From Research to Art: Inside the Creative Process of Dana Barqawi

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Some artists create beauty, others create truth. But every once in a while you meet someone whose art holds emotion, history, and resistance all at once. Today's guest is one of those people. Dana Burkawi is a multidisciplinary artist and urban planner whose work challenges colonial narratives, honors indigenous identity, and transforms research and lived experience into art that speaks across generations. Welcome to Sity's Stories. I'm your host, Naila, inviting you to pour a cup of tea and listen into the stories that remind us of who we are and where we come from.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Leina. I'm good, alhamdulillah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So we always start off with a Siddhi-inspired question. If you were sitting in your Siddhi's living room or kitchen right now, what sound or object would make you feel at home?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

It would be the food. Maybe the food, the smell of the food. Yeah, it would be uh the food in both my grandmother's kitchens. My grandmother's um one one I have an Egyptian grandmother and a Palestinian grandmother uh from my dad and from my mom's side. And they both lived in Palestine, and it would definitely be the food. Uh I'm very fond of food. I have a very strong connection to food in general. I enjoy it, I love it. I feel that there's so much power in food and bringing people together and bringing communities together and bringing family together, also just the process of growing food and producing food, it has a connection to the land. And I feel that it's a very spiritual aspect that is usually taken for granted. But for me, it's very beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, I love that you said that, especially because like I feel food is like really what kind of like brings us to our roots and like grounds us. So when you talk about kind of like bringing us to our roots and like taking us back to kind of like where it started for you, can you share a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and what village or city your family was from and kind of like where you live now?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

So I I currently live in Jordan, in Abraham Jordan. My family is originally from Nables and Hebron. Oh nice. And uh they grew up in Nables um and in Hebron and in Tulkerim. My grandmother lived her whole life in Tulkim. I spent my early years in uh Saudi Arabia. We were living in Jeddah. My parents were working there, so we lived there and I I went to school there, and then I came back to Amman, to Jordan, to continue my studies. And then I lived abroad also for maybe three to four years, and I was living between Germany and Spain for some time, and then I lived in Kenya for almost a year. I was working there, and now I'm in Amman. I've been based in Amman since 2018.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Okay, nice. So you feel like you've been able to like put down some roots in Jordan right now? Yes. That's such like a classic like Palestinian experience, though, like having lived so many different countries and so many different places. So I'm glad that you're able to kind of take a beat and like settle in like one place now. You are an artist, but I saw that you were an urban planner before. So can you walk us through how you became an urban planner and then what that transition looked like to art?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

So I'm an I'm originally an architect by training. I studied architecture at school and then I continued my studies in urban planning. So I studied afterwards urban planning and international cooperation. So there was a lot of political studies that came into my thought process, and I majored as an urban planner. And then I worked in Amman as an urban planner for almost five years. Um, I was working with NGOs, which was also one of the reasons that has directed me into uh doing what I'm doing right now. I just thought that there was so much that I wanted to talk about. I started seeing that there was a gap between what's actually being said inside offices and decision-making spaces and reports, and between what's actually being implemented on the ground. And I wanted to understand why this gap is there, what is the purpose, how is everything working? And then I just started seeing that so many things are connected to each other, so many decisions are connected, nothing really operates in isolation. And I started seeing the bigger picture and I wanted to discuss and talk about the bigger picture. So I started writing articles just on my personal page about short articles about topics that I thought were important for me to question and to discuss, and I wanted to discuss with people, and discussions started happening, and that was very interesting for me. And then I found myself naturally moving towards art as a means of communication. So for me, art and what I do, the artwork itself, is not about the artwork as much as it is about using the artwork as a tool to communicate and to trigger conversations about topics that I think are really crucial and important for us to discuss and start talking about.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

