Here I wanted to share with you the keynote speech I wrote for the SWANA Heritage Month that was celebrated at the University of Maryland on the 29th of April, 2024. I hope it gives you something like it gave me something to write it. Big thanks and love to MICA and to everyone who helped in this with special thanks to Hana Zewdie.
i am from resilience
Good evening everyone and Salam 3alaykum to my Muslim fellows out there
I have my iPad with me today because I’ve been writing this speech for the last three weeks. Editing it on the plane. At hotels. It’s a bit difficult to condense all the thoughts and feelings I’ve had for the past thirty years in one speech. Everything I want to say. Especially with what I’ve seen happening over the last six months. But I will try.
First, let me thank you for inviting me to your university, and for giving me the space to speak, to talk about our community. Thank you to everyone here attending on a Monday night. I’m sure you have classes tomorrow so this means a lot.
I think it’s good to start at the beginning. Give you a little introduction about myself so you have a picture of who’s talking to you.
My name is Zoulfa Katouh, and I am the first-born eldest daughter of my family [pause for sympathetic nods]. My name in Arabic is not a common one. I’ve actually met four Zoulfas in my life. It means “close” and in a religious context, “close to God”. Exactly one month ago, I turned 30 years old, but I still feel like I’m twenty. I was born in Canada, and I’ve lived in the UAE and now I live in Switzerland. I went from being a city Arab girl to Arab Heidi. And it’s been quite the change. Exchanging tall skyscrapers for cottages by the mountains. There’s multitudes in my experiences. I speak English, Arabic, and German and I wish I spoke French and Korean. I’ve been reading ever since I was a little kid and I grew up with Anne of Green Gables. I have a bachelor’s in pharmacy and a master's in Drug Sciences and never in a million years thought I would ever write a book. But I did. And more than that. I wrote one that doesn’t fit inside any of the predefined boxes we’re usually crammed in like sardines.
But to do that there was so much I had to make my peace with. To confront. To accept. To challenge.
I was born Arab, if you can’t tell by my face, but it took a while to be proud that I am Arab.
I was six years old when 9/11 happened, and I clearly remember that morning. My parents argued about whether they should send me to school because they were afraid someone was going to ask me, a six-year-old who was learning how to write the word friend, about a terrorist attack that had nothing to do with who she is, her identity, or her religion. But also, nothing to do with her, seeing as she was a literal child.
I went to school because, well, education is very important in my family. And I really wanted to be there during story time. My favourite time of the day.
But my mom did tell me to answer I don’t know if anyone asked anything. And I thought it was bizarre because I didn’t know what was going on.
She genuinely thought someone would ask.
I know we’ve all gone through something like this in our lives. Where we’re asked the biggest, heaviest questions, accused of heinous actions. When all we wanted to do was eat our lunch or, in my case, read all the books in the school’s library.
But without me knowing, it was a turning point. And there were many turning points after that scattered like marbles in my life, shaping me into who I am today.
I was beginning to understand how the world saw me.
Saw my people.
I learned about Palestine from that age. Learned about injustice and genocide. Realized that death can be vicious and unkind. I sang songs about freedom and dignity, repeating words I didn’t fully understand, but felt they were important.
I grew older and that loud, indignant spirit I had slowly started to go quieter and quieter.
Because the outside world didn’t share the hurt in my heart, in my soul. Didn’t share my people’s pain. In fact, we were seen as the enemy.
We have done so much for this world, that civilizations grew on the foundations we built. We became prosecuted, treated with suspicion, and in the darkest consequences, killed.
This was a reason my family moved my siblings and I to the United Arab Emirates. A refuge from what the world was trying to do to us.
But when I would come back to the West or Europe and caught those glimpses either from being outside on the streets or the internet, it wasn’t looking promising.
