Layanne El-Asmar is a Lebanese-Australian fashion designer who navigates the infamously challenging Western fashion industry with a firm, rhythmic stride. With grace, she carries the values of her foremothers and weaves her Islamic and Arab inheritance into the fabrics of her garments with authenticity and sincerity.

This edition of Offshoots is especially precious, given I have known Layanne for almost all of my life. Growing up, I remember always admiring the strength of her values, Allahuma barek {A prayer: Oh God, grant your blessing}. From being 10 years old and crossing paths on primary school playgrounds to winning high school debate competitions and graduating side-by-side, Layanne is more like family than she is an acquaintance. It is the greatest honour to bear witness to a generational crafts(wo)man in the early years of a foreseeably groundbreaking career, and if you have not yet had the privilege of meeting Layanne, this article is your ticket to knowing an icon in the making.

Yours lovingly,
Shayla

I. At the Roots

What seeds were planted in you early on that you are only now beginning to understand was pivotal towards where you are in your ambitious pursuits today? Were they planted by a significant someone, or was this a seed you learned to plant yourself?

I think the seeds that were planted early on and were pivotal to where I am in my ambitious pursuits were definitely the seeds of independence planted by my parents. Growing up, I would always change my idea of what I wanted to study and with each changing idea I presented, my parents always told me that I could do it and would encourage me to pursue a career I loved. They always gave me the confidence to not limit myself to who I should be, and it is only because of the numerous sacrifices of my parents that I have the blessing to choose a career based on passion, instead of one chosen out of necessity or a need for stability. Alhamdulillah {Thanks be to God} for them both.

II. The ‘Offshoot’

Unconventional pursuits, such as fashion and design, tend to carry certain stigmas - and understandably so, considering the nuanced experience of migration and Western assimilation. And given the tight-knit nature of our communities, these stigmas are passed down through generations. How did you confront any inherited biases, and how do you aim to demystify the stigma surrounding the fashion industry as a Lebanese Muslim woman?

A lot of the inherited biases I was met with involved the same idea that “working in fashion isn’t a ‘successful’ or ‘suitable’ industry for a young muslim woman”. I found most people who presented these biases to me would ask under the pretense of already understanding my priorities and foretelling the course of my life.

To confront these biases, which initially had me questioning whether pursuing fashion was the right choice for me, I researched and asked people around me who I trusted on how Islam views a career in fashion. Not much to my surprise, I found that in Islam, being a designer is completely permissible, and creativity is always encouraged in our religion [within the bounds of Islam].

Therefore, once I fully understood Islam’s standing on this, I gained the confidence and independence within myself to realise that even though a lot of people may disagree with my career choice and claim that there is “no place for a Muslim woman in fashion,” at the end of the day I will only answer to Allah S.W.T for how I choose to live my life. Since no one else is going to live my life for me, or study for me, I may as well spend my time pursuing a career I love.

To demystify the stigma surrounding the fashion industry as a Lebanese Muslim woman, I hope that by simply being present in the community unapologetically and being proud of my profession, I am able to challenge these stigmas and show that any career in the arts is as valuable, and worthy of success as any other.

Was there a moment when you realised, “this is the direction I am meant to grow in”? If not, how do you navigate any doubt that may arise, internally or externally, surrounding ambitious pursuits?

During the time I was considering different degrees at school, I found myself overwhelmed with the pressure of making such a big decision that would greatly affect the rest of my life. I decided to take a second and think to myself, “if I did not have to consider success rate, opinions of others, wage and so on, what would I want to do for the rest of my life?” It was less a discovery of what I wanted to do, and more a realisation, that I have always dreamt of having a career in fashion and it was only my own doubt that was stopping me from pursuing it. Now that I am well into my degree, there have been countless, small moments where I’ve realised this is the direction I am meant to grow in. A recent instance, is when I started an internship with a bridal designer and had an overwhelming feeling of inspiration and contentment as I entered the atelier for the first time, which I have not felt anywhere else- that gave me the reassurance that this field is the direction I am meant to grow in.

III. Creativity as Cultural Continuity

Is there a particular cultural “root” {i.e a tradition, value, or story} carried with you through your work?

I find myself heavily leaning into my Lebanese heritage for my projects as a tool to truly connect with my work and reach the highest potential of my creativity. We are taught as early designers to reflect ourselves in our concept development and throughout the entire design process, so I find that further researching and implementing what I learn about my heritage allows me to authentically design with a strong purpose behind my work.

A particular cultural ‘root’ would be the women in generations before me who were known to hand sew a lot of the clothes for themselves or other family members at home. In particular, my grandmother, who studied fashion at tafe and still sews today, had to handmake a lot of the clothes my mother and aunties would wear when they were younger. Being in Australia, access to modest clothing was nowhere near as accessible as it is today, so she had to rely on her craft to dress her daughters in a way that reflected their values on modesty.

In what ways do you feel your craft is an extension of the community and generations before you?

I feel my craft is an extension of my community, as the Lebanese culture is known to be rich in traditions and craft due to our strong Middle-Eastern roots that blend with the influence of European fashion houses. Lebanon itself is currently one of the leading countries for upcoming talent in fashion, including designers such as Geyanna Younes, Gorges Hobeika and Haute Couture house Elie Saab. I think this is due to the fact that many Lebanese people are born into this culture which comes from our strong levantine roots that blend with the influence of European fashion houses.

IV. In Layanne’s Digi-garden…

Please recommend your favourite emerging creators, those who inspire your craft, from POC media that you urge your audience to follow and support?

1. Nawal Sari- (fav influencer) her content and work is always authentic to who she is, and inspiring. I also love how she always remembers her religion and values in all of her work and doesn’t let the influence of others steer her from staying true to that.

2. Khamsa- love this digital magazine so much bc I feel that it is tailored to seeing creatives from my community and gives me so much content that I can relate to personally. It’s also a source of inspiration as it shows me the wide range of work Middle Eastern youth create in the arts.

1. Zahra Al-Najjar- Iraqi-Canadian fashion designer who recently completed her honours at Central Saint Martins. She presents really conceptual high-fashion looks throughout her work and integrates remnants of Arab culture so seamlessly into her designs.

I never sensed a rift between myself and my heritage until I travelled to Lebanon for the first time.

I’m not even Lebanese. I’m half Syrian, however at the time, the political climate in Syria was precariously ‘unsafe’ for a family reunion. Beirut was the next best thing.

I packed my bags with excitement and sat beside my grandmother on the plane. She gave me mastic chewing gum from the Arabic store and explained her family tree to me. I confidently planned out what I would say to her sisters and brothers and daydreamed about how we would all get so close and talk for hours. They would tell me about Syria, and I would tell them about California, and we’d both leave feeling more at home in places we’d never been to.

You can imagine my chagrin when, upon arriving at the Airbnb, I was met not with cheerful two-sided conversation but the unpleasant realization that my Arabic was truly, truly not all that. I’d studied formal Arabic for years–practically my whole life–but it paled in comparison to the liquid fluency of the Damascene dialect my family exchanged so smoothly. I’d listen in wistfully as they painted pictures of their homes and gossiped about fascinating characters I’d never know. The exchanges were seamless. At times, my grandmother would stop to laugh, or her brother would stand for a hilarious impression.

Within these pauses my mother tongue would leap to interject, but alas, it stumbled and collapsed before it had time to take flight. I’d pass my stutter off as supportive laughter, and everyone moved on. Like water pouring from a vase into a glass, they would open their mouths and speak. Before I could catch even a drop their conversation would be over.

I spent the trip glued to my mother’s side and smiling while stuttering out a couple generic phrases here and there. “Yes please,” “Thank you,” “It’s very nice.” Sure, I could have spoken to them in the formal dialect I’d studied, but who wants to parrot textbook phrases to their family? By some miracle, my family members made do with my self-imposed predicament and were able to connect with me anyways.

One breakfast, my Great Uncle Salah noticed that I enthusiastically piled my plate with a certain type of luncheon. He made it a point to buy it every morning and remind me to have some for the rest of the trip. We visited a farm in the mountains and I helped my great-grandmother pick mulberries while she showed me pictures of her fit checks and her apartment in Damascus. I left the trip glad to have connected with that side of my heritage, but utterly dismayed at my failure to be able to properly talk to my family. When I would feel like rubbing salt into the wound, I would remember that my first language–my mother tongue–is Arabic.

My parents often tell me that when I was a toddler, I spoke both Syrian and Egyptian Arabic so well that I could switch mid-sentence depending who I was speaking to. I had to learn English from playing with children on the playground, and had a thick Arab accent for a while. Now, I have the most stereotypical Valley Girl accent to an almost comical degree. People I meet from other states always tell me “Wow, you sound so…Californian!” Till this day, the irony of it strikes me often.

In some strange semblance of a coping mechanism, I pushed away the idea of getting more immersed in my culture and wallowed in my state of detachment from my heritage. Maybe my prefrontal cortex began to develop or something, but eventually something switched and I decided it was cool to be from Syria and Egypt even while living in the United States, and started making a real effort to speak in the Arabic I’d lost.

I remember sitting in my grandparents’ home once, struggling through a conversation with my grandfather. I told him I made his recipe for lentil soup but added a few things, and he asked me what they were. Remembering words I only ever heard in passing felt like pulling teeth, and by the fourth time I had to google a word I felt certain that I should just end the conversation. But his face had settled into such a warm state of hope and comfort I couldn’t bear to.

There were other, subtler changes too. Things that, had I been born overseas, would seem tacky to me suddenly became alluring.

My mother let me take a ring that belonged to her as a child. It’s gold and features a flower motif surrounded by little grapes and berries. I know that if I wore it to a function in Alexandria, it would be called “baladi” or gaudy and fobby. But I can’t bring myself to care. I need all the fobbiness I can get. I picked up Tatreez, a Levantine practice of cross-stitching, and made a Pinterest board of projects I liked the idea of doing. Would I ever have the discipline to sit and embroider an entire ensemble? No, but it was simply the powerful concept of treasuring anything that would connect me to a homeland that felt like mere land.

And yet, it never feels like enough.

I always feel like there’s something more I should know, like there’s some inside joke that people actually born in the Arab world all know and keep secret from those born in the diaspora. There’s a certain sense of pride and security they carry, as if they don’t need to prove to anyone that they’re worthy of calling a place they don’t live in their home. I cast the blame around onto various factors: my parents, for not speaking their dialects of Arabic to me at home; Sykes and Picot, for destabilizing the Middle East and making it the corrupt political mess that it is; the Ottoman Empire, for allowing themselves to fall and be split apart. The list goes on, and gets progressively more and more far-fetched. There is no neat ending to this or my struggle with identity in the West.

I’ll just keep at it, even if that means I have to google the Arabic word for turmeric to discuss lentil soup with my grandfather for the rest of my life.

(It’s كُركُم, if you wanted to know).

EDITORS NOTE

Dear albi,

It is a quintessential experience of the cultural diaspora to be caught between two tongues. The stumbling, the fumbling, the stuttering is truly a humiliation ritual, especially in a room full of native speakers.

Fittingly, it is an experience immensely complicated to put to words, however, reading this piece was a catharsis to my diasporic complex.

Jazakallu-khayrun {May Allah reward you with goodness} to Summayah transforming this uncomfortable experience into an incredibly vivid perspective article. Not only are you precious as our first ever international writer (all the way from California, USA), but a writer with a wonderful spirit. May this be the first of many beautiful writing pieces- I will always be rooting for you from Down Under. 🩵

If you, dear reader, have an idea blooming from deep inside of you, we would love to bring it to words! TCD is a wonderful avenue to experiment, practice and publish your work for an tight-knit literary community and we would love to have you! Pitch your ideas via the link below:

Pitches Here!

With that, we cannot wait to see you in the next Dispatch. Thank you for remaining with TCD after an unforeseeably extended hiatus. InshAllah {God willing} we will be back with many more diasporic musings very very soon.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatu.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}

As if their souls are in tune with the lunar cycle, 1.9 billion Muslims around the world welcome the holy month of Ramadan at the sighting of a crescent moon. Just as the night is beloved for its stillness, this month of fasting and worship exceeds a mere shift in routine — it is a period of solitude, reflection, and spiritual nourishment.

At the beginning of this semester, many Muslim students will be observing the month of Ramadan. But what exactly is Ramadan; what does a month of fasting look like as a student, and how can you show respect and support to your Muslim mates this month?

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, officially commencing upon the sighting of the crescent moon on the 29th day of the previous lunar month, Sha’ban.

