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First modification: 02/10/2026 - 17:27
Fleeing war does not always mean abandoning a vocation. Duha Abd Allatif, a 32-year-old Palestinian writer and educator, managed to leave Gaza with her husband and two children after a year of waiting. Today, settled in Paris for just three weeks, she is trying to resume her work while dealing with the distance from a land that, she assures, is still present in her mind and heart.
Duha Abd Allatif, one of the 13 Gazan artists hosted in France by the Pause program of the Collège de France, which since 2017 has offered refuge to professionals threatened by war or persecution.
In a decade, the program has received hundreds of scientists and artists from different countries, including several from Latin America, under one premise: allowing them to continue researching, working and creating away from danger.
“In ten years we have welcomed 600 scientists and 150 artists who have had to flee their countries due to personal threats or situations of generalized conflict,” explains the Franco-Colombian Laetitia Braconnier Moreno, responsible for selecting and receiving the scientists and artists of the Pause program.
At Escala en Paris we spoke with Duha Abd Allatif about the impact of the war in Gaza and the difficult process of rebuilding her life away from her homeland.
The Palestinian writer tells us how her project Voices from Beneath the Rubble was born, a book conceived as an archive of the experiences of those who live through war, and how the conflict transformed her work with women and her daily life into a fight for survival.
We also talked about the difficulties of evacuating artists and scientists from Gaza, the role of the Pause program, and the possibility of one day returning to a Gaza where she can live with her children “in safety and dignity.”
A program coordinated by Florencia Valdés, carried out by Hadrien Toureaud and Yann Bourdelas.
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