That is not to say there weren’t the most genuinely kind, selfless people who would see me as a human being. Columbia students, NYU, and the other gorgeous, gorgeous people who are protesting right now, risking their futures. I went with my friends, and we were able to see through the sliver of the gates where the Columbia students were singing, and it was humanity at its purest form. If the students hear this speech, hear me talking, you have made history as heroes. You have embodied empathy and the Islamic conviction of standing with any oppressed person regardless of religion or race to get justice.
But when I would meet people, one of the first things they would ask is, you all know this one, “where are you from?”
Yep. This and “not even water” when Ramadan comes is the staple of what it means to be an Arab and Muslim. That’s the Arab Muslim starter pack.
There has been so much debate about this, and the clear consensus is that this is an offensive question. And I agree. It creates an othering, an inherent accusation for those of us who have lived their entire lives in the States, Canada and so on. You are from that country. These are your traditions, and this is your language. This is where you’re from.
But strangely, I never minded that question. And it’s only recently that I realized why.
It didn’t as much as offend me as it confused me.
See, there are some of us who haven’t lived in one country their entire lives. My family is Syrian. I was born in Calgary, Canada. I’ve lived in the United Arab Emirates, and now I’m in Switzerland. So where really am I from?
Genuinely asking because I don’t know.
And that’s why I don’t mind this question because if you want to know where I come from, I will tell you where I come from. I will tell you about the sacrifices and what I’ve lost. Of what I’ve gained. It’s not to clear my name as a labeled terrorist but because I love telling stories.
Because really what we are is resilience.
As a scientist, we learn about phenotypes and genotypes and a lot of complicated words. And the way genotypes influence phenotypes. An organism’s phenotype is determined by its genotype. Which means that because of certain external factors like environmental influences, this gives the organism certain traits. For example, if a certain flower has red pigment, it will show that pigment if it receives enough sunlight. And if it doesn’t, then that red pigment, which is inherent to the flower, is inhibited.
From that, I have come up with my own theory that has no scientific basis except from what I’ve seen.
I think for us, for our people and community, throughout our history, resilience has been on every page. We invented math, which, yes, has made a lot of us cry in school but it’s pretty important. We wrote the Canon of Medicine, six volumes of books that were the standard medical textbooks in Europe. We looked to the skies and thought we want to know what’s going on so we further developed the Astrolabe. We knew the earth was round and that it orbited the sun way before Gallelilo thought of it. We mapped the world. We were the ones who wrote the book on the etiquette of war. The mercy we show. That we choose life over death every single time. And we fought injustice no matter where it was. We survived colonization and genocide. We still do. Is that not resilience? Is that not in our genotype?
I tell you this because I want you to be proud of who you are.
You are not just number. You are not a stereotype. You are not a second-class citizen. Your stories matter. You matter.
I tell you this because you know the world is usually against us. That our achievements aren’t celebrated, and our mistakes are written in bold letters, and sometimes not even our mistakes. We’re not on New York Times bestseller lists. We’re in the minority of minorities when it comes to books written by us. Even when we’re secondary characters in movies or books, we’re painted with a broad brush. We fear for our lives, and we are required to speak for the entirety of our people. We’re lumped as one monochrome collective. We’re not celebrated for our diversities and similarities. We are made to feel like burdens and that we should apologize for our existence.
In this world, we are not even an afterthought which is frustrating. Which hurts. Personally, I haven’t heard of SWANA Heritage Month until two years ago. As of 2022, SWANA population was around 493 million. And that is only our people in SWANA. Not counting those of us living outside of Southwest Asia and North Africa. So you’re telling me we’re more than 500 million people, and we’re still far off from a nuanced representation written by us being the mainstream? I googled the percentage of Arab authors in publishing because that’s my area, and in 2020, we were just a nice cute 0.54% of all books published in 2020. But here’s the catch. Looking into those books, they weren’t entirely true to the Arab experience. They were 92 books that included nonfiction and ones about Aladdin and Egyptian gods. There’s more. Most of the authors were of South Asian, Iranian, or Afghan ethnicities writing about Arab stories. That was 2020. Fast forward to two days ago, I was at one of the well-known bookstores in New York City, and they had a table celebrating Arab American authors. Out of the six authors on the table, only one was Arab. So these issues are very much prevalent. They still feel like we’re being pinched in places people can’t see and we need to swallow through the frustration of it all.