Fasting is a critical feature of Ramadan, where Muslims abstain from all intake of food and water from sunrise to sunset, and make a concentrated effort to refrain from sinful behaviors. There are many people who are exempted from fasting, including people who are ill, travelling, menstruating, or pregnant. Whether it is being able to attain adequate sleep, take medication or nourish their bodies, Islam teaches us to nurture our minds and bodies by fostering good health. Women’s health is substantially prioritised in Islam due to the strenuous implications of menstruation or pregnancy. This not only allows Muslim women to nourish their bodies physically, but also mentally, by attaining extra rest and relaxation.

However, Ramadan goes far beyond the act of fasting.

Rich in history, community worship, and individual solitude, Ramadan is referred to as the ‘Month of the Quran’. Its significance comes from the miracle of the first Divine revelation, where the beloved Prophet Muhammad received the first verses of the Islamic Scripture.

“Iqra”, he was told.

“Read.”

The miracle of the Quranic revelation lives on today, where Muslims devote their time to reciting authentic Islamic scripture and stand shoulder to shoulder for extended night prayers, Taraweeh, at mosques. It is believed a person’s good deeds are multiplied by 70, our righteous acts are most rewarding during Ramadan compared to any other month of the year.

The warmest memories come from the most challenging Ramadan routines. Kitchen windows illuminating the stillness of the pre-sunrise morning, where Muslim families share Suhoor in loud whispers and tired eyes in order to sustain the day of fasting ahead. And those very same windows capture the rush to beat the setting sun, setting the dinner table, and the gathering around a wholesome meal at the end of the day. The sweetness of breaking your fast with a prayer and a Medjool date. Hearing the rhythmic hum of your mother reciting the Quran from her embroidery prayer mat during the night.

In Ramadan, not only do families feel most bonded, or communities feel most synchronised, but the inner self feels most tethered to God and the trinkets of worship we often overlook in the busyness of everyday life.

A day on campus looks and feels a little different for a fasting friend. Because the reality is that observing Ramadan in a Western country is difficult to navigate — it is commonly misunderstood and often unaccommodated for. A student’s energy levels are lower than usual due to the absence of a latte from Taste Cafe, or broken sleep due to Suhoor and pre-dawn prayers. Yet Muslim students remain pressured to maintain their academic performance at a non-fasting level. They may be compelled to limit their socialising and decline invitations to society events or join study groups after class. Muslim students may also gravitate towards the comfortable company of their families or Islamic spaces to foster a nourishing sense of belonging.

With empathy and understanding, we can be better mates towards Muslims on- and off-campus in several simple gestures. You can offer support with studying or class work through gentle encouragement, or changing your regular morning coffee meetings at Courtyard to a night-time Zoom call over a warm cup of tea.

Another means of enhancing our empathy is by asking questions about Ramadan. Every individual experience differs, and so respectfully engage in enlightening conversations about this blessed month. Beyond this, you can best explore the authenticity of Ramadan by observing it alongside your Muslim mates. It could be attending a Friday khutbah at a local mosque, joining a friends’ family Iftaar or simply feeling the solitude in the stillness of the night.

This Ramadan, we can collectively create a more accommodating space for our fasting friends. And as we anticipate the sighting of an iridescent crescent moon, may the month of Ramadan bring us peace and blessings.

رمضان مبارك

Upon the Ninth Crescent Moon was originally written for and published by Honi Soit on February 26, 2025.

I cannot recall a day in my life where prayer has not been present. From as young as my toddler years, I have vague memories of accompanying my father on his prayer mat and hearing the recitation of Jumma’h (a group prayer) at family gatherings. I attended an Islamic school from Kindergarten to Year 12, where prayer time would have its own bell just before lunch time, and teachers and students stood shoulder to shoulder in congregation. Prayer is a routine as frequent as brushing my teeth in the morning and I simply cannot imagine a day without it.

To Muslims, prayer is the act of drinking water: a necessity to quench our souls in the drought of this worldly life. It is a pillar of our faith and an act that sanctifies our identity as a Muslim. We pray five times a day, facing the direction of the Kaa’bah no matter where we are in the world: whether in the solitude of our homes, under the shade of a tree in a local park or even standing on the soils of a foreign land. It is an act of both immense personal solitude and community building, acting as the foundation of our relationship with ourselves and to others. Prayer unites strangers and has bonded tribes from the polar ends of the globe. It is sacred in both its antique relevance, forming the structures of civilisations across thousands of years, and its contemporary perseverance.

Following a peaceful and council-approved protest last night, Sydney Muslims were assaulted by the New South Wales police while in congregated prayer. It occurred on a street picketed with a street sign labelled “#RacismIsNotWelcome” after the worshippers had respected orders to divert from the main sight of the protest. They prayed in a quiet, open public area: men, women, children, teenagers and elderly synchronised in a state of complete surrender and vulnerability. Their foreheads prostrated on the ground before them as an act of total humility and yet were thrown from their limbs by police enforcement.

This blatant act of systemic Islamophobia and racism is an assault on humanity itself. Not only was such disgraceful violence a direct infringement of the Australian Constitutional right to freedom of religious expression and practice, but a broadcast revelation of rampant arbitrary power.

Prayer is the peace and humility of the worshiper. It is the whispers of faith in a momentary meeting at the mercy and grace of God.

It is breathing.

It is sacred.

It is an entitlement.

It is a human right.

In a creative writing class, I was assigned the prompt to imagine the perfect few hours of escape. Naturally, I wrote about the Prayer beloved for its accompaniment of the waking Earth. It is a time where the soles of a worshipper’s feet plant their position with the rising of the local fauna and flora and the early morning darkness is still in time. Because a prayer is not just a state of solitude, but is at it’s core, the ultimate act of peace. For every prayer is a breath.

That dawn I slipped free of the moorings of my life.

At dawn, I slipped free of the moorings of my life and the echoes of the adthan beckoned my spirit to a prayer. In the silence of the hour, my palms waved in a linear movement guided by a hinge - I paused time and movement. The tickle of tassels and hand-sticked silk softened as I stepped into place. My feet found refuge in a familiar space stood in the direction of heaven’s gates.

My body and spirit synchronised in the motions of a prayer as the heart whispered into the soft air of the early morning. In this silence, the songbirds and the silk worms rested in their nests and neighbourhood lights remained switched off. In the silence, it was He and myself: a complete surrender and devotion.

At dawn I slipped free of the moorings of my life and was one with the history of this very act of worship. While I stood in a solitary prayer, the feet of my ancestors were planted in the very same position as mine. Our blood and veins, all rooted in the soils of faith, spanning fourteen thousand orbits and infinite lifetimes.

For what felt like an eternity, the minute hand had only moved a slight degree further than when I had last checked. As the songbirds and silk worms softly fluttered into the farewells of the night, my bowed head swayed from right to left in a bittersweet bid of peace and farewell to the angels sitting on my shoulders.

That dawn I slipped free of the moorings of my life, and continue to do so each morning. Just as those before me, it is in the grace of the prayer of dawn that life itself recommences.

However, like many White-dominated spaces, fanbases are often gentrified, posing a slightly fiercer challenge for BIPOC fans.

Cazzie Ahmed is a Somali-Australian digital creator who has flourished into her truest self through the media she adores. She is the quintessential fangirl, carrying a central message towards her rapidly growing following: live loudly, unapologetically and most importantly, authentically.

I had the honour of meeting Cazzie at a local community event in late 2024 and her energy radiated from across the room. She wore an electric blue dress with matching, chunky earrings and the most beautiful smile. I recall thinking, “this girl is straight out of a romcom.” Funny enough, my observations were on point.

The force of her passion is beautiful, as though the purity of her joyful heart attracts her community and interests into her orbit.

NOTE: this interview was conducted via video format, which can be viewed on the TCD Instagram here. Cazzie chose to chat in a “little cozy video that's quite comfy” and hoped to “give a little like home video effect,” which I implore all readers to watch. Her energy is truly best captured in motion and will undoubtedly project a ray of light into you day.

Below is not the first interview I’ve conducted with Cazzie and I am certain it will not be the last. This one is for the fan girls, the chalant romanticists and the diaspora kids who pierce stigma with courage and optimism.

Yours lovingly, Shayla

I. At the Roots

What seeds were planted in you early on that shaped your love for storytelling, pop culture, and creative community-building?

So I started off very young. When I was around 11 or 12, I was really obsessed with Disney Channel – and that changed my life because I absolutely loved the behind the scenes of TV shows. I love the production; I love when the actors get into character. It was all so fascinating for me. And genuinely, that’s where all of that creativeness [was planted]. It’s where that passion to create fan pages from a very young age and wanting to get creative really started for me, and I’m very lucky.

Cazzie’s phone buzzes and she looks aside, a smile melting onto her face.

That’s actually a fan girl who messaged me and we wouldn’t even know each other [if it weren’t] for fangirling!

II. The “Offshoot”

Many diaspora creatives face a “double gatekeeping”: cultural stigma from home and exclusion in white-dominated arts spaces.

How did you navigate these pressures while building a path centered on fandom, media and community?

I grew up in a household that was quite academic, so you would do the traditional degrees: teaching, engineering, medicine, law, and that was fine, but I think I always knew that there was something more that I wanted to do. I was happy to pursue those paths, but I knew that I also wanted to do other things.

So I was kind of sorting out my life while getting my degree. I did a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English literature, and I think that really inspired me to want to kind of do more artsy things. I took a lot of electives like philosophy and arts and drama, just to kind of explore what that world would look like. And I think it really did help. I think at the end of the day, you really have to give it a go and see: is this even for you? Is it working for you? and then kind of see what happens.

Was there a moment when you realised “this is the direction I was meant to grow in”? And how do you handle the doubts that come with pursuing an unconventional creative path?

There were quite a few moments where I’m like, You know what? I think I can really grow in this space. And I think I can, I feel like I have something to offer to people.

It was just the lovely messages that I would receive on Instagram from people who would say “I love your content”, or “I saw you today”. People really resonated with what I was posting, and I was like, Oh… okay!

That gave me the motivation to keep going. My aim in life was always to inspire people through the Arts and to find people who are just like me and fan girls who are just like me. I kind of just ignored all those doubts. I would persist with, No, I can do this. I know that I can do it. There was always something for me to do here – a bigger picture.

III. Creativity as Cultural Continuity

Is there a particular cultural root that you carry into your work, in media, pop culture or literary events?

A root that I always carry with me is being authentic and always being myself. I never want to be fake. I never want to be someone that I’m not. I struggle to actually do that, but I think showing up as who you are is so, so important because it also means that people trust you and people can also relate to you as a human. It’s something I bring to my full time job, but also to my content. I think this is a really nice question.

In what ways do you feel your presence in media spaces contributes to building community for other diaspora creatives?

Nine times out of ten, I am the only black woman in the room, or I am the only hijabi in the room. Before, it used to freak me out a little. But also I know that we live in Australia, and we’re quite separated in so many different ways, so I kind of expect it. So I just tell myself, “You know what, if I have to be the representation today, I am so fine to do that.” I am so fine to do that.

I hope that when I am in these spaces, whether it’s in-person events or just anything, really, I want someone who looks like me to be like if she’s there, then I can be there too. For example, on the red carpet I think to myself, if I’m the only person [of colour] there, then, well, we’re gonna do a damn good job, aren’t we?

I think [being present in the media space] allows other girls who want to be in this space to feel welcomed and seen. Right now, there’s a lot more people [of colour] in this space, so it’s quite easy to pursue the creative arts – to show up and be a part of it – which we’re very lucky to do. To all the younger girls who want to do it, you’ve got that representation there – a lot of us are doing it for you.

IV. In Cazzie’s (digi) garden…

Please recommend your favourite emerging creators, those who inspire your craft, from POC media that you urge your audience to follow and support?

There are two girls that are both in these spaces that I would love everyone to follow on Instagram and TikTok:

1. Ayman Chaudhary [@aymansbooks] - is based in the US and is a hijabi woman of colour. She does a bit of interviewing and is mostly in the BookTok world, having met a lot of the cast from different TV shows and films that were once books and are now on the big screen.

2. Zainab Jiwa [@zeewhatidid] - lives in the UK and is also a hijabi woman of colour. She does a lot of celebrity interviews and does such an amazing job in the field.

They have both been doing an amazing job, amazing job. I am so proud of them, and am always constantly supporting them, because they’re doing really, really great things.

In our modern digitised world, mental health is talked about quite candidly. There’s over 28 million posts under #mentalhealthmatters on Instagram alone and if you have been favoured by the algorithm, you have probably engaged with content of the likes. Depression, anxiety, trauma, burnout – topics once deemed taboo especially outside the western world; are now acceptable, albeit dreary, dinner table talk. Although this is a vital push forward in mental health acceptance - there is still substantial progress to be made. 

