It’s ridiculous that our bodies are constant battlefields anyway, I thought as I changed in the cramped cubicle. The ibaya was about twenty centimetres too short, so the bottom of my jeans were visible above my shoes. The blue of the denim juxtaposed against the black ibaya reflected my dilemma - no matter which way I tried to dress or speak, either my Western or Sudanese identity would intrude.
When I left the bathroom I was no longer a striking brown woman who garnered attention, either positive or negative. Last time I visited, that hadn’t even been a consideration - one of the many ways my life had changed. I had grown up not caring that people thought I was different. I knew I stood out – because I was tall, or wearing the hijab, or laughing loudly – but it wasn’t something I thought about. These last few years standing out had become something I was rewarded for. People wanted to feature my style in magazines. They invited me to fashion events. They re-grammed my Instagram photos and they remembered my name. My inability to blend in had become a strength, and it felt good to have people compliment my scarf style when it had been a lightning rod for ridicule for years. And it felt good to gain access to the world of fashion; a world that had been well and truly sealed off to the nerdy, large-framed Sudanese-Muslim engineer version of me. I had never been considered beautiful as beauty was defined by an Anglo-reality I could never achieve. And yet suddenly, strangely, I had been invited into this new adventure and it felt good to not be in tension with one thing that society – and my extended family – implied women should aspire to be: beautiful.
In some ways this rankled: I felt self-involved, ashamed at liking rewards that had never been part of my self-narrative. Even though I enjoyed the cultural and societal capital gained, I was torn about taking advantage of a privilege I felt shouldn’t exist. I also wondered how my foray into fashion fit with the narrative and purpose of hijab. Hijab is not meant to be an object of beauty – at least not the way I was taught about it. So does turning hijab into one defeat its purpose? One school of thought argues that ‘modest fashion’ is oxymoronic, that if hijab is about modesty then wearing it to be striking and fashionable makes it redundant. This school argues that fashion is focused on the worldly when hijab is about doing something for Allah. I don’t disagree, but for me being a Hijabi is about both: about doing something for Allah but also about loudly and proudly proclaiming my identity as a Muslim.
Wearing the black ibaya, I could put that discussion aside for a while. Now my appearance was homely at best - make-up free with a hijab arranged in a deliberately ‘fashionless’ manner. The eyes of men slid right past me, barely registering my presence: I was invisible. In some ways it felt powerful. Islamically, wearing the ibaya made me feel at peace, but my clothing wasn’t the only reason for my sense of calm. In Sudan no one would ask me to speak on behalf of Islam, take my choices as representative of the entire Muslim faith, or ask me to apologise for and justify the actions of other Muslims. I was simply one of the masses. Who would have thought that would be liberating?
That sense of peaceful calm was short-lived. 2016 was a year of enormous and unexpected change, both worldwide and personally. I had begun the year scheduling my book tour and advocacy work around my FIFO schedule - I was finally going to earn my stripes following a promotion to a supervisor role on an offshore rig. When that didn’t quite go to plan, I decided it was time to take the plunge and focus full-time on ‘the other stuff’ I did – although I was nervous about my parents’ reactions. When I raised the idea of quitting my job, my mum’s rebuke was swift: ‘You know how tough it is to find a job in this market!’ She was right; instead, I took a year-long sabbatical.
My father surprised me, though, when he said I should consider whether this was a good opportunity to start afresh. ‘You’re too old to keep just trying things for the sake of it, Yassmina. Think deeply about what you want to do – and it doesn’t have to be in engineering!’
I couldn’t believe it. What did he mean? The idea of having a job away from engineering, being defined by a non-technical career, made me feel physically ill. Being an engineer was how I identified and differentiated myself publicly, as well as how I saw myself in the world. More than that, I loved it! As an engineer I found tangible solutions to problems, saw my work being built and felt like what I was doing was real. Engineering gave me fluency in another language. I used my experience as an engineer to introduce issues from the social change sector into the corporate world. I could talk to high-level corporate executives around the world about unconscious bias because I had lived experience of it. To get respect as a young, brown, Muslim woman I had to play by some of their rules. And as a working engineer, I did. Beyond the personal love of the profession, being an engineer gave me real credibility in my advocacy work. How could I walk away from that?
Dad reminded me that he had never worked as an engineer in Australia and yet I still thought of him as one, but moving away from a technical role felt wrong. I was worried about becoming a talking head, about not being able to make a tangible difference through my work. I also couldn’t imagine doing just one thing – I had always run on multiple career tracks simultaneously. On top of all that, I knew I would miss the uncomplicated world of the workshop, the field and the rig, and the challenge of making it where I wasn’t supposed to. I would miss finding ways to have that human connection around people I was different to.
My identity was still wrapped up in being an engineer, more so than I had previously appreciated. It was a role I was still proud of, still wanted to be associated with, still claimed. But it was good to know that I had the option to walk away.
