Zeena Mubarak

Image: silhouette of camel in the desert. Photo by Mariam Soliman on Unsplash If I will not emerge alive at the other end, please make my body a meal I commit myself into this journey, knowing fully that something waits for me. What waits for me, I do not know. Sugbon Oluwa, know that I have left my home because it is a catalogue of tears. If I will not emerge alive at the other end, please make my body a meal for the beasts of the sky so that as they fly, I continue my voyage.

I am beyond ready for stories that could give the lost little Sudanese girl in the US I once was, a template for loving herself. When I played make-believe as a Sudanese child growing up in the US, the characters in my imagination were always white. I had little reason to believe they could be anything but. I rarely saw Africans in the media, except as sorrowful children holding out their hands in charity commercials that had the same tone as those for injured puppies.

I am beyond ready for stories that could give the lost little Sudanese girl in the US I once was, a template for loving herself. A still from the breakout Sudanese film You Will Die At Twenty. When I played make-believe as a Sudanese child growing up in the US, the characters in my imagination were always white. I had little reason to believe they could be anything but.