Current Projects:
Fiction
Ghoula
In the 1990s, Clarissa Ayyoub, an up-and-coming journalist with the Toronto Herald, is eager to earn her stripes as a foreign correspondent. Still mourning the death of her father, she convinces her editor to send her to the West Bank in Palestine, where the attempted Israeli expropriation of a disappearing cave spring in her family’s village provides an opportunity for a career-making story, as well as the potential to reconnect with family and an old flame. But the night before her departure, Clarissa wakes in High Park with a hole in her memory, her clothes dirty and torn, and her late mother’s carnelian amulet around her neck. In the West Bank, Clarissa’s plans are thwarted by the disappearance of three boys from a nearby Israeli settlement, an incident which threatens the fragile existence of her family’s village. As she digs further into the mystery of the cave spring, where the boys were last seen, Clarissa realizes that only by healing the rift with her late mother can she save not only the village and her career, but also her own life.
Ghoula is currently being queried.
Once There Were Oranges
Yafa Al Riyadi's mother talks to ghosts. And though Yafa has grown accustomed manoeuvring her life around her mother's strange behaviour, any attempts she makes to understand her family's past and the source of her mother's trauma are met with a persistent silence. Only when Yafa's mother's tenuous grasp on reality finally snaps, resulting in a terrible crime that threatens the very fabric of the family, does Yafa's grandmother open up and allow Yafa a window into the family's past life in Palestine. Armed with this information, Yafa has only once choice: to try to pull together the frayed pieces of her mother's former life for her.
Once There Were Oranges is a work in progress.
In the 1990s, Clarissa Ayyoub, an up-and-coming journalist with the Toronto Herald, is eager to earn her stripes as a foreign correspondent. Still mourning the death of her father, she convinces her editor to send her to the West Bank in Palestine, where the attempted Israeli expropriation of a disappearing cave spring in her family’s village provides an opportunity for a career-making story, as well as the potential to reconnect with family and an old flame. But the night before her departure, Clarissa wakes in High Park with a hole in her memory, her clothes dirty and torn, and her late mother’s carnelian amulet around her neck. In the West Bank, Clarissa’s plans are thwarted by the disappearance of three boys from a nearby Israeli settlement, an incident which threatens the fragile existence of her family’s village. As she digs further into the mystery of the cave spring, where the boys were last seen, Clarissa realizes that only by healing the rift with her late mother can she save not only the village and her career, but also her own life.
Ghoula is currently being queried.
Once There Were Oranges
Yafa Al Riyadi's mother talks to ghosts. And though Yafa has grown accustomed manoeuvring her life around her mother's strange behaviour, any attempts she makes to understand her family's past and the source of her mother's trauma are met with a persistent silence. Only when Yafa's mother's tenuous grasp on reality finally snaps, resulting in a terrible crime that threatens the very fabric of the family, does Yafa's grandmother open up and allow Yafa a window into the family's past life in Palestine. Armed with this information, Yafa has only once choice: to try to pull together the frayed pieces of her mother's former life for her.
Once There Were Oranges is a work in progress.
Drawings by the immensely talented Sonia Sulaiman
Palestinian Futurism
It's a thing. More info here:
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1653013
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/171788?show=full
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1653013
https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/171788?show=full