You might not be aware of it; but as much as you may sympathise and even openly associate with mental health issues, you may still flinch, like your relic of traditionalist grandparents- at the broader scope of mental illness. 

It’s acceptable to address mental health only without specificity, only within the bounds of normalcy. Illness perceived through a ‘Neurotypical Grand Narrative’: a narrative that condones psychological adversity only if it’s causal and paves way for a necessary resolution; a narrative that reduces illness to a matter of low willpower, purporting that all mental issues can be patently cured with enough grit. 

Part of the development of this narrative can be attributed to the ongoing cultural fascination with self improvement and self actualisation. The echos of meditate! self discipline! how to master detachment! You attract what you think! Choose happiness! Manifest your reality! bounce erratically off the walls of our feeds and many of these sentiments may generally be motivating for people aiming to escape cycles of destructive and unproductive behaviour. However this emphasis fails to take into account neuro-developmental/ personality disorders such as OCD, ADHD, BPD, Bipolar and schizotypal personality disorders. For the majority living with these conditions, no amount of disputing or attempting to defuse thoughts/emotions is effective.

The narrative deems thought neutralisation and positive illusion as a sort of one-size-fits-all for mental health issues, but fails to recognise that many mental illnesses’ are driven by thought processing/brain wiring1. Thus, in the absence of psychotherapy – and often medication – the above sentiments hit a brick wall in the neurodivergent mind, rendering individuals weak as their difficulties resist the simple discernment and intervention that many neurotypical experiences allow.

For instance, emotional burnout or depression are conditions that form in response to tangible issues; Not to say that these issues are menial or can be pushed aside with an adverb ‘just’, but they are undeniably less complex in their manifestation, to the conventional human experience. Persistent low mood, loss of interest, fatigue, changes in sleep or appetite, feelings of worthlessness, and social withdrawal to name a few2. They are comprehensible to the common psyche because they can be linked back to an obvious trigger or mount of triggers (its easy to grasp why someone with an overload of workplace responsibilities or someone who recently experienced a break up would experience feelings of worthlessness). This readability more commonly receives genuine empathy, as it presumes that those experiencing illness operate according to reasoning. This possibility of rationalisation – linking the effect to a cause – enables neurotypical individuals to detach from their struggles because they are not the problem; their environment or past experiences is.

The grand narrative validates this branch of mental adversity as the behaviour that accompanies it is impersonal to someone’s true, ‘untainted’ self. It is possible (perhaps not easy, but possible) to return to this self with enough behavioural activation3 (build routine, healthy habits etc) and mindfulness. 

On the other hand, these manifestations are distinct from many of the disorders stated above- are labelled atypical, if we view ‘typical’ as the cause-effect narrative. Persistent fear of harming others or contamination, intense fear of abandonment, chronic disorganisation, difficulty retaining working memory4 ; environment plays a factor in amplifying these symptoms but according to the National Institute of Mental Health, are not the cause in most cases. These disorders contrarily, show stronger genetic influences – with heritability estimates around 70–80% for ADHD, 40–50% for OCD, and 35–46% for BPD5, meaning they cannot be traced back solely to a why or how; but just are. They originate in the true self. Subsequent lifestyle changes can help but not ‘heal’ these disorders as we continually hear online.

It is arguably, the possibility of ‘healing’ that makes depression and anxiety more prone to cultural valorisation because it is seen as a reflection of resilience. There is a possibility to look at this psychological adversity as a hurdle rather than a continual, lifelong race. This online culture that stresses a holistic ‘becoming’, the necessity to look at mental adversity in retrospect, as a past tense, exacerbates intolerance for neurodivergent individuals. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, it categorises them as emotionally/intellectually deficient for only being able to cope rather than overcome. 

Furthermore, not only does the Grand Narrative necessitate that mental illness should be reversible, but also familiar. As much as we feign an acceptance of the unknown,- many of us continue to dehumanise issues that fail to follow a fishbone diagram of predictable behaviour. 

It is widely more acceptable to talk about depression/anxiety because the symptoms don’t necessarily stray far from what we consider behavioural normalcy. The struggle can thus be discussed openly without being detested for impropriety, whereas neurodiversity does not have the same PR. For instance, persistent low mood can be viewed as an extension of regular sadness, loss of interest can be viewed as a more debilitating cousin of ennui, persistent worry can be understood as, you guess it, an extension of stress. The symptoms of neurotypical mood disorders are harder to place as linear extensions of regular feelings. An individual with OCD for instance, may have a constant mental intrusion that they are a danger to others- a common subtype of moral OCD. The anxiety accompanied by this intrusion is often exerted in the form of compulsions; such as repeating actions or counting. This does not manifest like exertions of typical stress such as fatigue, irritability and difficulty concentrating6, reinforcing a hierarchy of legitimacy in mental health by marginalising conditions whose manifestations cannot be easily rationalised.

This is evident in the ‘othered’ categorisation of mental disorders perpetuated in popular media. In Micheal Clayton (2007) Tom Wilkin’s character, a BPD patient is portrayed as abruptly moody and violent; straying from the subtle build up of emotions most people actually experience. Adrian Monk in Monk (2009) has OCD and is, of course, a perfectionist and obsessed with cleanliness ; discounting the various other subtypes of OCD compulsions. Larry in the Night at the Museum (2006) is read as having ADHD, with the film representing his distractibility as childishness. 

This reveals a dichotomy within modern society’s perception towards mental health: issues categorised as ‘ordinary’ are tolerated and even romanticised, while issues that manifest ‘irrationally’ are subconsciously detested. Is it not ironic to dilute illness to acceptable normalcy? The word disorder literally means to stray from the natural order, yet we still vie for some sort of equilibrium within the chaos.

Continually, it seems, society fails to comprehend abnormality if it is not exaggerated or dramatically characterised. We narrative complexity which may be an instinctual way to make sense of the unknown or uncertain, telling ourselves stories in order to live. But these stories are just that. Fictive. Mental illness continues to be oversimplified as a means of making atypicality perceptible and in turn digestible.

In the same light, Indigenous/POC peoples in history have been stereotyped: labelled uncivilised, mystical, primitive.The neurotypical grand narrative parallels the grand narrative of European expansionism; both are built on beliefs that a marginalised minority can be ‘civilised’ into behaving and thinking like the majority. Both are characterised by a fearful and confused perception of the unknown, leading to a caricaturisation of said minority. 

This is due to the fact that, as Edward Said puts it;

“The one thing the Orient could not do was to represent itself”.

This idea remains relevant to the neurodivergent identity. To truly represent themselves, a group of people need to have a dominant, public identity; a being known that said group has authority over. There needs to be stories and experiences shared from the inside, untainted by preconceptions and consumed without bias. Re-education is necessary to circumvent the moralisation of the chronic mentally ill and dissolve the shame for those living with it. We must recognise that just because an issue doesn’t make immediate sense that it is invisible, that it can be willed away. 

Look deeper, see things with an open mind whatever the circumstance. You might learn something about your own ill judgements, and learning is the inevitable free fall towards progress. 

EDITORS NOTE

Dear albi,

The act of calling out societal biases is one that takes great nobility. Not only does it direct our attention inwards but beckons us to reconcile with other stigmas we inherit from the (unfortunately) colonial structures we live and grow in.

The neurotypical grand narrative is a prevalent means of mystifying a faction of society that is under-represented and outcast, just as other factors are used to marginalised alternate groups (e.g: race, gender, disability, etc).

Jazakallu-khayrun {May Allah reward you with goodness} to Aiman for writing this exceptional piece with such unshakeable authority. Upon reading her very first draft, I was left feeling confronted, informed and undeniably grateful to have a writer such as Aiman writing for The Dispatch. I cannot wait to see the ways your contagious passion flourishes into your writing career, darling. 🩵

If you, dear reader, have an idea bubbling deep inside of you, we would love to bring it to words! TCD is a wonderful avenue to experiment, practice and publish your work for an tight-knit literary community and we would love to have you! Pitch your ideas via the link below:

Pitches Here!

With that, we cannot wait to see you in the next Dispatch. Happy holidays to our dear readers who celebrate; and for those who do not, I hope you have a restful break in the company of those you love and cherish. It is in the moments of gathering that our stories come to life and nurture us in the ways of our ancestors.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatu.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}

Salams albi,

We live in an excruciatingly polarised political landscape and the concept of one’s identity has become radicalised in itself. This has always been the case throughout history: in times of ideological conflict, the individual contemplates their innate reactions, morals and contribution to the global community.

The concept of the diaspora is always one that has fascinated me because it reflects the existential questioning of one’s social standing. It is that undefined space where culture and identity intersect. As a young Lebanese Muslim born and raised in Sydney, my place between the East and West is intersecting, complex and radical.

Offshoots is a literary ecology in conversation and storytelling of the cultural diaspora in its unconventional territories. Cultivated in the belief that creativity is an extension of heritage, Offshoots celebrates those who grow in ambitious directions while staying true to their roots.

This first conversation of Offshoots captures the quintessential concept of the cultural diaspora. I truly could not be more grateful to launch this series with the exceptional Offshoot who inspired this series in its initial stages: Emanie Darwiche.

Emanie is a force to be reckoned with, existing intentionally and unapologetically as a Lebanese-Australian Muslim woman in Western Sydney. Not only was she recently announced as UTS Vertigo’s Editor-in-Chief for 2026, but was one of the youngest ever candidates to run for Senate in Australia earlier this year. She is the epitome of the Offshoots narrative: the craft of a diaspora kid is an act of cultural continuity rather than departure.

As Emanie puts it later into our conversation: “Everything is political.”

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy conversing with the two of us. Here’s to archiving diasporic creativity and planting the seeds for a community where our cultural values are evergreen.

Yours lovingly, Shayla

I. At the Roots

What seeds were planted in you early on that shaped your sense of civic responsibility, leadership, or desire to represent your community in Australian politics and media?

My sense of civic responsibility came from my mum. My mum’s my hero. For those who don’t know, my mum is Rebecca Kay, and in the early 2010s, she was an advocate for the community.

She was an organiser in the Palestine Action Group and taught me very early on [about] the concept of BDS (boycotting, divesting and sanctioning) and about the occupation and genocide that was happening in Palestine.

Because people, Palestinians, who’ve come here and have fled their home, have nothing but the community to rely on, and what happened in their homeland isn’t something that we will just blindly and silently allow.

My mum also did a lot of advocacy and non-for-profit organising for women fleeing domestic violence and facing gender-based violence. I used to sit with some of the women’s kids, and I used to talk to them, and I just wanted them to feel like they were seen and they were heard.

My mum was also an advocate when it came to the environment, with Clean Up Australia Day. She would explain to me about how Australia is my home, and how I should keep it clean; that I should also be keeping it clean for the animals that live here, for our plants that live here; and that as Muslims, we should be practicing picking up rubbish every time we see it.

What really shaped my sense of leadership and responsibility was having a brother with special needs. Not many people know this, but my brother, Adnan, is intellectually disabled. Growing up, my siblings and I all collectively shared this responsibility of taking care of him and making sure that his needs were always met. Unfortunately, people’s awareness and understanding of disability is quite limited. I try to do my best to make sure that people are aware of disability in every shape, way and form. And I always make sure that my brother doesn’t feel like an outsider amongst people, and that he shouldn’t be ashamed of his disability.

II. The “Offshoot”

Young diaspora women in politics often navigate dual barriers: expectations or stigma from their own communities and systemic exclusion in white-dominated political spaces.

How have you confronted these challenges as a young person in politics?

Growing up as a half-caste within my [Arab] community – I’m half Aussie, half Lebanese – I was never accepted as part of their own, because I’m half White. And growing up with a white family and having an Australian community, I was never accepted as their own either, because I wasn’t ‘White’ enough. So I kind of grew up under the cloud of ‘being too Western for the Arabs and then too Arab for the Westerners’.

When it came to politics and journalism, the stigma from the Arab community and the systemic exclusion in White-dominated spaces, was something that I’ve just been so exposed to at such a young age that navigating it became like a second skill to me. I learned very early on to channel out what the community was projecting onto me, and to create my own space in the middle.

Have the challenges been different in navigating journalism?

Not many people might agree with me on this, but navigating these challenges in journalism and politics is quite the same. Journalism is very very sly – it’s very underhanded. You need to have skin in the game to be able to be a successful journalist in Australia. And unfortunately, that’s the same game that’s played in politics. So I suppose just breaking barriers and creating my own space is how I’ve navigated it best. Do I think it’s working? I’m not sure yet.

