“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday.

Kanyaw Abubakr is cautious by nature, so her sudden shift from teacher to carpenter came as a surprise. In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), carpentry is considered a male profession, but the 29-year-old wanted to “challenge myself and my community at the same time.”

Only a small number of women work in carpentry across Iraq. Traditional ideas around female roles leave little space for less conventional careers in a country where women make up just 14 percent of the labor force. However, recent years have seen a handful of women break barriers in fields traditionally dominated by men as patriarchal norms come under pressure to accommodate a changing workforce.

For Abubakr, the move is more than a career change. After seven years in academia, it’s also a lifestyle choice. At the end of the working day, her mind feels frazzled while her body buzzes with restless energy. Working with wood brings her peace of mind. “I have good hands for making. It feels satisfying to use my body,” she says.

Abubakr has always enjoyed crafts, but this time, a hobby squeezed around work hours isn’t enough. “I don’t want to wait for the future to realize this ambition. I have to start now,” she says.

The former language teacher is not, as she puts it, a natural entrepreneur, though she does have experience as co-founder of a fixer agency that assists journalists in Iraq. Her strengths lie in persistence and a dogged approach to learning. “There are people out there who can make better things, but I’m quick, and I’m interested. I believe everyone can learn if they are dedicated to the work,” she says.

She is relying on this spirit of perseverance to push ahead with her new business, Narewenn, even as the Kurdish region is drawn deeper into the US-Israeli war on Iran. Despite efforts to maintain a neutral stance, the KRI has been targeted by retaliatory strikes due to the presence of US bases and Iranian-backed militias on its territory.

The war has caused major disruptions, exacerbating financial uncertainty, destabilizing oil markets, and curbing economic activity due to prolonged power outages.

Abubakr is usually at the workshop from early morning to late afternoon, but with just a few hours of electricity each day, she has been forced to cut back. The sudden onset of the crisis reinforces the risks that come with investing in a start-up, but it hasn’t dampened her determination. “It’s hard, but we keep working,” she says.

Without start-up capital, Abubakr uses a friend’s workshop while she saves to purchase her own machines. She envisions a large makerspace with sections for woodwork, jewelry, ironwork, and other hand-crafted items. “It feels possible. Such spaces are emerging here,” she says, pointing to flagship projects like the Culture Factory, which have helped establish Sulaymaniyah as the creative capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

For now, she is focusing on carpentry, filling a gap in the market for high-quality woodwork.

In the past, almost every community in the KRI had a woodworker who took care of houses in the neighborhood, but many have now closed. Abubakr is confident she can make a living from carpentry, but says that to thrive, she will need to innovate. This means creating unique pieces and harnessing social media to market her work. “It’s not as simple as securing a fund to get going. I have to build the business step-by-step,” she says.

Ongoing economic struggles have undermined the potential of small businesses to succeed in the KRI, though recent steps to streamline the regulatory environment have made it simpler to launch startups. Most of Abubakr’s friends work in offices, but a growing number are launching their own businesses, she says. Some see it as a way to supplement income in a country where soaring youth unemployment, an underdeveloped private sector, and a bloated public sector limit opportunities for young Kurds. Others, like Abubakr, are pursuing long-term goals.

“For me, the thinking process is drawn-out, but when I act, it’s decisive,” she says.

On weekends, she visits the local wood market to educate herself about different materials and indulge in the “guilty pleasure” of running her hands over the smooth surfaces. It fuels her creative energies, but Abubakr wonders whether these materials are sustainably sourced. She suspects not. “Most of the wood is imported, so who knows how it was cut,” she says.

As the impacts of regional conflict upend daily life in her hometown, Abubakr finds solace in the workshop, honing her craft. Her current project, an L-shaped table, was inspired by a mid-century Danish design with two identical units that slide together to form different shapes. The joins must be perfect to ensure a seamless fit, so she has turned to her mentor for guidance. “In a matter of months, he has taught me skills that would take much longer to acquire,” says Abubakr, who hopes one day to oversee a team of carpenters.

It’s a bold ambition in a region where female woodworkers are rare, but Abubakr is already changing attitudes. “People assume that because I’m a woman, I won’t be able to use a saw,” she says. “They are always surprised to see the quality of my work.”

This article is co-published with More To Her Story. Middle East Uncovered uses pseudonyms to protect our sources in Afghanistan.

Each morning, Taiba prepares her family’s living room in Kabul to teach 25 girls who are no longer allowed in school. For the past year, she has woken early, prayed, finished her chores, and set the room for class. A 26-year-old graduate of Kabul Polytechnic University, she began teaching at a public school before the Taliban barred girls from secondary education in 2021. After a brief stint at a private school, she was dismissed as restrictions tightened. For more than a year, she has taught from home—part of an underground network that has reached over 18,000 girls across Afghanistan since the bans took hold.

A few months ago, Taiba’s already challenging routine was upended by a deeply troubling conversation with one of her students. “One of my students, a 14-year-old girl named Sahar, who was a bright girl and otherwise very lively, came to class that day with a frown on her face.” Sensing a difference in her demeanor, Taiba asked Sahar to stay behind after everyone else left the class that day. She sat with her, and Sahar immediately burst into tears, jumping into her teacher’s arms and crying, “My father told me today that I am getting engaged tomorrow.”

Taiba can only do so much as a teacher. Providing solace to a soon-to-be-wed 14-year-old girl was not covered in her training. Still, Taiba decided to speak with Sahar’s father on the off chance she might be able to intervene. “In the evening, I went to their house, and I spoke with her family. Her parents were completely hopeless. They said there is nothing left to do for girls in Afghanistan anymore, and the economic stress on their household pressured them into marrying off Sahar.”

The desperation of Sahar’s family is emblematic of broader challenges in the country. Since the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan for the second time in 2021, women have been systematically banned from all walks of life, including education. The marginalization of women and girls, combined with extreme poverty, is pushing thousands of families like Sahar’s to marry off their daughters—often to men decades older than the girls themselves. For many, it is a last resort to keep their households afloat. “Sahar told me that her suitor was a 30-year-old man living in Germany,” said Taiba.

Sahar’s story is but one in a deeply disturbing pattern emerging in Afghanistan. Taiba’s work sits within a broader, collective effort to respond to it.

She is not the only teacher in this underground network of classrooms, which, aside from their own internal struggles, must listen to and comfort their students as they endure hardships unimaginable to most. Middle East Uncovered recently spoke with Taiba and her colleagues, Arezo and Shukria, both 28, who are also part of the same network of underground schools. Together, they teach an average of 100 students per cohort per year. The majority of their students are young girls who recently graduated from 6th grade in public schools and are now unable to attend high school. Some even have participants much older than 18, including mothers who attend with their daughters.

Building on their shared experiences, these teachers and their students work together to keep the schools operational, all in secret. One hurdle they routinely face is limited access to technology. Only 6-15% of Afghan women have access to the internet and smartphones, meaning a significant number are unable to participate in any form of informal education. This is especially true for those from extremely impoverished families. This imbalance, paired with the Taliban’s tightening, draconian laws, has placed extreme pressure on teachers to provide education to an otherwise neglected half of society.

Arezo, a graduate of Kabul University’s journalism school in the year the Taliban returned to power, spoke about the sense of total isolation facing Afghan girls: “I think we are simply alive in Afghanistan—that is it.”

After experiencing the collective trauma of regime change, Arezo, a skilled journalist, worked at various media agencies even after the Taliban returned. Soon her dreams of reporting and producing were shattered when, one day, a decree from the supreme leader arrived in her office ordering a ban on any coverage of women or women-related activities in Afghanistan. “I broke down in tears that day and could not stop crying. Not because my hours of reporting were wasted, but because I realized how lonely Afghan women have become now,” said Arezo.

Similarly, Shukria’s story echoes the professional setbacks Afghan women face. Like Arezo and Taiba, Shukria was studying to become a software engineer. After graduating from high school, she enrolled in computer science at Kabul University, expecting to finish in four years. But the COVID-19 pandemic and a deadly attack on the university in 2020 stretched that timeline to six. “When the Taliban came, I was already in my sixth year of university. After graduation, nobody would employ women, and everyone started telling me that I had wasted my life studying for nothing,” said Shukria, further adding, “I started teaching computer science at a private school, but then after three years I was dismissed from there as well.”

When reflecting on the past few years, Arezo, Shukria, and Taiba quickly moved between the challenges they face together—running an underground network of informal education for girls—and the personal strains each of them carries.

Arezo said, “After I lost my job at the media company where I was reporting on women and their achievements in Afghanistan, I was at home for about a year, and I went into severe depression. I was at my lowest point in life with absolutely no idea where to go or what to do when I was introduced to the underground school network.” This experience mirrors Taiba’s, who had just finished her last year teaching mathematics at a private school when she was dismissed, but soon connected with the same network. Shukria says that initially her family showed some resentment toward the idea of opening an underground girls’ school in their house. It took more than a month for them to decide whether to accept the offer. “I eventually convinced them by telling my brothers that this is what I want to do, and I will make sure that I fulfill my duty to the best of my ability without raising suspicion,” said Shukria.

Beyond pressures at home, educators in the underground network face shrinking budgets, scarce materials, limited space, and the constant risk of being discovered by Taliban intelligence services. But none of that compares to the psychological weight of teaching girls who feel they have no future. As Taiba put it, “In our society, a teacher is considered a spiritual father or mother.”

This burden makes trust between teacher and student essential. Taiba said, “The relationship between a teacher and student should reach the point where the student truly trusts their educator. Fortunately, my relationship with my students is intimate—they can freely share any kind of matter with me,” while emphasizing her concerns about the growing mental health problems among her students. Arezo and Shukria nodded in agreement as she spoke during a virtual meeting with Middle East Uncovered.

Often, these teachers must listen not only to their students’ stories but also to those of their mothers, who regularly accompany them to class for the sake of the community. Taiba shared one such story, recalling, “One of my students usually comes with her mom. Her mom didn’t show up to class for about a week, and I asked my student where she was. She would repeatedly tell me that her mother is sick.” Taiba continued, “When her mom finally returned a week later, her arm was in a cast, her face was bruised, and her eyes were black. I asked her to stay with me after class, where she told me that her husband came home high on a substance one day and argued with her. After beating her nearly to death, she decided to end her life by taking pills.” Taiba described how this mother, in her late 20s, attempted suicide and failed in front of her young children.

The increase in suicide rates among women in Afghanistan places an additional burden on the teachers. Taiba, Arezo, and Shukria have to stand before their classes and tell them not to lose hope—even though all three of them are slowly starting to lose their grip on it themselves. Arezo says, “But who will give hope to us? Who will talk to us? We are human too. Where can we express our emotions and pain?”

According to a report by the Guardian, “Suicide rates among women in Afghanistan have surged under Taliban rule, with reports suggesting one or two women may be dying by suicide daily due to extreme despair, forced marriages, and ‘gender apartheid.’ While official data is not released, reports indicate that females now make up over three-quarters of recorded suicide deaths.” The hopelessness that prevails over Afghan girls has pushed many to engage in self-harm, as they see life as meaningless and unfair.

According to Dr. Mohammad Nisar Jallah, founder and CEO of Ottawa-Kabul Global Education Center (OGEC), the mental health crisis in Afghanistan is dire. OGEC, founded in late 2024 with the mission of providing a comprehensive online educational solution for girls in Afghanistan, educates more than 20,000 students, according to its founder. 7,000 of those students alone are enrolled in their online medical program, delivered by professors from Kabul Medical University who are now living abroad. What sets OGEC apart from other organizations in online education is its robust psychosocial support program, run by trained, skilled professionals who work with hundreds of students up to four times a month to address their most pressing needs.

“Before we started the program, I would unfortunately hear on average three suicide attempts per day related to people in our network or their loved ones,” said Dr. Jallah, adding, “We are grateful that that number has been nearly zero in the past eight or nine months.” While demand exists, students who have participated in OGEC’s psychosocial support program have shown tremendous improvement in their mental well-being. “The mother of one of my students contacted me one day, telling me that her daughter was suicidal after she was banned from attending Kabul Medical University. She would stay awake at night guarding her daughter, fearing that she might attempt suicide. She expressed her gratitude for our programs that have kept her daughter so occupied and mentally relieved that thoughts of self-harm are not even on her mind now.”

The emotional cost of living without meaning or purpose is beyond most people’s comprehension. Those of us living abroad have the freedom to choose what to study, how to live, who to listen to, which career to pursue, and, most importantly, who to choose as our life partner. Children like Sahar are deprived of those rights and are traded like property or disposable objects out of necessity. Taiba told me, “Sahar eventually got married to that 30-year-old man. He came to Kabul from Germany for the wedding, but soon everyone found out he was already married and had children. After a month of wedlock, Sahar was divorced and separated from her husband.”

Sahar, who has lost everything, including her innocence, recently returned to her father’s house as a divorced 14-year-old. “She was never the same again. She would come to class for a few weeks after her divorce, quieter and more somber. Eventually, she gave up on class altogether, and I could not persuade her to come back,” said Taiba.

These brave teachers, who themselves were just little girls a few short years ago with dreams of becoming software engineers, teachers, and journalists, have had every opportunity taken away from them. Just as they were about to begin the careers they had spent years preparing for—at a time when women still had at least some access to education and work—they were pushed out and confined. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, their voices carried a strain that was hard to miss. They present themselves as strong and composed, and often they are. But beneath that resolve is the weight of everything they have lost, and the reality that they, too, are in need of care and support.

​And still, every morning, they open their doors and wait for the students to arrive. There are no guarantees—only the risk of being discovered, the weight of bearing witness to stories like Sahar’s, and the knowledge that many girls will never make it back to class. But for those who do, the room stays open—until the day girls are no longer forced to learn in secret, and can return to classrooms without fear.

At 79, Paul Mattar has a new idea. He doesn’t know whether it will work. Like much of his creative output, “it’s experimental,” and the audience will decide.

As an actor, composer, singer, playwright, and theater director, Mattar has explored many modes of expression, but he has spent a career searching for a form that’s free from constraint.

It has taken him from the star-studded stages of Golden-Age-Beirut and the cabaret halls of 1960s Paris to bombed-out venues across war-torn Lebanon. Yet even as he swapped national theaters for shelters and school halls, Mattar was frustrated by the same invisible barriers in his art.

“Everything in theater is prepared and fixed in advance. As an artist, I want to feel free,” he says.

Now, Mattar believes he has found a way to unite artist and audience in a common voice. These days, Mattar is “bored” with theater productions. He wants an authentic art form that mirrors the audience’s reality, not a mouthpiece for the writer or a stage for performance.

“I’ve seen my country invaded, its cities destroyed, my economy collapsing. We need real stories that chronicle Lebanon’s history in the words of people living it.”

He’s happy to begin with his own.

The shy second son of middle-class parents, it was Mattar’s talented elder brother who seemed destined for the stage. “I was creative, but it was not obvious to everyone, especially my parents,” he says.

Mattar was happy to stay in his brother’s shadow. The two shared a room and went to the same school. When his brother Pierre took guitar lessons, Mattar learned by watching him play.

It was Pierre who put his younger brother forward for his first role. Mattar auditioned and landed the part, performing alongside professional actors in a 1966 production called Les requins aux Presque, or “As close as possible to the sharks.”

Working at the newly opened Théâtre de Beyrouth (Beirut Theater), he met acclaimed playwright and director Roger Assaf, who helped the aspiring actor find a foothold on Lebanon’s burgeoning modern theatre scene.

The 1960s are often described as Lebanon’s Golden Age, but Mattar disputes this. For him, it was the early 1970s, up to the outbreak of war in 1975. “That was when Lebanon started to be heard in the world,” he says.

This was the height of Lebanon’s Belle Epoque, when the arts blossomed during a period of prosperity. Theater, once the preserve of a wealthy elite, was becoming accessible as literacy accelerated in the 60s and 70s. “We were discovering something we had never had in Lebanon—the power of theater,” Mattar says.

Plays were performed in every available space to accommodate the outpouring of new work. Grand hotels, including The Phoenicia and The Normandy, transformed ballrooms into stages while schools, churches, and town squares hosted smaller productions.

