Yassmin’s Story Read online

  About the Book

  Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a young Muslim dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh air – and hope.

  At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote oil and gas rig: she was the only woman. With her hijab quickly christened a ‘tea cosy’, there could be no more unlikely place for Yassmin to want to be. This is the story of how she got there, where she is going, and how she wants the world to change.

  It is a story about being a third culture kid; growing up migrant and Muslim in Australia post 9/11; navigating the usual teenage dramas, on top of adjusting to now being seen as the face of the ‘enemy’.

  Yassmin reflects on the fluidity and responsibility of cultural identity and appropriation, on bridging cultures, about the strength of women and learning to lead.

  Yassmin’s Story challenges who we are as a society, and asks you to join the journey to a better place.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Where the Blue and White Nile Meet

  Chapter 2: Early Days

  Chapter 3: The Day It All Changed

  Chapter 4: Hijab

  Chapter 5: Back to Sudan

  Chapter 6: High School

  Chapter 7: Jumping In

  Chapter 8: Building Stuff

  Chapter 9: Boys? Inshallah

  Chapter 10: On Being Strong

  Chapter 11: Learning to Lead

  Chapter 12: Back to Sudan: Teenage Struggles

  Chapter 13: Check Your Bias

  Chapter 14: Oriental or Official?

  Chapter 15: The Snowball

  Chapter 16: Failing, Learning and Finding the Spark

  Chapter 17: Why Should I Care?

  Chapter 18: Grindin’ My Gears

  Chapter 19: For the Love of Speed …

  Chapter 20: The Romanian Painter

  Chapter 21: The School of Life

  Chapter 22: Family and Marriage

  Chapter 23: On the Rigs

  Chapter 24: #ThingsRigPigsSay

  Chapter 25: Why Do You Care What I Wear?

  Chapter 26: We Gon’ Be Alright

  Chapter 27: And Now?

  Picture Section

  Copyright Notice

  I once asked my mum what her expectations of me were and she said:

  Do the best you can in everything you can.

  Do your absolute best.’

  This is for you, Mama (and you, Baba and Yasseen).

  This is for my family.

  This is for all the teachers who have made me who I am today.

  (Mrs Lepp, Mr Henderson, Mr Stumpf, Mr Carlil).

  For the mentors, informal teachers and those who took a chance on me.

  (Lorraine Collins, Julianne Schultz, Julie McKay, Barbara Piscitelli, Michael Rose).

  For all my ‘habibs’.

  You know who you are; thank you for always keeping me grounded.

  For all the sisters.

  We’ve got this.

  Prologue

  I’m sitting on a helideck in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of kilometres away from any land. It’s the dead of night, the only time I find peace and the chance to be alone on an oil rig full of – well, mostly – men. When you live with over a hundred not-quite-strangers for weeks at a time, sharing accommodation, bathrooms, meals and work, you do become family, but those precious moments of being alone with your thoughts are few and far between. This helideck is my refuge.

  The surface of the dark green landing pad is rough; I sit cross-legged in the middle of the brightly lit ‘H’ that marks the touchdown spot in the centre of the octagon. This raised platform was never meant for human lounging but I am always one for repurposing.

  Why am I here? This is my day job. I work as a drilling engineer on oil and gas rigs and my career so far has taken me to remote rigs on land and in the ocean, around Australia and the world. I am sometimes on call, sometimes on a roster of one month on, one month off. A day job, however, doth not a woman make. I have the privilege and blessing of taking on multiple identities. Yes, I am a mechanical engineer; I am also a practising Muslim woman (Alhamdulillah), a founder of a youth-led organisation, a former race car Team Principal, a Sudanese-born member of the Arab-African diaspora, a Queenslander, a boxer, a doer and, hopefully, also a thinker who is able to add value, to be useful. I care about leaving this world a better place, so I spend my time advocating and agitating for that positive change.

  Why am I here, typing up my story under the moonlight, with the never-ending din of machinery in the background? The rig derrick shines brightly in front of me, a forty-metre-high beacon of industrialisation in an unforgiving and terribly beautiful landscape. Why tell this tale at all?

  When I was growing up, I didn’t see stories about people with lives I could relate to. There were no stories centring on young women, people of colour or Muslims. There were definitely no stories of young migrant Muslim women who grew up eating mahshi and listening to Avril Lavigne. The stories being told about people like me are often told by people who are not like me, and often without permission. It is exhausting to forever be talked about without being involved in the conversation in a meaningful manner. Yes, some people do try, but it is not enough to be invited to speak only when spoken to. Also, I have never been one to wait my turn. This book is about reclaiming the narrative, redefining it to my lived experience and the varied experiences of the strong women and mentors in my life. In doing so, I hope to provide some insight into a different world: one that has always existed but has not often been acknowledged by the society I live in, the West.