Congratulations on being elected as Vertigo’s Editor-in-Chief! It feels you were born for the role.

Thank you. Thank you so much! Alhamdulillah, I’m very happy to be announced as Editor-in-Chief. It was quite an emotionally and mentally taxing time on myself along with my team. We were subjected to a lot of Islamophobia beforehand and during the elections. But Alhamdulillah, the truth always prevails, and I will always stand by my truth and the truth.

Was there a moment when you realised, “This is the direction I’m meant to grow in”?

I suppose there wasn’t a particular moment where I realised that I wanted to be Editor-in-Chief. It was mainly just a build up of being Student News Editor this year. I didn’t like how political stories were portrayed or written. Everything is political, and everything should be platformed with urgency. I feel within University spaces, advocacy can feel performative, and I wanted more hard-hitting journalism, more political literacy, and more authentic advocacy. I really wanted people to understand the severity of what is happening to people outside of our tertiary education – globally – and what these implications have.

One of the other things I really wanted to see is that not every BIPOC story, or not every story of struggle, has a happy ending. It’s still equally important to platform these stories and these people and these experiences, because if we can’t create a sense of understanding and foster experiences that don’t have the outcome we want, then what growth will be achieved by just platforming only the happy stories?

I wanted Vertigo to become a space of resistance and representation for everyone. As 2025 News Editor, I was subjected to a lot of exclusion for who I was, culturally and in not so many words, religiously as well.

I truly believe that becoming Editor-in-Chief as a Muslim woman of colour would allow more people like myself – who grew up in low socio-economic areas – to be able to say, “Yeah, I deserve to be in that space as well”, and I want to take on that challenge.

III. Creativity as Cultural Continuity

Is there a particular cultural “root” that you carry through your work in journalism and advocacy?

A particular value that I carry with me in almost everything I do, whether that be in my advocacy or my journalism, is to always set an intention. That intention is your driving force, and [it means to] to never, ever compromise on that intention, who you are as a person and the values you stand by. A lot of people might deem me as an angry activist or stubborn or “too posh to push” but no, it’s mainly on the intention of what I want to bring to the table that helps give my community the leg up and create a better light on who my community is. Or even just creating, or being part of an amazing experience without having to compromise on what has brought me to be the person that I am today, and there’s been a lot of pushback on that.

I truly, truly believe that if you compromise on your intention and your values and almost anything that you’ve been brought up with, it will always snowball. You’ll end up losing the intention and the mindset and the values of what brought you to that space. I don’t want to be part of that expectation that people above think that’s going to happen to me.

I just want to stay authentically true to my intention and to stay authentically true to my community in every part possible and in every outcome. To compromise even in the slightest is not only hurting me, but it hurts the community, and it may hurt future generations that choose to look up to people in journalism and advocacy – in politics.

During this year’s elections, you made headlines for “heckling” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to take action against the genocide in Gaza.

In what ways do you feel the presence of diaspora kids contributes to accountability and morality in the current landscape of media and politics?

I feel that for diaspora children, we don’t show up to be provocative. We show up because silence is exhausting.

Growing up watching your family or people who look like us and share the same history as us be talked about as statistics or foreign issues, you develop a low tolerance for moral avoidance. And for me, that moment with Anthony Albanese just came out of frustration.

I don’t like when people say that I heckled him, because prior to that, for 20 minutes, I tried to have a civil conversation with him, but I just kept getting pushed and shoved by his bodyguards. Albanese referred to me as “that thing” – he told his bodyguards before the media came, “get that thing away from me” – and I was just so fed up. He was so dismissive and so aggressive. He’s making such big decisions that impact my family, my community, my life. So I just resulted in what any other person would do, and at that moment, I didn’t really care what the media would label me as.

I wanted him to know that people like myself and the younger generation of diaspora kids are not standing for what he does. Watching leaders speak around suffering instead of naming it puts that kind of barrier that diaspora kids should become the ones that interpret it.

We don’t have the luxury of distance, and what’s happening to us isn’t abstract – having a diaspora presence creates accountability by simply refusing to let things stay comfortable.

At the end of the day, we remember what gets buried. We notice when language is softened, and we see the pushback when media and politics try to move on without reckoning. It’s not about getting radical, it’s about being honest. I feel as if diaspora children bring that urgency because we carry those consequences with us.

On a side note, I think the most disappointing thing I experienced during that time was the criticism from my community. I was getting death threats from right-wing and Zionists and whoever was a supporter of Israel. While I thought my community would be supportive of me, a lot of them actually thought that what I did was quite disrespectful, and I should respect someone of such high political status. It just made me think, “I’m doing what you wanted people in power to do and now that I’ve done it, you think I’m disrespectful” – it was really upsetting.

IV. In Emanie’s (digi) garden…

Please recommend your top means of garnering inspiration from POC media or creatives - what/ who inspires & uplifts you?

The people who I would look up to the most are…

Senator Lydia Thorpe: I have so much respect and admiration for how unapologetic and fearless she is when it comes to advocating for what Australia needs right now, back then and in the future. I love how she does it with so much empathy, passion and determination, and she won’t stop until we get it.

Massilia Aili: I am in such awe, MashAllah. She is such a successful journalist and a hijabi in the media. It’s really uplifted me, where I’m like, “wow, if she can do it, what is stopping us?” I love that she is just so visible as a Muslim woman – as a Muslim journalist – and a great journalist, mind you.

Assala Sayara: Similar to Lydia, she just leads everything with such empathy and passion, and she’s so truly rooted in who she is. She’s unapologetic about who she is as a Muslim woman, as a person, as a Palestinian, as an educator. I really aspire to be someone who can be so grounded and so authentic and so true to myself.

My mum: She been my rock and my mentor, and I look up to her a lot as well. I don’t think I would have been able to achieve anything without the help of my mum. She truly is a blessing to me.

Anthony Lowenstein: He’s a great journalist. I’ve read a lot of his books. He’s so educated and again, so grounded and so fearless on saying what needs to be said and calling out what needs to be called out.

Ahmed Ouf: One more who is upcoming – who I think will win the next election, InshAllah – is Ahmed Ouf. I had the pleasure of working with Ahmed when I was in my advocacy with Palestine Action Group and during the federal election. I have so much respect for him and the way that he connects with his community, and the way that the community truly respects him. I really, really am rooting for Ahmed.

Senator Fatima Payman: Her crossing the floor was just ugh, it sent me and I was just like, “wow”. Make politics great again by having this more.

I often wonder why little to nothing has happened in the face of mass atrocities around the world. I think the answer is so simple yet so unfortunate — we find it possible to dilute the humanity of others. Such dehumanisation is so rampant and yet so divorced from the very real and very beautiful humanity that is practiced by billions of people. The reason such dehumanisation is successful, despite it being so untrue and so dangerous, is because of the range of ways, many of which are subtle and less noticeable, that it persists.

Often, it is a product of entrenched racial hierarchies, which make us subconsciously believe that victims of war, systemic oppression or other structures of violence are less worthy of our grief and solidarity when they are non-white.

In Edward Said’s 1978 book Orientalism, he describes racialised dehumanisation as a product of “Western exceptionalism” which “regard[s] other cultures with derisive contempt.” The result of such attitudes, as Said warns against, is the devastating loss “of a sense of the density and interdependence of human life, which can neither be reduced to a formula nor brushed aside as irrelevant.”

Similarly, those who occupy vastly different lifestyles to those with privilege and power, such as people who live in developing nations or practice unconventional cultures or class habits, are disgracefully often out of our circle of empathy.

This dehumanisation is often subtle and manufactured by media and politicians often sidelining victims of oppression, justifying the harms incurred to them, and creating unfamiliar caricatures of them which are hard to sympathise with. This does not excuse our desensitisation to their suffering, but is an unfortunate reality which means many are apathetic to or even willing to endorse mass violence.

The portrayal of victims as superhuman was a brand of dehumanisation which I was unfamiliar with -- that was until I saw a Palestinian content creator, Rand, speak on it through Instagram.

“Dehumanising Palestinians beyond the point of superhero status to the extent that you forget and ignore each individual’s unique human experience whether it be suffering, joy or anything else, is still dehumanisation.”

She urges us to resist this less recognised form of dehumanising propaganda, which normalises violence against Palestinian people over decades, “do not become desensitised. Do not stop taking action. Do not stop talking about Palestine.”

Dehumanisation does not only ever function as making a people seem less human in the sense that harm to them is unimportant because they are inferior, but also in the sense that harm to them is unimportant because they are in some way superior. Any deviation from ‘normal’ humanity allows us to excuse crimes that face fellow human beings. In this way, characterisation of Palestinians and other victims of violence as super-human means we elevate them to a level that is above humanity, yes, but still beyond it, and in that way it is difficult for us to understand their pain from the framework of shared humanity.

When I read Plestia Alaqad’s book The Eyes of Gaza, this is what struck me most. She talks about very human experiences – her friendships, her missing cafés in Gaza prior to their destruction, sleepovers and talking with friends, breaking down and crying due to being overwhelmed. All incredibly simple and human experiences which so many of us overlook due to the many barbaric ways in which the lives of those oppressed are reduced. They are reduced often to numbers, to faceless victims, to people whose suffering is seen as inevitable or justified or tolerable.

These experiences are ones I can relate to on a personal level. As an Egyptian who visits the Middle East every few years, a lot of what Plestia describes stands out to me as familiar. Kind strangers, crowded apartment complexes, beautiful watersides. But even less localised than that, experiences like spending time with younger cousins and extended family and friends, pursuing ambitions, travelling, enjoying food with others, all speak to me with such intricate and relatable detail.

Dehumanisation is propelled by individuals who have insidious interests, who want to continue violence that is profitable and politically popular, but the reason we accept and internalise this is because it is an easier way to live. Talking about how we dehumanise people and become desensitised to their plight is a truly grotesque thing to talk about. I feel ashamed just thinking about the normalisation of truly brutal and disgraceful violence. These are truly shameful patterns of behaviour to admit to, and yet they are worth discussing. We must resist the dehumanisation of victims, and part of the reason it is so difficult to humanly confront and be truly radicalised by violence, is because the reality of violence is that it can affect us all.

More than anything, the reason why this propagandistic reduction of the humanity and breadth of life held by oppressed groups works on us, is because of fear. It is deeply disturbing and frankly very scary to think about the possibility that we could ever be confronted by such violence.

At the end of 2024, journalist Jan Fran published a carousel of her very profound reflections at the end of the year, amidst the genocide in Gaza:

“I can not look at my boy without seeing his face collapse. I can’t stop seeing his flesh melt into his bones or his limbs dislodge from his torso. I can’t stop seeing his tiny body crushed beneath hundreds of tonnes of concrete.”

The horror of conceptualising the pain that befalls others through the hallmarks of our own existence; the love we feel for others, the contentment we have in our lives, our ambitions and dreams, threatens our sense of complacency and stability. It is truly terrifying to think that nothing more than geographical fate has protected us from such brutality. It is truly terrifying to think about the suffering inflicted on others, and our undeniable role in it through the financial and political complacency of the West. The West that enables and often funds despicable atrocities in Palestine and Sudan and Congo and other states. Because of that, it is easier for us to differentiate our own experiences of being human to that of others.

Embracing the reality of shared humanity and our obligations under it may be inconvenient to the comfort of our lives, but it is the very least we can do with our exceptional privilege.

The danger of superhuman-isation as a specific form of dehumanisation, is that it affects even those of us who do deeply care about anti-colonial struggles like Palestinian liberation. This manifests in a couple of disturbing ways.

Firstly, it facilitates criticism of victim-survivors of the Palestinian genocide. In imposing an expectation of flawless resilience and perfection, we often criticise Palestinians who defy this image, such as those escaping the genocide, making the devastating trade-off between their land and their life. I saw frequent criticism of journalists like Motaz Azaiza or Plestia Alaqad for leaving Palestine, despite the threats to their lives if they remained in Gaza. Plestia talks about her survivor’s guilt at the conclusion of her diary, and what the combination of external shame, internal shame, trauma and the longing for one’s homeland would produce is unimaginable.

Additionally, this framework of thinking precipitates criticism of resistance to such oppression. I would generalise this from just Palestinian resistance, to any form of self-defence. For example, female victims of domestic violence are often critiqued for fighting back. In doing so, they disrupt our understanding of them as tolerant and non-violent, which fundamentally dehumanises women because it expects them to be devoid of the innate human desires for freedom or safety or justice.

