I used my time on Bolster to develop the play that I began working on at the beginning of 2021. The current iteration of this play is called ‘How to Ride a Bike (and Other Things Baba Taught Me). It is a piece that tries to work against the dangerous controlling stereotype that we see of Arab and Muslim men in the arts in the west. It does this by exploring a father daughter relationship through the hazy rose-tinted memories of a woman’s childhood.

I began writing it last year and in September 2021, I was lucky enough to receive funding from The National Theatre of Scotland to develop it further. I did a small three-day R&D. My team consisted of: Firas Ibrahim to play the Baba character, Nat McCleary as movement director, Sara Shaarawi as dramaturg and myself as an actor, writer, director and lead artist. It was during this R&D that I envisioned what my next step should be and Bolster helped me achieve that. I knew that this time round I wanted more time and more people in the room. I wanted to play with new scene ideas and explore the physical journey of the bike metaphor that we began to look at last year.

A week in the room followed by a week of writing was the perfect amount of time to do this. With regards to more people in the room, this time round I wanted a director, as I felt myself having to wear too many different heads in the first R&D. After speaking to a few different candidates, I entrusted Edinburgh based director Jen McGregor with the role. I knew I desperately needed a director but as anyone would be, I was apprehensive putting this project, that is very much a passion project and my baby in someone else’s hands. And yet, I am so glad I did. I feel Jen greatly enriched the process and handled what is foreign subject matter to most in Scotland with gentleness and curiosity. I used some of the budget to meet beforehand to really explain the bones that this project was carved out of and how I like to work. I feel that this time was really valuable and made all the difference, as it meant very little time was wasted in the rehearsal room trying to understand what this piece was striving for and how I felt about certain things as the writer and lead artist.

The time in the space was invaluable and we managed to establish a great sense of play in the room, which is integral to the piece. I left the first week of R&D with a much clearer idea of the plays entire journey. How it begins, how it ends and everything in between. It made the following week of writing flow remarkably easily. I have managed to double what I had originally written and have a clear idea of what needs to be explored in the next stage of development: Code-Switching in bilingual families and third culture kids.

The process as a whole was beneficial to my practice because it helped teach me, that just because it is my practice, does not mean that I have to try to do everything myself. If I want to hire someone to take care of the admin, I should hire someone to take care of the admin, because your value as an artist is not placed on your ability to chase people up and send repeated emails. We are berated with hustle culture so much that we forget that we do not need to do everyone’s job. We can carve out our boundaries and work within them and that does not make anyone less than.

Terms used in the blog: 

Alt – A single personality in the Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) system – speaking from one perspective. 

Collective – Speaking as a cohesive whole, as an entire system rather than separately. 

I have always been bad at finishing projects, coming to the end of a chapter and then finding my next steps. I am unwilling, in some sense to let go of this period of time and development, simply because it was so rewarding.

The fear of faltering is something everyone is familiar with in some way or another and having the Bolster grant has given me the space to face that fear and develop this piece of work I set out to do.

I have been very unwell throughout this process but it was always going to be an uphill battle to create in the face of disabilities, coupled with suddenly appearing kidney issues I had a very limited timeframe in which to produce something. It was also my first stumbling block.

I went into this process determined to create and complete a finished piece which as a game around DID (dissociative identity disorder) and bringing awareness to the struggles and joys of living as more than one person. My entire focus was on creating a game as an end process, to be “productive” however after speaking to members of the community I realised I was approaching this in the wrong way. The advice I received was that I shouldn’t be trying to speak for a diverse community because anything I try and create will have issues, will fall under criticism and ultimately won’t be the intended end product. Therefore I decided to change the perspective and focus of the future game, where I would be speaking entirely from my own experience and perspective.

This was a real turning point for me because my development of a game effectively was put on hold until I found the path I wanted to go along with sharing my story. How do you put yourself into something so visceral and open? I’ve always translated myself in pieces and I was wondering how I could form a cohesive story about how I wanted to tell people about “us”.

the narrative here switches as speaking from a collective rather than just one alt view so we refer to ourselves/we/us. 

In the end we defaulted to our strongest cultural ties, where do those lines lead and how does it intersect. The grant enabled us to explore these possibilities without begrudging pennies and thinking about the cost of exploration within this dynamic of self.

We settled on collaborating with the four parts of our system that are creative in a drawing and writing format and see where we led each other. Through allowing for that looser progress style we discovered something wondering, the weaving narratives between us that lead to an idea of something we could follow through with.

The end idea is creating a game based around DID but with a cultural aspect connecting this to ourselves. The main themes that came up between us was specifically embroidery/fabrics and the body as a physical presence. Specifically interconnecting Islamic geometric patterns and the everyday, which will be visible throughout the end result of the game in the form of fracturing.

You can see from the four pieces of art we made together that there’s different stories that each part wanted to raise and discuss.

This one is referencing the pain of disconnection and separation, where a body becomes parts and fractured, we used the idea of china/porcelain being shattered around us and still having this colourful viewpoint on everything. It’s in reference to the constant of pain and beauty being intermingled in our growth. We touched on the creation of mosaic in this piece.

