Diversity as Someone Born to an Arab

DIVERSITY

As someone born to an Arab Saudi father and an African Sudanese mother from the Darfur region, my life has always been heavily influenced by major issues of diversity. Arabs do not respect Africans; they denigrate them and treat them like second-class citizens. Frankly, I do not have any early memories that do not include encounters with racism, classicism and the tremendous social differences associated with relative poverty and wealth. My father, who was a wealthy man, divorced my mother when I was three, forcing her to leave home to train as midwife to support her four young children. During that time, I was cared for by various different relatives until the age of seven but it was a difficult experience for me because their attention was less than what I had received from my mother. It taught me that I needed to learn how to fend for myself in life.

Initially, I rejoiced at my mother's return but that immediately became a tremendous disappointment for me the moment she announced that, as a new midwife, her first mission was to perform female circumcision on me. I remember running as though for my very life and hiding in a cattle shed for more than 24 hours. Unfortunately, I was eventually located and forced to undergo the unspeakable trauma that I can never forget. Afterwards, I was never able to trust my mother entirely and I became somewhat rebellious. I became determined to become educated as a means of overcoming the oppression of my life in Sudan and worked hard enough in school to achieve the highest score in the country on the university entrance exam. Eventually, I received a BA in Law and B.sc. In Economics.

In Sudan, I was beaten and arrested more times than I can count by the police and security forces for organizing and participating in nonviolent demonstrations against the dictatorial regime.

When the American Embassy in Sudan turned down my application to pursue my postgraduate studies in the U.S. In 1989, the British Embassy granted me a visa. I enrolled in Manchester University in the Master of Economics program, eventually spending 12 years in the U.K. For a girl who had been raised in an oppressive dictatorial society, it was an incredible experience just to be able to make autonomous decisions without continual fear of punishment and official condemnation. In my opinion, it is difficult to appreciate what freedom means when one has never been deprived of it. In Manchester, I worked part time while attending the university and I roomed with a lesbian couple. Obviously, that alone was an incredible experience a young Muslim girl raised with the fear of God's punishment and initially I feared God's wrath just for living with my roommates.