“It was very exciting. I was very lucky to live through this period,” he adds.

The Beirut Theater attracted a vibrant community of thespian talents. Together, they pioneered a bold era of contemporary drama that celebrated Lebanese writers over international productions and creativity over conformity.

Mattar’s mentor, Assaf, saw theater as an extension of popular culture and wanted plays that reflected the issues of the day. Landmark productions like Jalal Khoury’s Juha on the Front Lines and Ousama Aref’s Idrab al-Haramieh spoke to Lebanese audiences and cultivated the interactive spirit of the age.

Artistic expression flourished as playwrights broke new ground with daring productions that challenged social norms. Assaf’s work would push the democratic spirit of Lebanon, then seen as a bastion for free speech in the region, to its limits.

In 1969, his production of Majdaloun, written by Henry Hamati, was shut down by the Lebanese military three days into its run at the Beirut Theater. The plot confronted controversial subjects, addressing the Palestinian armed presence in southern Lebanon as a consequence of the Israeli occupation.

In a moment of triumph for creative freedom, Assaf, his co-director Nidal Ashkar, and the cast walked with the audience to the Horseshoe café on Hamra Street and continued their performance. But the play, which criticized the state’s inertia and called for domestic revolution, tapped into tensions that would continue to rise.

Politically charged works like Majdaloun resonated powerfully as the atmosphere darkened in the months leading up to civil war. The earlier climate of buoyant intellectualism and free experimentation gave way to a more urgent and ideologically driven theater as the stage became a vehicle for resistance against political forces that were propelling the country into conflict.

“The civil war didn’t stop us. On the contrary, it pushed us to perform more but in new, different ways,” Mattar recalls.

Recently returned from a period in Paris, where he acted at Théâtre de la Ville and composed songs for concerts and cabarets, Mattar was ready to forge something new. Inspired by the spirit of the music hall, he staged free performances in intimate venues, bringing audiences closer to productions that were “marginal, weird, unspecific.”

It was liberating to work in the mini-theater format. He felt free to experiment and wrote a play that merged Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens with a tale from One Thousand and One Nights. People would sit, sip drinks, and feel part of productions. “It was one of the most interesting experiences of my life,” Mattar says.

This lasted a few years before war broke out and consumed the country’s cultural spaces. For a while, Mattar composed songs about conflict, trying to make sense of the tragedies unfolding in the streets around him. Then he gave up. “There were too many.” He turned back to acting, curating a performance for children that could be staged across the country.

With a simplified set and a cast of three actors, plus puppets, crammed into the back of a tiny VW Polo, they drove from village to village, performing in every available space, sometimes under fire. During one performance for children with disabilities, they only just managed to get the audience to safety as shelling began.

By the time the war ended in 1990, most of the country’s cultural spaces lay in ruins. Yet even as he mourned their loss, Mattar saw the need for something new. “The Civil War changed artistic creation. For a while, nothing else in life existed outside the war,” he says.

When someone offered him a dirty, underground space that was lying empty, Mattar seized his opportunity. Working alongside actress and producer Jocyane Boulos, he oversaw the emergence of Le Monnot Theatre, where he would serve as director for more than two decades.

Friends questioned his decision to move from West to East Beirut, but Mattar was more interested in using art to dismantle the barriers that segregated the city during war. “When you are offered a stage, you have to go.”

And soon, audiences were coming from across the city, as the artistic community drifted back, ready to make sense of the last 15 years on stage.

Mattar is proud of his work at Le Monnot Theatre. On their 20^th anniversary in 2017, he counted over 1,000 performances, showcasing diverse talents and genres that helped revive Beirut’s theater scene.

Today, it is recognized as one of the city’s most enduring creative spaces and a symbol of cultural revival in post-war Beirut. But for theater veterans like Mattar, there are qualities that can never be reclaimed. The exuberant spirit of Lebanon’s theatrical renaissance has vanished. Passing the ruins of the Beirut Theatre in Ain el-Mreisseh, a lump catches in his throat. “I lived the most beautiful moments of my life in this place, and now there is nothing.”

That age of artistic experimentation has given way to a more globalized, trend-driven culture. “The performances we staged in these theaters were different. Today they all look the same,” he says.

He now feels that there are more direct and urgent ways to tell stories than on the stage. Tracing his career from the heady optimism of 1960s Beirut, through the trauma of war and the crises that have engulfed Lebanon since, he has found a form that finally makes sense. “For me, storytelling is the solution,” he explains.

Mattar is planning a storytelling festival that will elevate the audience, dispensing with the artifice of theater in favor of a stripped-back, raw form. He hasn’t decided on a name, but he wants to reflect life in real time, relayed by authentic voices. “The history books are biased,” he says. “I want our history to be chronicled by Lebanese people. We need to hear them talk.”

Perched on the side of a pyramid, Dr. Salima Ikram looks completely at ease. A photograph on her website captures the archaeologist in her element —“crawling down holes and popping out of pyramids.” Even when expeditions go awry, this is where she feels most herself.

“Some of my colleagues are more sedate,” says Ikram, whose voice is slightly hoarse after a month-long illness from inhaling too much mummy dust. She’ll be back to excavating burial chambers and examining remains as soon as her lungs clear.

Occasional setbacks are worth it for working on “extraordinary projects” and making discoveries that reshape our understanding of how people lived 5,000 years ago. Even after 43 years in the field, Ikram remains in awe of the achievements of the Bronze Age. “Almost everything about the Ancient Egyptians is interesting, absorbing, and inspiring… One wants to hang out with them more,” she says.

Ikram’s love affair with Egyptology began in childhood. On her first visit to Egypt at the age of nine, she was captivated by the civilization that built the pyramids and developed hieroglyphic writing.

This began an “endless quest” to immerse herself in a civilization spanning more than 3,000 years. It’s a journey that has shaped her both mentally and physically—falling off cliffs and breaking her pelvis are just some of the tolls on her body—but it’s all part of a career that “makes you open to adventure and less set in your ideas,” she says.

The specimens she studies are ancient, but even across millennia, they feel present. “History is part of a shared past… we learn about ourselves too,” she says, pointing to the way her specialism—human, animal, and food mummies—helps trace the origins of society today.

It’s often the smallest details that resonate the most. Examining the mummy of a mother with her baby tucked into the crook of her knee feels intensely poignant to Ikram. “It’s these moments that remind us of our common humanity,” she adds.

Quiet moments of reflection are interspersed with the excitement of discovery, but the process can be painstaking. Weeks of fruitless searching, as pressure mounts and funds dry up, are compounded by sweltering heat and flies at dig sites. “Sometimes I could do without the bats,” Ikram says.

Yet these discomforts seem negligible when the cry goes up announcing a new discovery. There’s a lot left to find. More than 200 years of archaeological activity have uncovered less than a third of Ancient Egypt. Estimates suggest that 70 percent remains below the sand, hidden beneath modern cities and Nile mud.

In particular, worker settlements, offering a window into the lives of everyday Egyptians, have been overlooked in favor of royal tombs. The world has long been enthralled by the tantalizing potential of priceless treasures buried with the Pharaohs, fuelled by sensational discoveries across the decades.

The most famous of these was in 1922, when British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the doorway to a burial chamber sealed for three millennia. Many royal chambers have been plundered by thieves across the centuries, including by the ancient Egyptians themselves, but Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovered intact.

More than 5,000 objects were found alongside the boy king, who died aged 18 or 19, possibly from malaria and a leg injury. Extraordinary treasures emerged from the site in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, including Tutankhamun’s death mask, now considered a masterpiece of Egyptian art. “Before, people would admire Greek and Roman art, and the Egyptians were thought primitive,” Ikram says. Suddenly, the world was mesmerized by Egypt.

The craze known as “Egyptomania” or “Tut-mania” went global as ancient Egypt became a dominant theme in fashion, art, and architecture. Interest was heightened by the ‘curse of the pharaohs’, a rumor fabricated by journalists denied access to the tomb. “The Times had a monopoly, so they made it up,” Ikram says.

A century on, archaeologists have compiled a detailed understanding of Ancient Egypt, fed by more groundbreaking discoveries in the years since. For Ikram, everything is open to question as fresh finds revise our understanding of the age. In her specialist field, studies of mummification materials have revealed a more complex process than previously thought, with resins and oils imported from abroad indicating early global trade networks that were previously unknown.

These scientific inquiries are matched by the thrill of archaeological finds in the field. On a rescue-archaeology mission in Sudan in the 1990s, Ikram and her team excavated at speed in front of bulldozers that were building a new road. When a pair of tumuli was discovered intact, Ikram opened the doors to burial mounds that had been undisturbed for 2,500 years.

“I could smell the incense that was burned as part of the burial ritual. Moments like that are extraordinary,” she says.

She compares archaeology to detective work, analyzing clues to test different theories until one fits. Not all evidence is equal, however. Deciphering the paintings in a tomb can feel like looking at someone’s social media feed. “It’s what you choose to put in there,” Ikram says.

But taken together with other evidence, including the food a body was buried with, the condition of the bones, and the materials they were wrapped in, it’s possible to build a picture of the life lived thousands of years ago. At times, a feeling of familiarity echoes across the centuries. “Things that mattered 4,000 years ago to human beings are still the same things that matter to us today,” Ikram says.

Understanding these motivations and how they shaped Egyptian society has been her life’s work, though it didn’t seem achievable to everyone. Even in a country with the only surviving wonder of the ancient world, her early aspirations to be an archaeologist were considered far-fetched. “My father said you are never going to get a job. What on earth are you doing? But much to everyone’s surprise, I made a career of it.”

Over the years, she has met many people who shared her ambition to become an archaeologist, only to abandon the dream in favor of a reliable income. Many of those who did persevere also teach, like Ikram, to sustain their research.

At The American University in Cairo, where Ikram is a professor in Egyptology, she sees the same pattern play out. There is a lot of interest from students, but parents worry they won’t find paying jobs in the field. Many who major in Egyptology go on to work in business or finance, she says.

Teaching eats into the time she can spend on digs—two and a half weeks is the most she can commit to on-site, but living in Egypt means she is on hand when her expertise is needed, including for television projects.

Advising on films and documentaries, including The Mummy, allows her to bring ancient Egypt to a wider audience and meet interesting people. Describing the attraction of digging in tombs to actor Morgan Freeman, she told him, “Being an archaeologist means that you never have to grow up, and the past is always part of the present.”

She was referring, she says, to playing in the sand and crawling down holes, a process that is both thrilling and unnerving. Bumping down tomb shafts in the dark, unsure of what waits below, fear temporarily takes hold. Then she passes the halfway point, and curiosity triumphs, pushing her deeper into the past to uncover the secrets of Ancient Egypt and share them with the world. Each discovery builds on knowledge gathered across two centuries, with the potential to revise history in ways not yet imagined. It’s an enticing prospect that renders the bats and the bruises irrelevant, when, as Ikram puts it, “suddenly you excavate something and ideas that have been written in stone for at least 100 years have to be tossed out of the window in light of fresh new evidence.”

Bar Ninety-One, nestled in the heart of East London’s iconic Truman Brewery off Brick Lane, isn’t the first place one would imagine hosting an Afghan-themed evening. Yet here we are, 70 diners squeezed together at long tables, our mouths watering as the tantalizing aromas of Afghan cuisine fill the air.

At the center of it all stands Mursal Saiq, a petite, 32-year-old British-Afghan with a black tattoo of her name in Farsi across her chest. It’s bold and unapologetic, just like Saiq. “Until Afghan women get their voices back, we’re their voices. We have to be louder,” she says. For this raven-haired chef, Afghan Nights isn’t just a supper club. It is defiance served over three courses.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in the summer of 2021, not only have they erased women from public life, but they’ve also pursued a policy of eradicating Persian in the country, instead favoring Pashto, their native language.

Saiq’s tattoo, therefore, was a big fuck you to them.

“As a country, you can lose land. But you only really lose when you lose your sense of identity and history. I need us to preserve our history.” Born during the first Taliban rule in the 90s, Saiq grew up as the middle child in a family of six children. They fled the civil war for Mumbai, India, where Saiq fell in love with the country’s rich festivals and traditions.

“We celebrated Diwali and Holi, watching all those colors, and eating sweets,” she smiles.

India was also a creative inspiration, its rich food and spices leaving a lasting imprint on her palate and imagination.

Saiq’s uncle worked in Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry. She grins when she tells me about meeting superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

When she was nine, they left for the UK. Saiq and her mother were separated from half the family, which left the chef with immense trauma that she still struggles to talk about today.

Then there was the racism. North London, at that time, was still hostile to some ethnic minorities. “Me and my brother were around nine or 10 and had rocks thrown at us,” says Saiq. “My black friend, Deb, said, ‘This happens to us every day.’”

Saiq’s first memory of food is white rice served with lubya kidney beans, a “peasant dish” from northern Afghanistan. It was comfort food. “When I took it to school for lunch, the girls said, ‘Ew, what’s that?’” For a while, she rejected the dish that had once soothed her. “As a young ethnic child, it’s difficult to be yourself and to love your food.” Years later, she found her way back. It is now her favorite again.

When her father eventually joined them with the rest of her siblings, the family moved to Hackney in east London. There, she found something different: a place where people from different cultures could all celebrate their differences. “Before, our food was smelly and disgusting, but here it was celebrated. We could wear our traditional clothes. Hackney taught me about integration.”

Returning to Afghanistan for holidays in the 2000s, after the Western invasion had ousted the Taliban, Saiq naively thought she was going home. “When you’re in a foreign country, you usually don’t understand the language, but this wasn’t the case here. I thought, this is another part of me.” Yet, ironically, the locals called her “English girl.”

Between Kabul and London, she realized she belonged fully to neither. “We are called traitors for leaving. Your entire existence feels guilt for leaving. People say to me, you don’t look religious, but I do pray. First, I rebelled against the Taliban and then against the West.”

Instead, Saiq found clarity in food.

After studying history and political philosophy at Goldsmiths College, she worked at the British Museum as an archivist by day. In the evenings and at weekends, she joined Street Feast, learning barbecue craft. But there was just one niggle. The food wasn’t halal or vegetarian. “None of my family and friends could eat it.”

Determined to include her loved ones in her cuisine, she and her partner, chef Josh Moroney—who is of mixed English-Guyanese heritage—founded Cue Point, a British-Afghan smokehouse that blends Afghan flavors with traditional barbecue techniques.

From the outset, they committed to halal and vegan menus. They wanted to reflect Hackney’s diversity in their food and make sure as many people as possible could eat it without feeling left out. Saiq even travelled to the US to compete for Britain in the World Food Championships, where she came second.

Back at Kabul Nights, some diners come for nostalgia, others for politics. Many arrive simply for good food—of which there is plenty. Afghan cuisine is a rich blend of South Asian, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern food.

The first dish is mantu, dumplings stuffed with slow-smoked brisket and garlic yogurt, topped with lentils. The vegan version omits the beef in favor of leeks and onions.

The music comes from Yaz Fentazi on the oud and Samir Nacer on the darbuka, their melodies and drumbeats mixing with the sounds of laughter and conversation.

One diner, named Tia, recalls fondly her time working at a radio station in Afghanistan. “Afghans are the most magical people I’ve met,” she smiles. “I remember seeing men who used to listen to the radio in secret—they’d stick their heads out of the window while wearing earphones, so that the Taliban wouldn’t catch them.”

Laila, a young Afghan woman of Pashtun and Tajik heritage, has brought her English partner. “I feel seen by what Mursal is doing here,” she says, as we tuck into Saiq’s take on the Kabuli pulao, a meaty aromatic rice dish mixed with carrots, raisins, and toasted cashews. The borani banjan, a slow-cooked creamy, tangy eggplant dish with yogurt, is comforting on this rainy night.

Dessert is a mouthwatering caramel-and-pistachio cake.

Laila’s smile falters as she recalls how her mother was smacked by a Taliban member for wearing white shoes in public, her father beaten for listening to the radio and not growing a beard.

“I’m angry at the women’s rights activists who don’t raise their voice for Afghans,” she says, betrayed by the western intervention which did, briefly, lead to some meaningful changes in the central Asian country.

