I will tell you a happy-ending story. One of those rare ones. The kind we read little about, or never, in the newspapers. I tell it to close this difficult year. 2025. And to continue hoping for better ones to come. Not by magic. By commitment. Because this is a story of active dedication. Of people who have devoted themselves to others, with a simple and radical idea: that no one should settle for less than what they deserve.
IT WAS THE BEGINNINGof May. My daughter and I were at the port, we had just said goodbye to Amna, now a daughter, a sister to our kids. Just before, we had struggled with her luggage, always too full for the zipper to close. All three of us sitting on the suitcase, on the wet asphalt of the port of Carloforte, I was anxious, as only mothers know how to be at the first goodbye to a child. She, so strong and so fragile, was laughing with my daughter at that little show in the parking lot of the port, and ahead of her was a journey – a whole life – to face with one leg, and a prosthesis in place of the one that Israel took away from her, aiming at her closely. For the first time, she was leaving us since she had come to live with us. I was anxious, perhaps more than I am when I say goodbye to my children. Yet I knew we had achieved what she truly wanted: to continue studying veterinary medicine.
In no time, thanks to a fruitful and deeply human collaboration with the team from the University of Milan – the Rector, the Vice-Rector for studies, and a group of competent and generous people – we had opened the first scholarship dedicated to Gaza for her. A work made of listening, responsibility, and care. Even before the Iupals project took shape, Amna was welcomed into the guesthouse of the veterinary faculty in a moving atmosphere of hospitality.
But once that further step was taken to improve Amna's life – political asylum, the right to public health, a temporary prosthesis to at least restore her autonomy, the university – one essential question remained. What did she really need to be well? The answer was simple. Her family.
HER PARENTS, Ghada and Khaleel. The three sisters. The brother. It was then that I took my daughter by the hand and said to her: let's go on a mission, little one. My children now follow me like this: they smile, they go along with me, they enjoy the improvisations I put into action even before knowing where they will lead me. The thought is born, the path is built by walking. The first stop was the high school in Carloforte. We waited two hours to speak with Professor Salvatorina Vallebona, the principal of the global institute in Carloforte: a dynamic, charismatic woman of rare character. My daughter came out of the meeting laughing. "She was so enthusiastic that she couldn't sit still," she told me, amused.
THE PROPOSALIt was simple and bold: we bring two girls to Carloforte. Will he admit them among his students? The next stop, that same morning, was the newsstand. Andrea Luxoro is a pillar of the town: culture, vision, ability to create connections. With him and his wife Aga, Carloforte thrives. Andrea understood immediately. He proposed to involve Caritas, the municipality, and the parish. To create an ad hoc committee. And so it was. Father Andrea made an apartment available. The Mayor of Carloforte, Stefano Rombi, with the enthusiastic support of the Deputy Mayor, Elisabetta Di Bernardo, signed the commitment to take in the two students, the first step towards a subsequent regularization for the younger one. Caritas would take care of the weekly expenses.
And then something bigger happened. When, at the end of September, after months of exhausting struggles, I finally went to pick up Sara and Farah in Amman – when almost no one believed we would make it – the whole town mobilized. Their schoolmates welcomed them like princesses arriving from afar: with gifts, with invitations, with promises of shared life. Dr. Viglietti, the island's veterinarian, offered to handle all the necessary paperwork for the two kittens that my son had chosen for them back in the summer, at the sailing school where they were born and where the instructor Lello had cared for them.
THE DOCTORthe town made itself available to assist them for free until the health card arrived. And so the dentist, the eye doctor, and the cardiologist for the volleyball check-up. The women of the town offered Italian lessons. The pharmacist prepared a box with essential medicines, so that nothing would be missing at home. The municipality and the parish organized cultural exchange meetings at the library, with an expert in Christian and Islamic culture. In one of those meetings, Farah recited a passage from the Quran chosen by her father. It made everyone cry. It was a song of welcome, almost prophetic, that she interpreted with an austere voice.
THERE HAS NOT BEENa single person who has not contributed. And I apologize to anyone I have not mentioned in this story that I hope warms the hearts of many and encourages us to do the same, because the number of good people is infinitely greater than those who are focused on their own little personal vices. They just make less noise than the others. Not a single gesture has been left hanging, starting from that first glass jar with watermelons drawn with permanent markers this summer, when it was still unknown if Sara and Farah would make it: a fundraising for our girls in Gaza.
THE ORGANIZERSof Marballu’s, the theater, music, and dance festival in Carloforte, kept it prominently displayed in the square where everyone passes, the citizens of Carloforte and tourists, throughout the summer. This is social commitment. This is civic politics, in its highest sense. It is initiatives like these that make us citizens of the world, capable of truly impacting the lives of others. It takes little. It just takes the will. A little piece from each of us. All together. Happy 2026.