From the Author and Photographer of Portraits and Cranes

After two years of not posting on this blog, I am here again, finding myself picking up what feels like a long-lost heirloom - something intrinsic and personal that no matter how much time passed, still belongs to me. Dramatic much, LOL. The last two years I honestly reworked this website so many times, I completely ignored and disabled this page not wanting to delete it. Its currently only linked and found under the website's 404 Error page as a secret blog, haha. It took me a while to figure out but here we are. So welcome new commers and welcome back if you have been here before! 

Almost always when people find out that I travel, I'm asked what my favorite place is. Sometimes though, people ask if there is any place I'm scared to visit. My answer is yes - I'm terrified of Spain. Odd, right? People always think I'll say something less globalized and accessible or more dangerous. But no, good old Spain does it for me. They also ask if there's somewhere I want to go next, and though something on my list of over 40 countries is usually my response, I know deep down that my greatest desire is to spend a few months sailing around the Mediterranean. There's something mental and emotional, even spiritual that holds something over me for the region.

If you didn't know this already, I love history and just how complex and diverse yet similar humans are to one another. My mother is from Ecuador, and my father is from Egypt, and so Spain holds this foreign and also kind of mirrored concept of who I am. You see, back in the 700's, the Moors of North Africa invaded the Iberian Peninsula and ruled for almost 800 years, until 1492 - the same year Spain began invading South America. By the mid 1550's some of the Spaniards that left the peninsula settled in a part Ecuador inhabited by the Peleusí (a part of the Cañari indigenous people). Though they massacred the natives, they also integrated into their lands and learned from them. My grandmother holds a Spanish last name (I once went down a rabbit-hole and found a link between her family name and that of a Spanish general who was based in Peru not far from the Ecuadorian town she is from, but I am not sure if that was my actual ancestor or a coincidence) and my grandfather's name is on a Spanish registry of families that were exiled from the country. Could it be that the descendants of the Moors who integrated into the Iberian Peninsula are my ancestors on my mother's side? It could be. It could also be the case on my father's side. Just like the Spanish moved West across the Atlantic, many of the Moriscos (Spanish of Moor decent) were forced out if they refused to convert to Christianity and so many of them returned to North Africa (predominantly in the western half). Some of them later went on to trade across the continent, assimilated into other areas of the Islamic Ottoman empire, and many even joined the Egyptian Army in the 1800's. Now, there is no evidence to prove I am related to any of these people, and epigenetics aren't proven to extend that far into the past, but imagine seeing the result of a DNA test that shows a genetic makeup roughly 1/3 Iberian Peninsula, 1/3 North African, and 1/3 South American ancestry. About a third of my genetic makeup is Iberian - and I felt this before I knew it!!

Now to be practical I want to share a look at my present - more specifically, my identity. I've always been one to enjoy culture and language and currently speak English, Spanish, Arabic, and French (and dabbling with Darija). So imagine my amazement when I found Moroccans rapping in Spanish. My eyes popped out of my head, my jaw dropped, and it took me a good couple of months to regain composure. You mean to tell me there's a parallel place on earth where Spanish can coexist with Arab, where Arabs can coexist with Hispanic customs without being singled out and made the center of attention. (To an extent; I'm aware racism exists). But it just blew my mind that Spain doesn't only contain architecture, food, and language that is so intertwined with my Arab heritage, but there are people there today who exist from that same heritage and are part of Spanish society. I have spent the last three decades being a topic of conversation wherever I go, to Latinos for being Arab, to Arabs for being Latina, and to everyone else so exotic for being both. I'm sorry but if I go to Spain, I might just find a new version of home and I'm not sure if I'm ready for that kind of truth. Just thinking about it makes me light headed lol.

In all seriousness though, I'm going to aim to make it to Spain this year. I'm not sure for how long or where to exactly (like I don’t have a whole map with precise towns, buildings, waterfalls and all saved loool), but this year I am focusing on visiting and spending some time absorbing my surroundings. If I am granted the opportunity, I want to extend that trip to Morocco and Algeria. All of this requires money, time, visa, etc. and so all I will promise is to put one foot in front of the other and do what I can to make it a reality. I am focusing on my work as an art, on networking, on improving my craft, and really want to take the educational aspect of what I do to a new level. I'm focused and pray this focus outlasts me. So whether in 2025 or later, when and if this trip happens and I publish my work from it, may you find it and remember the backstory of when I finally met my Iberian roots.