Afghan women made advancements in education, employment, and health care, and were even represented in government. The 2004 constitution guaranteed equal rights for all citizens, including ethnic and religious minorities. That all changed when the Taliban returned to power.

Now, says Saiq, there’s a sense things are worse with the “Taliban 2.0”, because “Afghans had that taste of freedom.” A generation learned to dream. Not anymore.

“When the Taliban took over, I felt trapped and lost. I wasn’t sure how to celebrate our culture because I’m also not traditional,” says Saiq. “Someone told me that she doesn’t go to Afghan events because she feels like she doesn’t belong.” Afghan Nights, therefore, is a place for the lost souls who are caught between two cultures and countries.

There is a pause between courses, as some Persian poetry is read on stage. One is Saiq’s cousin, Bazil, the other a young woman named Rokhsar, who recites the words in English as well as Farsi. In a city thousands of miles from Kabul, Persian flows freely and defiantly, far from the eyes and ears of the Taliban.

For this is what Afghan Nights really serves: not just delicious cuisine but language, culture, and shared memories. It’s a space where those who have been silenced are given a voice here in London.

“I feel like the Taliban is my personal enemy,” says Saiq. “The more they do, the more I act.”

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday.

Between 2006 and 2007, when the bloodshed peaked in Baghdad, Ammar Karim went out every night. Crossing the city was dangerous after dark, but he went anyway, heading for the small café in Zayouna, where his friends sought a sliver of normality in those febrile years after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

One worked in the defense ministry, another at the oil ministry. There was a company contractor, an academic, and Karim, bringing them breaking news from that day. “I came loaded with information, until they asked me to stop,” Karim recalls. “They were trying to live peacefully, away from all this violence.”

It was 2007, and Iraq had become a hellscape of car bombs, sectarian clashes, and spiralling death tolls. A fresh wave of violence had followed the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, prompting a surge in US combat forces across Iraq. The conflict seemed never-ending, seeping into all areas of life as civilian casualties climbed during one of the deadliest years of that decade.

Karim worked all hours, covering events in Baghdad for the French news agency L’Agence France-Presse (AFP). “For two years, we reported the same story again and again—how another body had been found in the street or pulled from the river.”

The chaos was constant, but reporting on it could be unpredictable. After the fall of the Ba’athist regime in 2003, censorship had eased, and local police began cooperating with journalists. It made helping families locate the bodies of loved ones easier, Karim says. Then, insurgent groups began targeting police stations, and communication broke down. “At some point, the police became so aggressive. They were under daily attack, losing their men and relatives,” he says.

The country, straitjacketed into submission under Saddam Hussein’s ruthless rule, had erupted. From AFP’s sprawling office in the city, the team sent 10 to 20 alerts each day, racing to cover the barrage of attacks that pounded Baghdad at all hours. Still, it was better than life before, says Karim. There was freedom, and the sanctions that starved the population had lifted, but his country was drowning in chaos. “I thought Iraq could never survive those times,” he adds.

Just three years into his career, Karim should have been a cub reporter. Instead, the war fast-tracked him into the role of a seasoned correspondent. While doing ad hoc translation work for the US Army, he crossed paths with AFP bureau chief Sammy Ketz and saw an opportunity to pursue his interest in politics. “I was so optimistic that this country, one day, would be better,” he recalls.

Around him, foreign journalists converged on the city, many making their names in the war that was tearing Iraq apart. “I never saw any shame in that. I help every journalist who comes here,” says Karim, who set up the Foreign Journalists Institute, drawing on his contacts at the interior ministry to assist international media in the country.

Now 47, he has continued to advise and support journalists throughout his career, drawing on a huge network of contacts across Iraq. “Sometimes journalists cross a line, but I always assume it’s not intentional,” says Karim, who has helped secure the release of detained reporters in the past. “We are not a big community, so we have to protect each other.”

He knows too well the risks that accompany this work. Like any veteran reporter in Iraq, Karim can reel off a list of close calls: fleeing masked gunmen on a motorbike, bullets whistling past his ear, sheltering from a shootout at the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf as insurgents opened fire.

Other stories are more painful to tell.

The murder of his friend Hisham el-Hashemi still haunts Karim. He eventually found the words to express his grief in a moving story on the respected security analyst, who was shot dead in a car outside his home in 2020. The attack came during another period of intensified violence, when armed actors operated with impunity across the capital.

“I warned him about the consequences,” Karim says, describing the fear he felt for his friend, who had openly criticized the Iran-backed groups that operated outside state control. “Hisham loved Iraq. He was trying to get the country out of the influence of Iran,” Karim adds.

El-Hashemi’s death came as a shock to the media community. He had been a trusted friend and sounding board, advising with extraordinary clarity on the complexities of Iraq’s shifting security situation. “He was a soft, gentle person, and smart—the only security expert writing honestly about what he researched,” Karim says.

News of the murder sparked public outrage and prompted then-Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi to respond to the wave of assassinations and kidnappings of Iraqi activists that followed the 2019-2020 Tishreen protest movement. Journalists, too, were being targeted as militia men stalked the city, ticking people off kill lists then vanishing into the night.

Friends messaged to warn Karim to maintain a low profile. He had already lost friends, relatives, and colleagues in the bloody frenzy that surrounded the protests when more than 600 demonstrators were killed by security forces and armed groups. Now he wondered whether he could find any hope in a country that had dispensed with one of its sharpest minds in a seemingly endless cycle of violence.

El-Hashemi was “one of the finest, most principled men I have ever known, whose honesty and dedication struck fear in the hearts of Iraq’s masked, armed boogeymen,” Karim wrote. Driving to his house that night, blinking through tears at the sight of blood pooling beneath the driver’s window, something in him broke. “I lost my confidence in everything about life,” he says.

Karim leads a large WhatsApp group where journalists share tips and resources. It was where he first read, disbelievingly, of his friend’s death. Usually one of the most active voices in the chat, he fell silent, ignoring the steady stream of alerts each day.

In Iraq, many media outlets are owned by or aligned with political parties or factions that promote their backers’ agendas. Members of the chat come from across the country and span the political spectrum. He knew that some of them could have affiliations with the group that sent men on motorbikes to shoot his friend.

“There is very little neutral journalism in Iraq,” he says.

In recent years, this has begun to change as social media and AI create space for independent journalists to publish without party backing. During the Tishreen protests, social media became the primary source for real-time updates as local channels brushed over state violence towards protesters.

As a democratizing influence, Karim welcomes this shift, but he worries about the quality of future journalism. “People are not writing anymore…this will change us,” he says.

As someone whose life has been shaped by stories, he shudders at the thought of AI-generated reporting. Covering Iraq as a journalist for 23 years has been frightening, and at times traumatizing, but it also affords privileged access to people, places, and information that help him understand his country and the people in it.

Looking back, it has shown him another side to the nation so often portrayed as corrupt and violent by foreign media. One recent freelance job saw him escort British actor and TV presenter Michael Palin for the Into Iraq travel documentary. “We covered a lot of very good things about Iraq, that no one has been able to show—a lot of beautiful things in this country that need to be seen.”

Until recently, a tentative optimism had emerged in Iraq. Security conditions eased, and a period of peace paved the way for new developments in infrastructure, industry, and entrepreneurship. An article in The Economist last year called Baghdad “the world’s surprise Boomtown,” citing the influx of foreign investors reshaping the increasingly stable Iraqi capital.

A sense of possibility reminded Karim of the days after Saddam Hussein’s fall. Growing up under the strict censorship of the Ba’athist regime, he never dreamed of becoming a journalist. “We were completely isolated.” Then the dictator fell, and there was freedom in the chaos that followed. For a brief period, a different future emerged. It was enough to keep Karim in Iraq, while friends and colleagues moved abroad as the country unravelled.

Over the next two decades, that hope would dissipate, and he would consider leaving Iraq for good. He never did.

Now, after a brief period of stability, regional turmoil threatens to plunge the country back into conflict following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran. “Every few years, we are back to wartime,” Karim said. “Iraq is not a very lucky country; even if it’s not our war, it still feels like it’s our war.”

Already, Iraq is at a boiling point. Its status as a proxy battleground between Washington and Tehran has seen it attacked from all sides as pro-Iran groups target US assets in Iraq, including the US embassy in Baghdad. The US has also carried out attacks against these groups in Iraq. Karim has watched this play out before and fears the worst. “I don’t think this war will end in a good way. Our airport is under fire, our oil companies are under fire, and I think when Israel and America finish with Iran, we will be next, unfortunately,” he added.

For more than two decades, Karim has reported on a country that repeatedly edges toward disaster and then pulls back again. As tensions rise once more across the region, he continues to watch the same patterns unfold, knowing that if Iraq is drawn into another conflict, he will be there to document it.

In the fall of 2023, Fatima sat alone in Doha’s airport terminal waiting for her flight to Boston when a sudden realization struck her. She looked around anxiously, questioning why she was there and what she was thinking when she boarded that flight to Qatar. The shy, subdued girl that she was, Fatima panicked and hoped that her next flight bound to America would somehow return her to Pakistan, where she had just left her weeping brother behind the airport gates a few hours ago.

Of course, she had reasons to be anxious about the journey ahead. Fatima Wojohat, now 23 years old and living in Franklin, Massachusetts, has lived a life where she has adopted a completely different identity based on a cultural gender construct that defined her for most of her life. Fatima, despite being born a girl, was raised to pretend to be a boy. This practice is known as Bacha Posh, in which a girl is dressed as a boy from an early age, usually for safety, pragmatic mobility, or economic reasons. Fatima’s teenage years were spent trapped in an identity that did not really belong to her. Was she really ready to embark on a journey to America, knowing she struggled to talk to strangers without hiding behind her mother?

In Afghanistan, a deeply entrenched patriarchal culture exists that is rarely acknowledged or discussed in wider literature. In a society where conservative values are widespread and access to education is limited, men have historically been entrusted with guarding family honor—often by exerting control over female relatives, who are frequently viewed as potential sources of shame rather than sources of pride. The arrival of a son is celebrated with gifts for the mother, while the birth of a daughter is seen as much more somber and, in some cases, unwelcome. In lower-income households, especially, mothers who bear only daughters may face mistreatment for their perceived failure to produce male heirs, boys who represent vital working hands for struggling families. In some cases, girls in these households are dressed and raised as boys until puberty.

Fatima was not just any Bacha Posh. Her family did not see girls as liabilities, nor did they suffer from poverty; there was more to it than just that. Born in Pakistan, Fatima returned to Kabul with her family at age 5. “My mom said to me that if I wanted freedom and security in this country, then I needed to cut my hair, adopt a male name (Safa), and become a boy,” she told me.

“I remember the first day of school with my younger brother, who is also my best friend. I asked him where I should sit. With the boys or the girls?” she recalled, “I didn’t know where I would fit.” Fatima’s brother asked her to sit with him because he was afraid the other kids would make fun of his sister if they knew she was a girl without long hair or a dress.

Usually, Bacha Posh starts at a very young age and ends after puberty. But in Fatima’s case, it lasted until she was 17. “My elder sister was also a Bacha Posh, but she stopped being one at a young age,” she said. When asked about why she didn’t stop being a Bacha Posh, Fatima replied: “I noticed that I had tremendous freedom and liberty in that country [living as a boy], so I continued with it until late in my teens.”

Fatima’s parents were both government workers who spent their days at their jobs and returned home at night to three daughters and a young son. During the day, her father worked as the minister’s photographer, and her mother was an administrative assistant at the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. They believed that by pretending their daughters were boys, they would feel more secure in a country plagued by severe abuses and injustices affecting children, especially young girls. Fatima said, “I was indeed mad for some time thinking that a good portion of my childhood was not spent with dolls and femininity, but on the other hand, as I grew older, I realized that we lived in a very wretched society, and it was for my own protection.”

Afghanistan has consistently been ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for women, often holding the very bottom spot in major international indexes. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index ranks Afghanistan last globally, and Georgetown University’s Women, Peace and Security Index has placed it at the bottom of 177 countries every year since 2021. The UN Women’s 2024 Afghanistan Gender Index revealed a shocking 76% gap between men and women in areas like health, education, financial inclusion, and decision-making—the second-largest gender gap worldwide. Afghan women currently access only 17% of their potential in opportunities and personal choices, compared to a global average of 60.7%. Nearly 80% of young women are completely excluded from education, employment, and training.

As she grew up, Fatima slowly realized she needed to become the agent of her own life and direct it as she wished. From a young age, she had a special gift for sketching faces and portraits. “My family and relatives would ask me to draw their portraits,” she told me, “I was not perfect, but I tried my best.” It was clearly an understatement from Fatima, because she would prove not only to her family and relatives that she is truly an artist, skilled and passionate, but also to her city as she won multiple provincial art competitions and was praised by state officials.

Fatima’s mother saw her daughter’s potential and decided to reach out to one of Afghanistan’s most influential and well-organized art collectives, Artlords. She secured a place for her daughter and boosted her social skills by having her join the group. At 17, Fatima was among the youngest members of Artlords, alongside university students and graduates. She described the first day as if “my mom was dropping me off at a day care, she even told them what time I should have my lunch,” showing her initial struggle to socialize after living all her life in a duality.

Fatima’s talent and skills quickly proved she was a valuable addition to the Artlords team. The collective is famous for its street murals across Kabul. Fatima’s first street art was a piece she created with her teammates outside Istiqlal High School, depicting Zalmai Khalilzad at the signing ceremony with Taliban officials in Doha during the 2020 peace agreement—an agreement that ultimately led to the return of the Taliban just a few months later, plunging Fatima and millions of Afghan girls into house arrest.

Fatima described her mother as brave, outgoing, kind, and a poet at heart. Her mother remembers all too well the first time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. One evening, while Fatima’s mom was visibly pregnant with her elder sister, she went to see her parents on the other side of the city. Of course, Fatima’s father had to accompany his wife. “My mom said Taxis would avoid couples at that time, fearing that they might not be in wedlock,” she said. “So my mom and dad decided to walk all the way to Khair Khana from our house in Share-e-now.” The journey was abruptly cut short when a Taliban truck pulled up next to them and immediately started questioning the couple separately. When asked to provide marriage certificates, the couple had nothing to show as the papers were at home. “They started beating my father with the Kalashnikov stock while they kicked my mother in her belly, hoping to terminate the pregnancy; they said this child is a bastard.”

In August 2021, as the Taliban rolled into the streets of Kabul again, Fatima’s mom rushed home, remembering the first regime and thinking about the future of her children. Fatima’s mom cried to her father, “Last time they wanted to kill our daughter, this time they will take them away.” Her mom refused to work at the ministry anymore.

Fatima turned to art once again to avoid the depressive cycle of waking up and going to sleep in the confinement of their own home. “Life became dull,” she described the first weeks of Taliban rule while adding, “My biggest dream was to attend the American University of Afghanistan, study political science, and secure a job as a diplomat with the foreign ministry.” Fatima’s art was always personal to her, and she was hoping to keep it that way.

After witnessing the Taliban’s brutality and their oppression of women in Afghanistan, Fatima decided to push back and resist, starting with the Taliban’s supreme leader. “I learned how to do digital art on my phone and started drawing with my fingertips,” she added, “I used to publish on Instagram, and then delete everything and turn off my location because I would get death threats from the Taliban telling me that they are going to find me.” For 3 years under Taliban rule, Fatima courageously drew, sketched, and painted the Taliban’s supreme leader, their draconian laws, abuses, and human rights violations in the context of caricatures and political art. She grew her Instagram following from a few supporters to thousands, even attracting the attention of diaspora media such as Afghanistan International.

“We did not feel safe after 3 years in the country because our own family and relatives would tell me to stop my work,” she said. “I honestly did not care if I was caught, but I did not want my family, who are innocent, to be persecuted because of me.” At that point, the family had received confirmation numbers for their humanitarian parole applications to the United States—a program that allowed vulnerable Afghans to request temporary entry but has since been halted by the new American administration. Believing they might soon be able to leave, they sold all their belongings and moved to Pakistan.