I love how you were able to take your educational background and your working background to pursue a larger passion that you have, but all while all came from the same place of you wanting to create a better space for community and keeping that political conversation going. You were largely influenced by women in your family. I was reading that you have a lot of artists who are in your family, and I was wondering if you could talk to us about that and how you were inspired by your family members.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Me as a young girl, I always did art. It was something that I always did as a kid, but I was also surrounded by, so my mom, uh, she sewed all the time and she embroidered. My aunts, both of them, they painted. Um they still do paint and produce paintings professionally. And my grandmothers, both of them also worked with their hands and they produced art for the house. So art was something like many women in our communities. Art is really a part of their daily lives. They embroider their dresses, they embroider their cushions, they decorate their spaces. We now call it art and maybe want to put it in a museum or make it more exclusive, but in reality, art has been an intrinsic part of our of the co of the woman in in our community. Um and uh even the men. I focus a lot in my work on the white man's gaze. And I always say that when the white man and when the colonizer came to our land, they took this art, they took these dresses, they took the spoons, the the plates, the artworks, and they put them in a museum. And then it became artwork that is appropriate for the Western gays. But in reality, it was art was just a part of life. This is how we lived, and life was artistic and it was beautiful, and this is how they expressed themselves. This is how everyone expressed themselves without calling themselves an artist.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

I love that you bring that topic to light because I feel nowadays we look at art as a privilege and as something that only, like you said, it's an exclusive form. And so, like if you're privileged, you're able to be an artist, and it's just something that our people did as something that was so functional. Our cities did Tatris to make their thobs, and they were their thobs to garden and work. And so I love that you were able to bring light to that. How did you feel those early influences shaped your storytelling and your art?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

So I would say that the influence was more in giving me confidence in using art as a tool to just express myself. But when it comes to storytelling and narration, that really developed over the years, and it started with in my household, like many other households of Palestinians living in the diaspora, it the TV was always on uh the news, and my dad was always watching the news, and there was always a kind of um a clip or a video of my people, of Palestinians, struggling. We were always told that, and we're always taught that we have a land that is ours that is being stolen by a colonizer. And so just growing up with this and knowing that you have a land somewhere, and your parents have a house somewhere, and your grandparents have a house somewhere that you cannot visit, that you cannot go to, but you hear about the house. You hear about how the house looked like, you hear about their experiences in this house, but it's a place that you cannot go to, that you cannot visit because a colonizer has stolen it from you. So growing up with this, and then also when I continued my studies, also in political studies, you start seeing how everything is really connected and how important it is that we understand history and we understand how decisions were made historically and how history repeats itself in a circle. And when we understand all of this, then we can understand why the world looks the way it does today and why we are in this situation today. I really believe that understanding the root cause always of any situation, of any problem, if you really understand the root cause, then that's the first step to change and to trying to make to try to make better decisions and maybe change the reality where you live.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

How do you do you feel like your art helps you convey to people the root cause? You were talking about the root cause. How do you help people understand what the root cause is through your art?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So through my work, I do storytelling through my work and narrations. And the process, how my work starts, is first of all, it starts as a personal process of questioning and trying to learn and unlearn many narratives and many histories. And then I produce the artwork and then I want to share it with the world, with the people, to also have conversations with these people. Reaching or understanding what the root cause is is not a very easy process because it means that you have to unlearn so many things that shape your history, that shape your identity, that shape the way you see yourself and shape the community where you live in. So it's not always an easy, easy process, and it takes a lot of energy and power to try to accept it. Um but once I do reach it, and I do reach that, for example, this is a root cause that I want to tackle in this artwork, um, then it just becomes easy and it just flows uh through the artwork, and I am able to um uh express it visually. Um in the artwork itself, there's a lot of, I use a lot of elements, a lot of symbols that refer to that root cause. Um and sort of looking at the artwork, it's like you're reading um a story, is that you're reading a narrative. This is what I try to do through my work, and this is how I refer to the root cause.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Your work really does carry a lot of pieces of and themes of resistance. Do you see art itself as a form of resistance?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yes. Art can be a form of resistance. Everything can be a form of resistance. Uh it just depends on how you plan to use it, or how you decide to use it. Um so art uh can be a form of resistance.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

How do you connect the Palestinian struggle to other struggles around the world and express that through your art?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

