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Articles by Zeena Mubarak
The Desert Traveller’s Prayer
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.
Africa: You Will Die At Twenty and the Adichie Moment That Never Came
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.
You Will Die at Twenty and the Adichie moment that never came
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.
The Beautiful Bossiness of Hermione Granger
Hermione Granger: bossy, unapologetically bookish, abrasive in a way that put off her peers — in so many ways, she was everything I was afraid of being. The classic image of Hermione is sitting in class, her hand stretched in the air, eager to show off what she knows. As someone who remembers consciously trimming her vocabulary in middle school so as not to annoy her classmates, Hermione’s confidence in the classroom was unthinkable for me.
Chapel Hill and Violence Against the Veil
Inna lil lahi wa ilayhi rajioon. To God we belong, and to Him we shall return. Yesterday, the lives of three young Muslim college students were brutally ended by a lone gunman. They were husband and wife, Deah Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19. Their deaths are an unspeakable tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families in this difficult time. There’s no question that a grave injustice was done to these students.
The Drinking Gourd
Here’s what my sister and I don’t like to admit: my father can be quite charming when he wants to be. Image: Three Wise Monkeys He’s in Room 134, all the way at the end of the hall. That’s good because it gives me time to say a prayer to the beat of the hospital beeps: Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. His name is written in baby blue on a whiteboard outside the room. When I was younger, no mere door could contain my father. He filled our entire house with his ox shoulders and walrus jowls.
The Whitewashing of Arab Identity
Recently, I paid a visit to the Arab American National Museum. Initially, I was extremely excited — as a Sudanese American, I’m not used to seeing my identity represented positively anywhere. I had a few pre-existent apprehensions: there is a strong history of marginalization of Black Arabs and of course racism exists in the Arab world, just as it exists all over the world.
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