The family endured economic hardship in Pakistan, where everything is twice as expensive for Afghan immigrants, and where the Pakistani landlords constantly ask Afghan families to marry their daughters. “The owners of the houses would ask us to be married to him if we wanted to live in their building,” she recalled. But Fatima did not lose hope. A few months later, the director of Scholars at Risk asked Fatima to apply to Dean College. She did, and a few weeks after, she found herself on the doorstep of the American embassy in Islamabad, waiting in line to acquire her student visa.

“I never stopped working even while in Pakistan,” she recalls, “I was told at the time that the Pakistani police have a connection with the Taliban, but I still worked and posted my art online.”

In September 2023, Fatima left her family behind to seek a better future in the United States. The girl who had once lived as a boy named Safa, caught between the freedoms and contradictions of the Bacha Posh tradition, suddenly found herself alone. At the same time, her family waited another year before they could meet again, this time in California. Fatima is in her 3rd year of studies at Dean College, where they formed a new art department just to accommodate her, instruct her, and save her life. They requested that Professor Amy Adams, whom Fatima has spoken highly of, take on the challenge of elevating an already gifted young artist from Afghanistan who stood against the Taliban’s supreme leader.

Fatima held her first exhibition at the Franklin Public Library—America’s first public library, founded through a donation by Benjamin Franklin, who believed deeply in the power of knowledge and education for democracy. For Fatima, an Afghan artist who had defied the Taliban through her work, the exhibition was a powerful moment. Three months later, she held another show, displaying more than 50 original pieces.

She was quick to point out one thing, however: Her artwork is not for sale. “The artwork that I create is for me personally; they have extreme meaning to me and are of importance,” said Fatima while adding, “If people want me to paint for them, they just have to ask; I don’t want my paintings to be sold because they are precious to me.”

Fatima’s story reflects the complex reality many Afghan women currently face. Living as a boy gave her a glimpse of the freedom and independence typically reserved for men in Afghanistan’s deeply patriarchal society. Yet despite the barriers placed before them, Afghan women have repeatedly shown their determination to resist a system that seeks to strip them of their agency.

Fatima used her art to challenge the Taliban and their oppressive ideology, a choice that ultimately forced her to flee her country. Now in exile, she continues that fight from afar through work that confronts dominant narratives about Afghanistan and amplifies the voices of Afghan women. Her story reflects the breathtaking tenacity of thousands of Afghan girls navigating a society shaped by restrictions many around the world can scarcely imagine. This International Women’s Week is a reminder that true gender equality remains out of reach while regimes like the Taliban continue to deny women their fundamental rights.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday.

When Ranja Ali left school aged 17, freelancing was tantamount to unemployment in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). At best, “people thought it meant volunteering,” says Ali, 25. As a freelance filmmaker in the southern Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah, he was familiar with the obstacles this mindset presented, particularly when it came to raising funds for his film projects.

After shooting movies on shoestring budgets despite winning awards for his work, he decided to press pause on his passion for filmmaking and focus on improving the working environment for young people in Kurdistan. “People say, ‘Why don’t you go abroad?’ but I don’t want to leave. I want to give other people a reason to stay and invest their skills in developing Kurdistan,” he says.

His start-up, Wedonet, set out to create a market for freelancers and provide Kurdish and Iraqi talent with a platform to craft fulfilling careers on their own terms. Launched in 2022 with a handful of subscribers from Ali’s personal network, it has grown into a national platform that connects local and international clients to a pool of 400 self-employed people.

In three years, “We have changed the culture around freelancing, and the life stories of many people,” says Ali.

Unemployment among young people has reached critical levels in the KRI, with over one-third of young job-seekers unable to find work. The situation is reflected across Iraq, which has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the region.

Scarce opportunities in the country’s underdeveloped private sector and a bloated public sector have led to despair among young graduates who struggle to secure employment.

In 2019, frustration boiled over when a group of students began protesting outside the Prime Minister’s office. They were met with heavy repression from security forces, triggering Iraq’s Tishreen Movement, which became the largest social movement since 2003 and forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi.

Ali was 19 at the time, struggling to make ends meet as a filmmaker. Having left school early because he found the Kurdish education system outdated and “boring”, Ali was looking for opportunities to pursue his passion for film.

Sulaymaniyah is considered the cultural capital of Kurdistan and a hub for artists, writers, and other creatives, but entry-level jobs in his industry were nonexistent. So Ali badgered his family to buy his first camera and learned through YouTube videos before volunteering on film projects and offering his services for free.

Gradually, he built up his technical skill and was rewarded with recognition when his short film Stowe Vermon won Best Experimental International Short Film at the Scout Film Festival in Boston, USA. The barriers he confronted at home suddenly seemed surmountable. “It was motivating to realize that someone, somewhere, was appreciating my movie.”

Ali spent just $75, working with a team of 10 volunteers to make his short film A Piece of Land, which maps the experience of a man from Rojava displaced by ISIS. Ali wanted to evoke sympathy for the plight of refugees amid a hardening of attitudes as the war dragged on. “I couldn’t fight like the Peshmerga, I wasn’t a doctor, but I realized that with my movies I could help by evoking emotional support,” he says.

Many of his contemporaries, though, were less fortunate. Other people his age bemoaned the lack of opportunities to cultivate creative talents in a country where jobs were already scarce for young people. Many, like Ali’s friend Mohammed, resorted to working long hours in poorly paid jobs.

A talented photographer, Mohammed was working as a motorbike delivery driver when Ali set up Wedonet. As word of the platform spread, he contacted Ali to ask about photography work. “I pushed him to create a portfolio, and in less than a month, he secured a long-term project in a government office in Erbil. Now he is one of the top-five videographers in Kurdistan,” Ali says.

The success stories quickly built up. One freelancer on the platform fulfilled their desire to travel with a three-month commission in Thailand, while a young student was able to give up long hours as a cook and pay her student fees by establishing one of the leading content creation companies in Kurdistan.

“Wedonet is not just a business. It is changing people’s lives, including mine,” Ali says.

His first trip abroad to Poland for a film festival crystallized this vision. Meeting people from all over the world in Poland reinforced his belief that creatives make their own opportunities. “I suddenly saw what was possible.” Returning to Kurdistan, he enrolled in several accelerator and incubator programs to hone his business skills before founding Wedonet in 2022.

There were barriers—launching a start-up in the KRI is not easy, and Ali’s platform challenged the traditional work culture in Kurdistan. But it also identified a glaring market gap for a reliable portal that connects young talent with work opportunities at home and abroad. “I made clients trust freelancers,” he says.

In three years, the company has delivered more than 260 projects, including filming a recent documentary for Al Jazeera and providing media for the Board of Investment (BIP) Summit in 2025. It has quickly become the leading freelance platform in the KRI, Ali says, managing projects for clients with diverse skill sets ranging from video and photo production, content creation and direction, to sales, marketing, and app development.

Ali can do many of the jobs that come in himself, but he outsources everything to others. “I want to focus on growing the business,” he says.

Eventually, he hopes to return to filmmaking and use the proceeds from Wedonet to fund features that showcase Kurdish culture. But for now, all profit goes back into the business, which is transforming the landscape for freelancers in Kurdistan and Iraq. “Even if you live in a village, you can work,” Ali says. “We’re giving talented people a reason to stay in Kurdistan.”

When Meridel Rubenstein’s neighbor drained the marshes around her family farm in Vermont nearly 20 years ago, she could not have known it would trigger an idea that would eventually lead the American artist to the arid wetlands of southern Iraq.

It was September 2006, and Rubenstein awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of howling coyotes circling the newly destroyed wetland and beaver pond. For some time, her neighbor had been claiming that these marshes were encroaching on her land, so she had just taken it upon herself to drain them and breach the dykes. (Engineered, linear embankments of earth, rock, or other materials designed to hold back tidal waters or river flows, protecting the land behind them from flooding.)

Rubenstein was devastated. To her, the “wild grasses, beaver, geese, ducks, heron, bass, turtles, frogs, otters, and muskrats had made this area a paradise,” she wrote in her 2017 book Eden Turned on Its Side. It was a place where her friend, Dickie, made his daily jaunts to feed the birds and “watch the evolution of this swamp into an oasis.”

But no more. By draining the wetlands, the actions of Rubenstein’s neighbor sent acres of muddy water, sediment, and alien bass into the town’s main (trout) stream and water supply.

A few years later, she saw a startling parallel on CBS News’ 60 Minutes, which was telling the story of the vast drained Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq. Just as her neighbor had altered Vermont’s landscape for personal gain, Saddam Hussein’s actions were reminiscent of this small-scale, localized devastation, but on a geopolitical scale.

In the 1990s, the Iraqi dictator deliberately drained the Ahwar, the ancient Mesopotamian marshes in his country, to punish Shi’a rebels hiding there.

The Mesopotamian Marshes in southern Iraq, a vast wetland system between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, are considered by many to be the location of the biblical Garden of Eden and a, if not the, cradle of civilization.

For thousands of years, the Marsh Arabs, or Maʻdān, had hitherto relied on its waters for fishing, hunting, and building their iconic reed homes. When Saddam’s forces diverted the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates, burned reed beds, and poisoned lagoons, the ecosystem was devastated. Thousands of Marsh Arabs were killed, and many more forced to flee. By the early 2000s, only 20 percent of the marshes remained.

After the 2003 US-led invasion, attempts to reflood the marshes regenerated about 30–40 percent of the original wetland area. Yet today, the Ahwar face a second, slower crisis: climate change and upstream dam construction in Iran and Turkey. Reduced rainfall, higher temperatures, and rising salinity threaten both human and ecological survival. The UN Environment Programme ranks Iraq as the fifth most vulnerable country in the world to decreasing water and food availability and extreme temperatures.

Nature Iraq, the country’s first and only environmental NGO, was attempting to restore the marshes, but needed some help.

Enter Rubenstein. In 2011, she was teaching at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore when she learned about the initiative. So when she received a grant of $65,000, she used it to assemble a multidisciplinary team: Jassim Al-Asadi, managing director of Nature Iraq; engineers David Tocchetto and Mark Nelson; and Iraqi-Dutch project manager Zahra Souhail.

Together, they launched Eden in Iraq, a project that combines wastewater garden technology with ecological knowledge to regenerate the area. Once completed, the 6.4-acre site in Al-Chibayish, a town on the Euphrates River, will serve up to 10,000 residents.

Getting a visa to Iraq back then was a mission. “On the day we arrived in Baghdad, Osama bin Laden [founder of al-Qaeda] had been killed!” she laughs, as she recalls the events of May 2011. Her colleague advised that they hide their Jewish identities “just in case.”

However, all their fears dissipated once they headed into the marshes.

“Once you get in the boats, you’re hooked forever,” says Rubenstein. “All these canals, tall reeds, and pomegranates.”

But in many places, the water gave way to bare, cracked earth. There were other things that gave Rubenstein cause for concern. The rapid return of residents in the 2000s led to serious health problems, as many areas lacked a proper sewage system.

“The town councils said there was no sewage collection, just rubber pipes dumping sewage into the Euphrates, then into the marshes. There are no septic tanks.”

Waterborne diseases such as bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever are common due to high levels of pollution from solid waste, including household and industrial waste.

To solve this issue, Eden in Iraq uses a “subsurface flow wetland” to transform wastewater. Bacteria break down organic material into minerals, which both purify the water and fertilize plants and fruit trees. “The reeds are ‘eating’ the sewage - they’re the kidney of the land!” Rubenstein explains. “It’s basically a natural, sewage ecosystem.”

Wastewater gardens are a proven technology, first developed in the Biosphere 2 project in the early 1990s and now implemented in over 200 locations worldwide.

This can be replicated all over the Middle East, says Rubenstein.

To pay homage to the area and its traditions, the garden design draws deeply from Marsh Arab culture: reed architecture, earthen brick, and patterns inspired by Sumerian cylinder seals and embroidered Mesopotamian wedding blankets.

At the entrance will be a brightly colored panel featuring Inana, the Sumerian goddess of love and war.

“I’m all about peace building and communities,” says Rubenstein. “My belief is that beauty can change things.”

Phase one, completed in 2023, involved constructing perimeter walls, laying pipes, and planting the first reeds, which now reduce odor and clean around half of the wastewater. Phase two, yet to be started, will add an underground pipe network and additional plantings.

The garden will not just serve as a functional wastewater treatment system, but as a “symbol of hope,” says Rubenstein. “In a land devastated by conflict and climate change, we wanted to create something that renews life and honors history.”

The project has already received recognition: in 2020, UNESCO listed Eden in Iraq as one of its outstanding Global Green Citizen projects. Beyond cleaning water, the garden reconnects people to the marshlands they call home and preserves techniques and designs that stretch back 3,000–5,000 years.

Yet challenges remain. The team still needs just shy of $3 million to complete the garden and ensure long-term maintenance. The Iraqi bureaucracy has delayed the release of the $2 million in funding once promised by a former minister.

Then there’s the destabilizing role of neighboring Iran, which has led to some setbacks. “The state thinks any environmental work is being funded by Israel,” says Rubenstein. “You have local militias who are funded by Iran. Jassim [of Nature Iraq] was kidnapped for a brief period in 2023.”

Rubenstein last visited in 2022. The October 7 attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza have made it difficult to return.

“You might wonder why I’d stick with this after all these years,” says the 77-year-old, predicting my next question. “I have the world’s greatest team; they won’t give up, and neither will I. I believe art can transform poison into nectar.”

Rubenstein and her team certainly have their work cut out for them.

Nevertheless, Eden in Iraq represents a model of what is possible when art and science intersect to restore both ecosystems and human dignity.

Through Meridel Rubenstein’s vision, the Ahwar may once again flourish, not just as a marshland, but as a living testament to the enduring spirit of the Marsh Arabs.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday.

Pounding music filled the room in Riyadh, where people were partying hard. It was the first time Maher Harb had seen this side of the city, and it unnerved him. Watching this hidden hedonism unfold, he felt a powerful urge to escape.

He got in his car and drove. The world began to spin as he lost control, his body turning, again and again. Somehow, he survived with only a scratch, but the crash was a wake-up call. “The policeman let me off too; it was really strange. I took it as a sign,” he says.

Months later, breathless and sweating, he heaved his bike over the rugged terrain of St. James Way in Spain. The historic pilgrimage trails gave him space to think. It was steep and hard, but that was the point. “I had all the answers I needed,” he recalls.

It was time to go home. Harb quit his job as a telecom consultant in Saudi Arabia and embarked on a new career as a winemaker. He knew nothing about running a vineyard, only that this was how he would honor his father and their land.

Would he recommend it? Harb, now 43, has spent years building a lifestyle many dream of—immersion in nature, rolling views, and rustic cooking—sustained by a homegrown business that feeds his soul. It’s everything he imagined, but not everyone finds what they are looking for. “Whether it’s a vineyard or an office, you eventually go back to facing the same problems,” he says.

Flexible work arrangements and the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated a counter-urbanization trend in countries around the world. Drained by digital overload and frantic schedules, people are seeking rural lifestyles in pursuit of a slower pace. But reality doesn’t always live up to the Pinterest board expectations.

“It doesn’t work if you’re not ready,” says Harb, who credits perseverance for his success. “You need to have faith in what you are doing and truly believe this is what you want in your life.”

In 2014, he traveled extensively, earning an OIV Master in wine management in France and developing his philosophy as he went. “There’s a lot of pretension around wine. In my mind, wine is rural, linked to nature, and accessible to everyone,” Harb says.

When he wasn’t traveling, he was back in Nehla, the tiny mountain village in north Lebanon where his father had left him a parcel of land. In 2012, when he began work, it hardly resembled a vineyard. Trees and bushes covered the ground, and the terraces had almost disappeared.

But he had overcome challenges before. Harnessing the ancient agricultural practices of the village, he brought balance back to the land.

The natural rhythms took him back to his childhood in these hills, where villagers discussed the phases of the moon in relation to planting cycles. Their gentle cultivation methods were in keeping with the principles of biodynamic farming, which uses organic practices guided by philosophy and cosmology.

Harb had learned about biodynamic farming on his travels and knew the movement was gaining momentum worldwide. Mounting demand for sustainable wine was fuelling interest in organic varieties, and Harb saw the potential to infuse contemporary viticulture with traditional methods that honor the origins of Lebanese wine.

