Recently, The Atlantic posted a short film produced by the Thomas Reuters Foundation (trust.org) about one Syrian woman’s new life, Starting Over in the Netherlands. It begins by showing a picturesque view of the city, Kessel-Eik, as the woman, Hanadi, bikes through it. As a tranquil melody plays, we see a church behind trees, a […]

Izzat. It’s Old Rei, the language spoken by Scholars before the Martials invaded and forced everyone to speak Serran. Izzat means many things. Strength, honor, pride. But in the past century, it’s come to mean something specific: freedom. – Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes  Recently, and in tandem, I read Sabaa Tahir’s An […]

In a recently aired Saturday Night Live skit, comedian Kenan Thompson played host to a gameshow called Should You Chime in on this? In it, contestants (caricatured as having little intellect and even less of a personal connection to the topics presented) had to refrain from weighing in on recent news items. Even when knowing […]

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” -Toni Morrison, Beloved Awhile back, a friend and colleague said something about me I wasn’t sure how to take: “Heba,” she said, “in some ways you shatter everything that I thought I knew about Muslim women; in other ways, you absolutely embody stereotypes I have.” I smiled, […]