…and I hope mine inspires you — There’s a fly drowning in my coffee. It’s so annoying. I just made it. It’s my fault. I put so much creamer; poor fly thought it was cake and dove to his death. I’m going to have to go to the pantry and make another one. I hate going to…

The 1619 Project is the seed America tried to bury, and now the branches have come to avenge their roots — Origin My dad has two birthdays — the one on his refugee documents and one he discovered in his fifties. Like most refugee kids born in 1948, his birthday is recorded as January 1 because in the years following the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians became dispossessed and forced to flee their…

The myth of being less racist and other colonial fuckery — Canadians love wiping their hands clean from racism because they've adopted the faux talking point "I don't see color," even as we continue to pull dead bodies belonging to indigenous communities from the ground. Ninty- three burial sites with varying numbers of bodies, including baby bodies, have been identified between…

Poor him! — If a woman dared to have a wandering eye, the whole community would gather to gouge it out for her. But it was the norm to hear about women’s husbands having a wondering eye in passing — his eye dropped out, rolled across the table, and fell into another woman’s…

The Scrooge of Ramadan — When I was a teenager, my friends would push me into the pork section of the grocery store to get me in trouble. We would laugh so hard and tumble into the room only to be kicked out. The butcher couldn’t stand us for sure. I lived next to Spinneys…

When Madonna- whore complex intersects with a white- inferiority complex — I used to hear about the glory days of Egyptian cinema as a kid. Some of the greatest stars of my grandparents’ generation lit up the screens in black and white. Old-school Egyptian movies were a staple in most people’s homes across the Middle East, they had incredible fashion, dancing…

I got dressed up, wore heels, borrowed someone's I.D., and went to a club, only for my besties to get into a physical fight with another group of women. So, I waited outside till they finished. They were pissed I didn’t join them, "We yelled YALLAH, and you just left!" …

It was a massive scandal. We heard about it all the way in the UAE. A bunch of men dressed in 3abayas snuck into "Women Only" day at the mall in Saudi. As a kid, I remember being concerned about the whole mall being gendered and wondered why on earth…

Tales from a scapegoat —