In 2017, he launched Lebanon’s first biodynamic winery, focusing on indigenous grape varieties that offered a true taste of Lebanese terroir (land, soil, climate). This holistic approach, which views the vineyard as an ecosystem and farming as symbiotic with the land, proved a path to self-discovery.

“It’s an honest expression of the terroir, in complete harmony with the place and the human work,” he said.

Harb named his winery Sept, guided by a spiritual belief in the significance of the number 7 and the forces that drew him back to Lebanon. He had been abroad for 17 years, trying to escape the trauma of growing up during the war.

Harb was 17 when he left for France. He “couldn’t bear being in Lebanon anymore.” Ten years earlier, his father was killed while trying to save his brothers in the final battle of the Lebanese civil war. “He was hit by a bomb and died a week later in hospital. I have spent all my life trying to heal those scars,” he says.

Living abroad, he could block out the past, but whenever he returned home, he felt a powerful draw. “I needed to find a lifestyle that would put me at ease with the memory of dad; all my thinking took me back to the village, where he built our house,” he says.

To the outsider, it’s easy to see why he loves this place. The scenery grows more beautiful as the road curves upwards, winding through mountain villages surrounded by vineyards and wild flowers.

Sept today is an established name on the Lebanese wine scene with an award-winning Merweh that celebrates one of the country’s ancient grapes. Harb only works with Lebanese varieties. “I want to show the value of our heritage. This is wine from our land, not an imported Chardonnay or Merlot.”

In a country that has become synonymous with conflict and crisis, he is helping to revive the national image, reminding people that “we should be proud of what we have in Lebanon and take back what is ours.”

Navigating the challenges of recent years has forced him to build a business that’s resilient, though he doesn’t welcome that word. Like many Lebanese who have endured the impact of economic collapse, COVID-19, the Beirut Port blast, and now the conflict with Israel, he is tired of being patted on the back. “Stop saying we are resilient. Let’s change something so we avoid these challenges in the first place,” he says.

It hasn’t all been uphill. The best year, by far, was 2023. Sept had a reputation for food as well as wine, and word had spread about the farm-to-table culinary experiences Harb and his wife, Krystal, created.

Marriage was barely featured on Harb’s agenda before Sept. He saw it as a solo project. But when a journalist visited in 2016 to interview the rising star on Lebanon’s wine scene, the connection was immediate.

Together, the couple has created a seven-phase farm-to-table menu anchored in authentic village cuisine. As with wine, Harb’s food is about relishing what is truly Lebanese. “I think Lebanese food has been locked in this international presentation all over the world, and it didn’t really evolve,” he says.

These days, the business consumes most of his time. With a growing staff, what preoccupies him most is being a good employer. When the pandemic crisis prompted salary cuts and job losses across Lebanon, Harb responded by giving his team a raise and believes he has reaped the rewards. “Instead of trying to optimize my margins, I invested in this beautiful team that trusts me,” he says.

In 2023, when business was booming, he created a company in France to sell Sept wines to their expanding European market. “I had a feeling things might not keep going in the same direction,” he says. When war broke out in 2024, this safety net offset the dip in Lebanese sales.

Yet even in difficult times, people still come to Sept. Harb. It has built a dome with a roaring log fire so it can host visitors year-round. It’s not enough that he has created his own idyll; he wants others to share in it, too. But he is frank about the everyday stresses that accompany this way of life. “Today I am proud and happy, not because I live in a vineyard, but because I overcame the obstacles and I love what I do.”

His favorite time of year is harvest, when he casts everything aside—including, on occasion, his clothes—and connects with the natural world. It’s a personal, powerful moment of gentle harmony, when the balance he has restored in the land nourishes his spirit. But there is only so long he can stay still. There are many things that make Harb happy, and he has relinquished the idea of a single end goal. “I realize today life is not a destination. It’s about finding that alignment, with yourself and the things you love the most.”

Middle East Uncovered uses pseudonyms to protect our sources in Iran.

The first thing Kazem told me was that no one believed the regime would use live ammunition against unarmed civilians.

“We thought it would be tear gas,” he said. “Maybe rubber bullets. That’s what everyone prepared for.”

Kazem had never protested before January 8. He and his wife were not activists nor part of an organized movement. Like many middle-class Iranians, they were getting by materially, working, planning home renovations, living within the narrow space the Islamic Republic allows people who keep their heads down.

That changed after the Twelve-Day War in mid-2025, when Israel struck Iranian targets, and the regime claimed victory despite visible military humiliation. Something shifted in the country afterward—people were beginning to see cracks in the regime’s facade. It felt like a window of opportunity to fight for something better might be opening. To Kazem and to many others, the Islamic Republic emerged from those twelve days exposed and diminished.

“After June 2025, many women stopped wearing their hijab,” Kazem told me. “Many women stopped covering their hair at all… including my wife.” One reason, he said, was technical. “Their surveillance cameras stopped working.” Another was psychological. “They lost a lot of power. They didn’t feel as scary anymore.”

When Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince, called on Iranians to march on January 8 and 9 (the Iranian weekend), Kazem heard something different from past appeals. This time, people around him were actively preparing to make their voices heard.

“Everyone was talking about it,” he said. “Neighbors. Family. Friends. People were saying, If we don’t go out this time, then we shouldn’t complain anymore.”

So they prepared for what they believed the regime would do. During the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, the regime notoriously fired rubber bullets at protestors, often injuring or blinding those who were hit. That was the level of force Kazem and his wife were expecting.

So they bought workshop goggles to protect their eyes, layered their clothes to blunt the impact of pellet rounds, and watched videos on how to neutralize tear gas. They left their phones at home so they couldn’t be tracked. They were preparing for brutality, yes—but not for war. War implies two armed sides.

“We started watching tutorials on how to protect yourself in a protest,” he says. “If you get tear gas, what you should do… Don’t take your phone; leave your phone at home. We learned about the precautions. We asked ChatGPT. No one in their darkest mind thought they would bring machine guns onto the streets,” Kazem said.

What he would go on to describe to me was nothing short of a blood bath. An unchecked, brazen, brutal assault on the citizenry by the very forces supposedly charged with protecting them.

On January 8, Kazem went out with his wife to protest. Every kilometer or so, they would set a new meeting point in case they were separated.

“We were holding hands,” he said. “We couldn’t afford to lose each other.”

Kazem describes what protesters were trying to do in those early moments: disable cameras, silence propaganda, target symbols of state control. “We were part of the crowd that went for the TV… state TV complex,” he says. “People thought, let’s silence this regime. Let’s stop their propaganda. That way, they can’t lie and call us terrorists.”

They were, he emphasizes, “empty-handed. No guns, nothing.”

And then the regime arrived. What followed went beyond crowd control. The regime agents seemed to have been given orders to shoot to kill. He tells me about the trucks first—Toyota pickups with mounted machine guns. He saw them close enough to measure the distance in meters.

“I was 15 to 20 meters away from one of the trucks when he shot warning shots,” he says. “And the bullets are so powerful that they lit up the sky. They’re like fireworks, basically.”

In Rasht, a northern city where one of the deadliest massacres unfolded, witnesses told The Guardian they saw Toyota Hilux vehicles with machine guns move into the crowd, and that security forces fired on people fleeing burning streets.

Kazem’s account confirms that. They were being hunted.

“Why are they still shooting?” he remembers thinking on the second night. “We’re clearly running away.”

He tells me about a friend in Isfahan who ran with six others into alleyways as shots rang out. A motorbike with two men followed them—one driving, the other holding a gun. They turned. The bike turned. They ran again. The bike followed again. They hit a dead end and scattered behind whatever cover they could find.

And then the gunman fired into the alley and left.

The next morning, Kazem says, his friend went back and found a bullet embedded in the brick, and a spent casing on the ground. He kept it and made it into a necklace.

“He says, ‘I’m a dead man walking,’” Kazem tells me. “‘Here’s the casing of the bullet that was going to kill me.’”

Kazem tries to explain the feeling that haunted him most: that the shooters seemed incentivized, as if murder were a quota to be filled.

“It’s like someone says, ‘You know that man? If you shoot him, I’ll give you a million dollars,’” he says. “Or the more men you kill… I give you money. I can’t prove this, but it’s how it felt.”

He also described something more chilling than money: devotion.

“There are reports of them being foreigners, not even Iranian people,” he said—men he believes may have been recruited from militia networks supported by Tehran across the region. “So they are devoted to Khamenei himself,” he said. “They see him as the living imam of Shias.”

And then he added something that corroborates our reporting last week about regime agents “finishing” wounded protestors: “And you know about the reports that they walk amongst the injured… and give them a last bullet.”

Kazem tells me one story he did not witness directly, but that came from someone he trusts—his uncle, who went to see what remained after a machine gun was used in a small town in Isfahan province.

An individual on a motorbike, Kazem says, threw a Molotov cocktail toward one of the regime’s trucks and fled the scene. The soldiers, enraged, turned their heavy weaponry on the crowd.

“They pointed the machine gun at people and fired,” he says. “One bullet could pass through three people easily.” He described the guns as anti-aircraft weapons designed to bring down planes—being fired at people.

When the chaos subsided, the regime started scrubbing the evidence.

“They took the bodies away,” he says. “Cleared the evidence. They even washed the street. They washed the blood away.”

In the morning, his uncle went to the area and noticed that the once blood-red pavement was wet and clean.

“So it’s very clear that they washed the street,” Kazem says. “And my uncle saw parts of human bodies in the canal,” Kazem says, his voice tightening. “They were washed away from the street as if they were cockroaches.”

In Rasht, witnesses similarly described bodies being removed by dawn, with families later resorting to secret burials or struggling to retrieve remains due to fear of extortion. ABC News reported that internet and telephone access across Iran was cut on January 8, creating the longest digital blackout in the country’s history, with NetBlocks reporting outages lasting more than 400 hours. It still hasn’t been fully restored.

Kazem describes what that meant on the ground: isolation, rumor, and the sense that each neighborhood was being crushed one by one.

“With the internet shut down… people quickly figured out how to speak in code,” he says.

He and his wife ultimately left not only because they feared what might happen next (regime officers reportedly came to arrest participants after the fact, with many disappearing without any information about their whereabouts being shared with their families), but because they needed to keep working and required the internet to do so. And yet, Kazem tells me, the hardest part of leaving wasn’t distance from home.

“The hardest part is now we have access to the internet, and we can see there’s so little support,” he says. “There’s a huge lack of support for the massacre that happened in Iran. The same people who come out on the street and support people of Gaza… where are they?” he asks. “We’re human too.”

He isn’t asking for ideological conformity, but the lack of moral consistency enrages him.

“My countrymen didn’t die in a war,” he says. “Most people died defenseless on the streets where they grew up… at the hands of the armed forces that are meant to protect them.”

“I think I speak for a lot of Iranian people when I say… we just want revenge now with this regime,” he says. “We want them gone, but we also want revenge.”

He is careful to clarify that he doesn’t mean chaos or civil war, or weapons flooding the country. He doesn’t want to see what happened in Syria and Libya happen in Iran. He believes Iran is more cohesive than outsiders assume.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a civil war in Iran,” he says. “One, people don’t have guns. If we had guns, we would have fought back… Two, we don’t have anything against each other. Iran is the country of peace and love, trust me. Iran is the country of poetry. It’s not the country that supports terrorism. We’re not. And we are just so sick and tired of being called the number one terrorist supporter of the region.”

What he wants—what he believes many want—is targeted pressure against the regime’s repressive machine.

Then he says something that, to me, feels like quite the opposite of revenge.

“The love that exists among people in Iran is what holds this nation together,” he says. “What’s holding us… helping us to get through these hard times.”

Sanctions, he argues, crush ordinary people more than they restrain the regime. He lists the small humiliations outsiders don’t think about: the medication you can’t find, the cheap, unsafe cars you’re forced to drive, the impossibility of ordinary modern conveniences.

“There are things that are day-to-day ordinary things for you,” he says, “that’s a dream for an Iranian person.”

And still, he wants to go back.

“I feel like abandoning the ship is not what a good man should do,” he says. “We should stay… spread the love… enjoy the love that we give to each other.”

It is a beautiful sentiment, and also a tragic one, because it comes from someone who had to run for his life.

At one point earlier, Kazem compared the world’s silence now to Europe watching Hitler rise—an analogy that may sound extreme until you consider what it would feel like to be inside a country where the state is firing machine guns into crowds, washing blood from streets, arresting suspected dissenters indiscriminately, and turning off the internet to prevent images and testimony from leaving the country.

“We haven’t learned our lesson from history,” he tells me.

Maybe he’s right.

Or maybe the lesson is simpler, and more damning: that the world always learns—just too late, and at innocent people’s expense.

In the days since January 8th and 9th, the outlines of what happened have begun to emerge through satellite channels, leaked footage, phone calls on landlines, testimonies from people like Kazem who escaped, and the work of human rights groups trying to count the dead in the middle of a state blackout. In the coming days and weeks, we will continue to learn more about what really happened.

For now, Kazem is alive. He is safe. And he is speaking out. And he is doing it with the same dogged determination that has carried Iranians through decades of living under one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. He believes that if enough people tell the truth, the truth will eventually become harder to kill than the people who bear the burden of having had to carry it.

And maybe one day, Iran will truly be free.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday.

Jihad Mikati knows at a glance when calligraphy is the work of a master. There are subtleties that only another calligrapher could pick out. Time slows as he stands before a perfect piece, lost in the grace of the curves and the clarity of the strokes.

In an era where few people have time for meticulous art forms, these moments are precious. “Calligraphy calls for extreme patience,” Mikati says. “Even older generations don’t have this anymore.”

Cultivating this skill is the work of a lifetime. Mikati has been practicing calligraphy since 2014, when his eye was drawn by the neighboring stand at an art fair in Saudi Arabia.

A digital art professor at the time, he worked with rapidly evolving technologies. The idea of an ancient art form steeped in history held a powerful allure, so he asked to learn the basics.

Those early lessons set him on a path that would come to define his work. “It was like I found the grave of Ali Baba. I wanted to explore this new world,” he says.

There’s a mystical quality to finely-wrought calligraphy that connects the mind to a distant age. For many, it carries a spiritual significance, dating back to the dawn of Islam when the first Kufic scripts emerged.

Developed under the 7^th century Umayyad dynasty in Kufa, Iraq, Kufic was the original Qur'anic script before more familiar, cursive forms became commonplace.

The most famous example appears on Islam’s oldest standing monument at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, where Kufic inscriptions from the late-7^th century convey the significance of Islamic teachings through the beauty of the written word. For many, it’s enough just to look at Qur'anic calligraphy, which is considered to be a visual expression of the divine message.

Today, very few people can read Kufic, and the ancient art has come close to dying out. But in recent years, early scripts have resurfaced in street art, company logos, and advertising campaigns, as contemporary artists reimagine early styles for the modern age.

Yet even as early Arabic calligraphy enjoys a renaissance, traditional practitioners struggle to find work.

A hundred years ago, Lebanon’s calligraphers were in high demand, called on for shop signs, official documents, invitations, and decorations. These days, only the elite can afford calligraphy commissions. “This kind of job is almost gone. People use computer programs to do the work calligraphers once did,” Mikati says.

Nevertheless, he continues to refine his art, enjoying the creative fulfillment this brings. “I need to do calligraphy. It’s like the urge to hear a favorite song,” he adds. Between work and family life, those moments with his pen offer a sliver of serenity and a connection to one of Lebanon’s oldest traditions.

The Arabic script, which underpins Arabic calligraphy, originated in the Levant and developed into an art form with the advent of Islam. The revelation of the Quran spurred the development of scripts, and the practice flourished as calligraphers codified the proportions and refined distinct styles.

From the 10^th century, the bold geometry of Kufic softened into cursive scripts such as thuluth, known for its sweeping curves and ornamental complexity. Often used in mosques and Qur’anic inscriptions, it is also the most difficult script to master.

“The calligrapher who has perfected thuluth is a rare artist,” says Mikati, who specialises in Diwani, Naksh, and Riq’a but practices thuluth when he can.

