This space is a storytelling hub with a focus that includes but is not limited to: the exploration of mythologies, folktales, ancestral foods and plants, indigenous erasure, and the joy that comes with reconnection. I investigate and find stories through these landscapes, plants, foods, folklore, individual and collective memories, and cultural traditions still practiced today.

In my study practices, I like to incorporate academic and non-academic ways of learning, understanding and knowing. The landscape is an archive, and so are collective and individual memories; our body is an archive, our dreams, plants are archives, and elders are archives. There is so much we can learn when we open up to new ways of listening.

As a Palestinian and Arab, I am interested in deconstructing the many layers and fragmentations placed upon my identity. Starting with the zionist colonization of part of my homeland, Palestine. This brought with it forced borders, ethnic cleansing, and changes in the landscape. Then there is the erasure of the vibrant and diverse SWANA identities and practices through Arabization. Growing up in the U.S. or on Turtle Island, many more layers exist to dissect.

Erasure is part of what brought me to learn about native and local plants and foods in the Levant. This cultivates healing, giving me a sense of wholeness, reconnection, joy, and immense love for the earth and our place in it.

I chose Yansoon for my website because it is an Arabic word, an aromatic herb/seed from my homeland, and it literally means “they forgot.” I found this meaning very poignant, as we are living in a time where we must urgently remember to put back the pieces of our interconnectivity.

I followed Yansoon with .ink as this space will examine the stories we tell ourselves and create to give meaning and make sense of our world. Reimagining our stories allows us to rewrite them and find a new vision for our planet.