How do we become ourselves when we were never meant to be?

Writing against shame, lineage, and the invisible jury

I had to kill both parents in the novel I just finished writing. I didn’t consciously realise it was something I had done until I was speaking about it with my dad’s friend. Her mum is dead, I told him. How about her dad? He asked. I stole a look at mine then, who was sitting across the table from me. He’s dead too, I replied.

He had to be dead for it to be at all believable that she would be able to do any of that, I explained. That she would be able to live like that. The *that* being living a life unencumbered from her parent’s expectations. A life in which she can act of her own volition. One in which she can want. Can take. Can try out different versions of herself. They had to be dead for the story to be at all believable. That’s how radical it is for an Arab woman to simply live like that.

Is that true? My dad’s friend asked him as he leaned over to top up my wine glass.

Yes, my dad responded. It is true.

And I could see the pride in his face, could hear it in his tone. That an Arab man – an Arab father like him would be so rare as to be entirely unbelievable.

And yet still.

Even with them dead, she wasn’t really unencumbered at all. The spectre of them and of their opinions and expectations guided everything she did and thought and allowed herself and didn't allow. Even if it was only for their imagined gaze – for what and who I called the invisible jury, in The Greater Freedom. Ghosts make great audiences, it turns out.

Do we ever really grow up as Arab women? If we’re defining growing up as living lives for ourselves and based on our own morals and values then I would say it can be extremely difficult to claim that, especially out loud. I would say that a lot of the time, the answer to that is no. That we are never really our own people – we are always an extension of our entire lineages. The burden of representation heavy on our shoulders.

I tried to grant my character respite from that, but I felt the invisible jury with every word I typed.

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Writers often speak about needing to shut the world out in order to create. They speak about going into cabins or on writing retreats or shutting their phone in a drawer. I did all of that too, but mainly because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to write a word. Because otherwise the invisible jury would’ve shouted too loudly, blocking every thought I dared to spell out.

There were some days I didn’t check my phone until 4, 5, 8, 9pm. I couldn’t let even a hint of the outside world leak in, or the shame would have suffocated me. It would have silenced me. The book scared the shit out of me to write.

Every time I wrote a sex scene or allowed her to express her own desire. Every time she was slightly outside what was expected of her. Every time she rebelled. Every time she was a woman with agency. Every single line, then, I felt the weight of my ancestor’s gaze. Felt like a child daring to misbehave. The weight of the punishment impending.

I guess the threshold of our tolerance for discomfort must move, because when I was writing my first book, I was scared shitless too. It’s funny that, in comparison to what I have just completed, that now feels like the most timid of PG offerings. It now doesn’t feel scary at all.

Then, as now, I sat down with both my parents, and in particular my dad, the man who is thankfully not the Arab patriarch of the world’s imaginings, and yet is still my dad. I sat down with them to try and give them a warning. To try and gauge if I’m going too far this time. To explain that I have to do this, that I am compelled to seek the truth and to share it. To see if they would still love me.

Alya, my dad told me, you are 36. You are an adult. If this is what you want to do, that’s up to you.

And I felt a deep relief.

Somewhere deep down, of course, I knew that that would be his answer. That that is how he moves through the world, how he raised me, what allowed me to even be here, talking to him about this book that I had written. And I felt and feel immense gratitude for that. That I am not a woman whose self has cost me my family. Who has had to silence myself out a misplaced sense of duty and love. Their support doesn’t erase the fear, but it does soften it. It makes it possible for me to try.

And yet still.

I am 36. I am a grown ass woman. I could have had children and been responsible for other people’s lives by now. I live alone and have lived alone for maybe almost as long as I ever lived under my parent’s roof. The list of evidence that proves my adulthood is long. And yet I am talking about needing permission from my parents. I am talking about having to consider what I would have done if I didn’t get it.

It makes me feel twelve again. Like I’m standing in front of them asking if I’m allowed to go to a party. And at the same time, it breaks my heart a little. Because I know how much it means. How much of what I get to do rests on the foundation of their love. And how shaky that foundation can feel when the stakes are high.

The contradiction is almost too much to hold - this adult woman with her own keys and her own deadlines and her own scars, still scanning for approval before she can tell the truth. And feeling less Arab because I have it. As if real Arabness requires disownment, secrecy, punishment.

What on earth?

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“Who is she writing this for?” I heard a fellow Arab ask, in a podcast episode I stumbled across recently. “Is she really Arab?” they said. “My parents would never let me write something like this.”

I felt the familiar shame then. Who am I writing this for? Am I really Arab?

Who gets to decide what being Arab means? Is it obedience? Silence? Not telling the truth unless it’s pretty?

And I thought, not for the first time, how much we lose because of these expectations – those that come from our families, and from our peers, and from somewhere deep inside us, too. How much art and how much truth are we losing out on. How that continues to perpetuate the cycles that we are trapped in. How it limits our lives and the lives of others and what we can allow ourselves to dream and be. How many stories and possibilities and lives we are missing out on because we are not hearing them. Because we can’t then even dare to imagine that they might exist.

And how much shame we are feeling and living, too, not knowing that we are never alone in what we think and feel and believe. That someone out there has gone through it too.

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I’ve been reading a lot about love and sex and relationships over the last couple of years - a lot about women living autonomous lives. These books have given me more courage. More spirit. More agency.

At the end of every year, I like to look back at what I’ve read and track its diversity - how many women writers, how many Arabs, Black authors, and so on. Lately, I noticed that most of what I’ve been reading is by white women.

How come? I asked myself. And the answer came to me instantly: Because not many women of colour have written about these topics in a way that speaks to where I am. Because we are silencing ourselves. Because we are silenced. Because we do not dare.

And I keep thinking about what that means - what it costs us. How much is lost when we don’t speak? When we don’t write? When we don’t allow ourselves to become the people we’re aching to read?

Words have always been a balm for me. A mirror. A map. When I read something that captures the nuances - of longing, of shame, of resistance - I feel less alone. I feel more possible.

And I think about what it would cost me to never find those words. What it would cost others if I didn’t write them. And I feel a little less afraid. And I know: It’s because I can that means I have to.

-Alya xo

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About Me:

I’m Alya Mooro, a writer and the bestselling author of The Greater Freedom: Life as a Middle Eastern Woman Outside the Stereotypes. My work explores identity, self-discovery, and what it means to live in alignment - with ourselves and with each other.

The Greater Conversation is where I share the softer, more reflective side of that work. It's become a space to think aloud, ask questions, and grow alongside a thoughtful community.

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