When we deny the lived reality that victims of Israel’s genocide possess the very human desires to live and enjoy their rights, we make them less, not more human. Insisting that a group of people are exceptionally and unwaveringly resilient is a narrative that is often afactual and also detrimental to our understanding of their liberation. Palestinian resistance exists because of human desires for freedom. And its less comfortable manifestations such as through violent or military resistance can often be critiqued because they are incompatible with an image of moral simplicity and passiveness imposed on those we dehumanise.

This discussion reminds me of a lot of content I have seen depicting Gaza before Israel’s 2023 escalation. Images of a beautiful, beachside Gaza are often critiqued by Zionists as evidence contrary to the total siege of Gaza. However, what they do reveal is a resilient Palestinian people, that are not ambivalent to life or death as is the image often constructed of victims of constant brutalisation and murder, but dedicated to celebrating and preserving life wherever possible — as all of humanity is, or should be.

I think this realisation which should not be shocking to any of us, is essential in us seeing solidarity with victims of violence be it systemic violence, interpersonal violence, regime violence and other injustices, as justified by shared humanity. Whilst the majority of people I know are fortunately very conscious of the humanity of those suffering, I hope we can interrogate the more subtle and insidious versions of dehumanisation that persist. And also, that we can challenge mainstream dehumanisation in media, politics and social circles.

To conclude, I want to share a beautiful and heartbreaking poem, a reminder of the brutal disruption of humanity Israel has perpetrated. This poem is featured in Plestia Alaqad’s book, The Eyes of Gaza, which I am currently reading and would encourage everyone to read:

Sitting in a corner of a hospital,
Trying to write a poem.
But a child is crying.
A cat is wandering.
A young girl is screaming.
Doctors are panicking.
And the sound of bombs?
Only getting closer.

As the mother rocks her crying child,
Waiting for sleep to take his eyes,
He asks for time.
His mother, looking at the sky:
Two stars and a drone.
In the blink of an eye,
All that’s left is
Darkness and drones.

I remain, sitting in the corner
Alone, with a spider
Trying to write a poem.

But it has already written itself.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatu.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}

EDITORS NOTE

Dear albi,

It fills me with so much appreciation and gratitude to publish TCD’s first-ever external Dispatch! Now, the gates of the TCD garden has officially opened to new writers and creatives sprouting in-between the East and West.

Whether you come with polished essays or seedlings of ideas, this is a space that believes in artistic freedom, cultural nuance and the power of storytelling to deepen community. In collaboration, we cultivate the seeds of new growth.

Pitch your ideas via the link below:

Pitches Here!

My warmest gratitudes to the unequivocal force of nature, Anhaar Kareem, for writing this crucial and insightful piece. Anhaar is a dear friend of mine and one of (if not) the most promising upcoming journalist and activist in my community. Jazakallu-khayrun, my dear. 🩵

To our readers, be on the lookout for more exciting content for the TCD in the lead up to the new year. The season has only begun xx

Yours lovingly, Shayla
Editor-In-Chief

Loving someone is the most natural state of human connection. When we strip away the residues of capitalist structures and superficial societies; of match-making tools and corporate competition; of manufacturing a ‘type’ like a tin of biscuits and pitching one’s complexity in dot-points; of pursuing your ‘perfect match’, we only mortify the natural motion of love.

This is the very rhetoric I drowned in contemplation as the rolling credits beamed in blue light from my bedside screening of Celine Song’s second feature film, Materialists (2025). Through the recognisable medium of a love triangle rom-com, Song beckons us to break past the film’s familiar exterior to find at its roots, a mirror. She asks us, ‘what is companionship in its most natural and probable state?’ and in its reflection, we see love is the purest thing us humans can do.

The negative reception received by the film astounds me. I grieve the potential this film holds towards our modern concept of love. As a disclaimer: this article is not a review of the acting, marketing (although I do believe it was this that interrupted its intended message) nor a study of its production, but a reflection on its message.

As seen in her previous film, Past Lives (2024), Song is no stranger to a nuanced romance film. Her mind and heart are intertwined and she truly, sincerely, irrevocably loves love. To direct a film so deeply layered and critical of how shallow our concept of love has become, only for her audience to diminish the very ideas she sought to penetrate, is nothing less than a tragedy.

The fault of “broke man propaganda” commenters and “she should have picked the billionaire” rhetoric lies in the sheer fact that their viewing stopped short at its medium: the love triangle trope — and this unveils the unfortunate reality that the modern concept of love is no longer in tandem with it’s natural being. Modern love is material. We have become material lovers.

Within the romance genre of the Arts, love is factionalised into marketable ‘tropes’. They are exciting, concise, convenient, and digestible. They are also a tool used to simplify the nuance of romance to push for a more marketable and profitable representation of love appropriate for mass consumption. Love as a social phenomenon loses its integrity when it is constantly being folded in the heat of corporate palms. We expect love to be linear and compare the complexities of the human experience to a fantasy of simplicity. We lose the cognitive ability to know someone intimately and lose the natural nuances of love in reality.

Beneath the surface of the love triangle criticisms, Materialists and it’s subsequent discourse captures the impending truth that not only are our collective media literacy skills staggering, but our ability to empathise is being flatlined into defining the value of romance with superficiality.

Song shows us that love needs not be in pursuit of a ‘perfect match’ based on an unreliable set of data we construct ourselves as mortal, complex beings. The message she shouts through the steady-paced dialogue and 35mm film frames is that the contemporary concept of love is so far buried in materialism that we have forgotten that love is the most natural thing a human being can do. We love, not because someone seems to be a more stable, more charming match that is ‘perfect on paper’, but because love is intuitive. It is incapable of being understood with the rationale of corporations. The human spirit must not become a slave to the machine of capitalism, yet we have made it so, and that is exactly what ails Song so deeply.

The medium is not the message. As consumers of a media landscape overtaken by capitalism, it is essential we understand this when we interact with it.

We see the commodification of romance in the constructs of tropes that bind our literature to recognisable formats and familiar narratives because it’s profitable. Buzzwords are calculated by marketing professionals to spike our dopamine and manufacture our judgement through formulaic narratives. These buzzwords sustain the algorithms which cement the material concept of romance to further enhance revenue from its audiences. This is manifested into the binds of technological infrastructure. The astounding rise of dating apps is no coincidence, rather a mechanism of materialising our concept of love and romance to be one of marketability and data-driven compatibility. Corporations across all industries profit off of the manufactured gain of numbing our innate human intuition to love organically but rather love strategically.

This is not said in ignorance to the tumultuous complexity of romantic experiences, but on the contrary, an active step of resistance against a system which continues to commodify life and exploit the art of love. I believe this extract from Toni Morrison’s Love (2002) explains its seamlessly:

“It takes a certain intelligence to love like that – softly, without props. But the world is such a showpiece, maybe that’s why folks try to outdo it, put everything they feel onstage just to prove they can think up things too: handsome scary things like fights to the death, adultery, setting sheets afire. They fail of course. The world outdoes them every time.”

The zeitgeist of artificial love has disfigured romance as a status symbol based on checkboxes and selfish prosperity. We formulate a ‘type’ based on an ideal job salary, height, property, fitness levels, lifestyle because we have based love on who we desire ourselves to be paired with. We depend on a romantic partner to ‘make us feel valuable’ as repeated in the film, rather than to simply love and be loved. In doing so, we cloud our judgement of what truly matters: basic principles of morality, safety and pure, genuine companionship.

In the ancient texts, the concept of love is not an epic tale but rather a force adjacent to the natural world. Love is one that takes its own course and binds souls together in an unseen eternity. In the Quran, it is said:

“...[God] created for you spouses from among yourselves so that you may find tranquility in them. And He has placed between you compassion {affection} and mercy. Surely in this are signs for people who reflect.” (Surah Ar-Rum: 21)

We interfere with the natural course of love.

Love is the soil that sustains the roots of produce in seasons moist and dry.

Love is the luminant clouds smitten with shades of turmeric and lilac on summer nights.

Love is the rain shower, so light as water droplets cut through the daylight in a cumbersome downpour.

Love is the course of the oak tree grooves standing just as it did centuries prior, in its youth.

Love is pure.

The film symbolises this most profoundly as one partner slips a flower-bent ring onto the finger of his lover – both a symbol of absolute devotion and the manifestation that true love is a kin to the natural world. It is the gesture of this ring, relevant from the stone ages to contemporary New York City, that so eloquently delivers the message that love is the native language of the human spirit. It is a rejection of the capitalist normalcy of a big diamond ring and liberates love from the constructs of money and status. The flower ring is love in its purest form.

Love is our most purest form.

Yours lovingly,

Shayla

Asalamu-alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatu

{May peace and blessing be upon you}

The shell of literary academia is heavily desaturated and the pursuit of the Humanities is gatekept as a luxury behind glass doors of an ornate cabinet. It sits besides the fine china of creative disciplines, reserved for only those who bear the privilege of pursuing professionally. For only those who are truly welcome.

Resulting from the plague of colonisation which persistently oozes like a poorly stitched wound, general knowledge and literary curriculums are desaturated. And where content and discussion lack diverse representations, the literary discipline as a whole becomes exclusive to only those who can truly relate to its subject matter and authorship. This is intentional.

I re-watched Dead Poets Society (1989) as one does when freshly amber autumn trees sway in the black of the night, and on this occasion, I was struck in contemplation of one of the film’s most famous quotes. Robin Williams famously says “we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race,” and in the milieu of literary elitism, that quote bears an uncanny sting for those excluded from positions of the readers, the writers and the narratives.

Apart from being an almost entirely white-casted film which follows the legacy of predominant European and American writers and the experiences of upper-class, white male students, Dead Poets Society (1989) is a filmatic representation of the exclusion of people of colour in the romantic reputation of literary academia. If reading and writing poetry, and pursuing the Arts is an essential part of being human, are those unwelcome in the space any less human, or unhuman entirely? And is the gentrification of the Arts a direct weaponisation of White supremacy – just another clog in the machine of Eastern subordination?

It pains me to reflect on the ways my younger self would suppress her ambitions of becoming a writer because it just never felt achievable as a woman of colour – especially as an Arab Muslim. I think back to my Pinterest boards of dark academia, romantic handwritten prose, classic novellas, and feeling an unfulfilled longing to pursue literary studies. However, ambitions of law and science felt more realistic, more acceptable, more welcoming as a means of concentrating my academics.

It wasn’t until I began to study a corporate discipline that I came to realise those ambitions are very much accessible to me. The only thing holding me back from taking that leap was my own internalised subordination and the cultural stigma I had grown accustomed to. Who could blame me? Curriculums throughout our schooling years are intentionally crafted to focus on the literary excellences of White writers and only ever include ethnically-diverse narratives as a token of comparison rather than building cultural understanding. While this is a direct result of academia being reserved for the elite class until the modern ages, why does our education remain so transfixed on White writers when history proves classic literature always existed in the greater ethnic region of the world?

Platformed literature is reserved based on skin tone, and categorised to support colonial narratives of a ‘civilised’ West and a subordinate East. It’s purely the case of Orientalism, a theory developed by Palestinian academic, Edward Said in the 1970s, and outstretched to the scope of the Arts half a century later.

We glorify the study of psychosis and identity in the works of Dostoevsky and Kafka, celebrated in state-governed curriculums taught to us in schools and given platforms in university workshops. However, we look past the equally impactful and culturally nuanced exploration of the very same topics by authors such as Tayeb Salih and Ah Cheng, which are given little to no recognition in mandatory coursework. Especially within the genre of ‘classic literature’, authors of colour and translated fiction deserve to be recognised, celebrated and honoured, just like the Brontes, Fitzgerald, Dickens and Austen.

Exploring the history of my ancestors has quite literally changed my life in many ways. Whether it be asking my father to re-tell his childhood memories of causing havoc in his family home in Al-Minyeh, or reading about the underground disco movement in 70s Beirut, there is always a tender piece of my heart that feels connected to my people through our literature. Because coursing through the cedar roots of my motherland, and the fertile springs outside the broader global West, is the sheer fact that our people are fundamentally built on the Humanities through historical preservation, storytelling at communal gatherings, enriching our culinary palette, merging music and film from across the region.

Our people are storytellers, whether that’s through speech or the synchronicity of our hands. Our people are the ancestral forebearers of the Arts. Yet in literary academia, people of colour and those of migrant backgrounds not only experience a harsh lack of accreditation for our contributions to the Humanities, but are excluded from the Arts.

