Farah Ahamed

Several books are mentioned in Mohammed Hanif’s novel Rebel English Academy, most notably Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961). In one scene, Sabiha Bano, a young woman on the run determined to find her incarcerated parents, throws Fanon’s book at the failed revolutionary and English teacher, Sir Baghi. This moment invites the question of whether her gesture carries a deeper symbolic significance.

Name one book by a woman or marginalized writer that more readers should discover. Instead of a book, I’d like to suggest music which makes references to dolls. The Iranian pop singer Shahrzad Sepanlou referenced doll imagery in her 1999 song, Ghalbe Man, My Heart…

How did Parwana Fayyaz and Forough Farrokhzad first enter your life? I first came across Forough Farrokhzad at an exhibition at the Barbican in London by Soheila Sokhanvari, Rebel Rebel. The first painting in the series was that of Farrokhzad, and I was moved by her story, which prompted me to look her up…

In a conversation with a group of women I had only just met, I was told, with pity and envy, ‘You don’t have biological children, so you’ll never understand the true extent of “mothering anxieties.”’ I did not respond. I recognised that I had been ‘othered’ simply because I had not given birth.

Why are sexual desire and motherhood considered incompatible? Why are mothers, either biological mothers or maternal figures, ‘othered’ when they resist being confined to the Madonna role? Speaking of women and identities, novelist Shashi Deshpande has said that, “For a woman, intelligence is always a burden… We like our women not to think.” It also seems that we don’t want them to feel, either.

Farah explores the concept of sunn kaall (the primordial void) in the music and poetry of Islam, Hinduism and Christianity.

In 2009, when I moved back to Nairobi after ten years abroad, I decided to learn to sing Indian classical music. I had been circling questions about voice, silence and spirituality, and felt that music might open a way in…