The mind… it boggles. There were many reasons why I wrote Lemon Trees, and a main one, was this fire inside me, burning me up to write a story about us from us in a light never seen before. Before my book came out in 2022, there wasn’t one Syrian author who had published a book in English in the young adult category.
And despite all of that, all of this pushback, and being left on the sidelines, we continue to resist. We continue to write and draw and paint and dominate in fields. We grow trees from blood-soaked soil. We stand with our heads held high in front of armored shields. We use our voices to speak because the one thing they can’t do is silence us. Our hearts are one because, despite the geographical lines dividing us, we are one people. If one part of us is hurting, the rest of us are.
This is why books and movies like The Hunger Games affect us deeply because we know what true injustice is. We know that Katniss Everdeen is not just a fictional character and that if we burn you burn with us. That these scenes are playing word to word in real life. To the outside world, these movies and stories exist within the confinements of the cinema or pages of a book. But to us, it’s very real.
We were colonized for decades, Algeria for a hundred and thirty-two years. One hundred and thirty-two. That is roughly five to six generations. People were born during that occupation and died during that occupation. Those are our people. As I said, there are no geographical lines when it comes to us. And I think that’s one of the purest aspects to come out of our people. If you mention any of our countries to anyone from SWANA, they would only have the best words to say. Egyptians are hearty. Iraqis are proud. Qataris are generous. Sudanese are kindhearted. Tunisians are selfless. I could go on and on with every single country, but I think this would summarize it. In Arabic, whenever we mention other SWANA countries we’re not from, we always say “our siblings in Morocco. Our siblings in Jordan” because that’s what we are. There may be borders drawn on maps but there are no borders drawn on our hearts. We belong to each country. They are home.
One of my favorite songs which is actually a poem called Mawtini by the Palestinian poet Ibrahim Tuqan has always brought me to tears. Arabic poetry usually does. It speaks to the resilience I mentioned. To the pride we feel in being who we are, and where our blood comes from. I would recommend listening to it even if you don’t speak Arabic. You will feel the emotions. Sometimes, Arabic poetry would be taken and spoken in a tune, like a song. A stanza I wish to share with you:
My homeland, my homeland,
Glory and beauty, sublimity and splendor
Are in your hills.
Life and deliverance, pleasure and hope
Are in your air.
Will I see you?
Safely comforted and victoriously honored.
Will I see you in your eminence?
Reaching to the stars.
My homeland, my homeland.
And while the effects of colonization were poisoning our countries, our grandparents and parents made the difficult decision to begin a new life elsewhere. To sacrifice their dreams for ours. And in that, essentially, we lost an alternate life we could have lived. I think about that sometimes. Of could have been. What kind of person I would have become. Who would be my best friends? What would my greatest fear be? What memories would I have had? But now, in this life and universe, I open Google Maps and I watch Syria and wonder.
Like a lot of you, I’ve lived my whole life away from the motherland. So far away from a culture that exists frozen in my parents’ stories and TV shows, I sometimes feel like an imposter. My dialect isn’t Syrian enough, my mannerisms even less. I feel like “a branch broken from a tree” as they say in Syria. And in Switzerland, people obviously don’t look like me. I perk up when I hear Arabic spoken in the streets, smile at every hijabi I meet, and am gloriously happy when I meet an Arab or a Muslim. I try to find pieces of a home I never knew. But in not being seen, in being attacked, it creates a sense of, for lack of a better term, shame.
I’m 30 years and one month old now, I’m wise beyond my years but I wish I had someone tell me that when I was just starting to go out into the world. I wish someone told me that I shouldn’t be ashamed of who I am. That this weird, strange feeling of needing to be in the shadows, out of the public eye is nothing but a lie I fed myself. That no one would care about me. That of course it’s my birthright to suffer in this world.
