we each contain multitudes

Reclaiming the Narratives of Displacement

I was invited to present the first of the year’s presentations for the Melbourne University Social Equity Institute, in partnership with the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, series on displacement. I wanted to speak about how distorting the narratives around displacement are, and the tragedy they land us all in.

Categories:   Displacement / Narratives

Adelaide Writers' Week: Unstable Ground

Being part of Adelaide Writers' Week 2021 was really rewarding. This event invited us to speak to the prompt "Unstable Ground"...

Categories:   Unstable Ground / WritersWeek / Progress

Adelaide Writers' Week - Book Relaunch event

It felt so special to be part of Adelaide Writers' Week this year. I had a really great in conversation event, as well as a chance to participate in two other events, including this great idea for a book Relaunch event, in response to a year where the COVID-19 pandemic had quashed many author's chances to celebrate their book launches!

Categories:   WritersWeek / Parwana / Book Launch

War Crimes and Evasion

The revelation of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan is being understood through a confining lens of personal or organisational failings. There have been dismissals and apologies, and the path laid out for criminal prosecutions - but without stripping back past preceding layer upon layer of injustice, without broadening the lens to see the militarisation of distant lands as a manifestation of a persistent imperial mandate, then many of these actions and discussions are cursory and act to reinforce the massive power imbalance from which these travesties arise. We can't reverse the path of injustice, but we can choose to have a moment of reckoning, breaking past the confining narratives built on partial histories, thereby shifting who we collectively become.

Categories:   War / Afghanistan / Australia / Justice

What Writing Parwana Meant to Me

In late September this year, the book I wrote about my family's restaurants and Afghan cuisine will be released. My aim was to write this book in a way that supersedes the distorted and impersonalised narratives associated with Afghanistan today.

Categories:   Parwana / Book / Connected Histories / Family

Afghanistan: Beyond the Blinkers of Imperialism

Afghanistan today has been built upon narratives which depend upon the erasure of its vast history and the dehumanisation of its people.

Categories:   Afghanistan / Imperialism / Humanity / Connected Histories

Transcendent Narratives that Bind Us All

On the 4th July 2019, I was invited as a speaker at the Newday annual event. The theme was to explore notions of leadership in a world that is rapidly changing.

Categories:   Connected Histories / Narratives / Humanness

A Lament for the Displaced

Both the scale of, and the general response to, displacement and displaced people in our world today, I fear, reveals a deep laceration and dismembering in our collective spirit.

Categories:   Displacement / Narratives / Humanity

The Re-humanisation of Humanity

The power of the humanities today, lies in the degree to which it can facilitate our collective re-humanisation.

Categories:   Rehumanisation / Narratives

Dismantling the Boundaries that Deny Us to Ourselves

I want to talk about dismantling. And I want to talk about dismantling in relation to boundaries.

Categories:   Dismantling / Boundaries / Narratives / Pandemic

The Illuminations of Gillian Triggs

In the face of a horrid campaign against her, the former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, used her position to tell the truth about children in detention, insisting that everyone has a right to have rights.

Categories:   Displacement / Human Rights

The Ship of the Past Has Sailed

We must choose to stay open and not build walls in a world that is rapidly changing, and we should reject any attempts to regress to times gone by.

Categories:   Humanity / Future

The Alienation of Faux Feminism

In its purest form, free from manipulation and bias, feminism should be a movement that has the fluidity and durability to represent the interests of all women, everywhere, regardless of their colour, ability or religious background.

Categories:   Feminism / Imperialism