Posts

My Ghost

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It took years to get here. And a lot of thinking, stumbling, and getting up again. I don’t know if I’ve ever known myself to be a woods person, but I honestly don’t know what I could’ve done without the McKintosh Trail in K’jipuktuk. The leaves today had more red in them, the stubborn vegetation leaning into the new season and finally giving in to the inevitable cycle of change. Fall. It’s a sad season for me; reminds me of my birth and the death of romances. To me, September has always symbolized a certain end to possibilities. As a child, I’d hate the end of summer vacation - a time when I’d have to go back to Dubai for school and leave Cairo behind. To my childhood and teen self, Cairo was the pinnacle of all meaning, where things and characters and drama got created. Dubai was small and unassuming, no matter how prettier and cleaner it was.  The connection with the family, the land, and the existential roots during the summer was what I lived for during the school year in Dubai. Th
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Nuna from Nunaland

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Hi, my name is Nuna and I come from Nunuland. I’m a left-handed woman in a big world of predominantly right-handed people. I was born left-handed but those in power have made it out as if I “chose” being left-handed. Some suggest that I got bored of right-handedness and decided to try a more exotic choice. Some think my left-handedness is a psychological disease that I need to get “therapy” for. And some label me as “dexterously deviant.” Just for being myself. People who have never lived my experience will talk about me as if I’m a theoretical concept or “issue” or political movement. But I’m just a human being existing, just like them. When I get any representation, the dominant right-handed folks get angry for some reason, but I don’t understand why my existence threatens them. When we left-handed folks form our own safe spaces, some hateful right-handed folks will come and hurt us. We have tried everything, from logic and science, to love and peace, to reason with the dominant folk
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Stockholm Syndrome and First-Generation Immigrants in Nova Scotia: A Quick Reflection

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Stockholm Syndrome among racialized immigrant communities in Canada has always been a thing, but I got to taste a very real version of it at a recent one-on-one conversation with another first generation immigrant in the Nova Scotian Muslim community. The unsaid gist of what he was telling me - in relation to my equity-seeking posts - was basically, “how dare you be so free when my colonized mind never allowed me to be?”  There are depths to this trauma manifestation, this syndrome, in the colonized psyche that go beyond idolizing the oppressor and adopting their language and logic. There is also a sense of wanting everyone else who fits the category to be shackled by the same disease; a desire by the oppressed for the perpetuation of the cycle of oppression so as not to be alone in their trauma. “If I’m not free, then neither should you,” kind of thing.  Another psychological layer for this desire for perpetuation may be guilt. Oppression trauma involves a very real layer of guilt in
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On the Coloniality of Knowledge and the Emphasis on "Meaning"

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       Manuscripts on astronomy and mathematics originating from Timbuktu  source: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/of-cannons-and-canons   The journey towards decolonizing one's heart is never-ending and replete with challenges. Perhaps one of the most subtle being the need to always question meaning. Meaning . A word laden with possibilities, dangers, and sometimes the potential for decolonial freedom. Ever wondered where meaning is derived from? Why a certain word has a certain meaning? Why some things are deemed more meaningful than others? And who or what creates and controls that meaning? This post is about the production of meaning - the process by which knowledge is created - and specifically who creates it, and why. "The most violent spectacles of imperialism are visited upon colonised bodies, but the most durable are inflicted upon consciousness. Colonial regimes were – and are – predicated on epistemicide; the erasure of entire ordering systems of knowledge. Wh
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Systemic Racism: Its Too Sneaky and I'm Too Tired

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One of the most thrilling things to do is speak truth to power. It's also one of the most exhausting. Especially when you're a racialized person in Canada, with competing layers of intersectionality woven into your very core. Being a North African makes me too many things that white Canada doesn't necessarily understand, let alone acknowledge or care about. I'm an African, Arab, Semite, immigrant, Muslim woman whose only real desire is to live truly free. But here's the glitch: I can't. Systemically and structurally can't, neither in Canada nor back home in Egypt.  People think racism is this personality trait that someone can get branded with and punished for, and therefore can avoid if they were caring (or careful) enough. While overt racism exists in the form of explicit racist actions by individuals, like racist slurs for example, and can get really bad for the likes of me, I feel an obligation to my fellow humans to point out something more insidious, m
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My Ancestors, My Power

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Today a Scotsman, an Indigenous Cree woman, an African Nova Scotian, and an Egyptian spoke about love. We came together online and did it in front of a wonderfully unexpectedly high number of people. In the context of celebrating Black History Month in Nova Scotia, we shared our personal experiences about the inspiration and challenges of our ancestors, how the past resonates today, and how to be a good ancestor for those to come. Through our stories, we spoke of love for the self that is indiscriminate from love for the ancestors, love for real connections, and for the power of authentic responsibility towards one another’s “future” history. And boy was it tough. But it was also courageous, heartbreaking, joyful, and liberating. Revolutionary even. Yes, love can do that. Wait, that’s not everything. The magic was in the reception, folks. The flood of gratitude, acknowledgments, returned love, support, and declaration of NEED for more open dialogues like ours was unbelievable. Hence, t
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Missing Aswan

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I miss Aswan and the Aswanians so much. I miss the Nile at Aswan, so calm and blue, flowing like a true gift to Egypt from God, a source of our livelihood and heritage, and a symbol of our softness, often manifested in our songs, dance and dialects. There is almost no amount of stomping in the dances native to Southern Egypt, where our civilization began more than 7000 years ago. I think it’s because of the serenity of the river that flowed into our land and gave it its mildness. Even when it inundated such land, the Nile was never thought of as a threat to Egyptians, only a gift to be thankful for. So, it’s no wonder that Aswanians and Nubians dance with the gentle grace that they do. I miss the faces of the proud, happy, and kind Aswanians...people who’d share their food with you when they can’t be certain they’ll have enough for themselves the next day. There is a world of comfort in just being on that kind land of the ancestors, where they thought of Egypt as their life and death,
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