And even though I have shaken that conviction off, I sometimes feel it. We all have those days when it’s too much. When the world is too loud and too cruel. And that is okay. When you feel like that, I would ask you to be kind to yourself. Yourself is doing its best. To wake up, to get out of bed and to look “different” is resistance. To not give in to the pressures of today’s standards of what’s considered beautiful when it comes to our noses and faces. Oh, you are beautiful, and that is a face that is loved and had sonnets and songs written about. Wars raged for that face. You are the descendent of sultans and sultanas and warriors. Do not take yourself lightly. You are worth your weight in gold.
I tell you what I wish I could tell my twenty-year-old self. You’re not limited to what you’re doing right now. There is creativity in each one of us. Sorry, it’s in your genes. And there’s so much space in this world to fill with that creativity. With whatever your hobby is, I want you to nurture it. My hobby was reading, and from that I wrote a book. When I look back at it, this was always the path I was heading toward but just didn’t know it. I took everything I wanted to say, everything I felt and poured it into a story, thinking I was yelling into a void that would never answer. But I was wrong. Thousands and thousands of people who picked it up felt seen, no matter where they came from. Whether they were from Ukraine, Bosnia, Guinea, and everywhere in the world. And that is an honour I will carry with me forever.
I know that the common- and true- stereotype for us is that our parents want us to be doctors or engineers and that there is no secret third option. I’m also the poster child for “I went to pharmacy school and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”, but to those of you who are in STEM, look at what else brings you joy. As much as we want our people to make strides in physics and medicine, we also need your creativity. Your hobbies. Because that’s what changes minds and thoughts. Art is a revolution. Art elicits thoughts and emotions you don’t find anywhere else. And despite what we were led to believe growing up, they are no second-class citizens to STEM. They are what builds communities and people. And to those of you who are in the arts, thank you for bestowing your gift to us. For making our hearts stir and our brains think. I want us to be painters, and composers, and musicians, and philosophers, animators, authors, movie producers, actors, fashion designers as well as surgeons, chemists, physicists, lawyers, and astronomers.
I want us to create art that is loved by us. Art where we’re seen. And we exist in all the colours of the universe as opposed to the plain old grey we’ve seen ourselves in time and time again. I tell you I am tired and, speaking for myself, if I see one more Muslim Arab character on Law and Order spewing ignorant “facts”, I am going to lose it. So I am asking you to speak up. If you write, write. If you paint, paint. If you direct movies, direct those movies. If you sing, sing. They can’t silence us all.
Art and STEM are not two opposite sides of the spectrum as many would think. In fact, they complete one another. Ibn Al-Haythum who was a pioneer in the field of optics and visual perception is an example of someone who merged the two together. The experiments he did with lenses and mirrors is why we have cameras today. And the way he understood light’s interaction with objects is what inspired artists like this one fellow, I’m not sure if you know him, Leonardo da Vinci. One of those indie artists. He built on that with his own paintings.
Art inspires art.
As a scientist, I look into the human body, and I see stories there. Your body, the protagonist. The virus, the antagonist. We make drugs to combat the virus. We play with the shape and consistency of the drug. The virus develops a resistance. We come back with more ideas. We win. It’s like a fantasy book series.
I look at you and I see the stories you hold in your hearts. I see all the decisions and twists in the road that brought you to where you are. I look at you and I see embers of fire glowing in your souls. I see people whose ancestors are living in them. Through them. In your features and in your convictions. Whose history empowers them. I see you have so much to give. So much to take in return. And if no one has said that to you before, I see you and I’m so proud of you and so honored to stand in front of you tonight. So, thank you for letting me be a part of the memories you’re making in this life.
And so, if anyone asks me where I’m from. I tell them from countries that knew the meaning of resilience.
Thank you.