by Beatrice Castellani
Me and Moist we met in 2014, during an Erasmus program in Wrocław, in Poland. We were both students in the Mechanical Engineering department and ours, more than a meeting, was initially a clash between two different cultures.
Husam had never been to Europe before, I had never met anyone who was religious muslim. The Poland of student dormitories and Erasmus was certainly not a land impartial on which to measure yourself. Alcohol and evenings flowed, I was so far from home for the first time and Hu found himself catapulted into a world completely different and in which it was difficult to orient oneself.
We had a lot of questions. Both. One on the other’s culture. Questions that became even more complex on January 7, 2015, when the attack on Charlie Hebdo in France it gave rise to a long period of mistrust and fear towards the Islamic community. In those months, some students generically identified as “Arabs” were associated with and began to suffer terrorist acts attacks of various kinds.
Meanwhile, Husam and I continued to talk and try to understand, to give meaning and narrative to what we were experiencing. I’m not sure that our discussions have ever reached any kind of shared conclusion, but what is certain is that, by talking to each other together, the unknown becomes known. And the distrust turns into friendship.
Read Also
Gaza, almost 24 thousand dead. Israel bombs southern Lebanon. US media: “Biden is losing patience with Netanyahu”
Since then Husam and I have never stopped being friends, he came to visit me in Italy and we continued to update each other on both our lives. The of him, returned to Gazaevery now and then he appeared on television and then I wrote to him to ask him if, despite the bombings on one side or the other, if everything was still ok. Until October 2023, when at some point the connection is gone and for two weeks I remained convinced that he might be dead. That was the stroke of the beginning of a long nightmare from which he, his wife and the little girl have not yet managed to escape. And I find myself without answers and conclusions, exactly like in Poland 10 years ago. But to remember perfectly that the stranger had become a friend. A friend who today He needs help.
Husam is now married to Aya, also an engineer, and is the father of a 20-month-old girl named Basant. He is studying for a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at King Abdulaz University in Saudi Arabia. Thanks to the student visa, when he was wounded in the leg obtained permission for transfer to a hospital in Saudi Arabiawhere he underwent several surgeries aimed at making him walk again.
Aya and Basant are stranded in Gaza and live in a tent without food or water. The houses are no longer there. Most of their families are no longer here. Businesses don’t work anymore. There is no longer the possibility of having a life.
I decided to start a fundraising campaign to help Hu and his family reunite in Egypt, to try to rebuild.