This one is discussing the issues of visual and auditory hallucinations that occur when we switch between parts and navigating that can feel like seeing through bars, like the world outside doesn’t make as much sense as the inside. It’s also discussing the distractions from internal voices and the impact that has on our outward presenting “self”.

This one is probably the most interesting one we have produced in our plans for building a game it was highlighted that we cannot ignore the impact that displacement/ migration has had on us. The image is of a “missing” rug, referencing our Afghani heritage being removed from us, not being able to connect to a culture that we are strongly tied to. The eyes stitched to the missing rug is around the concept of being watched and “observed” as a dangerous person because of the colour of our skin and our mental health disorders which make us a collective rather than a single person.

This one is about nature, and how beautiful it is but also how dangerous for us it is to be there. Further out of cities spaces are not diverse and feel unsafe for us to occupy. So it’s talking about the beauty of Scotland but the fear around enjoying the space entirely without a care for the other people there.

So these are where we started off, the way our system communicated to us that it’s where they would like to start.

The other side of our research was the body and ownership of it. We tried to take photographs of ourselves that were pieces similar to the way we see ourselves as something other. We produced a photographic print of our body that is both a nude and showing nothing typically considered sexualised, which was then shown at IMT Gallery in London within the Naturally Non-Binary Exhibition. This was talking about the sexualisation of self, the lack of self-acceptance and process in the ways that we exist in line with nature.

The body as a form of architecture, building triangles to hold weight of objects and containing ourselves.

Shadows and light play with the idea of power – light in one hands fending the darkness of regressive memories/PTSD.

the narrative here switches as speaking from one alt view rather than collective so the references to self becomes I/my. 

I have continued this series with taking images of our bodies, of nature and how they overlap in the way we see the world.

Lastly I looked at and investigated embroidery and crochet, creating possible ideas such as an entirely stitched zine from found fabrics and pieces of stories from all our parts, where they are able to create their own narrative through it. Unfortunately, that progress was halted due to disabilities affecting our creative process, however I look forward to completing that idea as part of my future planning and progress.

Neon thread on off white muslin fabric: “Thy name as forged in stars and fire. They body birthed in clay and bone. Thy mind contains multitudes.”

I think the final game idea will be a combination of poetry, stories, pieces of writing, and a narrative threading everything together at the end. Where you, yourself, piece together a sense of self with me and hopefully gain a sense of what it’s like to live with DID.

Blue paper with writing: “Hello, if your reading this, I don’t know what to tell you. You have come looking for answers and have one. We are both wandering in the dark, looking for stars. If you find some, will you share the stars or keep them for yourself? Would I? I offer you companionship, in the dark, stumbling together, looking to the stars for answers, instead of each other.”

Artist of Survival – a creative script writing project. 

I am not a Writer and never have been. I thought.
Being a self-proclaimed Artist, I have tried many different areas of art.
But the areas of writing and performance have stayed undiscovered and unexplored to me.

The project was going to be a tentative dip of just the toe into unknown waters – a trial. A hesitant glance at the Art of Writing.

Not any kind of writing style.

For quite some time, I considered writing about traumatic events in my life. Believing, they are worth knowing about and hoping it would set free some of the pain and sorrow stored in the deep dark hidden me.

I needed a safe and structured way of writing. One that sets boundaries without restricting my creativity, and without weighing too heavy on the reader.

I suspected that the cunning art of scriptwriting a play may just provide me with that. After all, a well-enacted story can lead an audience to cringe with laughter, move them to tears and shout out in anger.

I endeavoured to learn about the trade of a Playwriter, and maybe, just maybe I would produce a few lines of play… enough to hand it to willing dramaturges and actors to want to read and guide me in the process.

Safe to say, I survived the project.
I learned that thorough research was vital, and many useful techniques for writing and most importantly, how to keep writing no matter what. Latter was one of my main fears.

“Continuity” is one of my worst enemies. I am far too familiar with starting something without finishing it off. I have actual Nightmares of this, an ever-occurring dream of not being able to get through the finals of school. Only to wake up to remember, that I have done a degree at a University in Sheffield.

Writer’s block is maybe one of the most feared problems of writing, but the trick is to not fear the block.

There is no such thing as “continuity” if perceived as a stable entity that persists infinitely long. There are bursts of progress, intercepted by spells of seemingly pausing intervals. However, nothing truly stands still. Even in those times, one thinks nothing happens – there are a lot of unnoticed processes going on, but we are reluctant to call them progress.

Incubation is a process, that is almost unnoticed without much (if at all) credit given. I have learned to value and pay better attention to Incubation, giving special room to this process to take place.

This made me stop fearing procrastination and not finishing what I started has become irrelevant.

Overall, focusing on timeout as well as progress led to conducting interviews for research, draft writing over 50 pages (almost an hour’s worth of play), and working with two dramaturges. Actors even enacted a readout of 6 Minutes of my work.

I am still writing and thoroughly enjoy this process. This Project has exceeded all expectations and extends far and beyond.