It is essential to recognise that our world is changing and becoming more diverse and inclusive. More POC students are studying English and becoming published authors and making waves in academia, but these spaces remain widely shrouded in white supremacy. It still remains that literature is a privilege.

“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race,” but why is it that the prose of POC writers receives the most praise when we write about our suffering?

While narratives of adversity and struggle are essential to preserving the historical and ongoing experiences of torment, imperialism and discrimination faced by people of colour, it is crucial to affirm that these experiences do not undermine our humane entitlement to also be viewed in triumph and prosperity. This is Orientalism in practice, a means of fostering the subjugation of the non-White persona and stripping the “Oriental” from all its complexity and agency.

As the new generation of great writers becomes more diverse, let us remember that we, too, are creatives with immense agency and that we must not constrict our narratives within what is deemed digestible and acceptable for authors of colour. We must read and write poetry of exceptional nuance because we too, are members of the human race.

Yours lovingly, Shayla

Asalamu-alaykum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatu.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}

In the age of artificial intelligence infiltrating our digital spaces, the struggle for authenticity has never been more troublesome. The fine line between human-made and computer-generated art is blurring and the world is truly beginning to look like an episode of Black Mirror. While it has become increasingly difficult to stay in tune with our environment when the blue glow of our screens paralyses the scope of our outer-beings, my biggest concern for the technological future is losing touch with the documentation of our inner-selves. That is, the prevalence of analogue documentation - the kind using the humble pen and paper.

It wasn’t until I started journaling that I began to harmonise my thoughts. The gentle scratch of metal and ink on soft paper created a symphony of my spiraling mind. I had tried to get into the habit of journaling many times in the past until I developed the perfect collection of analogue documentaries that best nurtured me (a chronic over thinker) to mindfully treat myself with utmost grace and foster my creativity.

Journaling is a practice that exists throughout the entire span of human civilisation. All the ancient history we are aware of was derived from some kind of physical documentation - largely from personal accounts and written observations. Think about all the great thinkers and artists who kept an analogue documentation of their thoughts in modern history – Frida Kahlo and the diary she kept by her side, Mahmoud Darwish and his personal accounts of Palestine in both its flourishing and vulnerability – all artifacts that not only became sacred markings of profound historical influence, but a tangible preservation of the present. 

Our writing is the sacred archive of our thoughts and ideas – our inner-selves. It need not be groundbreakingly philosophical, or beautifully poetic, but rather a reflection of our best traits. Think of journaling as an archive of your ideas, including the greats and the not-so greats, organised into the categories of our passions and thought bubbles. That is precisely why we should have a collection of journals for separate benefits, projects and interests because the strength of being human is to be multifaceted, nuanced and complex. 

No two people are the same, and so your journals should just be by you, for you. Never mind grammatical errors, literary prestige, or even completing a journal entry. Your journals are not a mess but rather a bank of your personal intuition. Yes, that includes a pen and paper — no matter how tempting it is to vent to ChatGPT and receive a response back. To preserve analogue documentary it must be tangible, and written as a product of your time and thought. It is an act far too sacred and important to be replaced by AI.

Without further ado, here are my fundamental five journals I believe everyone should have in their collection of analogue documentary:

1. Reflective journal

When I first took up journaling, I bound myself to the concept that journaling daily was something that requires discipline. The journal for reflecting on your thoughts should not be an act of discipline, but rather a safe haven. It should feel like a weight lifted.

It was only until the ink of my pen flowed with my stream of my consciousness did I feel the benefits of reflective journaling: a sense of emotional ease and relieved physical tension. Reflective journaling is like yoga for the mind.

While it’s an admirable habit to reflectively journal on a daily basis, it is important not to hold yourself to such a strict account. Giving yourself grace not only heals the way we reconcile with our cluttered thoughts, but allows us to thoroughly enjoy the practice of journaling. It should be a safe place where we feel overwhelmed rather than an obligation.

Your reflective journal should be almost entirely initiative. Write along the current of your thoughts, regardless of literary conventions and do so for the amount of lines or pages you feel is sufficient at the moment. Learn to seek journaling and reflection in both positive times of triumph and gratitude, and more troublesome times of mental turmoil. The words we write are direct manifestations of our ideas - they go from fluid thoughts in our mind to physically tangible objects on paper, so it is important to be intentional about the seeds we plant in our journal. The positive moments in life are just as worthy of journaling and documentation as the complex ones.

2. Common-place journal

The concept of a common-place journal is one that truly cements one in the appreciation of analogue documentation. That being, it is perhaps my favourite kind of journal.

Every single day, thousands of great thoughts are lost in the bustle of our fast-paced lives. That brief spark we feel when an idea comes to mind, a short surge of passion quietly fizzles out amongst the bombardment of tasks and obligations. Do not lose those little thoughts - that is where the magic lies.

A common-place journal is essentially a pocket-sized, physical home for all the thoughts we enter into our Notes App. It is a space where all the spontaneous little thoughts throughout our daily lives can become tangible ideas. Whether it’s remembering what milk your friend has in their coffee at a local cafe catch-up, a scribbled brainstorm of article ideas on the train home, or even a few doodles that vaguely resemble the trinkets on your office desk.

I place emphasis on the ‘pocket-sized’ nature of a common-place journal beyond all else because its best feature lies in its practicality and accessibility. Soon, you’ll pack your journal and a pen in your handbag alongside your keys and other daily essentials. A side note: if you do not yet own a common-place journal, an excellent habit is to always have a pen on hand. Whether it’s writing on a napkin or the back of a receipt, your written ideas all collated into the wonderful collection of your own analogue documentary. 

If you are intrigued about the concept of a common-place journal, please give this article by Ayushi of Milk & Cookies a read! I always kept a common-place journal without ever putting a name to it, and this article made it all make sense.

milk and cookies

How to Start a Commonplace Book (and Why You Need One)

There’s something magical about a notebook filled with the words, images, and ideas that resonate with you. It’s like a time capsule of your evolving thoughts, a space where random scribbles somehow form a tapestry of your mind. If you’ve ever saved a quote, bookmarked an article, or kept a screenshot of something that moved you, you’re halfway to keepi…

Read more

2 years ago · 2582 likes · 38 comments · milk and cookies

3. Passion journal

In the journey of becoming, we tend to overlook the progress we make along the way. Everyone has a passion, and that passion is one worthy of being pursued. 

Our passions are pursued in projects: stepping stones that uplift our expertise one brilliant craft at a time. A passion journal is a documentation of these stepping stones, housed from cover to cover for your reference.

These passions do not have to be literary or even artistic in nature! Studies and research are most effective when done out of passion, and so your journal could be a documentation of your learning journey. From beginners key concepts to more complex insights on niche academic areas, documenting the growth of your passions into a physical tangible collection is a truly beautiful act of self-preservation and discovery.

You could be passionate about baking, and begin a passion journal to document your favourite recipes and the reactions of your loved ones as they indulged. Or perhaps you are travelling to your home country for the holidays and wish to cement your fluency in your native tongue by creating a dictionary of all the words and phrases you learn along the way. 

The external, capitalist structures of our world may assign us by occupation or accomplishment, but as humans, we come to understand ourselves most intimately by pursuing the ideas we love most. And that is a journey worth being documented.

4. Visual journal

One of the bittersweet experiences of being a 2000s kid is being the last generation with photo albums. In our family home, my parents have colourful albums stacked in drawers storing the lifespans of their own childhoods to the first day of school for my brother and I and our family holidays. That it itself is an analogue documentation of our lives, and it is a tradition we must not let go of.

The convenience and accessibility of our photo galleries on our phones are undeniable, however, we can take an extra step to preserve our lifetime of beautiful memories in physical archives. A visual journal can be anything from a photo album, a scrapbook, or even a sketchbook. Despite journaling being often associated with writing and words, images and textures are the most universal means of connection and expression in human-kind.

While I tend to overthink visual projects, I found junk journaling to be a sweet spot of crafting my memories without expectation. Junk journaling is a form of scrap booking minus the extensive planning and more of unabashed hoarding. Another plus side to junk journaling is it is almost entirely done using recycled materials, which is not only more environmentally sustainable, but immensely cost-effective!

You can collect physical keepsakes from business cards from a local clothing store, newspaper clippings and wrapping paper, airplane tickets from travelling, a funky coaster from a restaurant and even sweet wrappers from Eid visits, and paste them onto your pages however you see fit. It’s a practice that takes getting used to, but once you enter the flow of junk journaling, you can really impress yourself with what you can create from the recycled materials you collect from life’s adventures.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

Migration is an experience that bleeds through generations. 

It’s a journey of sacrifice and necessity – starting life in a new country with a new language, new localities, new laws, new social standards, new workforces. It’s the disorientation of one’s cultural identity, being forced to learn and adapt to a foreign lifestyle on one’s own. 

Migration in the current climate of a conservative West is a gushing wound that perpetually blisters. It’s a scab leader’s of our global superpowers continually rip and watch with piercing eyes as the bitter sting continues to distasteful hues of burn red, white and blue. 

The process of declaring citizenship is a tedious selection that is wildly under-resourced, backlogged and unjust in the West. Those who are lucky to be granted the right to citizenship must start from scratch, dependant on a welfare system that is just as under-resourced as immigration systems. The unlucky ones endure the deprivation of humanity, experience the trauma of deportation and detained in limbo.

Detention centres remain hardly functional, yet contain several thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers in gravely inhumane conditions outside the shores of Australia. They live life in limbo, in the pitch black of nowhere for years and years of anxiety and uncertainty. ICE continues to brutally tear mothers and fathers from the embrace of their children in the US – people who served their country in the workplace and diligently built lives and families and legacies on a land which refuses to see their humanity. That is not to mention the heartless treatment of refugees and vulnerable global citizens denied the right to flee war and oppression.

If you didn’t experience the turmoils of migration first hand, you most definitely experienced the troubles of the diaspora as first- and second-generation migrants. The diaspora is a fascinatingly haunting space of the in-between - you are neither here nor there. Born to migrant parents and grandparents means you must balance your nationality with your cultural background – a terribly conflicting experience beyond the cliche search for “who am I?” It’s the appropriation of native traditions and reframing them as conservative trends, rather than paying due to its true origins. It’s the subtle microaggressions of cultural exclusion and the harsh depiction of non-Western cultural practices as barbaric. It’s the pitted feeling of knowing you are not, and will never be, entirely free to embrace your cultural background without assimilation, despite it being your birthright to do so under a fragile international governance.

The people’s fight to preserve the agency of migrants is a fight for the humanity of the vulnerable. From protesting to boycotting to educating the public on social platforms, every individual who stands for the humanity of migrants is simply standing for humanity. Storytelling and performance is rooted in cultural significance from across the globe – a practice signatory to our species – and so I would like to share my story as the daughter and granddaughter of migrants. 

Here is a little semi-autobiography I wrote for a university assessment, where I apply the literary psychology of “fraudulence” to my own experience as an adolescent navigating the diaspora:

It was in 2017, during an unventilated drive from my jido’s home in the Shire, I decided I was a fake Lebanese—a fraud.

I was born and raised in Sydney’s inner-west to first-generation Lebanese parents. I studied pre-kindergarten Arabic at the community madrasah and continued my studies through primary and high school. So, it was a wonder to my Sheikh why this pure-blood Lebanese girl lost her ability to form a coherent sentence in Arabic. Sure, I knew my vocabulary just like the average Muslim kid—but could I have a complete conversation with my grandparents without relying on frantic nodding and a tightly plastered smile? Or understand the meaning of the Quran without referring to the translation? Not really.

“You’re too Aussie for the Lebos, and too Lebo for the Aussies!” my non-Arab school friend (who, may I add, spoke better Arabic than I did) would always say. I was thirteen. That sentence still haunts me.

It wasn’t until a university lecturer, six years later, explained the works of an apparently ‘controversial’ (and simply mentally unstable) author that my cultural disassociation was given a tangible label: fraudulence. 

The unsettling chill of my inner consciousness bypassed my physical discomfort from the rigid wood benches. Looking around at my Aussie peers, I realised I was nothing like them. And why had I never been invited for lunch after class, or to social gatherings? Or that conversations never advanced past the awkward discussions of weekend plans and weekly readings? Was I deterring myself every time I brought up my love for kifta-bi-saniyeh and (wo)mansplaining Islamic spirituality during my tutorials? Do they see me as an Islamist mouthpiece, or a gypsy out of touch with the customs of the ‘civil’ West?

I picked at the scabs of the blurred silhouette that vaguely resembled my own, and spiralled in a suffocating sequence of self-analysis. This disfigured shadow from my childhood nightmares stood grounded in the narrow scope of my vision. And the echoes of my lunch group’s giggles. And my blood ran cold, and my face burned flush.  

