I was invited by Dorna earlier this year (although it feels like 500 years ago!) to give a talk on entrepreneurship. It was humbling to be considered alongside giants like Bibi Hayat and Sawsan Daana, though my imposter syndrome kicked in for a second (am I really an entrepreneur? can I say anything worthwhile?)…but then I reminded myself of what I had accomplished so far.

My freelance writing career started at Nuqat, honing the art conference’s themes and writing up their conference and workshop guides (before that I helped establish and manage the Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait). Slowly, my client portfolio grew, and when I say slowly, I mean that it took YEARS to have more than 2 or 3 clients.

There was a growing demand for copywriting work, in both English and Arabic, and some of my biggest struggles were around finding Arabic translators and writers that were dependable, good, and affordable. The boom in the Kuwait F&B industry around 2016 led to my workload expanding (hello, third-wave coffee! Donut burgers! Indian-Kuwaiti-Latin American-European fusion food!)

I found that my business experienced the most growth when I added Arabic to our services, and when I got the copywriting agency branded and officially registered at the bank. Now, we are The Scribes. Woohoo! 

So here are my key takeaways from my Dorna talk about entrepreneurship and working for yourself:

1. Appreciate Your Privilege (but don’t undersell yourself)

There’s a privilege in taking risks. Often, starting out your business necessitates sacrifice and support, from both yourself and others. Your spouse may have extra financial strain until you start earning money. Your mental health might suffer, keeping you up with anxiety about seed money and finding office space. These stressors are also indicators that you’re pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone. Be grateful for the option to experiment and take risks.

In the beginning, I offered my services at a base rate. I charged as low as I could and sometimes did free work for students and artists.

When you’re starting out, experience matters more than pay.

That being said, you need to keep yourself motivated with the promise of a reward. It took a long time for me to get comfortable with what I charged clients, and these days what I do is break down each job by how long I think it will take and charge clients by the hour (email me or sign up for a coaching session to figure out how to price your services).

As long as you think what you’re charging is fair, DO NOT NEGOTIATE.

If you see the clients’ point — let’s say you want to charge them for 5 design options, and they only want 2 — then go ahead and lower your prices. But if they just think you should charge less because they don’t want to pay, then trust me, don’t do it. This sets a bad precedent in so many ways and can affect your self-worth. The funny thing is, those clients will usually go to someone cheaper, then come back to you to fix the terrible work they got way below market price.

2. Your business can fail but your reputation PREVAILS

The only true failure is when you fail yourself and your values. It’s super important to be kind and honest in EVERYTHING you do so that you can live without regrets.

It’s super mystifying to me when people become someone else at work, as though the more shark-like and mean they become, the more successful they will be. Work doesn’t have to be stressful. 

You don’t always have to get your way. Throughout the highs and lows of your life, I believe that staying graceful when things don’t go your way is one of the most important successes you can attain. You can be successful and treat people you work with kindly - make jokes, inquire (appropriately) about their personal lives, and comfort them when they’re worried. It’s wonderful to be known as someone who is good at what they do and is easy to work with. Your career becomes (mostly) pure joy!

3. Find Balance

There are two prevailing stereotypes of people who work for themselves: the pajama-wearing bum and the tireless hustler. Let yourself be both!

For me, this means waking up early and being pretty disciplined about how I spend the first few hours of my day since it’s when my brain is the freshest. I highly recommend the book Atomic Habits - it’s helped me see my habits as a “stack” of actions.

I realize there’s a ‘yin’ and a ‘yang’ energy throughout my days. Sometimes I’m writing, producing, ideating and other times I’m reading, researching, and listening. When my career is more ‘yang’ i.e. my schedule is more full and intense, I make sure to ‘yin’ a little bit extra in my personal life i.e. I treat myself to a massage over the weekend or salon treatment. What’s the point of making money if you don’t use some of it to treat yourself? When my career is a bit more ‘yin’ and my schedule is not as full, I take on challenges in my personal life, i.e. I re-organize my space, sign up for a course, or organize a gathering, and so on.

I even adjust my workout intensity according to what’s going on at work!

4. Female vs. Feminine Empowerment

I don’t like being called a “female entrepreneur.” Female is not an adjective. Feminine is. Often, we are rewarded for being masculine at work - for thinking in a linear fashion, sealing deals, being focused, and intent about achieving what we set out to do.

Culturally, we don’t applaud feminine behavior in the workplace, though it’s often what keeps the whole machine oiled.

