This is a love letter to you, Uncle Farid. And here are the questions I was never able to ask you: Did you ever believe in Allah? Did you ever try to come out to your parents? How did the news feel, in your body, when you were diagnosed with HIV? Were you able to feel fully queer, and fully Arab, in France? “Made Of Smokeless Fire” is an homage to my uncle Farid, who passed away in 2013. In the absence of his voice, I turned my lens toward LGBTQIA+ individuals of Muslim culture in France, often underrepresented and simply ignored. France is home to the largest proportion of Muslims in the Western world, estimated at 8.8% or the population, or 5.57 million. Yet, islamophobia remains pervasive. While some individuals have cut ties with their families, others have reinterpreted the Qur’an, found ways to heal with their parents, nurtured supportive spaces in France. There is no singular narrative. Opening up our memories and traumas can almost be redemptive, leading us to question our imposed narratives of faith, survival, family and love. This body of work has become a necessity for me, a tunnel for examining the trauma of silence surrounding queered and racialized bodies - bodies in liminality. I have been working on this project since 2020, and will publish a book in 2025. In the next few months, I plan on editing, sequencing, scanning, transcribing and working with designers and publishers. The Lucie scholarship will support the publishing of my first monograph.
