Return to Macondo: author Ayaan Adan Mohamed revisits her childhood home

Eleven years after leaving Macondo in Vienna's Simmering district, author Ayaan Adan Mohamed returned to the housing estate where she spent her childhood. Her first observation was blunt: "The gates are just as broken as they were back then."

She remembers arriving at the estate as a nine-year-old at the end of December 2009. Snow reached her knees. In front of her stood a gray, silent apartment block among bare trees, appearing as if someone had covered it overnight and forgotten to uncover it.

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The gates are just as broken as they were back then.

"There was nothing far and wide, just cold, concrete and a few tracks showing that others besides us had to be here," she recalls. The family moved into the Kaiserebersdorf family housing complex on the grounds of a former imperial and royal military barracks. Residents called it Macondo, or simply Zinnergasse.

The estate is regarded as a symbol of flight and integration, and Mohamed's return connects that public meaning with the place where her own childhood began.

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There was nothing far and wide, just cold, concrete and a few tracks showing that others besides us had to be here.