Both men and women and can be both feminine and masculine in the workplace. I like to recognize that a big part of my success comes from my feminine skillset, which includes emotional labor such as:

•  Listening to what everyone has to say and integrating it into the final outcome

•  Caring for everyone’s wellbeing and doing things like organizing team retreats or ordering the food for meetings

•  Assuring everyone that everything will be ok that we will meet the deadline, please the client, etc (also known as surface acting).

5. COMPETITION IS GOOD

First of all, competition is how you know there is a demand for what you have to offer. 

Second of all, competition keeps you on your toes. It pushes you to specialize in what you’re good at and to keep learning new skills.

I prefer to think of my competitors merely as other creatures in my eco-system. I reach out to other copywriters when a client asks for something I think they’d be better at, and pass the job along to them with the hope that they’d do the same for me.

This might sound really dumb, but that’s what capitalism wants you to think. I end up with clients that respect me more, instead of ones that are disappointed with what I have to offer.

I think asking for help is one of the biggest shows of strength and self-compassion. When I ask for help, I’m also giving someone else the opportunity to feel useful. We all like to feel needed, no?

And speaking of help, please comment below with some advice for other people who want to be their own boss!

IMAGE: Tarek Al Ghoussein

Kuwait’s residents have no shortage of complaints about their home - its lack of entertainment options, the impossibly high cost of real estate, its deeply engrained structural racism, its ‘beigeness’ - are all thorns in our feet. Liberals think it’s too conservative and conservatives think it’s too liberal. The government sector is a running joke, even to those who run it. Kuwait’s once-renowned freedom of press is wearing thin, too - with crackdowns on writers and journalists in newspapers and on Twitter abounding (although there’s some good news, too).

Given our world-class status at bitching and moaning, why is art criticism in Kuwait so lagging?

A few years ago I was standing with friends outside a pop-up restaurant, and of course in our small town we found ourselves saying hi and catching up to scores of people, one of them was a woman who had recently put on a performance that we’d attended.

“So good to see you!” my friend said, “I loved your performance!”

“Thanks so much habibti, I’m so glad you came,” the woman responded. The rest of us smized silently - we don’t know the woman personally - and continued talking. We chatted amongst ourselves, interrupting each other to say our hellos to our various acquaintances, friends, cousins, colleagues, teachers, students, classmates, frenemies and thankfully, no ex-boyfriends, until we were seated.

All night I was haunted by this white lie.

The three of us had attended said woman’s performance - gripping our seats and trying not to cringe visibly at how cheesy it was. Afterward we’d agreed, the acting was too literal and the writing was chockfull of bad puns and entendres, all that was missing from the presentation was someone trailing a tear with their finger as it rolled down their cheek.

Why couldn’t my friend have said the work was brave? Or that the format was fresh? If she specified her praise, and saved her criticisms until they were solicited, then she would have participated in a much more honest exchange. Instead, she did what many of us in Kuwait do after facing the creator of a bad piece of art - lie.

Or, as we say in Arabic - injaamil - we give exaggerated praise, often in the form of platitudes. 

We do this because we want to be liked. Because we live in a small town, in even smaller circles, and we don’t want to be the one with offensive opinions. But doesn’t our art suffer as a result?

I’ve lived in places like Beirut that have the opposite problem (though the town is just as small). The critique each other’s work TO DEATH. But you know what? Their work gets exported. It goes places, it travels the world…because it’s workshopped constantly by the artist’s friends, family, peers, predecessors, and like, the Uber driver that picks you up from the exhibit opening.

Kuwait could learn to give - and take - criticism. So this year, I started doing a roundup of what art was being created around town and gathering opinions on it. Hence, THE REVIEW was born. You can find all the episodes on the Abaih World IGTV and YouTube channels.

Enjoy! And of course, feel free to give me your raw, honest opinion in the comments section below.

Being in lockdown has made me realize that stillness, like silence, is golden. This stillness, whilst it can be challenging and numbing (literally, my leg is falling asleep riiiight now) also has a way of unpacking the volumes we have packed within us.

It was much easier to repress dark thoughts and feelings when we lived with a frenetic rhythm, always doing something and going somewhere.

In the quiet stillness of the global pandemic, the monster under the bed has reared his head, and he’s a Frankenstein of childhood traumas, bittersweet memories, and that one stupid thing you said to your friend’s mom about her Australian accent when you were a teenager (it still haunts me! Along with a million other foot-in-mouth moments).