***

I could never come to terms with my cultural fraudulence. An unprecedented figure loomed in my inner consciousness but was easily deterred if I pretended it wasn’t there, piercing spots in the back of my head. The sickening stench of bushfires and car tyres only lingered, and I grew accustomed to the nausea.

That was until my father asked, many summers after that humid drive from my jido’s house, a question that altered that beckoned that unwelcomed figure to breach my space.

“What do you consider your nationality to be?” 

I was baffled by this excruciatingly plain question. The answer was highlighted in good, old neon. The word was printed on my only passport and documented on my birth certificate: ‘AUSTRALIAN’. 

But my tongue failed to roll out the four-syllable word, like when you stumble on a bump from underneath a tightly woven rug. And you frantically look around to see if anyone witnessed the humiliating trip.

I never viewed myself as a true-blue Australian. Not because of my thick, frizzy hair or because my mother wears the hijab, and my dad grows out his beard. But those moments of isolation in everyday interactions, like having to choose the vegetarian option at the coffee shop because no one supplies Halal meat in the CBD. Or having to sit an exam on Eid and explain my absence to my grandparents in broken Arabic.

If I don’t feel genuinely Australian, that must mean I’m Lebanese. 

My father was born in Tripoli at the height of the Civil War, but his family was from the mountain village of El Minniyeh. My mother’s story couldn’t be more different. She was born and raised in Cronulla with her parents, who left their farm in El Minniyeh to start a family on the sunny side of Sydney. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that all my grandparents received an ‘ELLIGBLE IMMIGRANT’ stamp on their crumpled visa forms. 

So here I was, contemplating my cultural fraudulence on a similarly muggy drive to my jido’s home in the Shire. Torn between two identities: a curiously coincidental chain of paperwork that dictated those ten letters under my name or an extraordinary chronology of love and loss that has moulded my entire being, those before me, and potentially, those after me.

My jido never left his home in the Shire—it turns 50 years old this year. Still, he wakes at fajr and feeds honey and bread to the fluorescent flocks of cockatoos and parakeets on the clothing line we used to dangle on as kids. 

And it was in that very backyard, with my brother and sister, and my mumma and baba, and cousins and kholto and kholo, and my tayta and jido, that I was enabled to exist.

Sure, I’ve never visited Lebanon, and I do not know whether I ever will. But I am here, on an island in Oceania, thousands of kilometres away from the very soil that possesses the contents of the blood which pumps through my veins. 

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

The end of Ramadan is always a bittersweet end - a well and true cliche across the Muslim world. Nonetheless, the act of sighting the Shawwal crescent moon is as intimate as a prayer, signified by the solemn intentions we set to honour the lessons we learned and bid a tender farewell to a truly, Holy Month.

May Allah swt maintain the invisible string of Divine faith we have worked to strengthen over the past few weeks and continue to keep alight the twinkling sense of serenity until the next time we greet Ramadan once again. Ameen.

It’s a curious, yet lovely human instinct we encounter as we leave the Holy Month of Ramadan. Reminiscent of a tight embrace at an airport departure gate, or the final steps we take outside our high school. Every Ramadan is a milestone, leaving us with the perfect balance of sweet achievement and a sorrowful goodbye. Yet, like every monumental memory, we can carry the essence of Ramadan in our hearts and echo its grandeur through our actions, inshAllah {God willing}. So, upon the final Maghreb adhan approaches, let us soak in the final moments of spiritual solitude and carry on the graceful stillness we hold within us.

To celebrate Eid, I have dug out a poem from the archives that I feel is absolutely darling for this exact feeling of saying farewell. I wrote it on a plane last year as we departed the mountains of Cappadocia, Türkiye, where I still believe a piece of my heart remains. However, overtime I feel it has evolved beyond that very moment, and is universal to the bittersweet experience of leaving something loved behind. I hope you resonate with the verses and enjoy the coming days of a long-anticipated Eid.

Aşk/ حب/ Love.

On your proud homeland of which I am disparate
It is a wonder - a triumph of the centuries.
Where great empires collapsed and clever architects studied,
It was a grace we met momentarily.

Perhaps it is your aura like horizons and rivers,
Or the grand ancient valleys framing your heart - 
Maybe your scent of pomegranate molasses
And the musk of an underground city.

Why choose I when my blood flows foreign?
Why choose I when I am but a little mountain?
Of all the apricot trees and freshwater seas,
You are the mosaic of handcrafted glass tiles that decorate me.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

Yours lovingly, Shayla

As we peel back the cover of a fresh new notebook, crème lined with amber embraces our dreams and desires for our next orbit. And when the ink of our pens, as deep as the night sky, blots onto the pristine page, a force of desperate alteration drives its motion. An almost aggressive hope to shift oneself in the name of ‘resolution’. 

With the new year in full swing, it is an utterly humane tendency to aspire for change - a change in routine, personality, appearance, interaction and consumption in the name of becoming our ‘best self’. While reflection and aspiration are undoubtedly beneficial in helping to clear one's consciousness for the new year, it is easy to get caught up in self-criticism and dangerous ambition. We grow harsher on ourselves, for we prioritise perfection over progress when we know, deep down, growth is far from linear. This recent realisation came to me as I sat on the beach on the morning of this New Year's Eve: are we showing ourselves grace when we dream of our ‘best selves’?

That word stuck with me: grace. In Arabic, ‘Grace’ is translated to ‘Ni’mah’ {نِعْمَة}. However, like many Arabic words, Ni’mah is a grand, spiritual concept with several meanings. 

Growing up, I recall hearing Ni’mah used to describe blessings - something to cherish and be grateful for. Gathered at the dinner table, my parents explained to my siblings and I that we mustn’t throw away our food as it was a Ni’mah, a gift from God. In many ways, sharing a meal is a sacred gift in itself: the nourishment of both good company and delicious food. Ni’mah is your morning cup of coffee or the mandatory block of chocolate to cleanse your palate after every meal, even the sip of water you take from the water bottle gifted to you from a museum gift shop. Alhamdulillah {Thanks be to God}.

Another instance where we are provided Ni’mah is with our luxury of choice. Being a cripplingly indecisive person myself, I often tend to overlook what an immense gift it is to have the opportunity to simply, choose. Whether it be as little as deciding what to wear according to the weather or as significant as determining what university you’d like to attend, I believe this, too, is a blessing. 

Upon pondering my own aspirations for 2025, I noticed a popular re-branding of ‘New Years Resolutions’ as setting ‘New Years Intentions’. I like that word: Intention (or, in Arabic, Niyah {نية}), which, may I add, is rooted in Islamic spirituality. This year I tried something a little different; I decided I would tie my New Years Intentions to one word. And what more lovely of a word is ‘grace’. I will be more graceful to myself and to others, InshAllah {God willing}.

Encircled with the most fluorescent mosaic of blessings and the luxury of choice, there are an ample amount of ways we can omit grace from ourselves and onto others. A significant act of grace is being mindful and intentional with our purchasing - are the companies we support ethical towards the environment and exhibit fundamental human rights towards their workers? In a world where we are hypnotised by trending audio and short-form media videos, we fall into a habit of over-consumption. By practising mindfulness, we can act with grace by treating ourselves within the scope of our own morals. 

Another way we can extend grace is by how we treat others. A small act I am challenging myself with is to be more vocal about my positive thoughts about others. I adore it when people are able to uplift each other in the most mundane and familiar places. As an introvert myself, I find it immensely difficult to interact with people; however by vocalising positive thoughts, it is undeniable even one word of grace could flip someone’s entire day around. Whether complimenting a stranger on their fabulous outfit at the store or empowering an awesome person at the gym, we can be a grace to others through our words. 

And if a spoken word seems intimidating at times, a smile is an act of grace surpassing any combination of letters and punctuation. One of my favourite hadith {teachings of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH} is:

تَبَسُّمُكَ فِي وَجْهِ أَخِيكَ لَكَ صَدَقَةٌ

Your smiling in the face of your brother is charity

(At-Tirmidhi)

A final thought, which is perhaps the most noteworthy, is being graceful to ourselves. In an overbearing world of competition and comparison tucked behind a glowing screen in the palm of our hands, it is so easy to drive ourselves into harsh criticism. I stress this point to myself first, and to you second: you are deserving of all of nature’s grace and compassion and warmth for simply being. An in simply being, we are imperfect, but with grace, I hope we can grow to accept and embody our imperfections. Take this moment in your reading to close your eyes, take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Sigh it out. Alhamdulillah {Thanks be to God} for the luxury it is to simply be you, in safety, in nourishment, in company and in stability. 

P.s. it would be really lovely if we could all share our dearest Ni’mah/s in the comments! This could be something we encounter on a regular basis, or even one we aspire to appreciate in the new year. Also drop in your own intentions for 2025! :))

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

To my people, coffee is more than a beverage. As a visitor is greeted with “ahla wa sahlan” {“hello and welcome!”} and showered in kisses, a copper dallah brews with a faint whistle on the stovetop. To my people, coffee is a delicacy that reflects our values of community, generosity, and nourishment for the mind, body, and soul. 

From the gentle roast of Arabica coffee beans, later ground to a blend reminiscent of sand dunes and prepared in the heart of our homes (the kitchen), Qahwa (or Arabic coffee) is a historical tradition practised for many centuries. The rich fragrances of cardamom, saffron, and cloves are the palatable embodiment of the motherland across different regions of the Middle East.

While coffee is a focal aspect of culinary and social culture around the world, the widely adored beverage was first invented by (you guessed it) the Arabs. So, treat yourself to a cup of coffee prepared to your liking (no judgement if it’s decaf or a mocha) for this read on the Arabic origins of coffee and its culture.

The story of coffee begins in the lush forests of North Africa. While there is historical contention amongst the Arabic legends, it is widely accepted the coffee bean originated from ancient Ethiopian soils and later became the brewed beverage we know today in 15th-century Yemen. 

As legends have it, it all started with an Ethiopian coffee tree, a goat and Kaldi, the goat herder. Upon observing the growth of a foreign red ‘berry’, Kaldi noticed his goats’ heightened energy. He was awestruck at the sight of his prancing goats and decided to chew the berry as they did. To his curiosity, Kaldi found himself more energised and hurried to share his experience at a local Sufi monastery in search of wisdom. The monks dismissed the erratic red plant and it’s stimulating effects, and threw them into a nearby fire. Little did they know, the strange berry would not burn and dissolve. It would roast…

The mysterious roasted fruit later garnered curiosity across the African continent and Arabian peninsula. According to the first credible source, coffee was first consumed as a beverage in a Sufi monastery in Yemen. Via trade routes, it was brought into Yemen and cultivated. Lush gardens of green embellished with darling crimson bulbs decorated the monasteries. 

It was in these monasteries that Sufi monks began to prepare the roasted coffee beans into a deliciously bitter beverage to assist them in sustaining their worship through the stillness of the night. The stimulating drink prolonged hours of focused meditation and sincere prayer. Reported by an early historical source, Abd Al-Qadir al-Jaziri says “They drank it every Monday and Friday eve, putting it in a large vessel made of red clay. Their leader ladled it out with a small dipper and gave it to them to drink, passing it to the right, while they recited their usual formulas”. 

Soon, the beans and beverage would garner widespread popularity from Yemen’s infamous port city of Mocha, across other regions of the Arab world. The name of Yemen’s buzzing city port, Mocha, also became famous for it’s local bean flavour, which had a richer chocolate taste. From Makkah and Madinah, to Egypt, Syria and Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), the beverage became an essential accessory to long nights of worship.

For centuries, humans have found luxury in the beverage: it’s palliative scent of cardamom embracing both the one who prepares it, and the one blessed with consuming it. In the Arabian peninsula, coffee was adopted as a gift to indulge visitors with its aromatic comfort and grace loved ones with warm hospitality. Coffee soon became a regular routine for locals to treat themselves and later developed outside the home to serve the community.

It was in Constantinople the first coffee house was established, marking the pathway for coffee consumption to be communal. In 1475, gatherings of Qahwa became the epicentre of knowledge and community. Alongside a heart-warming sip of coffee, locals met with old and new acaquntinecies to listen to music, exchange wisdoms and engage in meaningful conversation - the ultimate third-place! In Makkah and Madinah, coffee houses were referred to as “Schools of the Wise”, and cherished by international pilgrims to enhance their communal and individual worship.

The beloved beverage garnered groundbreaking popularity across Europe, and soon globalised beyond the boundaries of language, culture and identity. Coffee and coffeehouses became a beacon of intersectionality, of creativity, of expression, of unity.

