Athaar (ruins in Arabic) is a story about the identities we create, adopt, and reject as we question the traditional constructs of freedom. The western world has objectified the notion of freedom as its own—today freedom is not Arabic, it’s American, European, Western.
As immigrants, the identities we adopt in our home countries often come in direct conflict with the identities we strive to create in our new country. Our emotions wager between nostalgia, fear, and an acute desire for liberation. While the notion of freedom is a highly diffuse concept, this story seeks to dismantle the western notion of freedom, not to create a new one—but to reveal the shallowness of its construct.