When having obsessive thoughts, it can help to interrupt them with mantras.

The mantra can be as simple as Be Here Now. It can be as complex as the Gayatri mantra. Personally, I find most comfort repeating the names of Allah. An ancient practice called Dhikr, repeating sacred words either silently or out loud has a hypnotizing affect, like rubbing your thumb over a smooth stone.

I had done a lot of work around forgiveness last year, using different meditations and healing techniques. One of them is the cord-cutting technique. I’ve also written letters to people and either sent, threw away, or burnt them. Some of the hardest work is forgiving yourself. Forgiving yourself for losing your temper and saying things you don’t mean. For letting people treat you badly, for not making boundaries or speaking up.

No matter who you need to forgive, it can be really helpful to repeat the following following names of God. I learned about them from the book Physicians of the Heart: A Sufi View of the Ninety-Nine Names of Allah (yes, that’s the full PDF! You can learn more about the organization behind the book here)

Phase 1 and 2 of Forgiveness: Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghaffoor

Invoking Alghaffar means forgiving people for unconscious mistakes — for micro-aggressions and transgressions such as cutting you off in traffic, stepping on your foot, or acting out of ignorance, for example saying things like “oh you’d look so much better if you dyed your gray hair.”

Alghaffoor is the name of Allah we repeat to help us forgive people for the BIG or ULTIMATE pain they cause us. Cheating, stealing, lying you know the drill. Ugh. The kind of thing that makes you clench your jaw when you remember it.

This pairing is super powerful — both these names of god share their etymology with “astaghfurallah” which means “god have mercy.”

It really helps me to think of the root of the word — ghaffar refers to the sticky substance that bees use to repair their hives, which is also used to repair leaky water skins in the desert. When you replace anger with forgiveness, you moisturize your heart with a healing balm.

Phase 3 of Forgiveness: Ya Tawwab

The truth is, if you can’t forgive someone then you are not surrendering to god’s plan. All the pain that you experience is:

a) created by your mind to some extent (and your attachment to the pain body)
b) part of your growth journey

So instead of turning to the past and obsessing over how you were hurt, you can turn your heart up to the heavens. I do this literally: in the shower I look up at the water to try and cleanse my heart of bitterness, with loving intentions. I thank god for bringing me to this situation to help me grow, and let the universe know that I trust that it is giving me these situations to get me to somewhere that is in better alignment with my higher good.

It doesn’t always work. Sometimes I have to massage my heart, sometimes I have to go back to repeating Ya Ghaffar, Ya Ghafoor. Be patient and committed to freeing yourself of bitterness. The root of the word “tawwab” simultaneously means to turn from something and go toward something else.

Make the conscious choice of turning away from obsessive thoughts or insidious anger. Turn your face towards the sun, the skies, the divine.

Phase 4 of Forgiveness: Ya ‘Afuw

Imagine being so deeply at peace that you can’t be offended. That you see people being assholes and you see it as just that — their own problem, and not yours. Repeating Ya ‘Afuw is meant to calibrate you to the vibration of eternal forgiveness. According to the Physicians of the Heart, Al’afuw means to “completely forgive, with no trace of the even subtly retained…[like]wind blowing across the desert vastness and completely erasing all the tracks in the sand.”

It’s completely normal to go through all phases of forgiveness but find yourself a year or two later back where you started. Forgiveness takes vigilance. It doesn’t mean you failed, it just means to recharge yourself with this powerful practice.

Remember, self-forgiveness is the most difficult of all. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is forgive ourselves for letting ourselves get hurt in the first place. And to move forward with grace, and hopefully, new boundaries.

Happy forgiving!

I sat down to do some work today but was heavily distracted- the internet is SO LOUD and I’m SO PROUD. It’s exhausting to sift through the terrible state of humanity and to engage with people we disagree with, but the time is now. Corona has taken us all the way down to our survival instincts, and it’s time to reprogram some old beliefs that are keeping us from progressing as a race.

A race. One, single race. Although many people like to deny it, we all come from Africa. Everything we do and say is cultural and can be changed - no behavior is inherent in your genes. I knew racism was bad in the Middle East, and that blackness is punished as it is everywhere else…what I hadn’t realized was that people in the region commonly DENY the existence of racism. That they really think racism isn’t actually racism if it’s “just a joke.”

I received an uninformed DM saying that “‘slavery’ ended when the prophet Mohamad came…he ended slavery in the Muslim world…We don’t have racism against black [people].”