Over time, more styles emerged as competing dynasties developed unique scripts to spread their message.

Under the Ottomans, a ‘secret’ script called Diwani was used by the imperial court, which closely guarded the rules to protect its prestige as a symbol of the Sultan’s authority.

The development of the first Arabic printing press in 1734 accelerated the dissemination of calligraphic texts across the Ottoman Empire. When it fell, Diwani remained in use and continues to be popular for artistic and decorative purposes.

For a while, it was the only calligraphy script that couldn’t be reproduced by computers, but more recent technological advances are digitizing even the most complex designs.

For Mikati, who specializes in the Diwani script, computers will never replace the human hand when it comes to capturing the precision and power of this florid form.

An accomplished piece of calligraphy must be “neat and precise,” he says, with the right distance between letters, a balanced composition, and clear lines.

While these requirements are within the reach of modern AI models, “computer programs can’t replace Arabic calligraphers,” when it comes to creativity, he says.

Done well, a piece of calligraphy will possess a distinct rhythm. In some pieces, the letters seem to move, swirling and arching across the page. Achieving this level of accomplishment takes many years, with rigorous training required to achieve a basic level of technical skill before a practitioner can refine their style.

Teaching students, Mikati begins with the traditional tools of the trade, including the Qalam. Made of reed or bamboo, the instrument is carved with a special knife to suit varying styles of script.

Inks are typically made from soot and gum arabic, with pots lined in raw silk to prevent blotting and ensure the qalam glides seamlessly across the page.

It can take a whole year to learn how to hold the pen correctly and develop the muscle memory for smooth, consistent strokes. Only then are students ready to begin learning letters.

“There is no shortcut to Arabic calligraphy. It must be step by step,” Mikati says.

A strict system of proportions governs calligraphy, where specific measurements for each letter ensure aesthetic harmony and a legible flow. In time, a dedicated calligrapher will develop their own style, incorporating artistic touches and a signature flair.

In Beirut, the work of Lebanon’s master calligraphers can be admired at art exhibitions, but in Tripoli, these displays are rare. “We need more focus on the culture of calligraphy in Tripoli,” says Mikati, who believes that Arabic calligraphy should be part of standard art curricula.

“We see it in architecture, books, writing. It’s as important as classical or baroque art,” he says.

In an age propelled by real-time updates and instant messages, spending hours shaping a single word may seem counterintuitive. But for Mikati and those devoted to Arabic calligraphy, there is pleasure in embracing the lost art of slowness. Time, effort, and patience, key ingredients for any artist, are crucial for the calligrapher, who must have “the discipline to craft each line precisely,” he says. This challenge is also what makes calligraphy rewarding, as each stroke demands focus, absorbing the mind in a rich tradition that refuses to be rushed.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday morning.

As a political cartoonist in Palestine, Mohammad Sabaaneh does not need to search far for inspiration. His office in the West Bank looks out over Israeli settlements, and he passes through checkpoints every week.

A regular contributor to Palestinian newspapers and featured in publications worldwide, he is known for his raw, uncensored portrayal of the brutalities that have been normalized in occupied Palestine.

“As a Palestinian, you cannot be an artist just because you want to draw; everything is connected with our political situation,” he says.

Sabaaneh’s prolific output, which includes four books, keeps him in the public eye at a time when journalists are dying in record numbers in Gaza. According to Reporters Without Borders, more than 210 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip since military operations began in October 2023, at least 56 of whom were “intentionally targeted,” the organization says.

Many of Sabaaneh’s friends and colleagues were among those killed in the war. The current conflict began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas massacred 1,195 people and took 251 hostage in Israel. “Each cartoon I have published since October 7 could be another reason to be killed or imprisoned,” he says.

Sabaaneh has already been incarcerated once. In 2013, he endured six months as a political prisoner in an Israeli detention center, an experience chronicled in his first book, Palestine in Black and White.

Prisons take many forms in Sabaaneh’s work, where concrete walls tower over children playing football, barbed wire encloses communities, and tanks hold families at gunpoint.

“Many Palestinian cartoonists are looking to glorify the Palestinian resistance, but I think my role is basically to convey these atrocities that people are facing inside Gaza,” he says.

A media blackout barring foreign and independent journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, except on escorted tours with the Israeli military, has severely constrained impartial reporting on the war. This restriction has global repercussions, shaping international narratives and fueling accusations of bias from all sides.

In the absence of live reporting, social media has filled the gap with voices on the ground in Gaza, but multiple reports of content moderation have pointed to disproportionate censorship of pro-Palestinian content on some platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.

Censorship is a recurrent theme in Sabaaneh’s cartoons. In one striking image, freedom of expression withers in a world where pens are bound and broken, not just in Palestine, but across the Arab world.

The introduction to his first book references the region’s grim history of silencing outspoken illustrators, including the 1987 assassination of prominent Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali in London.

Al-Ali was unflinching in his criticism of the situation in Palestine, and Sabaaneh has embraced this heritage. Born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Kuwait in 1978, he learnt about Palestine from Ali’s illustrations, before moving to Jordan and then the West Bank, where he began working as a cartoonist in 2002.

For those outside the orbit of Middle East media, Sabaaneh’s output offers a crash course in the symbols of suffering that articulate Palestinian reality. Gaunt, mouthless figures appear tethered and chained, trapped behind high fences and crushed beneath booted feet. Many are children denied the chance to flourish in a barren landscape where saplings are denied the opportunity to grow.

For the youth of Gaza and the West Bank, there is no escape. One young boy stands forlorn before an impassable ladder propped against the wall separating Israel and Palestine. Others are dragged past lifeless bodies by shadowy soldiers or entombed in concrete prisons, surrounded by the weapons of war.

From his tiny cell in solitary confinement, Sabaaneh traced these images into the air until he was able to steal paper from a guard and fill it with the horrors he had witnessed. Every time prisoners were released, he smuggled out sketches, hoping to show the world what life in Palestine is really like.

Capturing these moments was also a way of staying sane in a degrading environment. “I was ugly in prison,” says Sabaaneh, who filed his nails against cell walls to reclaim some semblance of humanity.

The final section of the book narrates this experience—the preordained sentence from a faceless judge, the pain of separation from loved ones, and the truth behind the romantic portrayal of political prisoners.

“In detention, I got to know my heroes and witnessed their agonies,” Sabaaneh writes. After that, he stopped glorifying Palestinian resistance fighters because “you dehumanize them when you just depict them as a superhero.”

Risking re-arrest, or worse, Sabaaneh refuses to be silenced. In 2022, he lost 15 years of content after his social media accounts were blocked. Three years later, he used the experience to inform his latest book.

In 30 Seconds from Gaza, Diary of a Genocide, published in 2025, he draws on social media footage from the war in Gaza. In Sabaaneh’s hands, these fragments of evidence are preserved for future generations, resisting attempts to rewrite history and wipe the truth away.

Penned in indelible ink, these cartoons feature identifying details that anchor their sources in reality. One illustration, from October 15, 2023, shows “A child screaming after the martyrdom of his father,” while a drawing of the previous day shows “A child carrying a small bird with him during displacement.”

Speaking at international events, Sabaaneh is sometimes surprised to see audience members cry. Palestinians are hardened to conditions others find unimaginable— “we became sick with this situation,” he says.

Sabaaneh’s work has earned him global acclaim. In 2017, he was awarded the Prix d'Or at the Marseille International Cartoon Festival, and in 2024, he received the prestigious Swedish EWK award.

But with recognition comes more attempts to muzzle him. Trips get canceled and speaking invitations are rescinded, often with no explanation.

In 2024, a board member resigned from the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF) in the UK over Sabaaneh’s involvement in the program. In this instance, the festival upheld his invitation. “That was a victory for freedom of speech,” he says.

Sabaaneh shrugs off accusations of anti-semitism as attempts to silence his commentary on the Israeli government’s actions in Palestine.

“I know I am not anti-semitic, my friends around the world are Jewish. It is our right as Palestinians to criticize this situation,” he says.

Abroad, he is reminded what ordinary life looks like, a life his daughter, 11, and son, 7, often ask about. At home in Ramallah, it’s easy to find meaning in his mission to document Palestinian suffering. But in Europe and the US, he sees how other children live.

“Like any parent, I want to raise my kids without telling them about the occupation, but unfortunately, we cannot. Everything connected to the occupation.”

Even so, he cannot countenance a life elsewhere. Since the war in Gaza, the number of political cartoonists in Palestine has dwindled, and Sabannah feels more than ever that he must remain, despite the risks.

Teaching at the Arab-American University in the West Bank, he advises young people to prioritize safety. “It’s not a target to be a prisoner. If you can keep working and conveying the voice of our people, that’s our victory,” he says. It’s a victory Sabaaneh claims with every cartoon, refusing to relinquish his right to speak out. Amid the media blackout on Gaza, his is one of the few voices that still breaks through, forcing the world to look, when it would rather turn away.

Huda Kattan is not just a makeup entrepreneur. The face of Huda Beauty, a global cosmetics empire now worth over $1 billion, her transparency, relatability, and makeup expertise resonated with millions, making her one of the most influential women in the world.

Kattan wasn’t merely selling lipstick, concealers, or eyeshadow palettes; she created a community, one that grew not from corporate brands or legacy cosmetics companies, but organically from her Instagram stories and YouTube tutorials.

People felt as if they knew her personally. But there’s a downside to that kind of influence and perceived intimacy with followers.

Kattan, who was born in the USA to Iraqi parents, is no stranger to speaking her mind. The “Free Palestine” activist uses her massive platform to comment on certain injustices. Last year, she was accused of being antisemitic due to her comments on Israel. And for the past week or so, Kattan has been embroiled in a fresh boycott.

The entrepreneur shared a video that seemed to show pro-regime protesters in Iran burning images of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah who was deposed in the 1979 revolution.

Iranians accused her of amplifying content that supported the Islamic Republic, a government with a well-documented record of abusing and killing its own people.

Online users argued that the video was erasing the voices of anti-regime activists and promoting state propaganda.

Kattan swiftly deleted the video from her Instagram stories, but not before the backlash spread, with the 42-year-old influencer facing accusations of supporting the Islamic Republic regime. Several consumers posted videos of themselves discarding or publicly denouncing Huda Beauty products. One Instagram reel had the caption “no filter can hide your lies.”

Since protests erupted in Iran on December 28, more than 6,000 are feared to be dead, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which also says 17,000 more recorded deaths are being investigated. Other sources believe the death toll has exceeded 36,000, but the verification is hampered by a near-total internet shutdown now in its fourth week. At least 42,324 arrests have been made across the country, with little news of their fate.

In the face of such brutality, “what [Kattan] is doing is not just careless, it is actively serving the Islamic Republic,” said British-Iranian activist Ellie Borhan, from the rights group Stage of Freedom.

“Some of these influencers have spent years talking about women’s empowerment, but when it comes to it, they don’t care about women who are raped, murdered, whose bodies are dismembered [by the Islamic Republic].”

As the uproar intensified, Kattan backtracked on her comments. Insisting that she was not pro-regime, “I also don’t know enough about the regime. I’ve heard a lot of mixed things,” she said. “I don’t think I have the right to have an opinion on what’s going on in Iran—this is just my opinion.”

The beauty mogul said a regime change orchestrated by the USA “is a scary thing,” before adding: “People out there are angry at me because they think that I support the regime of Iran or that I am supporting anything that is hurting the Iranian people—that’s just wild. I can’t believe anyone would think I would support that.”

But this “non-apology” has failed to satisfy Kattan’s critics.

“How can someone be so blind to what the Islamic Republic is doing?” said Borhan. “You don’t need to be a scientist or politician. You just need a bit of humanity and to not support the Islamic Republic.”

This is not the first time Kattan has found herself in hot water.

In July 2025, she shared a video in which she bizarrely claimed there was evidence that Israel was responsible for the First and Second World Wars, the 9/11 attacks, and the Hamas-led atrocities on October 7, 2023.

She deleted the video, but not before it was seen by 2 million TikTok followers.

Sephora was due to include Kattan’s company in its upcoming autumn campaign, but following the outcry, reportedly dropped Huda Beauty from the rollout.

Kattan took to social media to defend her conspiracy-laden comments, insisting that people were “taking it out of context… I did not even say anything about Jews, or even the Israeli people, so I chose to remove the video. It is no secret that I have been speaking out about Palestine for quite some time, and that happened as a result of me learning about the Palestinian cause.”

Claiming that there was a “smear campaign” against her, Kattan insisted that she was not antisemitic.

“I stand against hate and discrimination; the video was misinterpreted,” she added.

Huda Kattan is still a powerful businesswoman admired for her inclusive cosmetics brand and bold voice. But her controversies offer a lesson for influencers: we’re living in an era where every post or statement is dissected and goes viral within minutes. And the bigger your platform, the more you’re expected to get right, or face the consequences.

When celebrities have a large platform, be they actors, singers, or even beauty influencers, when should they speak out? How much is acceptable for them to say? Or is it simply easier to say nothing at all?

As Huda Kattan’s controversies show, blending beauty with activism is not as straightforward as blending your makeup.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday morning.

For most of the year, Rabbit Island in northern Lebanon is peaceful, its pale beaches and azure waters providing a sanctuary for rare plants and birdlife. After the polluted shores of the mainland, it feels like another world, but come summer, the calm is shattered as the idyllic retreat becomes a busy tourist resort.

From July to September, the visitor ban protecting the Palm Islands Nature Reserve in northern Lebanon is lifted, and day trippers flood in from the coast of Tripoli, eager to leave the noise of the city behind. Some even bring laptops, swapping the office for sea air and sunshine.

But within days of opening, the island’s two tiny beaches mirror their mainland counterparts, where plastic bottles, carrier bags, and chip bags wash in and out with the waves on the shore.

The tiny island, which measures 83,000 square feet, got its name from the introduction of rabbits for hunting during the French mandate. Today, the rabbits are long gone—though some claim to have seen their droppings—but the island remains a vital habitat for other species.

“There are plants here that are not grown anywhere else in Lebanon, endangered spiders and migrating birds, not to mention turtles that come to lay eggs on one of the beaches,” said conservationist Aziz Zawk.

Zawk, 43, has tirelessly campaigned to protect Rabbit Island, balancing the right of people to visit with the delicate ecosystem it supports.

But tourist season takes a heavy toll. Hundreds of people arrive each day, littering the island’s beaches, dumping boat fuel off its shores, and trampling over wildlife. During one clean-up campaign, Zawk and his team shifted around 400 kilos of garbage a day. “I even found a fridge once,” he recalled.

Every year, he watches as the island sanctuary becomes another city park, polluted and parched, undone by the influx of human life. “It means a lot to me. If people knew how precious it was, I think they would treat it in another way,” he said.

An EU-funded eco project in 2019 channelled tens of thousands of dollars into measures designed to protect the island and its inhabitants, but little of the work had any lasting impact. Trash continued to pile up, fishermen decimated local fish populations, and people ignored new pathways, damaging rare plants and disturbing turtle nesting grounds.

Yet that hasn’t deterred Zawk, who believes inaction is the biggest threat when it comes to protecting Lebanon’s future. “This country is really special in terms of the environment. People just need to take it seriously,” he said.

Born in Cyprus and raised in Florida, Zawk first saw Lebanon through a visitor’s lens. Driving through the streets, he noticed soda cans and chip bags lobbed from car windows—a familiar sight for local Lebanese. “I was shocked. You don’t see these things in other countries,” he said.

Going for a walk in the forest one afternoon, he watched picnickers light a BBQ among the trees, ignoring the ban on open fires. When he passed the same way later, he noticed dirty diapers and debris from their meal strewn over the ground.

It was a turning point for Zawk. In 2009, he gave up his job as a marketing director in Dubai and joined a Lebanese NGO to work on environmental projects. Learning about Lebanon’s landscapes, he realized the extent of the challenges ahead.

Lebanon is witnessing severe environmental degradation, compounded by high pollution levels, poor waste management, and unsustainable quarrying practices that are eroding the coast. Systematic mismanagement and political inertia have exacerbated these problems, but in recent years the impacts have grown harder to ignore.

