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!

It’s undeniable that the human race is grieving. Even if you haven’t lost someone to Covid-19, our previous way of living has died. A certain innocence lost.

Memes about how doomed 2020 has been are multiplying almost as fast as the virus. For my community, the year has been too. Damn. Real.

Our incredible friend D passed away on Friday, February 7th 2020. She was 27.

I feel choked by writing about her in the past tense. Every moment of her life feels charged, each blink and giggle of hers is a monumental note in a symphony heaving with beauty. We are lucky that she showered us with love - there was no doubt that she led a good life, surrounded by great people. We are lucky that she loved to take pictures, looking coyly at the camera. We are lucky that she blessed us with her presence here upon the earth, however brief.

You learn to mourn, slowly, but always sadly, with each loved one lost. Your intuition grows, and you sense when time with someone is limited. The most essential thing is living each day like it’s their last.

Lesson 1: Acknowledge

…that we all feel guilt after death. I learned this with the passing of my grandmother - the immediate sense one gets after someone passes is remorse, and often guilt. The litany of family regrets came in upon her passing:

“I should have come to Kuwait to see her.”
”I could have called her more.”
”I wish I’d recorded her life story.”

That last one was me.

I immediately regretted not having documented her story - Salima Dawood was born in 1935 in Jerusalem and grew up amongst Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Her father was killed when she was very young, fighting in the Palestinian resistance.

She moved to Kuwait in the sixties. Her and my grandfather drove to Bulgaria from Kuwait for many summers, spent weekends on Failaka Island, and waited out the Gulf War in Baghdad trying to get papers to return to Kuwait. She worked at the Hungarian embassy, had memorized the Quran, and was the best Teta ever. I’d even had a microphone and SD card with plenty of memory ready to document her stories. I just never got around to it. And then she got sick, and sicker, and then she was gone.

Lesson 2: Make Time

…and record the memories, even if it’s just with your mind’s eye. You should never second-guess yourself when your instinct is to spend time with a loved one.

Should I go to the hospital? I asked myself when I learned D was getting an emergency surgery. Of course. I got in the car and set out on the first of many eerie drives to the apocalyptic-feeling hospital by Kuwait’s industrial port. Even when there was rush hour traffic and I only had 30 minutes between meetings, I would come to just glimpse her. To make another memory. I took pictures with my mind’s eye - the soft light filtering through the curtains, casting a pink halo around D’s ever-radiating beauty.

In my grandmother’s case, I made little drawings of her as she lay on the hospital cot. Would just lie in her bed whenever I could. I knew my mindset was morbid - I was planning for her death…but doing so helped me deal with the shock later on.

Lesson 3: It’s OK to Feel Helpless

There is nothing more excruciating than seeing the pain of a loved one. Especially when you can’t do anything about it.

“I helped the people helping her,” my good friend F said, when we shared our feelings of helplessness.

Even if you can’t do something like administer medicine or pay for a nurse, maybe you can order food, bring a good book, or access to an entertainment platform. Sit with the need to feel useful. Why is our self-worth so dependent on our utilitarian value? Aren’t the people who end up helping us the most usually the ones who just are there, listening? I started thinking about my time in hospitals as a time to be actively passive. Gentle, positive, and unobtrusive. Witnessing, holding space, but without the need to act or do.

Lesson 4: Grieve in Stages

…let yourself hurt. Otherwise, it will build and you’ll break down when you least expect it. With D, we were super lucky that we knew when time was running out. It was absolutely gut-wrenching to witness the complete catastrophic, absolutely undiscerning warpath that cancer goes on. The grief came in stages. The Diagnosis with a capital D. Witnessing the pure exhaustion of radiation and chemo. The shock that the disease had spread.

At every point, I found myself breaking down and crying. Never in front of her, usually alone. Sometimes with friends when we received bad news together. In the car leaving the hospital. Often I wouldn’t make it to the car, and would cry in the elevator. I didn’t try and hide it from the nurses, hospital staff, and other visitors.

“What?” my tears would ask…”Aren’t you human, too?”

I found that anger was part of my grieving process. It’s much easier to blame someone. The doctors and their late diagnosis. The shitty healthcare system. The Americans and their invasive medical techniques. Eventually though, that begins to poison you. You realize everyone is doing their best. And to stay healthy yourself, you need to let go of anger.

Lesson 5: It’s Not About You

D’s circle got smaller and smaller as her condition worsened. I believe that talking about your pain, intensifies it. Speaking about your problems makes them feel bigger. So, although it hurt that she stopped communicating as much, I told myself it wasn’t personal. It was her way of conserving energy.

As a general rule, not taking things personally makes life way easier.

In the case of terminal illness, it becomes absolutely imperative to avoid making it about you. When anyone close to D or Teta would get intense about claiming their space near her, I knew that the smartest thing was to back off.

Lesson 6: Respect the Different Ways We Grieve

Some of us need to talk. Others need silence. Others need company. And yet others need to be alone. Some of us stay super busy. Some of us get completely paralyzed. Denial can be comforting to some, and maddening to others. Some want to go online and memorialize their loved one the moment they are gone. Others want to wait. And some people find public grieving to be distasteful on the whole. In my case…I felt all of these things!

The dizzying gamut of emotions is completely normal.

There is no “right” way to grieve. Don’t judge anyone else’s process, or your own. It’s ok if you don’t cry or can’t stop crying. Just. Feel. It. Trust me.

Repressing your emotions will make them manifest in different ways - a horrendous email to an undeserving colleague, snapping at a toddler, etc. Just feel your feelings and let people know you’re grieving. It’s fine to even set an away message on your email inbox. This is as important as it gets in terms of life stuff. Give it the gravitas it deserves.

Lesson 7: Be Patient With Yourself

…and ask other people to be patient with you. It took me almost two months to write this. It will take many many months for me to feel like it’s real. Like D is not coming back, with all her glorious light and laughter. That Teta won’t hear me out and support me unconditionally when I make my next big life decision.

Lesson 8: Be Aware

…When you’re truly sad, vs. when you’re making yourself sad. I teared up writing Lesson 7, but they were tears of self-pity, not tears of mourning. Know the difference.

Going through old photos can feel nice when you miss a loved one lost. But it shouldn’t be a regular Sunday morning activity that cripples you for the rest of the day/week.

Sadness can be addictive. Don’t do it. Your loved one wouldn’t want that for you.

Lesson 9: Find Joy

…in their memory. Find a way to productively channel your loved one, a way to truly make their time on earth SING! In my case, I dedicate a lot of my yoga and movement practice to D, who was an incredible flow artist. On the days I channel her, there’s an extra smoothness in my body, an o0omph in my motions. This morning a bougainvillea (majnooneh) blossom landed in my lap. It felt like her energy was bringing me on of her favorite flowers. And I smiled.

Lesson 10: Reach Out to a Professional

At some point I felt way out of my depth. At a friend’s suggestion, I reached out to a doula who provides end-of-life services. It was such a relief to have an objective outsider give us suggestions - to make an album of her photos for her to look at…to allot time for each person to have one-on-one time with D…and so on. I will be eternally grateful to Nina Haley for offering a slice of sanity at that time.

And finally. There’s a ton of stuff I still don’t understand.

….Like, is there any way to prepare for a sudden death? How can you unpack a quick, senseless death and make sense of it somehow? How do we help children grieve? And so on. Would love to hear your thoughts! Thank you for reading <3