Honestly, the first thing I felt was sadness. Here’s a fully grown person who has clearly been underexposed to reality. Who was told something, assumed it was true, and never experienced enough of the world around them to see otherwise.

Sadly, slavery is alive and well in the Muslim world.

Just last year in Kuwait, there was huge uproar regarding human trafficking on Instagram and a 2015 article by The Guardian titled “Women from Sierra Leone 'sold like slaves' into domestic work in Kuwait” presents some of the horrifying abuse that workers suffer. The article cites a Human Rights Watch report on the abuse of domestic workers in Kuwaiti households,

“The sense of having ‘paid for’ or having ‘bought’ a worker makes some employers feel entitled to treat the worker however they wish.”

I found a book titled “Speaking with Their Own Voices: The Stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century” by Jerzy Zdanowski…just the introduction BLEW MY MIND and woke me up to my own ignorance and naïveté. There are entire chapters and firsthand accounts of different CATEGORIES of slavery in the GCC, including:

• Africans and their children who were kidnapped on pilgrimage to Mecca

• Yemenis kidnapped by Bedouins

• Slaves born into slavery, usually into households

• Male slaves who were usually laborers and specifically pearl divers (side note: many free pearl divers lied and said they were slaves to avoid paying debts to merchants)

• “Makrani” slaves from the slave trade that were taken from East Africa to Pakistan via Oman in the 1650’s, and from Pakistan through Persia to the GCC AS LATE AS THE 1930’s. Mind. Blown. (side note: “today many Pakistani of African descent are referred to as Makrani, whether or not they live there. On the coast they are also variously referred to as dada, sheedi and syah (all meaning black), or alternatively, gulam (slave) or naukar (servant). The children of Sindhi Muslim men and sidiyani (female Africans) are called gaddo—as in half-caste.” Source)

• And finally, female slaves. My previously mentioned conversant also mentioned, “in the Arab world…rich families had nannies with dark skin who were treated like a mother…and even take those families’ last names. They lived with them, traveled with them, raised their kids.” She meant to say that this was not slavery, that this was love and care. However, it is clear that female slaves were taken as concubines and free domestic labor. In her article “Confronting anti-black racism in the Arab world,” Susan Abulhawa writes that the Arab slave trade,

“targeted women, who became members of harems and whose children were full heirs to their father's names, legacies and fortunes, without regard to their physical features. The enslaved were not bought and sold as chattel the way we understand the slave trade here, but were captured in warfare, or kidnapped outright and hauled across the Sahara.”

What’s most shocking to me is not that women were enslaved, but that I am surrounded by people who insist that it was a form of kindness to incorporate female slaves into your family. Writes Zdanowski, there is

“proof that [female slaves] were beaten, divorced against their will and separated from their children. Separation from their children was the main cause of female slaves absconding.”

On top of dealing with the ignorance of others, I have to come face to face with my own. Not only was I unaware of how extensive the slave trade was in the Gulf, I also didn’t know about recent happenings such as hundreds of Zimbabwean women being sexually trafficked to Kuwait or why the word “khal” is offensive (not that I ever have or ever will use it!). It can be overwhelming to come face to face with your own shortcomings…but we have to start somewhere.

In addition to educating yourself and speaking more sensitively, what else can we do? (FYI, pictured is a woman discovering that blackface is offensive, but admitting she was wrong.)

Put your money (and your time) where your mouth is. Start by donating to Social Work Society (SWS Kuwait).

Among their many activities, they hire legal help and counseling support for abused workers, support to women at the Migrant Shelter, and help trapped workers get back home (particularly those from African nations that do not have embassies in Kuwait).

They’re also currently feeding over 10,000 people. You can donate money through Faye Sultan or take the following supplies to the Evangelical Church:

• 1 to 2 litres of cooking oil

• 500 to 750 ml of tomato paste

• 5 kilos basmati rice

• 500g to 1 kilo lentils

• eggs

• cans of chunk Tuna in olive oil

• cans of fava beans/chickpeas/foul

• cheese

• chocolate bars

• a kilo of potato

• a box of cucumber

• some garlic

• some onion

• half kilo of sugar

• box of tea

• box of coffee

I’m also offering tarot readings in exchange for charity donations. If you have any additions, comments, edits, or suggestions please chime in….let’s do this, fam!

P.S. It was hard but I think the person who DMed me eventually started to see that there was a lot more to learn. I thank them for being patient with themselves as they shift their perspective in the most important way!