All struggles are connected, and the enemy is one, and this is what I try to focus on also through my work. So initially, I started working my first two collection series of artworks was very much focused on Palestine and the Palestinian narrative, and also the colonial narrative that Palestine was an empty piece of land for the Jews to come and occupy. But as I did more research, you start seeing that colonialism and occupation and oppression is really a huge system that is not just manifest in Palestine, but it's manifest in all of our countries in different forms. And it is very important for the colonizer to separate the struggles. So the black struggle in America is different from the Palestinian struggle, is different from indigenous struggle somewhere else. But in reality, all the oppressed are having the same struggles and they're being attacked with the same techniques, even sometimes the same weapons and the same strategies by the same enemy. So it's really all connected. And when we really chant for a free Palestine, we should understand this this means the collapse of all other systems of oppression because they're all connected. If we really want a free Palestine, then we should be able to make the compromise that we have to make because everything will have to change. Nothing can stay the same if we want the world to change. Because we live in a capitalistic, imperialistic system. And to want a part of the system to change, but everything else to remain the same, it doesn't work. So we really need to be uh genuine and authentic with ourselves about what we're protesting for, what we're chanting about, and what we want.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Yeah. That really shows through your work. Like I feel I could see like so many people's struggles and stories through your work and then how they all connect. So I do not have like an artistic bone in my body. But when I lost my grandmother a couple years ago, I found myself like kind of being able to grieve through art and not by like me like doing the art, but just seeing art pieces that I'm like, wow, that reminds me of my Sidhi or that like helped me connect. Does art hold the same power for you? And in this moment, as we are collectively grieving as Palestinians, how do you see a way for art to hold that grief?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

First of all, your grandma Allah Hamha. Um and yes, art has the power to hold so much more than just grief. So it has the power to hold grief, it has the power to hold joy and stories and culture and power, and it also has the power to mobilize people and mobilize communities. It has been used historically to do that by both sides. So by oppressive governments and oppressive regimes who want to use propaganda to mobilize people. Art has been used. There were artists who were collaborators with the regime and with the governments who were used as artists to also create a certain sense of nationalism, of patriotism. But art has also been used on the other side by people who wanted to protest these governments and these regimes. So by people who wanted to protest, people who wanted to express themselves, who wanted to go against oppression. And it has been a powerful tool on both sides. So art is very powerful, and people can understand the power of this art. All people, like I just said, I don't have um an artistic bone in me, but like for me, I think everyone has an artistic bone in them. Art is really not just about displaying it in a museum for a certain group of people or artists who can understand art. For me, it's it should be for everyone and it should be accessible for everyone. And if we look at the most powerful art throughout history, it's really art that is by the people and for the people. This is the most powerful art that we now read about. In one of my works, I work, um, I talk about the revolution in Egypt in 1919. It was against the British mandate at the time. And I reference in this artwork Sayyid Derwish. Sayyid Derwish is an Egyptian musician. He was a construction worker, so he was really from the working class, and then he started writing lyrics and making music that is understood by all of the Egyptians, by all the people, rich or poor. And the people started singing his songs and his music and playing his music in restaurants and cafes um around British soldiers. And the songs were in Arabic, so the soldiers would not understand what's being said or sung it in these songs. And the songs he created were so beautiful because they were about the people and they were for the people, and used local language and used local vocabulary and just referenced things that people use in their daily lives, like for example, Ulle. Ulle is an Egyptian uh word for a clay vase where you put water and people would use it. So this uh one one song actually is just about this um this object in Egyptian culture, and it's so beautiful. And he used all of this to talk about decolonizate the colonization of Egypt and talk about the foreign, the white man, their presence in the country, and how people should be more proud of their own heritage and their own stories and their own identities. And it really was one of the reasons that motivated people to go out in protests, in mass protests, against the British mandate at the time. So this is just one example of how art in the form of music can be very powerful in so many ways.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

