Alae Al Said and the voice of a forgotten Palestine

"In a world that calls itself a world of human rights but continues to look the other way in the face of a tragedy unfolding before everyone's eyes," Alae Al Said chooses literature as a tool of resistance, testimony, and memory. With her novel "The Boy with the Orange Keffiyeh" (Ponte alle Grazie), presented at the Pordenonelegge festival, the Italian-Palestinian writer brings to the fore the story of "a people who have too often been portrayed by others."

Born in Rome in 1991 to Palestinian parents, Al Said is an Italian citizen. Yet, her identity has always been questioned, as she herself told Adnkronos: "At school, when I said I was Palestinian, I'd be told, 'Oh, Pakistani?' As if Palestine didn't exist. And if anyone had heard of it, they'd ask awkward questions: 'Don't you want peace with the Israelis?' I was ten years old, and I already had to answer about politics."

As a child, she wrote poetry. Growing up, Alae Al Said found in the novel a way to express "a collective pain": that of "a broken homeland, of a people under occupation, and of an identity" transmitted through what she calls "collective memory." A memory that is hers, even though she didn't directly experience the 1948 exodus or the 1967 war: "I feel the wounds of my people within me. Just as every Italian carries April 25th, Liberation Day, within them, so we feel the exodus as part of our identity."

In the novel, set between the 1960s and 1990s in the occupied West Bank, the story of Loai—a red-haired boy with a gentle spirit—becomes the emblem of an entire generation. From school to the Six-Day War, through his friendship with the strong and indomitable Ahmad, "The Boy in the Orange Keffiyeh" is the tale of personal redemption intertwined with the collective resistance of a people under siege.

But why write this novel now? "Because today we have before our eyes, in real time and in high definition, the genocide of my people," the author explains. "And we do nothing. We can no longer hide behind ignorance: we have the tools to stop it, but we don't want to use them. And this makes us all complicit."

Al Said's words are sharp. He goes beyond emotional denunciation and speaks of the West's inertia, "a result of subservience to US foreign policy. Israel is the United States' main ally in the region, an American foothold in the Middle East. That's why they don't want to intervene."

Writing Alae Al Said is "a form of struggle." But not only that. It's also an act of love, of reconnecting with one's own history, and of vindication: "Palestinians have always been described by others. Never the active subjects of their own narrative. Writing this novel means reclaiming our history, telling it with our own words, restoring dignity to our pain."

It's no coincidence that he quotes Mahmoud Darwish, the great Palestinian poet, and his phrase: "Whoever imposes his own narrative inherits the land of the narrative." Narration, therefore, becomes a battlefield. But also a place of humanity. Because, Al Said explains, "if I tell you that 800,000 Palestinians fled during the Nakba, it's just a number. But if I tell you the story of a child who lost his father, who has dreams, fears, hopes... then perhaps you can feel my pain. And only when you feel my pain, can you fight for my rights."

At a time when "dehumanization has become a powerful weapon," "The Boy in the Orange Keffiyeh" is a novel that restores "a face, voice, and heart to those who have been deprived of them for too long." (by Paolo Martini)