  I am writing this to share my story, but I am not arrogant enough to believe it is particularly remarkable, or unique. This is not about teaching, as I still have so much to learn. It is about sharing experiences and the lessons learnt along the way, as well as asking the questions those experiences continue to raise. It is clear that we are facing immense challenges as a global society and will continue to in the decades to come. Creating effective responses to these challenges will only happen through a combination of critical thought and fully considered action, a balance I have been searching for throughout my life. I am grateful to have been involved in a lot of ‘doing’ for someone my age – a healthy 24 years. This book is about some of the doing, but also some of the thinking that lay behind those actions. Hopefully, these stories will add texture and context to a different perspective – the perspective of a young Muslim post 9/11, of a girl who grew up seeing the strong women around her all wearing hijabs and being confused as to why the world was telling her those same women were oppressed. Hopefully, they will encourage thought and discussion around why we, as Australians and global citizens, are at the crossroads we are, and what needs to change to move us to where we could be: a place where we learn from and respect each other’s choices and experiences.

  This isn’t just my story. This is the story of so many other young people, so many other women, and so many other people of faith and colour. My story may seem unique because it does not fit in with what you expect from a young Australian Muslim woman, but there are many stories of young Muslims, women and people of colour that challenge, question and inspire, without tokenism or self-doubt. The difference is that a lot of these stories never see the light of day, don’t make it into our newsfeeds or the morning television shows because not everyone has a ready platform from which to share their story. Alhamdulillah, I have been blessed with access to a microphone and as such it’s my responsibility and my duty to make the most of it – for myself, and for the many others who don’t yet have that space.

  I write this story – my story and the sto
ry of the people around me who have created who I am – so that I can open a window into another world, the world of an Arab-African Muslim migrant woman who calls Australia home, of a chick on a rig, of a motorsport maniac, of a lady who lifts, of a smart mouth in a hijab. This world isn’t so far away, though, and any partition can so easily be dismantled, bit by bit. After all, we’re just drops in the same ocean. What are we waiting for?

  Chapter 1:

  Where the Blue and White Nile Meet

  ‘Yassmin was born in a world of her own!’ The phrasing made the statement sound dramatic, as Arabic’s poetic language is wont to do. ‘She was so impatient to join the world that she didn’t even wait to come out properly! She slid out in a bubble and the nurse used a needle to pop the sac because it wouldn’t break.’ My mum mimed the situation as she told the story, holding her hand out in front of her as though she was the nurse, wearing an irritated expression and poking at the surface of the balloon with exasperation. I was born en-caul, or in the ‘water bag’, as our family calls it. It has always quietly pleased me to hear that, even at the very beginning, I did things unconventionally.

  That story is not nearly as good, though, as the story of how my parents actually got to the hospital that night. They dodged army personnel who were out roaming the streets, enforcing the 11 pm state-imposed curfew, and they braved this alone – an extremely unusual situation for the first-born-of-the-first-born in Sudanese culture. The rest of the family wasn’t expecting me for another week and were caught up at another hospital supporting an ill aunt. When my mother started feeling something in her belly as she got into bed that night and suggested to my father that they drive to the hospital, they got into the car quietly and without the usual fanfare, unaware of what lay ahead – nothing to do with an oppressive regime, but all to do with an addition to the family. Sure, I was not due for another week, but I guess I was too excited to wait. Bubble or no bubble, Yassmin was coming out to get amongst it.

  I was born in Sudan in 1991, in the aftermath of the coup by Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, a man who, decades later, still runs (and ruins) the nation.

  We – my mother, father and I – lived in an apartment above my paternal grandmother’s house. This is still the traditional thing to do in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Typically, the main family grows up in one house and as the children mature the family builds apartments above. This allows the extended family to have some space yet all share the same building, in the spirit of communal living that is the bedrock of Sudanese culture. We inhabited a modest flat with two small rooms as well as a dining room, lounge and kitchen, with my cousins on the same level next door, in a different but similarly sized apartment. After we left Sudan, my other aunt’s family moved into our old place and so although we never lived in the apartment again, we were regular visitors, returning from Australia to visit Sudan every two years. My other aunt’s family extended our old apartment from two rooms to three, in an attempt to contain the rowdiness of the kids to a separate area. The apartments were built for multiple families to be closely connected, so the bathrooms connected bedrooms, and the kitchen in our apartment had a window above the sink that opened into the front corridor of the apartment next door – an early, Sudanese version of intercom. The parents would use it to discuss family trips or coordinate school pick-ups, and, as the kids grew older, the window was a portal we whispered important information through, like what time we were going to be allowed outside to play, or making plans to meet up during our mandated hours of afternoon naptime without having to leave the house and risk the wrath of the parents.

