Namal Siddiqui has always had a knack for words. When she was a child and her parents bought her favorite chocolate, she wrote a poem about it. When her family first had Internet on a desktop computer connected to the web via a modem that made the characteristic sounds, the first thing she did was look up the etymology of words she found interesting.
Siddiqui might have seemed destined to become one of the stalwarts in Dubai’s English-language poetry and spoken-word scene, but it took her a detour and a U-turn to get there.
After earning her bachelor’s degree in marketing and HR from the American College of Dubai, she instead opted for a career in advertising. Living in the United Arab Emirates as a lifelong noncitizen — just like virtually all immigrants and their children in the country — a job that could sponsor her visa was the easiest way to get the safe status she needed in the place she called “home.”
Back to her family’s roots
Aside from her day job, writing poetry has always come naturally to her ever since the first “chocolate poem.”
“It’s one of the things that exist within you since you were born,” she says.
However, it only took center stage in the past few years. It was also at that time that she asked herself what “home” meant, and whether the way she “felt at home in Dubai was the right way of feeling at home.”
For about a year, she lived in Pakistan, the country that issued her passport and the country that her parents still considered home. Her life in Islamabad, in the foothills of the Karakoram Mountains, which feature some of the world’s highest peaks, was different from in the desert city in the Gulf. But Siddiqui, who had recently become serious about mountaineering, appreciated the new environment and made it her home, too.
“I realized I could feel at home anywhere I feel comfortable,” she says.
More importantly, though, her concept of home shifted altogether — a development that was soon to influence her poetry.
Finding a home in culture
“I started thinking about my language, Urdu, in relation to home much more when I was in Pakistan,” she says, adding that she speaks Urdu with her parents, while English has always been the language of her daily life in the “multicultural Dubai bubble.”
“Urdu is what my ancestors spoke,” she says. “These are things that should ground us, not physical places we call home.”
Moments of heightened perception
Initially influenced by the heavyweights of English-language poetry, such as William Blake or William Wordsworth, Siddiqui has long since freed herself from the meters and structures of classic poetry, as well as from its typical themes. In her poems, Siddiqui often captures moments of heightened perception of her rich inside world and her environment, be it while stuck in thick traffic in Dubai or in a stuffy elevator.
I started thinking about my language, Urdu, in relation to home much more when I was in Pakistan.
Some of her recent poems have the form of a “ghazal,” an amatory ode that is closely linked to Sufi mysticism and the greats of Middle Eastern and South Asian poetry, such as Rumi or Muhammad Iqbal. Blending in this tradition of poems, typically written in Arabic or Urdu, also came naturally to Siddiqui once she realized it was part of her all along.
Deeply multilingual
In Pakistan, Siddiqui began thinking about what’s going on inside of her when writing.
“I realized that when I’m writing I’m not thinking only in English or Urdu,” she says. “When I’m thinking in English, I’m at the same time thinking in Urdu as well.”
In her poetry and spoken-word performances, Siddiqui began to incorporate elements of all the languages that are part of her identity.
“I have this Middle Eastern concept of culture,” she says. “When you hear me talk to an Arab friend, I’ll have a slight Arab accent. When you hear me talk to a Pakistani or Indian friend, I’ll drop in words in Urdu.”
With that realization, her family’s migration from Pakistan — and in part Bangladesh, which was at the time known as East Pakistan — began to form the backdrop of her craft.
“Most people in the world today are products of imperialism,” she said. “I want to map the history of my family through my poetry.”
Many projects
Siddiqui began to dig deeper into the history of her family and learned about episodes that were rarely talked about before, such as when her father traveled on a train scattered with blood in the wake of the Partition of India and Pakistan. She also realized the extent to which her mother’s “creative urge,” as she calls it, has always found an outlet in poetry, too. Little poems written by her mother were frequently found on the back of notebooks the family used to keep next to the telephone.
When you hear me talk to an Arab friend, I’ll have a slight Arab accent. When you hear me talk to a Pakistani or Indian friend, I’ll drop in words in Urdu.
After earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in the U.K., Siddiqui is now working on a book about her family’s history, as well as one about being a woman in the mountaineering space.
However, as Siddiqui wants to stay true to her first love — poetry — she is planning to publish her poetry selection first. She hopes it will be a collaborative project with her mother.
“I now urge my mother to write down all her poems in one place,” Siddiqui says. “She tends to write down her work in scattered places.”