Once I decided to take my sabbatical, I immediately began to make plans to move to Melbourne, to a city with a ready network of friends and connections working in the social impact and non-profit space. If I’m honest, a small part of me hoped there would be more marriage material in Melbourne than in Perth or Brisbane. It turned out all the guys with beards weren’t Muslims though, just hipsters.
I thought I would have a holiday, read lots, take it easy, sip lattes and eat smashed avo – ha! I toured with this book to schools, writers’ festivals and other events around the country. I hosted a podcast with the ABC called Motor Mouth on my dream to become an F1 driver. I started a TV career, hosting a documentary on the science behind racism as well as a weekly TV show on the ABC called Australia Wide. My face, as friends would tell me, was everywhere. The media opportunities weren’t part of a strategic move, but having more time and a tendency to say yes meant things started to snowball, Alhamdulillah.
I also grew my international presence, doing at least one overseas speaking gig a month, which meant I travelled to almost twenty countries over six months to talk about youth and female empowerment, unconscious bias, the diaspora experience, entrepreneurship and more. From keynoting alongside Kofi Annan in Switzerland to trips through the US, UK, Indonesia, Singapore, Canada, Saudi, Jordan, UAE, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, Qatar, Kuwait …
I also made it onto the world stage after an unusual altercation at a writers’ festival blew up into an international incident. In short, I walked out of the keynote opening night speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival, delivered by a famous American author, Lionel Shriver. I wrote about the event and my blog went viral, which means the story is easy to find online, so I will spare you the details.
Many people asked why I decided to walk out of this event: What pushed you over the line? You often talk about situations in which you have chosen to not take offence when someone has said something offensive, but rather made the person feel comfortable and worked upwards from there.
And these people are right. My preferred modus operandi is to minimise fuss, to ‘wear’ it, to weather the storm and then rebuild from the wreckage. That is still largely how I tackle these situations. I have been starting to realise that this always places the burden on the minority, and the weight of that burden was beginning to irk me. Why should I, as the butt end of the joke, also be expected to be g
racious when explaining why the joke was tasteless? Does the privilege of the majority and the norm extend a free pass for insensitivity? Do we simply accept that people who don’t have to learn about others won’t, and that it is our job to educate them? And why does freedom of speech seem to extend only one way – are people free to offend, but not to be annoyed when their words cause offence?
Within Islam we are taught to be gracious to those who seek to cause us harm. But we are also encouraged to have self-respect, and allowed a measure of self-defence. Being gracious doesn’t mean being passive and accepting of all treatment. I’m certainly still figuring this all out. You’re witnessing a young adult trying to decide the best way to engender change in this day and age, particularly on issues that are swathed in nuance.
It does frustrate me that I now have a public profile built on the assumption that I enjoy outrage. That has never been, and still isn’t, my chosen mode of change. I’ve always been about bridge building, and yet the one time I walked away from the bridge was the time people noticed. I guess building bridges isn’t as newsworthy. The Shriver case pigeonholed me as a defender of a single decision, rather than someone offering the first point in a constructive debate. The public response gave me little room to move intellectually, stifling the opportunity for me to learn and grow from the encounter. I accept that my thesis could be improved upon, but rather than using the opportunity to engage, the public response was to howl me down and personally attack me. Perhaps if I had known how it would play out, I would have spent more than a few hours on a Friday night venting my frustration. But I fell victim to the outrage machine. I do wonder whether we would be having this conversation if I had done anything differently: ‘I stayed until the end of Lionel Shriver’s speech, but I didn’t like it’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The actual concept of cultural appropriation itself wasn’t something that I had too much attachment to. Cultures change and adapt and borrow from each other, they always have. Sharing, mixing and exchange of cultures isn’t new, and that isn’t what I took issue with when I walked out of Lionel Shriver’s speech. The conversation I’m interested in engaging with is about racism and structural inequality and the power dynamics at play in our world. As far as I was concerned, the freedom to write fiction was a strawman argument for the reinforcement of the status quo, and the anger at anyone who dares criticise the natural order. That’s what I understood the talk to be about, and what I took issue with.
My family has had mixed opinions about the event and its fallout. Mum has been totally on board since the debate escalated and has encouraged me to stay engaged in the conversation – I think it’s her inner activist coming out. Dad was bemused by the whole affair and paid it little attention. Broader family members, particularly those in Sudan, weren’t all on board though. ‘It’s not fair, of course!’ one aunt said. ‘But that’s the way it is - she can write whatever she wants! You can’t change the system overnight and expect to bring people to your side by walking out. You have to do it softly, and in different ways.’
I can understand that notion, and largely I agree. At an individual level I will still meet people at face value, because more often than not their intentions aren’t malevolent. From my experience, one-on-one influencing is always more effective when the other person isn’t on the defensive. But I think we have to be particularly careful of the language we allow in public spaces, at keynotes and in public discussions. They hold a weight that is different to what is said in an individual discussion. Having a platform changes the dynamic, and in our current post-Trump, post-Brexit, Hanson/Farage/Le Pen-era language matters more than ever.
