Dry

Dry is about people, like me, who are suspended between places, identities, and expectations. It’s about the silent negotiations we make to belong, and the distance that remains even when we think we’ve arrived.

I was born in Algeria to an Algerian mother and a Sudanese father. When I was nine, my family moved to Libya, where I spent the next 18 years convincing myself I was Algerian, while my father insisted I was Sudanese. At 28, I decided to make Algeria my home. Only then did I begin to question my idea of belonging. I felt like an island in the middle of a society I had assumed I was part of, only to realize we had less in common than I thought.

How can an island exist in the middle of an ocean? Is it because its dry soil is strong enough to resist the water that surrounds it? Or is the ocean simply tolerating the island’s presence? Or perhaps it’s a relationship of compromise, where both sides give up part of themselves to coexist?

Dry is about all the islands I’ve encountered over the years. People , like me, suspended between places, identities, and expectations. It’s about the silent negotiations we make to belong, and the distance that remains even when we think we’ve arrived. It’s about the tension of standing in between, of being shaped by more than one place, yet claimed fully by none.