I think when you're authentic to like who you are and not trying to be something that you're not, it like really shines through, and then like other people can kind of connect to that. So at the center of Siddhis Stories podcast is our Siddhis. And um, I know you kind of shared a little bit about them earlier, about one being Palestinian, one being Egyptian. So I would love to hear a little bit more about your grandmothers.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Yeah, uh, my grandmothers again because we lived in different countries. At the early years of my life, I spent away and uh distant from my grandmothers, both of them. When I grew up a little bit more in my teen years, I was able to move back and spend more time with them. So my grandmother, both of them they lived in Palestine, one of them lived in Nablus, and one of them lived in Tolkarim. And uh I hear a lot about the houses where they grew up in, and I also hear a lot from my parents about uh their experiences in in Palestine with my grandmothers and with their grandmothers also. So my dad would mention a lot, his uh grandmother in Nables. He would mention how he and the cousins would gather on the weekends in their grandmother's house. It was a big house with a with a big farm, and they would wake up in the morning to the smell of their grandmother's baking. She would be uh baking bread for the for the grandkids, and then they would go out and they would pick olives, they had fig trees also. This my mom would mention also her grandmother's house where they had uh a horse stable and their lives. For me, I did not live this life as a kid. I was living in diaspora, I did not have this experience or this life, but just listening to how much they mentioned these stories and how many times these stories were repeated just made me feel like I have visited these houses and that I have been to these houses. My grandmothers, unfortunately, they left, they were forced to leave their houses in Palestine and they spent the rest of their lives here in Amman Jordan between family and friends. So that's uh good. But I mean, it's sometimes very dystopian to look at because my grandmother, who lived in Tulkarim, who had a huge house and lived with all of her sisters and her family, and they had horse stables and fruit farms, spent the uh the last couple of years of her life living in a very small apartment here in Amman, a second floor apartment that has only a balcony. And so she was completely uproot from her connection, from her daily connection to the land that she uh grew up with.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Uh when were they displaced from their home?

SPEAKER_01 21:12

During the uh uh the next. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah, yeah, 1967. You said how one of your grandmothers was uh Egyptian. How did she end up in false tea?

SPEAKER_01 21:25

My Egyptian grandmother. Uh she fell in love with my grandfather. My grandfather um studied in Egypt. He studied in Cairo, like many other men from this part of the world during that time. So there was a lot of exchange, cultural education between youths living in the Nevant and Egypt. Unfortunately, now it's very restricted. Um, at the time it wasn't that restricted. He lived in Cairo and he did his studies in Cairo, and that's where he met my grandmother. Oh, and then so he brought grandma back to Next Yes, and then to Georgia. When they were living in Nablus, my father was five years old at the time. And they left for a summer vacation. They came to uh Jordan for a summer vacation. And uh that's when the war erupted, and they just could never uh go back after that time. So they just stayed. My grandfather would go back and forth sometimes to just pick up some stuff, but after that they were never able to uh go back, so they just stayed here. So it was just a summer vacation that turned into a really long vacation. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah, I think that's like so similar to so many people's stories where they like genuinely didn't think that they were gonna be gone forever. They thought it was just a temporary thing. Um, and then unfortunately just not being able to go back. That also like hasn't stopped like across like generations. Like we are still in that like active like displacement process. And so it's like kind of like hard for us to like look back at like what we've like learned from our grandparents if we're like still going through it. But I did want to kind of ask, like, that takes a lot of strength and resilience to be able to be displaced and then like create a whole new life. We get a lot of resilience and strength from our grandparents just by kind of seeing what they've had to go through. Do you feel you embody that resilience and strength? And how do you show that in your day-to-day life?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I'm sure like many other children and children of people who have been displaced, you do carry their experiences, you do carry their stories in your heart, you do carry this yearning to a place that you've never been to, um, which is a very foreign concept to the Western um the Western community. The Western the Western person cannot understand how we, as people who live in diaspora who have never been to Palestine, I have never been to Palestine myself, how do we have such a strong connection to a land that we have never been to, a land that we've never visited? Why don't we just get over it or forget it or move on? It's a concept that we have in our upbringing and the way we were taught about standing up to oppression and standing up to injustice. So we can never say that my house has been stolen by a colonizer, but that's okay, I now live somewhere else. Because eventually that colonizer is not going to leave you alone. That colonizer is going to come after you. That colonizer is greedy. The colonizer always wants more. We can see, we can read that from recent news and recent speeches by leaders. Shin, when it comes to resilience, yeah, I think that we do carry a lot of the resilience from our parents and our grandparents, and we carry it on and we pass it on to our children, and they're going to pass it on to their children. The hope of the colonizers that we forget this resilience, that we forget these stories, that we forget, we just forget. But we have never forgotten for 77 years, and we we're not going to forget. And you're going to teach your children, and I'm going to teach my children, and it's going to carry on.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

