The journey was grueling, exhausting, and sometimes terrifying. But just hours before her scheduled landing in Paris on Tuesday, October 28, Sama Emad, a 25-year-old artist from Gaza who Le Monde spoke to via WhatsApp, felt that a new life was opening up before her. “Inchallah,” she said, shortly before boarding her flight at Amman airport in Jordan.
With her belongings stuffed into a pink backpack provided by the French consulate in Jerusalem, the Palestinian woman – whose home in northern Gaza was bombed by the Israeli army during the war – learned a week earlier that she would soon be flying to Paris, where she hoped to study art for a year or more.
Emad, a graphic designer, has four brothers and three sisters. She was chosen to be part of the group of 20 Gazans evacuated by France, as the French newspaper Libération reported on Sunday, October 26. Many in the group are, like her, artists, and represent a generation of young Palestinians damaged by two years of war. The young poet Batool Abu Akleen, co-author of the book Voices of Resistance, Diaries of Genocide, made the journey alongside scholarship students who will be attending various French universities. The group also included a few adults “who have a connection with our country (…) in order to be brought to safety,” a French diplomat said.
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