I grew up and forgot to forget

“You grow up and forget,” is a phrase often said by an elder to a child when they are hurt or subjected to any form of harm. From this phrase, Fatima’s story unfolds, the story of a child who grew up trying to forget, and never did.
Fatima represents the children of what was known as the “Sahwa Generation,” the generation of religious movements that swept the region in the 1980s and 1990s. This movement left deep rifts in Kuwaiti homes in particular, and in Gulf homes in general, from the banning of satellite channels and the criminalization of music, poetry, painting, and all forms of art, to the oppression of women and the confiscation of their right to make their own decisions: the decision to study, the decision to work, and finally the decision to marry.
The novel is about Fatima’s journey, from her attempts to forget to her confrontations with memory, and her entire struggle to preserve her small, harmless rights in this barren life they had decreed for her. Her battle with the “guardian,” who sometimes speaks in the name of religion and sometimes in the name of tradition. Another attempt to break through the matrix of alienation and emerge with a small victory in the form of writing poetry.