Upon my own reflection, it is incredibly beautiful to observe the minor differences of coffee across cuisines of different cultures. Perhaps the consistency is slightly thicker, the size and shape of the ceramic cup a little more flourished, the addition (or exclusion) of milk, and the loving labour of preparing the beverage with additional spices. Or even more enchanting, the taste preferences of individuals and the modern enrichment of blends and flavours. Coffee is a symbol of both individuality and customary tradition.

To my people, coffee is more than a beverage. We perserve our ancient tradition of serving coffee to visitors in our finest silverware reserved for these exact moments of gathering. These sacred moments of hospitality are an offering beyond a tasty treat - it is an offering of devotion, attention and adoring respect. It is as if to say “my home is your home.” And as we share the luxury of Qahwa, encaptured by the lingering aroma of cardamon, saffron and cloves, my people continue to endure.

On that note, please feel free to treat me to a coffee (happy to announce I have progressed from decaf, my ancestors will be proud lol).

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

Being born in the Spring
Perhaps must mean
I bloom in rotations of the Sun.

On the eve of this very orbit,
The moon beams down in silken silvers
And nights grow warmer with pollen.

Plastic tiaras and polyester gowns -
Turn into candle-lit dinner parties
And gelato cups downtown.

At the pace of an orbit -
Though it sounds greatly maudlin -
Winter’s shedded leaves and I renew as one.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

(May peace and blessings be upon you).

In the prime of childhood, the small wonders of life amused us. We would gaze in awe at every small discovery: the tickles of ants crawling between our toes in the garden and the sugary ecstasy of a smiley-face frosted cupcake. And when these sensations become all too familiar, they lose their spark as we grow older: the ants become itchy, and sweets become sickening.

“Little Lalo with the round, rosy cheeks” my parents have always called me. I was their first daughter, and an absolute princess (or so they tell me). My rosy cheeks remain so, but in the realm of growing up, that sense of wonder and awe is shelved in a grand case. Amongst the precious dining sets and glass trinkets, sits that inner-child.

So, why is it that only as we brush our wandering wrists against the cool glass case do we stop and recognise the treasures and trophies it houses? I believe it’s human nature: our hearts yearn for the past. We are creatures of deep nostalgia, but perhaps that sense is our inner-child. And we yearn, not necessarily to go back in time, but beckoning us adults to change our perspective every once in a while. To make use of those treasures.

I observe this most primarily in film. A few of my favourite films which magically capture the disparate contrasts between childhood and adulthood are Little Women (2019), Aftersun (2023), Amélie (2001), The Florida Project (2017) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006), amongst many others.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) is arguably Wes Anderson’s best film. It is a childhood love story with just as much (and possibly even more) soul and romance as those between adults. Both being treated as outcasts in their separate worlds, 12-year-olds Suzy and Sam run away together with simply their books and crafted gadgets. Together, they are equipped to navigate the world as they see fit. What Anderson perfects is ability to enlighten our inner-child through colourful and nostalgic visual cinematography, and captivate us with strong adult themes of belonging and normality.

Another deeply touching film is West Beirut (1998). With the atrocities of an escalating civil war in 1970s Lebanon in its timeline, the film focuses on the mischievous antics of two teenage boys. Through the innocent misadventures of these children, we, as the audience, are able to deeply reflect on the nature of war and conflict as it escalates in the background of the film. And when the boys’ world rapidly collapses, and they sit on the roof of the apartment building they were forced to flee from, they light illegal fireworks and promise to remain by each other's side. (Also, stay tuned for a complete film review!)

Innocence is not a trait of childish ignorance but rather a kind of purity in being able to exist entirely in the present. Our inner child is the untouched lens our heart needs to view the world without the corruption of dictated social constructs. This overstimulating lifestyle we become consumed by fragments our perceptions of our minds, our bodies, our relationships, our values, our spirituality, our connections with nature and most significantly, our sense of self.

Nonetheless, times of trouble call for maturity and rationale. However, we must not forget to reconcile with our inner child. It is this which keeps us grounded in the overbearing world of adulthood. 

It must also be mentioned I am not a perfectly optimistic person. As I write this piece, I too am learning immensely, so this goes as a reminder to myself first, and hopefully, to you also, dear reader.

I dedicate this article to little Lalo, whose cheeks remain round and rosy, but is working towards re-loving those features. Who still loves to dress up and sing along to old musicals when she becomes overstimulated by the pressures of success and conformity. 

I also dedicate this article to my parents, who always encouraged me to remain in touch with my inner child and remain persistent in nurturing the little Lalo within me.

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Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

(May peace and blessings be upon you).

We often see narratives of the East told through a Western lens. On the surface, they are radical and heroic and colourfully enlightening! However, left amongst the rubble of imperialism lies a human in search of their true place amongst it all. 

Tayeb Salih explores this in his groundbreaking, gut-wrenching, page-turning, stay-up-until-3 a.m. novel, Season of Migration to the North (1966). When read in its original Arabic text Mawsim al-hijrah ilā al-shamāl, it is so beautifully written it is referred to as prose. 

Salih refuses to take a victimised stance, and so he writes back to the coloniser. He is commonly said to directly address Joseph Conrad, who wrote the famous novella Heart of Darkness, one of the first literary critiques of the European Grand Narrative. In doing so, Salih presents himself as an intellectual equal, refusing to allow labels of being a ‘victim of colonisation’ to limit his credibility. 

He opens the novel with one of the most extraordinary power moves in literature:

 “It was, gentlemen, after a long absence…that I returned to my people.”

It’s in the third word of the entire text: “gentlemen”. (HEAR ME OUT!) What seems like a regular address, perhaps more formally inclined, is truly a revolutionary and intentional choice of words.

Tayeb Salih, born and raised during the British colonisation of Sudan, was an incredibly clever writer from a young age. When he was of age, he studied abroad in London, becoming an accomplished writer upon his return to rural Sudan. His own story inspired the novel’s main character and narrator, which he used as a medium to express his cultural diaspora - caught between the East and the West. 

So, let us return to word number three: “gentleman”. His amiable tone suggests he is of equal standing when conversing with a Western counterpart and demonstrates a sense of unwavering self-awareness. He may as well have called them ‘buddy’. 

Oh, can’t you see it so vividly: a man dressed in a crisp white abaya, with his chin up high, taking his seat unapologetically in a place he is not welcome. This hypothetical scenario is the very essence of the novel - and this is only from an external perspective!!

The setting alternates between the narrator’s return to his home village on the Nile and Mustafa Saeed’s lavish but mysterious past in Europe. Despite their ambitious expeditions into Europe and highly skilled academics, they experience a crisis of belonging, mimicry and ambivalence. Ultimately, the narrator and Mustafa embody the quintessential legacy of colonisation: a hybrid identity of the East and the West. They are marginalised and alienated in the West and East alike - talk about trauma bonding!

Torn between the Orient and the Occident, Mustafa consciously romanticises “the spirituality of the East” in his past, exploiting his cultural identity to earn respect and appeal to the West. However, this instantly shifts when he commits a heinous crime and encounters the explicit belittlement that the Western elite expressed towards the East. 

The scene of his trial is incredibly sickening, but I’ll leave that for you to experience.

But I want to end by enthusiastically shining the brightest possible spotlight on one of my favourite quotes. It is one with such immense depth I could write an entirely separate article about it (oh wait, I did - read my article on Orientalism):

“I am no Othello. Othello was a lie.”

By referencing Shakespeare’s Othello, Salih diminishes the justification of Mustafa’s criminal actions as being one of a victim. He challenges this binary of the East vs West, claiming the Orientalist influences in renowned Western literature are an illusion. Instead, Salih calls for the truth, demanding the intellectual de-colonisation of the East.

By responding to the oppressor as a form of radical resistance, Tayeb Salih equips the craft of writing to take ownership of his own identity crisis and communicates the truth beyond generalised narratives being perpetuated in the West. 

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Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

It was in the admiration of a foreign country’s subtle grandeur that I truly understood the essence of “romanticising one’s life”. And it must have been fate that this very land was once home to history’s most influential romantic: the great poet, Rumi. So, as I walked out of a bookstore in Istanbul with Deepak Chopra’s edition of The Love Poems of Rumi in hand, I was energised with the excitement that his pearls of wisdom would eternally consume me.

However, the substance of Rumi’s infamous writings has been forgotten in the fabric of time and history. Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi wrote his poetry to his Divine Creator. The artful, written wisdom we now read was Rumi’s way of appreciating the beauty of life and the glorious wonders of Al Majeed {The Glorious}. Essentially, his poetry romanticised life beyond the borders of the material realm.

Here is his enchanting poem, Behind the Scenes:

In admiration of this garden and the Earth’s elements, the beauty of the Unseen is crystal clear. What Rumi’s wisdoms do so masterfully is romanticise the seemingly mundane - the overlooked wonders of life we take for granted.

It is no coincidence the founder of Sufism himself was a foundational example of one of the three principles of Islamic spirituality that is often forgotten: Ihsan {إحسان}. 

Loosely translating to “the act of seeking beauty”, Ihsan is the sweetness we often crave when the material world consumes our being. When days feel dull in the fast-paced and cyclical nature of modern-day society, Ihsan is the practice of finding excellence. And when it seems impossible to identify beauty in times of all-encompassing darkness, Ihsan encourages us to create beauty in our actions and mannerisms. 

Rumi’s poetry is a written preservation of Ihsan in practice. This timeless sense of enlightened spirituality is the epitome of romance far beyond this realm. And quite literally, there is more to love and faith than what meets the eye.

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Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.

As an equally enthusiastic ‘book girlie’ and passionate Arab, I was delighted to discover that literature was invented by the Arabs—or at least the ancient civilisations in the Middle East. Beyond the several groundbreaking Arab inventions that revolutionised the modern world (like algebra, university, optics, coffee, and even the toothbrush), literature might just be the most unrecognised. 

Storytelling is a deeply integral pillar of community, culture and kinship. What this fictional story from the ancient Arabs reminds us is in a world based on individuality is not to outlive one another, or compete for material, but to preserve what is truly immortal: tradition and connection. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first ever written fiction, which inevitably inspired the foundational texts of human civilisation. Themes of immortality, power and humanity are referenced across all time periods around the globe: Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth, Dostoevsky and Kafka and the Brontë Sisters, and the list is as long as time!

Here’s a story that will certainly impress the girls at your next dinner party:

The earliest forms of written storytelling are traced back to ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and parts of Syria). The Greek meaning of the word ‘Mesopotamia’ translates to “between two rivers”, referring to the Tigris and the Euphrates. Its majestic lands of emerald fertility and glorious waters were comparable to biblical descriptions of the Garden of Eden!

In central-southern Mesopotamia lay the cultural hub of the era: the famous city of Babylon. It was during this era the very foundations of today’s society were birthed: law, civil rights, irrigation, time constructs, and the practice of writing. For this reason (amongst many others), Mesopotamia’s multi-cultural population was able to peacefully coexist in the same ways a more ‘characteristically unified’ civilisation would (think Ancient Greece and Ancient Egypt).

Given the wonderful background of this seemingly progressive era, it is no surprise the earliest form of literature was founded in ancient Mesopotamia! Estimated to have been written circa 2100BC, The Epic of Gilgamesh discovered in the mid-19th century by Hormuzd Rassam in twelve incomplete tablets, such as the one below: 

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a quest for immortality - a classic ancient storyline (and I say this respectfully and with great admiration: eat your heart out, Sophocles <3). It follows the King Gilgamesh of Uruk, who is both a fearless warrior and intelligent craftsman. Unfortunately, this king has some MAJOR red flags: he’s a womaniser and a tyrant. 

The gods are disgusted by the oppressive rule of Gilgamesh, and send down a half-beast-half-man named Endiku to humble him in a tough battle. However, Gilgamesh and Endiku are deeply impressed by each others MAD skills and instead, become besties! They set off on a boys trip of lust because they both want to outrun death and be rich and famous forever. (yes, this story was written over 4000 years ago). 

So, ancient Batman and Robin continued to irritate the gods, until they are finally humbled by (drumroll please…) A WOMAN. After being rejected by Gilgamesh for her tarnished reputation, the Princess orders the execution of these two arrogant men. While Gilgamesh escapes, Endiku is killed. In a state of immense mourning, Gilgamesh finally accepts he can never outrun death, regardless of his wealth and power. After all, he is simply, a mere mortal.

Asalamu-alaykum Wa-rahmatullahi Wa-barakatuh.

{May peace and blessings be upon you}.