Abd possesses the transparent fragility of artists. In a family of determined sisters, scientific minds that challenge the abyss with the strength of logic, he is the one who translates horror into notes. For months, music and writing have been his perimeter of survival, the only space not yet occupied by the rubble of Gaza. He defended it tenaciously, even going so far as to put a paper towel on the microphone to isolate his compositions from the sounds of war, trying to save beauty from the noise of bombs.
A year ago, he published one of his songs online, Amwat: "It has existed since 2024 – Abd recounts – I published it fully aware that it probably wouldn’t change anything. I didn’t want to die without leaving something that people could remember me by."
We met him digitally among the remnants of a previous life: mourning for his best friend killed at twenty, two pulverized houses, a massacre of relatives. And then the trauma etched in the flesh of his sister, hit in a "safe zone" and mutilated in one leg. There was a time when Abd seemed on the verge of disappearing: he would remain still for hours staring at the sky or get lost in the alleys of a Gaza that today terrifies parents, driven by the desperate instinct to stay close together, to live or die together.
THE MIRACLE OF STUDY. Then, the shock. The victory of the scholarship announcement in Milan and that phone call from the Consulate in Jerusalem that seemed like a lifeline. Abd was reborn. He started studying Italian with a hunger from another time, asking volunteers for lessons via WhatsApp seven days a week. In video calls, the faces of his mother and father appeared pressed against the screen, engaged in repeating those foreign syllables with him, mixed with hope.
For Abd, the agreements had been clear: if he managed to unlock the Israeli front, Italy would be ready to welcome him. And after months of exhausting legal battles, the impossible happened: the wall of Cogat (the Israeli military body that 'manages' the occupied Palestinian Territories) was brought down. Abd won, obtaining the green light for emigration through the Allenby Bridge. Freedom, for him, was technically ready.
THE RUBBER WALL.But just at the moment of the finish line, the Italian interlocutor evaporated. Since November 2025, the evacuation machine has come to a sudden halt: in December, only six students managed to leave, then absolute silence fell. The procedures that had worked for months evaporated in a reshuffling of responsibilities that borders on the absurd: the management of university corridors has passed from the Crisis Unit to the Office of the Farnesina for Italians Abroad.
The result is a labyrinth, in which no one takes responsibility for a life anymore. At the Consulate in Jerusalem, emails go unanswered and phone calls are filtered by secretaries who note names destined to never be called back. It is a cruel paradox: Abd has won his battle against the Israeli military bureaucracy, but he is losing against the inertia of the Italian one.
A HOPE EXTINGUISHES.In this void, Abd is giving in. His shy smile has faded. He no longer attends Italian classes; he sleeps for endless hours to avoid living in the time of waiting. His face, now extremely thin, is the portrait of the exhaustion of someone who has been deceived, has fought, has won his share of challenges, and now finds himself forgotten by those who promised him that "everything else was ready." But Abd is not alone; like him, there are dozens of girls and boys from Gaza, over forty, who have won scholarships in Italy and have been abandoned by Italian institutions with a vain promise in hand.
Evacuations are stalled, the Conference of Rectors of Italian universities is silent, the Consulate does not respond. Abd and his companions are trapped in line in a dehumanizing game, waiting for a signature that does not come, prisoners of an institution that offered them a future only to change its phone number, leaving them alone in the heart of a Gaza that does not grant second chances.