In need of a constructive way to channel this energy into something positive, I started working on my next project. MUMTAZA, which means ‘she’s excellent’ in Arabic, is a speakers’ bureau for women of colour. The many corporates and event organisers the world over who say they struggle getting good diversity for their panels can now come straight to us, and we will match them with a fantastic, fit-for-purpose speaker who happens to be a woman of colour. Tokenism? No. You can’t be what you can’t see, and the world doesn’t see the excellent women of colour around the world talking about issues they’re passionate about and experts in. MUMTAZA is about raising their profiles, and it comes with training and support, underlined by the same concept as YWB: building a family. It’s one of the practical ways I’m working on paying it forward. Yallah!
When I arrived in Sudan, nothing was quite the same. Rather than driving to my paternal grandmother’s house in al-Riyadh as always, we drove to the apartment Dad was now living in. The small flat my parents had recently bought was sparsely furnished, but it was our Sudanese home. It wasn’t the Sudan I knew, but I later realised that this was a real moment of achievement for my father. He hadn’t owned his own apartment or house in Sudan before, or had a place to call his own for his immediate family. No wonder he was so proud.
Habooba Saida’s house had been sealed and was gathering dust. The al-Riyadh house that was always so full of laughter and kids was now a diaspora of young adults, everyone living their own life: going to school or university, planning weddings. We really had all grown up. My cousin Aya was having a baby, and Aalaa, the sister three years our junior, was getting married. This became a source of ribbing. ‘Yassmina, khalas! When is it your turn, habiba?’ my aunts scolded me good-naturedly. I laughed, slightly self-conscious. What could I say? Even in the Muslim community in Australia twenty-five was old to be unmarried. I had passed the age at which I had told my father I would start seriously considering marriage. Weddings, kids and relationships had become a constant conversation around me, both in Sudan and Australia, and I never quite knew how to respond. I usually fell back on humour. ‘Oh, you’ll have to wait for Yasseen! Give up on me,’ I joked when we visited the extended family, but the sentiment went down like a stone. ‘What! Why, Yassmina! Don’t say that,’ they would admonish. ‘Inshallah, you will find your partner soon and have children before you know it!’
The same comment that garnered laughter in my Westernised circles in Australia provoked pity and embarrassment in Sudan. Prioritising family – a value that seemed to have lost its place in the Australia that I knew – was alive and well in Sudan. Once again, the tension of reconciling my Western views with those of my family settled in my gut.
Yet I was happy with my choices, Alhamdulillah. What exasperated me was the assumption that I was somehow diminished because I was unmarried, or that I was not a complete adult as a single woman – a reality that would be different if I were male. I had thought I’d be able to ignore the comments and double standard, and perhaps I could at twenty-one. Now it had become a regular feature of discussion, up front and centre, and I wasn’t amused. It wasn’t as if I had actively avoided getting married. I had no ideological opposition to the institution. I had just focused my attention on my career and assumed everything else would fall into place. Evidently not! As I constantly explained to my family, it was an issue of economics: supply and demand. The demand was high, and the supply didn’t quite meet the requirements, particularly in Australia. When I broached the idea of marrying someone outside our Sudanese norms, the familial responses differed wildly but there was one thing that was constant: he had to be Muslim.
I thought about the men who had come into my life during this very confusing year - men who were definitely not Muslim. Men who I walked away from, despite our compatibility, because they were not Muslim. My family’s response reassured me I had made the right choice. But my heart still hurt. Had I made the right choice by me? I hoped so. Allah knows best, I told myself. But part of my heart wondered if Allah would make exceptions.
I was shocked at some of the conversations I was having with myself this year – beliefs and behaviours I had taken for granted were being deeply challenged. Was this growth or drift? Healthy or destabilising? Probably all of the above. I just had to hold onto my faith and the belief that everything would be as it was me
ant to be, Inshallah.
It wasn’t until we were sitting in the living room of the house in al-Riyadh, the same house that I had run around as a child, that I realised how deeply my personal decisions affected my father. Aya had just given birth in Saudi, and the family was gathered to congratulate her dad on becoming a grandfather. Not prone to expressing emotion, that day he beamed with joy. The family then turned to my father: ‘What about you, Midhat? You’re looking jealous!’
Baba was! His mouth was drawn with a wistfulness I had not seen before, his smile rueful as he shrugged and looked at me. ‘I just don’t know where we went wrong.’
I almost recoiled from his words. I had known Baba wanted me to get married but I hadn’t realised he cared so much, and I was gutted my priorities had caused him pain. Although he had never pressured me to put family first, my dad had always valued his family above his career. In that moment I was reminded that we’re from a communal family and that my decisions are not mine alone. In fact, they reflect more on my family than on me. That changes the dynamic of my decision making. In a communal environment, my being disappointingly unmarried isn’t only my fault, but a reflection on the way my parents brought me up. How can I continue a behaviour that I know is directly hurting my parents, who had given everything up for me and my future? Classic third culture kid guilt.
Yassmin’s Story Page 30