We also carry on like the lessons and traditions as well of our cities and of our grandparents in general. Is there like a tradition or a lesson that you still do that you learned from your grandparents?

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Of course, I learned a lot from my grandparents. My grandparents would tell a lot of stories, all of them would tell a lot of stories about their experiences in Palestine before displacement. I feel that they wanted to avoid the negative experiences and the negative memories of losing the house, of losing the land, because it's very painful. So they usually always avoided talking of these memories. They just hang on on to older, happier memories of their lives in Palestine. So they never really spoke about how resilient they were after they were displaced or how they moved on or how they bounced back and restarted their lives again from scratch after being displaced from their homes. I feel that for them it was just a life choice that they didn't make and they had to. They just they had children and they had to live and they had to keep providing for their children and they had to continue life. Now, when we refer to Gazze and we refer to what's happening in Gazze and the people of Gazze, we refer to them as resilient, as powerful, as heroes, which they are, all of these things. But I think to them, they don't care about all these titles and they don't care about being called resilient or powerful or anything, because for them what they're doing is not resilience as much as it is as it is just wanting to live and wanting to keep going and wanting to survive. My grandparents, of course, they told me they taught me a lot about life, about uh being a good person, about being a genuine person, about being authentic, about all of these things, but it was nothing like just in specific to the Palestinian cause because it's just their life. It's not a cause that is outside of them, it's how our life is.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Really good insight. And your journey hasn't been just about art, it's also been about navigating the heavy realities of the world and the topics that you choose to carry on. Right now, so many of us are finding it really hard to create and be productive. How do you keep your creativity and productivity up at this moment?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

So, in the beginning of the genocides, I was extremely devastated. And I was completely unable to function in life, let alone work, for a long time. And you usually go into this mindset of rethinking about everything in your life and what you're doing and what is the purpose of everything that you do, and is it even important? Is it even relevant? So you really start to question everything in your life and everything that you do, and it hasn't been easy. It still is not easy because you feel like the genocide is being live streamed. We are seeing everything in videos, in photos, all footage is out there in stories, in writing, everything we're seeing, and all of this is unable to stop a genocide. So you wonder like, is anything I'm ever going to do going to help in any way? I have a lot of anger inside of me and a lot of frustration and a lot of disappointment and a lot of sadness, but also a lot of the kind of anger that once that keeps you wanting to do something and say something. Through my work, I channeled all of this energy, is what I do through the work. Every artwork is very emotional for me in its different story, in its different narrative. It's very emotional because I also have to do a lot of research before every artwork. And when doing the research, I have to do a lot of reading into the history of each narrative. And it just becomes more and more frustrating because you see history repeating itself. The same thing that has happened 70 years ago is happening now again, and no one is stopping it, and we're just watching it happen. So a lot of frustration I feel as I work with my artworks, but I try to challenge it through the artwork and just be as clear as possible and as honest as possible to tell my story and to narrate the truth as I see it. And then I've reached the realization that every act is important, no matter how small the act is, and nothing is insignificant, even if the change that you do is on a personal level, even if it's just between you and yourself, and you have the courage to make a small change within your thinking, within your heart, to align yourself with the truth, that alone is enough to create a ripple effect and to create change on the long run. So really everything is an act of resistance. Producing art is an act of resistance, writing is an act of resistance, music, raising kids, raising your children is an act of resistance. Aligning yourself with the truth, even if it's just between you and yourself, that is an act of resistance. So just these small acts are important. And I don't think that anyone should feel that they're helpless. I saw that a lot during the genocide on social media, that people would say we're helpless. I'm helpless. What can I do? We're helpless. There is nothing in our power. How can we do anything? And it usually frustrates me when I see that sentence because no one's helpless, and everyone has something that they can do, no matter how small it is, even if it is on a personal level.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Like I remember I went on a walk one time pretty shortly after like October 7th. Like we were still in October, and my neighbor like saw me going on a walk, which I do very often, but he approached me and was like, Are you okay? And I was like, Why? Like I didn't even say yes or no. I was like, Why do you ask? And he was like, I don't know, you seem you're walking a little, a little harshly today. Like you seem upset today. And at first, from not wanting to be so vulnerable, I wanted to just use another excuse of being, oh, I'm just stressed out, or I'm just this, or I'm just that. Not because of uncomfortability in terms of the topic, but more of just I will literally cry right now in front of you. And so for a second, I kind of wanted to just be like, yeah, yeah, no, I'm fine. And then I was like, no, this is the exact moment that I need you to see. I need you to see that I'm affected by this. Someone that you know and you have a friendship with is affected by this in a very real way, and we're not just numbers on the news. And so that was the start of the conversation with him, and he was very receptive about it. But so before we wrap up, I wanted to know where our listeners can see your art and follow along with your journey.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

