As one of the thousands of Levantine migrants (originating from the Levant region, including the countries of Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan etc.) whose families are now in the Gulf in pursuit of a better life, my world shattered the morning of the 28th of February. I had returned home from my studies in the UK for a quick visit with my family and to attend a family event. That morning, my mother woke me up claiming the war had started. “What war?” I asked, certain that my

I was born on December 3rd, 1993, in Caracas’ busiest hospital. I spent my early years in a high-rise apartment at the top of a mountain in Manzanares, living a quiet, ordinary life. Everything changed when Hugo Chávez, once the face of a failed coup, rose to power. My dad saw what was coming, and we eventually left for the United States. Looking back, it's painful to see how the Venezuelan diaspora, my family included, was shaped by those decisions.

On ‘The Traitors UK’, an award-winning reality TV competition, strangers trust and betray one another for the chance to win up to £120,000 (and one more day in the presence of Claudia Winkleman’s fringe). There may be no official strategy for winning, but the players who last longest all seem to understand one thing: psychology.

Growing up Muslim, I didn’t have many holiday traditions, so I learned to create my own. Today, I’m a Seattle-based writer who has learned to create traditions and define home on my own terms. As a kid, I couldn’t sing the words to the season’s greatest hits, didn’t spend the last month of the year shopping for presents, and never set out cookies for Santa. Instead, Christmas was a day when I would pick up extra shifts to cover for co-workers who were out of town to see their

Britain faces a growing mental health crisis, yet the narrative increasingly blames individuals rather than the conditions that shape their lives.

I will shift. Two teenagers scribbled this same line repeatedly in their journals. Both later died by suicide after extensive interactions with Character.AI chatbots

As I mother my own small children in the UK, I can’t help but think of mothers and children in Gaza. Like thousands of others worldwide, I have been watching the genocide in Gaza unfold over the last two years, literally live-streamed to us through civilians on the ground, from their phones to ours. Watching the most horrific war crimes in real time has been both deeply surreal and gut-wrenching. No human being should have to endure what the citizens of Gaza have, no matt

On 10th October, 2025, the Afghan Embassy hosted a forum with Afghanistan’s Foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in New Delhi, India. The embassy had invited over sixteen journalists, and not a single one of them was a woman, let alone a woman from intersectional identities. In the forum, it was observed by other journalists, how women and foreign media were turned away from the gate of the embassy, and has been widely discussed in the media.  As a young woman journalist, ba

Do you ever think about why you were born where you were born? I was born in France because a border opened. When France granted Tunisia independence in March of 1956, my father crossed the Mediterranean sea along with thousands of others, carrying with him a language, a faith, a culture, and a hope that the new world would be gentler. That decision between a man seeking opportunity and a nation opening its borders shaped my existence before I ever took my first breath.