Grandpa’s Fez

By Taghreed Najjar, illustrated by Maya Fidawi

Al Salwa Publishers 2024

Sanad opens an old wooden chest in the attic of his home and discovers a fez.

His mother tells him that it belonged to his grandfather, a lawyer remembered for his courage in defending the weak and the oppressed. Sanad never knew his grandfather, but that day he discovers something else that connects them: they share the same name.

Sanad decides to take the fez to school and tell his classmates its story. On the way, however, two boys mock him. One takes the fez from his head and throws it into a tree. Unable to retrieve it, Sanad reluctantly continues to school.

What happens to the fez next gives the story a wonderfully playful turn before it eventually finds its way back to him.

There is something powerful about the way family heritage can reach us long after someone has gone. An object can hold a story, a memory, even a connection to someone we have never met.

What stands out is the way the fez itself is represented. It is not used as a folkloric prop or as shorthand for a caricatured character—something we still encounter too often. Here, it is an object of cultural and family significance.

And yet the story does not leave it in the past. As the fez travels, it takes on new and unexpected functions. It remains recognisable for what it is while finding a place in the present—heritage does not have to remain fixed in order to remain meaningful.

Maya Fidawi’s illustrations add another layer to this movement between past and present. They are wonderfully expressive, with much of their richness lying in the interplay between old and new. The details quietly place the story in a living, contemporary world while allowing elements of the past to remain present.

The fez has become more than something Sanad found in an old chest. It has given him a story to carry forward.