At the heart of my grandma’s farm, a single palm tree reigned, towering and dignified—a friend, a confidant, a steady pillar through the seasons of my reading and writing. She ached to be climbed, and I couldn’t deny her; her shade cradled my afternoons, her fruit sweetened my summers, and her presence, always listening, gave me solace. I’d watch as dates ripened, growing soft too fast, slipping free and flying—each one a quiet tragedy, its sweetness lost to a swift, irrevocable splat. The softest, sweetest ones never seemed to last, and I mourned their fall each time, separated too soon from the tree that had borne them. Atop her, the world stretched vast, though I stood on one of the Gulf’s smallest islands. Among these palms, queerness felt as natural as the breeze, as real as the sunlight filtering through. Yet, as the island shifted, replacing palm groves with highways and housing complexes, the farm shrank: one side turned into a waterpark, the other into concrete. The few remaining trees were fitted with nets, catching any date brave enough to slip—never allowed to fall, never given the chance to fly. And when the trees were gone, when there was no shade left to write under, no branches to climb, no fallen dates to mourn, there was the internet.
The internet handed me the keys to the closet—though it didn’t exactly come with a user manual. Its expansiveness packaged what once seemed like my entire universe into a mere collection of insignificant data points in the world wide web. I now hold a digital passport into a vast catalog of queer culture, a world of media waiting to be explored. I read Giovanni’s Room, Rubyfruit Jungle, Orlando, and countless other great queer classics banned on the Island. I clocked hundreds of hours immersed in ball culture, learning how drag and performance serves as an act of African American queer becoming– a declaration of life and discontent. I continue to be awed by the deeply intimate queer friendships I’ve been privileged to foster with people who constantly push the limits of their contexts. Online, I found comfort in my interiority, creating my little tree house in the endless sprawl of the digital forest. Yet, at times, Western gay narratives didn’t feel like enough; I craved stories that would validate my existence and immortalize my community—stories created by and for Khaleeji queer people.
While the Persian Gulf positions itself as a wellspring of culture, narratives that challenge the status quo find it difficult to gain institutional support. Stories struggle for their first breath, stifled en masse before fingers even meet the keyboard. The few that come to fruition are often banished to dark, forgotten corners of hard drives, where they rot out of sight but remain heavy on our hearts. This lack of an outlet inspired me and a group of local Khaleejis to lead a grassroots effort to sow the seeds of what will become a self-sufficiently expanding archive called DA3OOS.com. DA3OOS (داعوس), roughly translating to ‘street,’ presents users with a ‘digitized street’—the backdrop to an un-curated collection of art, letters, code, AI, sound, and other creative mediums, where output takes precedence over perfection. This aims to be a place where art emerges without constraint, protected by layers of anonymity and nurtured by spontaneity. With every unique visit, the website reshuffles the positions of links that guide you to submitted art. The desktop version is currently live in its Alpha phase, with a full product launch anticipated by Christmas. So far, this collaborative project has personally helped strengthen my immediate community. In a world growing ever more un-human, I'm constantly reminded that creative expression is our most profoundly human response. And while I’m so grateful for all who committed to this simple covenant of creation, in seeking refuge in a digitized version of our street we’re reminded that, for a while longer, our art is not welcome on our actual streets. Yet, we will continue to create.
It's daunting how unsafe we've made reality, how so much of our existence is suspended exclusively online. At some point witnessing a total ".com" cultural burst will seem even more catastrophic than a full incorporation of "culture" into the ".com". Sometimes it feels like we have become those same deforested palm trees, and just as we anthropized the arboreal, the cyber forces are slowly feeding on all that is human, reducing us to pixels.
This is simply my sliver of discontent in the face of a hyper-capitalist project waging war on all that is unique under the guise of globalization. As a student, educator, collaborator, or simply a person, I aim to reposition the human within my educational circles, by existing as genuinely as I know possible. A simple acknowledgment of our shared consciousness is a step toward dismantling these bounds of shame—the arbitrary parameters created to police our comfort in space. I will aim to dignify the individual and celebrate the collective dance of life in my research. I will continue to push my peers, students, and educators to navigate their interests as creatively as it comes to them. Real change happens on the ground, in the everyday, through our shifting perspectives.
I crave to hug grass. I wish for the poems of kin to gently rattle the fronds of palm. I plead for the gods of industry to give us a moment to breathe, a chance to allow our narratives to reclaim their place. Let us fall; some of us will fly.