Wafa Mustafa is 32 years old and has lived in exile for nine. He had to leave his country of Syria after the disappearance of his father Ali, a well-known dissident of the Assad regime, taken away from home by a group of armed men. Wafa Mustafa was following in his father’s footsteps and participating in the ongoing protests, which gave hope for a change in the country. But then, with Ali’s arrest, the whole family had to flee, first to Turkey together and then dispersed between Berlin and Canada.
Since that day in 2013, the incessant search for his father has been intertwined with that of the 150 thousand people who have disappeared since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011. In 2020, Wafa participated in a protest before the court in Koblenz, Germany, where the trial against two Syrian soldiers accused of torture in their country’s prisons, and was later invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.
Together with her, the French political scientist and orientalist Olivier Roy and the Palestinian poet and activist Mohammed el Kurd will try to understand how our outlook on the Middle East is changing, especially after the war in Ukraine. They will be in Ferrara on October 1st, in a meeting moderated by Catherine Cornet of Internazionale.
On the same day El Kurd will also present his collection of poems Rifqa, together with the journalist and translator Francesca Spinelli.
Info internazionale.it/festival