So, my work, I post everything on social media. If there are any events or exhibitions or updates or even new works, everything is posted on my Instagram page. Um, and I also have my website. The website has all of the artworks on it with the with the narrations, with the written text, and it's very important for me that people read the text because it is part of the artwork. It is how my process starts. I start with writing a text and then I make it into a visual artwork. So all of that is uh on my website. Those are the two main platforms.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yeah, and you have prints that people can purchase as well, which is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:09

That's also on the website. So all original artworks are available as prints. Uh, prints is a way for me to reach everyone, people who relate to my work, people who relate to the stories, and who want to have a piece of their home with them.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Yeah, I love that. Is are there any new projects you would like to highlight that you're working on?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Um, so my last exhibition, my last project was on uh it was exhibited on November last year, uh 2024. And since then I've been working on uh a new project. It is still not finalized. It's going to take some time, maybe till next year, till 2026. And uh it's going to follow along the same lines, the same concepts uh that I usually work with, concepts of colonialism, uh, capitalism and imperialism, and womanhood and indigenous motherhood and the land. Those are the the concepts that I usually work with, and they're going to follow along the same lines, just maybe uh different techniques, different ways of visualizing these concepts. Yeah, but it's still work in progress. It should be ready by next year, inshallah.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Inshallah. We're we're gonna be very excited to check it out. Um so we always kind of close the way that we started with a city-inspired question. So if your city or your teta was here with us today drinking their cassette, and what do you think they would be the most proud of?

SPEAKER_01 34:36

That's very powerful. They would be proud of their children, the way they've raised us. Um, and they would be proud of their grandchildren in that we uh are trying to align ourselves to the truth as much as we can, regardless of the consequences.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

I think you're doing that. I'm sure they are, because you're clearly very much doing that through the work that you're doing. And thank you so much for carrying your Siddhi's wisdom and your own vulnerability into your work and into this podcast space today. I really appreciate you being here and chatting with me.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Thank you, Naina. I enjoyed this so much. I feel like I spoke so much. It feels also so good listening to you and talking with you, and thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 35:24

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Thank you for spending time with us today, and a heartfelt thank you to Dana for sharing not just her art, but the emotion, intention, and truth behind it. What stays with me is her reminder that emotion doesn't have to overwhelm us, it can move us forward, and that art in all of its forms can hold our stories in ways that words alone sometimes can't. As always, I'm grateful to you for listening, for supporting this work, and for helping preserve the stories that shape our communities. You can explore more of Dana's artwork at danabudakawe.com and connect with us at citystories.com or on Instagram at cities.stories. And a little announcement update if you haven't seen on Instagram, we actually have moved to a bi weekly schedule with episodes now dropping every other Tuesday. Also that each story gets the time and space it deserves. This is Sithis Stories, where we honor the ones who came before us and carry their voices forward. Until next time, mahasalama.