A journalist and writer from Tunisia, Malek Lakhal has been working on feminism and joined the residency program in 2019 to continue her work on these issues.

Our past resident Malek Lakhal shares about her stay at DentroLaTerra in 2019.

You climb on top of mountains after miles of white desert, not a soul, not a sound, and you feel small, and yet grateful to be here, to breathe by in this endless valley of silence, going through small villages encroached in the rocks of mountains. But it is not only white. Abruzzo is Europe’s greenest region. And from the top of the mountains you see them, these endless landscapes, vines, forests, olive trees, welcoming the flying visitors. Here at night the bird sing and its all that you need to hear. And if you go down, down, down you reach the sound of the wave breaking against small shingle, back and forth, endless, while the lighthouse of Vasto, turns its lights around to guide the lost in the age of GPS.
In a country where every region has its own peculiarity, its own language, its own way of dealing with life, yet where regions dominated others, Norths dominated Souths and Italian dominated dialects, Abruzzo with its high mountains, its endless vineyards and welcoming villages, stands tall, poor yet proud. Pride, with one’s food, one’s wine, one’s past, one’s poets, one’s churches and trees. A place where tranquility meets generosity.