italian boy, Matteo, from Bassano del Grappa, and a Pakistani girl, Anila, is rapidly increasing. "A nearby supermarket has asked me to collaborate and from next week I will be hiring another girl at the counter", explains the boy from Burkina Faso who is still the sole shareholder of the business and the only one who kneads and bakes pizzas and focaccias as he knows how to do it, after years spent experimenting, cultivating his passion. Already jealous of his method? "No - he laughs - on the contrary Matteo is already giving me a hand".
But Ibrahim's story isn't just the nice adventure of a boy who played pizza maker and became a successful small businessman. It's also one extraordinary history of integration, which culminated two months ago with his obtaining Italian citizenship: “Just in time to vote!”, he jokes. “Actually, it had been due to me for two years, but at the beginning I didn't attach importance to it. Then I realized that I really feel Italian and that I wanted to exercise my rights, including the right to go and vote". Did you vote for Lega? "But imagine!". In the stall a few tens of meters away, signatures continue to be collected to give Italy back to the Italians (Trento still has a centre-left mayor, even if last autumn the Province passed to the League). Perhaps by tasting Ibrahim's Ligurian focaccia, they would change their mind.