Wildfires have devoured vast swathes of land, inching closer to the highest reserves, where ancient cedar trees crown snow-capped mountains, some of them more than 3,000 years old.

Closer to sea level, pollution hangs in a thick fog over Beirut, where heavy reliance on diesel generators has contributed to rising cancer rates.

“We’re not at crisis point yet, but we are going to reach it in 20 or 30 years if we don’t do anything about the situation,” Zawk said.

In September, Lebanon launched its most comprehensive climate package to date, laying out plans to mitigate climate disruption and move closer to meeting the Paris Agreement goals. However, the ongoing economic crisis leaves limited resources for environmental policies.

Pressure is beginning to mount as ordinary Lebanese see the effects on their quality of life. But in a system that supports vested interests, sustainable development is not the priority. “When it comes to construction projects in Lebanon, it gets political. It depends on who is making money out of it,” Zawk said.

On the coast, untreated sewage mingles with industrial waste and agricultural runoff, creating a toxic sludge. Many Lebanese now avoid swimming as concerns mount over pollution levels that kill aquatic life and contaminate rivers.

Clean water should be abundant in Lebanon, yet the country currently faces its worst water crisis in decades. “Most countries get their water from other countries, while we have enough water to supply our citizens from our rivers, and we are polluting them,” Zawk said.

It’s the younger generation that spurs him on—the student activists and Gen Zers calling for change. “They come up with amazing ideas. When you find young people who understand the problems and what should be done, that’s when you know you should keep going,” he said.

He’s back in Cyprus now, working on a new project. Rising early every morning to walk his dog, he looks out across the Mediterranean towards Lebanon, just over 100 miles away.

His mind drifts to Rabbit Island and the unspoiled beauty spot that emerged during the clean-up campaign. For a brief period, it felt reclaimed, a place where wildlife flourished, and different species could coexist.

That daydream has evaporated now, but he won’t give up. After seeing forests burn, coastlines plundered, and beaches blanketed in trash, he believes the smallest efforts still matter. “I don’t care whether my name is associated with it or not, but I would like to make a difference,” he said. There is still time for change, but time is running out, and Zawk feels compelled to continue, despite the setbacks. “I sleep better at night doing what I do,” he said.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday morning.

Before her first day as a Member of Parliament (MP) in 2020, Dina Bashir did a practice run. She drove to the Jordanian Parliament building and stood alone in its vast halls, wondering what this new chapter would bring.

“The moment the doors opened and I saw the dome, I felt a mix of emotions—I was anxious, overwhelmed, and deeply moved all at once,” Bashir said.

Days later, watching King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein make a formal entrance, the gravity of her new role hit her. “It felt surreal—like stepping into a scene I had watched on TV for years,” she said.

At 35 and new to politics, Bashir would be one of the youngest women to serve in the House of Representatives, Jordan’s lower chamber. It was an exciting opportunity, but she was also apprehensive. “You know your life is never going to be the same,” she said.

Only 15 women had been elected to the 130-seat parliament, five fewer than in the previous 2016 election, which was hailed as a breakthrough for female representation in Jordan.

But in 2020, voter turnout was down, and the mood was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the country struggled to balance its debt-ridden economy, Bashir realized that before she could make an impact, there was a familiar hurdle to overcome.

Male MPs in Jordan benefit from established networks that make Parliament easier to navigate, while women are often treated as outsiders. Bashir, fresh from the private sector and expecting to be taken seriously, soon realized it would take time. “Every day you need to prove that women are capable of performing this role,” she said.

Prior to taking office, she worked at one of the country’s most prestigious law firms after completing her studies at the University of Jordan and University College London.

The pace of private sector life was stimulating, but interpreting Jordanian law had its limits. When she was invited to run for office, she saw an opportunity to engineer real legal change.

Jordan was embarking on a period of reform, buoyed by years of advocacy from a growing women’s rights movement. Bashir was already part of it.

When the results came in on election night, she felt a surge of satisfaction. After years of deciphering legal texts, she could finally use the law to change women’s lives. “You feel joy because you have gained the trust of so many people,” she said.

Then came a reality check as she adjusted to the dynamics of a male-dominated parliament. “You realize it’s not going to be as easy as you thought,” she added.

For female MPs in Jordan, securing a seat in Parliament is only half the struggle. The quota guarantees a minimum of 18 seats for women, but critics say this system privileges gender over ability and can marginalize female MPs as a result.

Others counter that quotas, first introduced in 2003, are necessary to break cultural barriers and normalize women’s presence in decision-making spaces.

Jordan’s patriarchal norms have long cast women as unfit for political life. Strict stereotypes reinforcing the role of women as wives and mothers have discouraged many from pursuing careers traditionally dominated by men. However, perceptions are gradually shifting as women become more visible in public life.

Recent reforms have improved access for female candidates, who won almost 20 percent of seats in the 2024 election, up from 14 percent. The 2022 Political Parties Law requires at least 20 percent of a party’s founding members to be women, and a 2021 reform increased women’s representation in local councils to a minimum of 25 percent.

Despite these gains, women remain under-represented in all areas of political life.

“Female politicians in Jordan often face a persistent stereotype claiming their success is primarily due to the women’s quota, and that their political influence is limited in scope,” Bashir said.

“Quotas alone are not enough. They must be complemented by real work on the ground—economic empowerment, political training, and sustained engagement with communities,” she added.

Her Parliamentary position enables her to serve as a bridge between activists and decision-makers, ensuring issues affecting women are heard at the highest levels. “The doors are open, and female voices are heard. There is a lot more support from the system,” she said.

Bashir was among the MPs championing changes to the country’s labor law when it was updated in 2023 to extend maternity leave and lift legal restrictions on the type of jobs open to women. The reforms were a major victory for women’s rights campaigners, but the process also proved to be a learning curve.

“I believed it would be easy to communicate with other MPs and convince them. I was faced with the reality that not all MPs are from the same background or community,” Bashir said. “You need to go outside your bubble and see how others interpret the issue.”

Now in her second term, Bashir has found her voice as a politician. A member of the legal committee in Parliament and chosen to serve as assistant to the Speaker of the House, she has influence and a track record of advocating for change.

She believes the country’s new party system will create a more competitive environment and encourage strong female candidates to step forward.

“There are struggles we need to figure out, including economic stability for women and changing cultural stereotypes, but we have managed to guarantee that women are represented in a decent way in Parliament,” she said.

At times, her work requires a thick skin, particularly when navigating sexist remarks on social media. But she takes her job as a role model for other women seriously.

“In countries all over the world, women are facing challenges. You need to be strong so others feel motivated and empowered by your success.”

Today, political reforms are laying the foundations for a more progressive path in Jordan. As legal barriers drop away, women are re-framing their role, gradually dismantling the cultural barriers that have excluded them from public life. As more women step into politics, Bashir is confident Jordan can carve out a competitive edge in the region.

“Ultimately, no decision-making table can be complete or credible without women as full partners in shaping the future,” she said.

As Jordan’s political landscape slowly evolves, Dina Bashir’s experience reflects both the progress made and the work still ahead. Her ascent as an influential lawmaker shows that women are no longer asking for a seat at the table, but actively shaping decisions, asserting influence, and reshaping the political space they have worked so hard to occupy.

Ronnie Chatah greets me over Zoom with the calm assurance of someone who has spent years explaining Lebanon to audiences who only think they understand it. He speaks with precision and warmth, with a voice that makes complex ideas feel legible without flattening them.

From the first moments of our conversation, it’s clear that he sees Lebanon as a complicated but beautiful country shaped by trauma, a people unwilling to cede their dogged sense of hope, and a history that never quite stays confined to the past.

Chatah is 44, and, by his own count, has seen “one too many wars” in Lebanon. Growing up, conflict arrived in cycles: chaos followed by a stretch of “relative calm,” a little growth, and then regression again.

How he sees Lebanon now is filtered through those cyclical repetitions. When I ask whether the latest shifts—a new president, another ceasefire with Israel, and foreign envoys shuttling through Beirut—have changed anything, he doesn’t hesitate.

“I’m not a big fan of putting too much expectation on moments of what looks like maybe perceived hope,” he tells me. He has seen this movie before: international enthusiasm, big speeches, headlines about turning points—and then the slow slide back into stagnation.

Since early 2025, Lebanon has had a new president: Joseph Khalil Aoun, a former army commander, who was elected after more than two years of political deadlock. His rise was hailed in some corners as a sign that Iran’s influence might be waning and that the Lebanese state could finally reclaim some authority.

Inside Lebanon, the reality has been more complicated. Aoun has pushed to revive the 1949 armistice agreement with Israel and expand indirect talks over the border, arguing that this is the only way to stop Israeli airstrikes and secure the release of Lebanese captives.

Hezbollah condemned the move as a “blunder,” warning that the state would be making concessions without getting anything real in return.

Chatah isn’t shocked by this kind of standoff. For him, it’s not a story of heroes and villains, but of expectations colliding with structures that haven’t changed.

“The president spoke a language of concern,” he says. “He sounded proactive on neutralizing Lebanon. People heard that and thought, ‘Maybe this time.’ But he’s still a consensus president. Without Hezbollah’s blessing, he wouldn’t have become president. So how far can that go?”

He pauses.

“I think people had higher expectations than they should have.”

Chatah spends much of his professional life talking about the consequences of political violence and armed sub-state groups like Hezbollah—often, as he puts it, to make sure the group doesn’t win a false narrative it has attempted to construct of pro-Palestine and anti-Israel resistance.

As Iran confronts renewed internal unrest driven by economic collapse, public dissatisfaction, and mounting pressure on the regime, the question of how that instability reverberates across the region has become unavoidable. For Lebanon, the stakes are especially high. Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah has long been framed as a question of bandwidth: does Tehran, when under stress at home, pull back from Lebanon, or lean on it more aggressively?

Chatah rejects the premise. In his view, Iran’s regional posture is inseparable from regime survival itself. If the regime were ever to face an existential threat, he argues, restraint would not be the likely outcome. “If the regime is really at risk of falling,” he says, stressing that there is “no indication as of yet that that is what’s happening,” his assumption is that Tehran would “activate their proxies as a last means of survival.” In that scenario, Lebanon would not become quieter. It would likely become “far more volatile before the end of the regime there in Tehran.”

Chatah also cautions against assuming that domestic instability reduces Iran’s capacity or willingness to project power through Hezbollah. He describes the relationship not as a discretionary investment but as “an organic, very, very critical relationship” tied to Iran’s survivability “both at home and abroad.” Even after Hezbollah suffered heavy losses in the most recent war with Israel, and even amid growing pressure for disarmament, “Iran still funds this militia as it exists.” For Chatah, Lebanon remains a frontline because Tehran has structured its regional strategy around militias beyond its borders.

What has changed, he argues, is Hezbollah’s autonomy. As Israel has hit the group aggressively, “Iran is in more control of Hezbollah than it would like to be,” he says. “The autonomy of the group has been sacrificed entirely.” That tighter command-and-control relationship, he adds, is not a sign of Iranian confidence but of overreach—an uncomfortable arrangement born of losses rather than strength. Whether Iran’s internal turmoil deepens or stabilizes, Chatah’s assessment is that Hezbollah remains central to Tehran’s calculations, and Lebanon remains exposed to the consequences.

“The Hezbollah of pre-October 8, 2023, will never reemerge,” he says. In his telling, the militia-party that spent four decades perfecting its role as Iran’s most successful proxy—subduing the Lebanese state, shaping its security, steering its foreign policy—was broken by last year’s war. Not by Lebanese politics, and not by some sudden flash of accountability, but by the sheer cost of the confrontation itself.

“They lost their entire command structure and their secretary general, who at some point was more prophet-like than a militia leader,” Chatah says. “That Hezbollah is over.”

What exists now, in his view, is something more naked: a group less autonomous, more directly an “organic reflection of the Iranian regime in Lebanon.” A Hezbollah that may never again be able to wage a full-scale war with Israel, not because it doesn’t want to, but because the price it paid was too high.

Meanwhile, the war itself never fully ends.

A ceasefire separates Israel and Hezbollah on paper, but drones overhead, artillery exchanges on the border, and periodic airstrikes put Beirut back into the headlines. Israel has hit Hezbollah targets in the southern suburbs multiple times (as recently as this week) since the truce, including strikes on underground infrastructure and operations that killed senior commanders. Israel claims the country has not upheld its end of the ceasefire agreement, which included a Lebanese pledge to disarm militant groups.

For most Beirutis, the pattern is familiar. Explosions a couple of kilometers away, the eerie hum of drones, and the quiet everyday calculation of how close is too close.

“In times of war,” Chatah says, “there’s a serious risk simply being in Beirut. But I don’t think the Israelis are interested in disarming Hezbollah. They’re interested in preventing future war with Hezbollah. That’s their concern.”

He says it with the resigned clarity of someone who has learned to live inside that gap between what’s morally necessary and what’s politically likely.

If you only followed Lebanon through breaking-news alerts, you would think the country oscillates between violence and ceremony—airstrikes in the southern suburbs, diplomatic visits and symbolic prayers—rarely pausing long enough to show how people actually live in between.

Late last year, Pope Leo finished his first foreign trip with a waterfront Mass in Beirut, praying for peace and visiting the ruins of the 2020 port explosion—a blast that killed more than 200 people and has become a symbol of Lebanon’s broken justice system.

He stood at the blast site alongside officials accused of obstructing the investigation, calling for accountability while victims’ families listened. Later, he joined Christian and Muslim leaders in Martyrs’ Square to praise Lebanon’s tradition of coexistence—a reminder that this tiny, exhausted country is still home to the largest Christian population in the Middle East, and to a constitutional system that insists, at least on paper, that power be shared.

Chatah watched it all with a sense of déjà vu.

“John Paul II came to Lebanon in 1997,” he says. “It’s almost repetition—the same messages, the same expectations, the same pain. Thirty years later, we’re still here, still not going the way we should.”

He is not a religious man. “I have no relationship to God,” he tells me, but he went out to see the pope anyway. He is drawn to moments that reveal Lebanon’s contradictions: a Christian president welcoming a pope in a country where many Christians have emigrated; Hezbollah supporters waving Vatican flags while their movement’s leaders reject disarmament; a multi-faith crowd cheering a man in white robes against the backdrop of drones and debt.

“The country is broken,” he says, “but it’s also genuinely tolerant in ways you don’t find in many places. That’s something I cherish. Beirut is still a cosmopolitan city that pulls in the region’s best—or used to, at least.”

People keep asking Chatah what he is. Analyst? Historian? Activist? Advocate? He’s given so many talks, panels, podcasts, and TV hits that the question feels inevitable.

“That’s the only question I struggle with answering,” he admits. “I don’t know the answer.”

What he does know is that his work revolves around storytelling, around taking things back in time, but not so far back that they harden into museum pieces. He is allergic to both exoticized portrayals of Lebanon and the romanticization of “resistance.” He doesn’t want former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to be revered by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist advocates, but he also doesn’t want criticism of Hezbollah to slide into sectarian hatred or simplistic geopolitical binaries.

“I live in that space,” he says—the uncomfortable middle, where extremism from any direction looks more similar than different once it reaches its edge.

He has spent years walking people—literally—through Beirut’s living memory with his WalkBeirut tour (currently on hold due to the ongoing crisis), stopping at intersections where Ottoman villas lean into French-era facades and glass towers, and explaining how a broken political system rose from the rubble. He later built The Beirut Banyan podcast as a kind of audio extension of those walks, a place where conversations about politics, history, and grief can breathe.

He knows what political violence feels like up close. In 2013, his father, the economist, former finance minister, senior foreign affairs advisor, and Ambassador to the US Mohamad Chatah, was assassinated in a car-bomb attack downtown attributed to Hezbollah.

Chatah has said he no longer expects Lebanon’s political system to produce a serious investigation or meaningful accountability, whether in his father’s case or in other political assassinations. But he insists he is not a cynic.

“Not cynical,” he insists. “Cynicism is an ugly trait. I don’t like cynicism. But yes, I am pragmatic.”

The distinction matters to him. Cynicism suggests giving up on meaning; Chatah is still betting on it.