  The aunt who moved into our apartment had a daughter only a few months younger than me – my cousin and first best friend, Aya. We grew up together, briefly in the same country, then on opposite sides of the world, literally taking baby steps at the same time. Aya and I are similar in many ways; we are both loud and social, and the firstborn in our families. We also both have a slightly rebellious streak, although it manifest itself in different ways in each of us. Her laugh is infectious; she is always up for an adventure and was always game to play. On our family visits to Sudan, Aya was my Partner in Crime (PIC), although sometimes we disagreed on what was fun. While I really wanted to play with things like the rock polisher I found in the cupboard, she thought that was lame and, to be fair, most of the cousins agreed. It would take at least sixteen hours to polish a rock, so their reluctance was understandable, but I loved the idea of creating something beautiful out of something so raw – at that time, every rock around me had the potential to be a thing of great value, no matter what it looked like. The rock polisher (a contraption owned by my father as a young boy) was like a mini tumble dryer chamber powered by a small electric motor. You would load a few ‘gems’ (rough rocks from the garden) into it, along with some polishing powder. The chamber would then be placed on a spindle and switched on, allowing it to slowly smooth the rocks into fabulous gems. The pictures on the front of the box were entrancing: gleaming quartz and cobalt globules placed against a blue background, juxtaposed against the ‘before’ photos of rocks. Aya and the other cousins were never quite convinced, though, so we didn’t polish any rocks on my visits. What we did both agree on was the fun value of cops and robbers, or Agbud Alharami! as it is called in Arabic. This was a game all the cousins could play, from the youngest who could barely walk, through to Aya and me, the leaders of the rabble. We would hide outside the house, in alcoves on the outer walls, and chase one another around the ground floor, past the lemon tree, smashing leaves pungent with the scent of citrus, the plastic of our thongs making slapping sounds against the tiles as we sped. The corridor on the right-hand side of the house was always full of activity; there was a door to the kitchen so my paternal grandmother would constantly pop her head out, reminding us to slow down and checking if we’d been fed. This area also had an outside kitchen workspace, a concrete basin covered in white tiles to form a sink. My grandmother and the maids would sit around it on small stools, cleaning rice and meat or washing clothing under the bright Sudanese sun, day in and day out. This was the place where I would later learn to braid intestine for the Mararah, a traditional Sudanese salad made from fresh offal, and also where we would wash our faces and feet before we went back into the house if the play had become a little too rambunctious. We would continue running past the washing line, in focused pursuit of the Harami (robber), typically a younger cousin. After we turned the corner, it was time to slowly sneak past the back of the house where the maids slept (all of us trying to be respectful, as we were taught this was their space), then as soon as we cleared their rooms we would pick up speed, bolt around the last corner of the house, and sprint!

  Growing up alongside Aya has given me a comparable Sudanese yardstick against which to gauge my life. We are from the same family tree so blossomed in environments with similar values. When we reconnect, our life stages feel familiar yet we are on such different paths, partly due to opportunity and partly due to expectation. How different would Aya be if she’d grown up with me in Australia? How different would I be if I’d grown up in Sudan? Of course, there’s the nature and nurture debate to keep in mind, but it is startling to be reminded so clearly of a potential alternative reality through the life of a family member. Like me, Aya is well educated and has a degree from one of the best universities in her country. She performed exceptionally at university and is a young, empathetic, independent woman. Unlike me, Aya married shortly after graduating, as many Sudanese ladies do (or are expected to). She is no longer working in her field either. Typically, Sudanese women will continue to work after getting married, but as Aya moved to Saudi Arabia to follow her husband’s career that was not really an option.

  Aya still lives in Saudi and we stay in each other’s lives via phone apps that work in the region. Every time we speak, I am keenly reminded that my cousin, who started out just like me, now lives a life so completely different to mine.

  Photos of me as a baby look a lot like th
ose of my father at the same age: plump arms, short, curling hair and a pointed chin, with one obvious difference being the giant pearl earrings that droop from my earlobes, demanding attention. As tradition in Sudan dictates, my ears were pierced pretty much as soon as I was born, to let people know I was a little girl, the sign of femininity bold and clear. It was important to my family from the beginning that my gender was so obviously defined; this set the scene for the expectation of the clear visual definition of gender roles that continues throughout a person’s life in Sudan. Of course, my family would not have imagined that piercing my ears could be considered a political act or that it could be viewed as limiting or oppressive. It’s just what people do when a young girl is born in Sudan, to make her ‘beautiful’. It might be a simple cultural tradition, but it is also emblematic of an attitude that exists more broadly in Sudanese culture; one that assumes girls should aim to make themselves beautiful and adorn themselves with lovely things. This tradition sets a standard for how women should present themselves, which is not just as a ‘female’ and as an expression of their biology, but more than that, as a ‘lady’.

  In Sudan there are clear, though usually unspoken, rules that dictate what it means to be a ‘lady’, and they often start with your family members reinforcing a particular gendered expectation. Whether the expectations are around jewellery, your hairstyle (even if you are wearing a hijab), how loudly you laugh or who makes the tea, they define a way of being that is tough to defy. It is even more difficult when religion is brought into the mix, because these expectations are then bestowed divine legitimacy. Discussions that challenge gendered expectations become much more complicated when some view them as sacrilegious. However, Islam is far more nuanced than that, and it is galling to see a beautiful religion used in a rigid and inflexible manner when the essence of the faith is anything but.