Kenizé Mourad, the Ottoman princess canceled in France: "My life turned upside down when I published my book on Palestine."

From the windows of her house in Kadikoy, Istanbul's most modern neighborhood, Kenizé Mourad can see Topkapi Palace, the Ottoman court where her ancestors resided. "In a way, I feel like I've come full circle," she says with a smile now that, at 85, she lives in the same city her mother had to leave as a child after the fall of the six-century Ottoman Empire.

During her childhood, Mourad was unaware of part of her family's history, which caused her a serious identity crisis for years. "Somehow, I always knew who I was, because at the convent school they called me 'princess,'" she says.

Born in France in 1939, Kenizé Mourad is the daughter of the Ottoman princess Selma—granddaughter of Sultan Murad V—who married an Indian rajah . Raised by diplomatic families and in a convent school, she didn't discover her past until well into her twenties, with a visit from Turkish cousins ​​and a correspondence she began with her father in India. Now, photographs and paintings of her mother, great-grandfather, and paternal family decorate the elegant living room of her house on the banks of the Bosphorus, suggesting a strong connection to her past.

However, Mourad says it was through her work as a reporter in the Middle East and Asia for Nouvel Observateur , as well as during her research for her novels, that she truly discovered her roots. "My whole work and my life have always been about trying to connect and explain the world of others. For me, work has been very important. It's a tool I've used to try to bring my two worlds closer together: France and the Middle East ," she notes. "Above all, I think I was very involved because for me it was a fight to survive, a fight for life, and to discover who I am ."

After a tortuous period at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where she joined a Trotskyist party, Mourad held various jobs until she began working as a reporter in the 1960s, experiencing firsthand conflicts that changed the Middle East, such as the Iranian Revolution and the first Palestinian Intifada . "The Iranian Revolution was fascinating, the first revolution carried out in the name of religion. At the time, we all thought that Khomeini [Ruhollah, founding leader of the Islamic Republic] would gradually give way to a democratic state. How things change... Still, it was fascinating," she recalls.

Soon, journalistic accounts became "insufficient," and she felt the need to write books to, as she describes, "delve into people's psychology, into history, into the depths of their hearts." In 1987, she published her first novel, On the Part of the Dead Princess , in which she traces her mother's biography after painstaking research into the history of her exiled Ottoman family. The novel was a huge success in Spain and was translated into 34 languages.

"My work and my life have always been about trying to connect and explain the world of others, to bring my two worlds closer together: France and the Middle East."

"I feel like with this book I've closed the most beautiful circle in honor of my mother. It's the best memory one can dream of because it's now eternal. Her story has become a classic around the world," she says. This success was followed by The Garden of Badalpur , a novel in which a young French orphan tries to discover her origins by traveling to India.

Her novels are both autobiographical and exhaustively documented, featuring strong female characters trying to find their way despite their contradictions and yearning for freedom. "You always let yourself be carried away by the writing. Of course, there's a lot of me in my mother, and also in my grandmother," she admits. "Also, there's a lot of the contradictions of every society. The way history and the past are presented is often very distorted . It's a subject that interests me a lot. For example, the Ottoman family was never...Muslim. I mean, of course they were Muslim, but it was experienced as a cultural thing," she describes. "The idea we have of veiled, extremely religious women is something newer and imported from countries like Saudi Arabia."

This Sunday at the Madrid Book Fair, Mourad will sign a recent reissue of The Perfume of Our Land: Voices from Palestine and Israel ; and a novel about Pakistan previously unpublished in Spanish, In the Country of the Pure , both published by M'Sur Libros . The writer and journalist has nothing but praise for Spain, which continues to show interest in her work while she suffers a "boycott" in her country of birth due to, she says, her stance on the Palestinian cause.

"The idea we have of veiled, extremely religious women is something new and imported from countries like Saudi Arabia."

"It's gotten to the point where a publisher would say, 'We don't open Kenizé Mourad's books ,'" the writer criticizes. "My life turned upside down when I published my book on Palestine," she says, referring to The Perfume of Our Land: Voices from Palestine and Israel , an essay that hasn't aged one bit despite having been first published in France in 2003. It is a mosaic of interviews with Israelis and Palestinians, "testimonies from ordinary people, children, men, and women."

" The French press has always been Zionist ; any critical discourse or any commentary that deviated from this line was considered anti-Semitic," the writer laments. Mourad believes the Israeli army's actions have not changed over time—which is why her book remains relevant—but there has been an acceleration of its "genocide against the Palestinians." "I don't know what France, the international community, or the Arab countries expect... They have been killed, mutilated, and now they are starving to death. Moreover, famine causes brain damage," she describes.

"The situation in France is worse now than it was in 2003, which is why I came to Turkey," he says. "No one has lifted a finger to stop Israel; it's a collective delusion. But little by little, with the famine in Gaza, critical voices are starting to emerge," Mourad notes. "They're starting to say that Israel has to stop, because they feel the wind is changing, that the international community is turning its back on them. That bothers me," he adds, concluding: " They feel the wind is changing and that one day they will be accused of supporting genocide . That's the situation, good luck to them."