On paper, Chatah’s “community” is made up of diplomats, analysts, ministers, and—increasingly—influencers. He’s on calls with cabinet officials one moment and going back and forth with anonymous TikTok geopolitics “experts” the next.

But he doesn’t mistake any of that for friendship.

“None of that is pleasure,” he says. “Real pleasure and real friendship have nothing to do with this stuff.”

His favorite nights are spent in the mountains, looking at the sky with people who want to talk about anything but Lebanon’s latest crisis. He gets visibly uncomfortable at the idea of an ideological friend group.

“I get turned off when it’s an echo chamber,” he says. He wants disagreement at the dinner table, not just on cable news.

And despite job offers abroad, he hasn’t left Lebanon in six years. “I do what I can to make opportunities remote,” he says, half-joking. “Everyone says, ‘You have to leave, you have to work in the office.’ I prefer not to.”

He has lived in Texas, Virginia, the Czech Republic, and the UK. When I ask him about his favorite place outside Lebanon, he surprises me by naming Washington, DC.

“Maybe it’s the right size,” he muses. “And there’s a real reflection of the world in that city, too. Beirut has a version of that.”

What keeps him tethered isn’t faith or blind optimism. It’s a stubborn insistence that Lebanon’s pluralism, its strange experiment in power-sharing among minorities, its free-speech culture and instinctive tolerance, is still worth fighting for.

When I finally ask him what hope looks like, he laughs softly, like he’s been bracing for the question.

“Hope for Lebanon,” he says, “is having this inefficient, outdated, maybe even retrograde experiment—this sectarian system, this weird way of power sharing among minorities—begin to function again in a way that’s meaningful and not compromised by war.”

For Chatah, tangible progress won’t arrive as another brief tourism boom or a couple of good summers. Lebanon’s flourishing requires sovereign resolution, an end to being used as a launchpad for other countries’ wars, and a foreign regime that no longer shapes the country’s security and foreign policy through local militias.

He doesn’t need to see the happily-ever-after himself to wish for it.

“I’d like to see the page turn,” he says. “Maybe a chapter closing by the end of my life. I don’t need to see how it works long term. I don’t have that much time. But I’d like to see it at least flicker again and begin to work.”

Outside, the drones keep circling over Beirut. Down on the waterfront, memories of the pope’s Mass and the port blast sit uneasily together. In Baabda, the president is busy reassuring foreign envoys that Lebanon wants peace while arguing with a militia that refuses to disarm.

In the meantime, Chatah keeps doing what he does best: telling the story honestly, so that when Lebanon finally turns the page, someone will remember how we got here.

“What It’s Like To Be” takes readers inside the lives of people working in remarkable and often demanding professions across the Middle East. Each installment offers an intimate look at the realities shaping their daily world. Look for WILTB in your inbox every Sunday morning.

In spare moments, Wassim Naghi likes to step back in time. Slipping between the buildings of the old city in Tripoli, he winds through labyrinthine passageways that open onto historic mosques, hammams, and a medieval caravanserai.

His family heritage is written into these walls, where vaulted ceilings, hidden courtyards, and carved stonework summon the atmosphere of earlier days.

“I live with all my senses. The smell of the souq, the scenery of this place makes me feel I was living in those times,” he said.

The old souq is busiest in the evening as shoppers jostle around stalls selling roasted nuts, vegetables, perfumes, and fresh meat. Naghi, 57, knows them all. An expert in historic buildings, he has restored many sites in the old quarter, reviving vital heritage that has faded with time.

As a professional architect, he has worked on projects across the region, but only feels rooted when he returns to Tripoli and wanders through its 700-year-old marketplace. This is where architecture comes alive, restoring his faith in a place that feels forgotten.

“You can sense the spirit of the city, feel its urban fabric and the social bonds of the people that lived here,” he said.

The last half-century has been tumultuous in Lebanon. Top of his class in university, Naghi had high hopes for his career, but working in a country beset by crises has thwarted his ambitions. “In some ways, the war was never over…. Since 2005, we have never had a long period of prosperity and stability,” he said.

Nevertheless, he chose to return home from Abu Dhabi in 2004, where he worked on some of the most prestigious projects in the region, including the Emirates Palace Hotel and the World Trade Center Abu Dhabi. “It was not my playground of creativity and design,” said Naghi, who spent the COVID-19 lockdowns studying and recently secured his PhD in Architecture and Landscape Sciences.

Visiting the old souq reinforces his mission to rescue Tripoli’s urban heritage from the ravages of modern decline. Recent decades have taken their toll on the Mediterranean city, where unrestrained development has consumed public spaces with construction projects that prioritize profit over design.

Once a commercial center with a busy port, the city’s wide streets and spacious seafront recall the promise of a more prosperous era. But poverty, corruption, and conflict have gutted Tripoli, crowding out memories of its 1960s heyday.

Vintage photographs on café walls offer a glimpse of this time, when ambitious modernization projects were planned across the country. This was a golden age in Lebanon, when the banking sector blossomed, and tourism boomed.

A vibrant movie scene emerged in Beirut, where five-star hotels became bywords for jet-set glamour. In the bars of The Saint Georges Hotel and The Phoenicia, international film stars rubbed shoulders with writers, and intellectual freedom flourished.

But it was Beirut’s lesser-known cousin, Tripoli, that would host a grand new exhibition ground to turn Lebanon into a regional hub for tourism and trade.

In 1962, the celebrated Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer was chosen to design a modernist marvel that would drive development in Tripoli and position Lebanon on the global stage. Best known for his work on Brasília, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect planned a concrete masterpiece that would rival exhibition grounds across the region.

But it was never finished.

Construction dragged on for over a decade, stalling shortly before completion. Frustrated, Niemeyer wrote to the Lebanese government urging progress, but in 1975, the Lebanese Civil War broke out. As fighting continued for years, the project was abandoned, its sweeping arches and concrete curves left to crack under the hot sun.

Half a century later, the fairground has become a “wasted dream” and a symbol of broken promises amid decades of decline.

“The site is screaming, but nobody’s listening,” said Naghi, who monitors the degradation of its concrete structures, which require vast sums of money to fully restore.

Yet even in this dilapidated condition, he sees its potential. In 2019, Naghi founded the Niemeyer Heritage Foundation-Tripoli to safeguard the site, today known as the Rashid Karami International Fairground.

The foundation’s first step was to secure legal recognition of the fairground’s cultural value and protect it under national legislation. Then they set about establishing it alongside other architectural wonders worldwide.

In January 2023, after eight years of work, the fairground was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, acknowledging its value as one of the most representative pieces of modern architecture in the Arab states.

The foundation celebrated this success with a steel bust of Niemeyer, unveiled in November this year. It overlooks the entrance, where Naghi is preparing plans to restore one of the 15 structures on site. “It’s the first time Niemeyer has been present here for more than 50 years. Many Tripolitans hardly know his name,” he said.

Today, the fairground lies empty, its concrete ruins ignored by passersby. Some say it’s a dead place, cursed by former landowners evicted from the site. Others, like Naghi, see romance in its plight. “It leaves you to imagine how it should really look,” he said.

This is how he likes to work, with imagination and insight. Architecture, Naghi believes, must be authentic and original, not curated or compiled. He warns against the collage approach that’s becoming common with AI. “Good architecture starts with blank paper,” he tells the university students he teaches.

Sensory experiences fuel Naghi’s creativity. He designs to music, connecting the mood to lines on the page. “I visualize myself walking through the finished building, feeling proud of the quality of the space.”

It’s a profoundly human process that draws on skills and perspectives shaped by decades of design. This is not something AI can mirror, at least not yet, he said.

Nor can it unlock the potential of places like Tripoli’s abandoned fairground to breathe new life into their environment. Naghi has been coming to the site since childhood, wondering how its story might unfold. Now he is reclaiming its potential as the centerpiece of a city that has been denied opportunities to evolve.

“Good architecture is a magnet for investment… once this place is vibrant, it will create jobs, boost the economy and attract visitors to Tripoli,” he said.

Spending time in Tripoli’s old souq and its abandoned fairground forge emotional connections for Naghi that can’t be conjured online. These are places where stories from the past and opportunities for the future mingle, inspiring him to fight for a city that has long been sidelined.

The feelings they summon are an expression of architecture’s magic, an intangible element that can’t be defined. It’s what Niemeyer achieved with a space that, over 60 years later, has achieved recognition as a modernist masterpiece. “I have been visiting Niemeyer’s fairground all my life,” Naghi said. “Every time I go, it feels like the first time.”

There’s a grand painting of Edwin Shuker that hangs in his living room. Visually opulent, it shows him praying before the tomb of the prophet Ezekiel in Iraq.

Located within the Al-Nukhailah Mosque complex in Babylon province, the tomb is draped in an emerald-green cloth embroidered with the words “peace be upon Ezekiel” in golden Arabic.

The intensity of Shuker’s prayer can be felt thousands of miles away here in England.

How he gained access to the site “was a miracle,” he says, smiling.

We meet in his north London home, which he shares with his wife Esther, over coffee and a baklava made by his 93-year-old mother, who lives nearby. The outgoing vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the 70-year-old is a leading figure among diaspora Jews.

But the story he wants to share begins long ago, in a Baghdad that no longer exists.

The eldest of three children, Shuker was born in Iraq in 1955 to one of the most ancient of all Jewish communities. Jews had lived in Babylon since the 6th century BC, after being exiled from the Kingdom of Judah. Even when the Persian king Cyrus the Great later allowed them to return, many stayed, establishing communities that flourished for over 2,500 years.

By the time Shuker was born, Iraqi Jews were woven into the fabric of the country. His family lived in relative prosperity—they even had a butler. The first eight years of his life were “paradise.” No one felt different, he insists, until much later.

There were, however, moments of upheaval and persecution. The Farhud massacre was a Nazi-inspired pogrom that erupted in Baghdad on June 1, 1941—some 180 Jews were killed and thousands injured. Within a decade, most Iraqi Jews emigrated to Israel. The creation of the Jewish state in 1948 also led to more violence.

Most of Shuker’s extended family fled. The intention was to join them in Israel eventually, but when the Shukers heard “they were living in refugee camps,” they stayed put.

Slowly but surely, that paradise started unravelling after 1963, when a coup led by the nationalist Ba’ath Party overthrew and executed Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. Jews were forced to carry yellow ID cards that singled them out in public. They were forbidden from travelling and had their passports confiscated. They could no longer study certain subjects at universities, nor join social clubs or hold certain jobs. Telephones were confiscated and their movements monitored.

“They would accuse us of being the fifth column,” says Shuker. He didn’t even realize he had extended family until he left Iraq; speaking about relatives in Israel was dangerous. “Even mentioning Israel by name was forbidden.” Newspapers blanked out its name.

Then, in 1968, Saddam Hussein became vice president, and Jews were an even bigger target. On January 27, 1969, 14 Iraqis—10 of them Jewish—were publicly hanged in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, a spectacle broadcast nationwide.

For the Shukers, the situation had become intolerable.

At 3pm on August 13, 1971, Shuker’s father gathered the family and told them they were leaving Iraq. They had just two hours to pack one small bag and nothing bearing their real names.

They left in the dark and were smuggled through the Kurdish mountains in the north. The family hid in a coffee shop basement until dark before continuing to Iran. From there, they flew to Britain and claimed asylum.

Though safe, life in England brought its own challenges.

“When I arrived, it seemed like it rained every single day for four or five months!” Shuker laughs. “We were used to sunshine. But here there was darkness. I was a fish out of water.”

Shuker’s ideas about England came from reading Dickens novels. “I thought everyone wore bowler hats and carried sticks. We thought they’d be big, tall people because they were rulers of the British Empire.”

He felt the country was “not welcoming to foreigners, probably nothing has changed,” he says, reflecting momentarily on current politics. His “Oriental looks” set him apart, as “they weren’t used to people of color.”

I ask Shuker if being a Jew made his integration in Britain more difficult. “Not really because at that point I had decided I didn’t want to be labeled as a Jew anymore,” he admits. “As a child, I used to cry silently and scrub my skin, asking God why he created me as a Jew if it was such a crime.”

Education helped him adapt. The British-style schooling he received in Iraq meant he knew enough English to pass his A-levels, before going on to study Mathematics at the University of Leeds, and later becoming a successful businessman.

Although Shuker had wrestled with his Jewish faith, he gradually re-embraced it before marrying Esther in 1987. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Esther’s family is Ashkenazi; he recalls how the British Jewish community felt alien when he first arrived, as most were of European descent.

In Baghdad, neighbors walked freely into one another’s homes. “Our doors were never locked. Here, in London, it took years before my mother even talked to the neighbors.”

His work in the community eventually led to his election as vice president of the European Jewish Congress, as well as vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews—the first Arabic speaker to hold the title.

Given his history, it is no surprise that Shuker is passionate about the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. His proudest achievement was his involvement in the Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community, a project about Jews of color, shaped directly by his experience as an outsider.

Despite building a family in London, Shuker never once forgot about Baghdad. In 2003, after the US-led invasion, Shuker did something he thought impossible—he went back to Iraq.

His father had recently died, never fulfilling his wish to return to his homeland to collect his law documents. As a lawyer, his father “never forgave himself for running away with forged papers.”

Shuker recalls feeling shaky when the taxi to the airport arrived, unsure whether he would even step onto the plane. But he did, and not only did he reconnect with his roots; he recovered his father’s documents.

Shuker’s story, and those of other Mizrahi Jews, is featured in Remember Baghdad, a 2017 documentary charting the 2,500-year presence of Jews in Iraq: a community that once made up a third of Baghdad and included parliamentarians, judges, scholars, musicians, socialites, and so on.

Shuker has returned several times, often at personal risk. In May 2022, the Iraqi parliament passed a law that makes it a crime to normalize ties with Israel. Violations can be punishable by death.

Yet Shuker remains undeterred. He is a big supporter of the Abraham Accords. Brokered by the US, the deal normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain in September 2020, followed by agreements with Morocco and Sudan later that year. The deal has established full diplomatic ties and fostered economic, security, and cultural cooperation between countries that were once enemies. This year, Kazakhstan signed the Accords.

Although relations came under strain during the Israel-Gaza war after October 2023, Jews can wear their kippahs openly and even have a house of worship in Abu Dhabi.

“It’s a dream I never thought would happen in my lifetime,” Shuker smiles. “To be welcomed and celebrated in an Arab, Muslim country, not merely tolerated. It took me back to the first eight years of living in Iraq.”

He believes Jews and Muslims lived in relative peace for centuries, “but what changed was three things: Nazism, which was exported to the Arab world; Zionism and the creation of Israel; and Arab nationalism,” says Shuker. “I’ve always believed that pure antisemitism was a European evil. It was exported during the Nazi period. Yes, you’ll hear people saying Arabs treated Jews as Dhimmis who had to pay for protection, but I believe this is revisionist. Jews lived side by side with Arabs.” The Abraham Accords, he says, are a return to that state, and have “proved their resilience and permanency.”

Israel, says Shuker, can be the “Jewish quarter of a new Middle East.”

These days, Shuker’s base is largely in the UAE, as he feels “safer as a Jew in an Arab Muslim country than in Europe.”

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, “anti-Israel sentiment has often spilled over into antisemitism,” says Shuker. Most recently, that has had murderous consequences—in Manchester, where worshippers were targeted outside a synagogue on Yom Kippur, and in Australia, where 15 people were murdered at a Chanukah party in Bondi Beach.

Rather than allowing such violence to deepen divisions, Shuker has dedicated his life to nurturing conversations that once seemed impossible.

“I’m a diaspora Jew, I’m culturally Arab. I feel I am the bridge between cultures,” he says.

As for Iraq, Shuker’s determined not to be “the last link in a chain of a hundred generations going back to 586 BCE,” when his ancestors were taken captive to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. “I’m not going to let go of that history and legacy. Jews and Arabs were neighbors and partners; they were intimately connected. The Middle East was built on this,” he adds.

Like the painting of him praying at Ezekiel’s tomb in his London home, Shuker stands between worlds, determined that the link between Jews and Arabs will not fade on his watch.