A constantly-updating collection of poems. I mustn't lose my personal history.
Retirement
A quiet house in Djerba, a plot of olive trees to tend, season after season, teaching writing to anyone (children or adults), making jewelry, making olive oil cold-pressed, the slowest and most honest craft, a small boat for fishing, mornings spent on open water, Arabic calligraphy, practiced patiently.
Places
Tunis — where I spent my teenage years surrounded by antinomy. Tension and relief, love and solitude, violence and tenderness. Tunisia is Amor fati. One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Paris — It was not love at first sight, but rather ennemies to lovers. At first, I felt like in Paris, I was an Arab, while in New York, I was simply Nour Assili. But then I looked closer and saw that the city resembled me more than I thought. I realized Paris is the capital of Africa. I found relative anonymity and space to develop as a writer away from noise and past mistakes. It was a crucial vantage point to see America clearly. Things were different. It had ruined me for my old life.
Madrid — where I self-exiled after a breakup and my friend Claudia, a Spanish artist took me in. I did nothing, and it was awesome. Claudia is Madrid and Madrid is Claudia.
Mexico City — How is it that this country has had so much influence on the whole world? The muralists, the writers, the filmmakers. A place that has been exploited and dismissed and still somehow shaped how everyone else sees. There is something defiant in that. Mexico has something that cannot be stolen.
Nesin Math Village (Turkey) — I organized a research retreat with my friend Yiğit in the mountains of Western Turkey. A self-sustained, community-driven pocket of intellectual rebellion under authoritarianism. Why do people leave places like this for the West? Turkey is beautiful. My friend Yiğit showed me how the community was real, and the ideas were alive. Still, the pull westward, the brain drain... It is a shame.
Colombia — I made a friend called Andrea, who organizes extreme sports like mountain biking, climbing, that kind of thing. He quit drugs for his mother and replaced them with the mountains. He was sad that people see Colombia as sex tourism and crime. The real Colombia, he said, is freedom. He took us to Cocora Valley in the Colombian Andes, where the longest palm trees on earth live on top of the mountains for 100-200 years. When they die, the entire tree falls at once. It was surreal and poetic. If this looks so beautiful now, imagine how it looked back then when it was only indigenous people. He was a free spirit with a particular look to him. That moment for me was the American Dream. Not the one they sell you. And it was nowhere near America. And yet I returned to the place that sells it hardest.
Bangkok — I was nauseated most of the time, whether the heat, or something else, I am not sure. I tried to focus on eating. There was a free buffet in my low-budget hotel that tasted better than anything I had ever had. Thai food is like hearing notes between the notes. Have I been tasting with half my tongue my whole life til I came to Thailand? However, the old European men everywhere, the economy of it all, is visible in a way that could not be ignored. Some places are meant for understanding, not enjoyment.
New York City — where I come back anyway. I do not feel like a weirdo in New York. This place is a legend. Myths are necessary for humans to keep going. People live poorly, but that never shakes the deeply-rooted belief that they are better than everyone else. They pay too much for too little. They sleep badly. They work too hard for things and people who don't love them back. And yet there is a faith here, irrational, unshakeable, that this is the place where it happens, whatever it is. That faith is what makes New York so cool and so terrifying. Do not mistake my words for judgment. I love New York. I need myths to keep going. Every human does. That is the secret. Like New York, I never stop because I cannot afford to look back. I move in one direction only - forward. To pause would be to see clearly, and to see clearly might break the spell.
The Internet — As the dimensions drift, digital distance becomes palpable. In this narrowing gray area, I see my desires — for intimacy, imagination, self-actualization — as states of being, and I try to capture them as objects. I scribble ideas on Twitter (collecting); I manually record my habits so I can see them as data (tracking); I use Instagram stories to study how light falls on surfaces throughout the year (watching). I'm not sure if these are art or compulsion. I'm not sure I recognize my digital self, or what it lets me believe. I am interested in technology’s human element.
There is something so fantastic in the spectacle I now present to myself of having run away in my teenage years and early 20s, run so hard, across oceans, multiple times, only to find myself once more squinting at a computer. Right now, I am tired of traveling. I want to stay right here in my apartment in Brooklyn which for the first time in my life does not feel borrowed.
As if all that motion was only ever about getting something out of my system. To exhaust myself into stillness. It worked.
Art Ideas
Creating olive wood kitchen equipment, designing postcards, ceramic masks for wall art, designing doors, making a soundtrack for books I read or films I watch, writing a science fiction about a bitcoin-centric civilization, experimenting with recipes, writing a cookbook, restoring, remixing, and remastering forgotten Tunisian folk music, drawing illustrations for children, science fiction book story about techno futuristic islam
Inspiration
Flamenco - Like a child whose parents’ features are unmistakably visible in its face, the music of flamenco itself is filled with clues to its origin. It reflects Andalucia’s unique history as one of the only places where christians, jews and muslims co-habited and saw significant immigration from other cultures such as the Maghreb and the gypsies. I really like its Andalucian cadence and the Arabic flavor of the Hijaz scale.
Ceramics - To slow down time
Jewlery Making - Because I can never find jewelry that is not ugly in the US
Romance
The heart-shaped sea fan my boyfriend and I found on the beach, like the ocean was in on our moment, the quiet anticipation when I cook and wait for him to take the first bite and tell me what he thinks, planning a big dinner together for a big group of friends, helping each other move apartments, early mornings at the airport, saving the last bite, conversations when we are so different yet found mutual understanding, moments where we are there for each other and it requires real effort and time. Love is cheap; commitment and discipline are precious.
Cooking
Mima, my grandmother, measuring nothing and still perfecting everything. My jewish host father in Seattle, treating the kitchen like a laboratory, saving every bone and onion peel as if flavor were a moral duty - dashi simmering while he explained why nothing should ever go to waste; tamales taste like devotion. My college roommate, sautéing something unhinged at 3 a.m., she quit marketing to become a chef; we exchanged recipes like postcards. The sancocho and bonoria I had in Colombia showing me how Arab, African, and South American kitchens meet inside a single pot, like continents remembering they were once one. Noticing the difference between the paellas I had in Puerto Rico and in Madrid, the way each place insisted on its own definition. Mexico, where sauces became entire philosophies. Dominican restaurants in Brooklyn where I go with friends after a drunk night. Grocery stores that feel like entering a new dimension where you lose track of time. My favorites are Uwajimaya (Japanese grocery store in Seattle) and IFM (a turkish grocery in Rochester).
Envy
My friend Maroun who has been drumming since he was born. His mom says he started banging on things since day one. He owns a Rik that was played alongside Melhem Barakat. He was taught by music icons in Lebanon. I know I shouldn’t be but I am jealous of people who were always becoming what they are. No detours. No confusion. Just a straight line from birth to purpose. I am not like that.
Doctors for having the coolest, most noble job in the world.
Anybody who is close to their religion and did not have to suppress it to be themselves.
People with good posture.
CTOs.