The Longing Of The Stranger Whose Path Has Been Broken

This is a personal project in which I reconnect to my roots and work collaboratively with the Sinai Bedouin community to explore the notion of belonging and the interconnectedness of people and land.

The project focuses on the process of finding the meaning of belonging cited through the Bedouin community of St. Catherine, South Sinai, Egypt. The community are participants in the creative process. I’m visually depicting the poetic harmony of people and land while using the community’s commentary of embroidery, poetry, sound and storytelling to link the photographic work with topics of representation, social injustice and the history of the community’s struggles. The final outcome of the project is a complementary collection of photographs, written content, embroidery and multimedia.

The project attempts to understand the layers of an identity and the intertwined connections between people and land which defines the notion of belonging. In doing so, I aim to raise questions and create a dialogue on the meaning of identity and the search for belonging. I believe it’s a common human emotion to seek a definition of one’s identity, yet its complexity is often ignored, creating linear narratives and othering. With this dialogue I’m building a bridge between the voices of the Bedouin community and western audiences who have long seen the Bedouins and many other indigenous communities through a linear and romanticized gaze.

I’m working with the Jebeleya tribe, who’ve been inhabiting the region for more than 1400 years. The community has survived wars, colonialism, drought and pandemics. They are in perpetual struggle with the authorities, struggling for their civil rights and contend with stigma and stereotyping for staying in their lands and holding on to traditions. Throughout it all, they remain the keepers of the land - protecting it from harm as it provided them with its blessings in return. This interconnectedness, forged over the centuries, accounts for the community’s resilience in the face of challenges.

Since the isreali war, most of the surviving archives about Sinai have been stored in the St. Catherine’s monastery. The Egyptian government prohibits public access, and thus withholds the history of the land, its people and possibly the history of my family. Having a peculiar last name El Dalil, translated to The Guide, our family was rumoured to have come from Bedouin roots, without further evidence. For years I worked to decipher our family history, with no guides at all. It's the interconnectedness between people and land which survived in my blood and drew me back to find my way home. This is my process of seeking the meaning of belonging and a reflection of a universal journey we all go through.