I still had a connection to God. But then my mother got sick. Pancreatic cancer.
The doctor who announced she had three months left, turned to me and said, “You’ll have to take good care of her.” As we left, and were about to walk downstairs to the exit, he told me to walk ahead—my job was to stop her from falling. That moment sealed a lifelong habit: putting other people’s safety first. No doubt this was compounded by my upbringing, being my mother’s daughter, being the daughter of a Tunisian, being a woman. All of these engrained in me the thought that I had to come last.

My mother fought hard, enduring surgery after surgery, trying anything, even acupuncture, which I dismissed at the time. She managed to survive over a year and a half, pushed by the goal of seeing my little brother graduate high school. But in the end, she died.
And with her, my faith.
Allah, El Rahman El Rahim: The Most Merciful, The most Compassionate, as he was called, had not spared my mother—the strongest, most loving, and forgiving person I knew. If God existed, how could He allow this? My mum who was a God in my eyes. A woman who grief, hurt, violence, loss, estrangement, abandon had not managed to take down. A woman that had beat illness after illness, that had survived countless surgeries, that had always managed to stand back up. That kind of woman could not just be human, she had to be immortal. But she died.

The facts were clear: life ends. My mother, my maker, my indestructible force of nature—was mortal. And if she was mortal, so was I. God was fiction. I lost faith in God. And with that, the concept of afterlife vanished too.
That realisation crushed me. If there was no afterlife, my mother had simply ceased to exist. Her body, mind, and soul—gone. Swallowed by a void into nothingness. Obliterated. The weight of that truth made grief unbearable, so I buried it so deep, it didn’t resurface for another thirteen years.
Not until I broke my back. Forced into stillness, I could no longer outrun the pain—first physical, then emotional. It was too profound to handle with just my humanity. I had to turn to something greater. Something that made death just a pit stop.
That’s what led me where I am now. I connected to a force beyond religion, something that showed me I was part of everything—past, present, future, seen and unseen. God wasn’t in a temple, a church, or a mosque. God was within me. I am God, just as you are, just as my mother is. There is not beginning and no end. I was never born, and I will never die. Neither did my mother.
She is me, I am her. My brothers are my mother, and she is them. I am what I love and what I despise. We are the same as our neighbours, our enemies. I started to understand different levels of reality, composed with impermanence, cycles, individuality and at the same time oneness and timelessness.
I understood nothing is ever lost. And yet I had to lose something to grasp this. I had to lose my faith to find myself. To find all that is. To find the God within.
Pain buried me in the dark, and that is the only place I could truly see the light.

My mother’s death was a death of me too. And also, a birth.

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When the automatic doors opened and I stepped outside of Sydney Airport, I remember taking my first deep Australian breath and thinking something in the air told me I had found it. This strong feeling that finally I was home came rushing in. It seems for as long as I can remember, I was searching for it. The place that felt right.

Being born from a French father and a Tunisian mother, I had grown up in France, Tunisia and Algeria. I had travelled my fair share after I turned 18 and moved to the Netherlands in my 20’s. Everywhere I went, all the places I called home, never quite felt right. Until that Wednesday morning in September. The sun was warm and welcoming, the air gentle and filled with familiarity. It felt like the land had called me home.

There is excitement and apprehension mixed into one ball of emotions when you move to a new country. A fresh start, so many possibilities, colliding with the feeling that everything has to be rebuilt from the ground up and the magnitude of the task. For me, there was no safety net. I had come alone from France, trading what I knew for this place I had never been to before. A gamble that heightened these feelings.

Of course, nobody moves to a new country without a set of challenges welcoming them too. But the one I was least expecting is one that I knew from long ago. The feeling of inadequacy and of not truly belonging.
Being a foreigner in a new country, one common sentiment is that you find yourself stuck in between worlds for a while. One foot in your home of origin and one foot in your new home. Not quite knowing Australian English too well and slowly forgetting your mother tongue. Trying to cook your childhood favourites while not finding the right ingredients. Seeing your palate adapt, your culture transform, your dreams and standards change. Slowly stepping away from your culture of origin without really noticing it. Seeing your close ones, on the other side of the world slowly refer to you as an outsider.

It rung some very deep-rooted bells for me, this feeling of not totally belonging despite having navigated many cultures and developed the ability to adapt to any environment.
Growing up mixed race, I was constantly navigating two distinct cultural worlds, each presenting its own set of challenges. In France, I often faced discrimination. My mixed heritage marked me as different, and harsh comments like “dirty Arab” made me feel like an outsider in my own country; like I should be ashamed of who I was. The prejudice I encountered there was a painful reminder of how difficult it can be to belong fully to one place when you don’t fit neatly into the prevailing norms.
On the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, this situation was echoed in different but no less challenging ways. There, I was often seen as the “rich French kid” who lived in a world of opportunity, far from dictatorship. My French background set me apart and, at times, led to feelings of alienation. I was perceived as having an easier life, disconnected from the everyday struggles faced by those around me. This perception created a distance between me and my own mother’s culture, leaving me feeling like I didn’t quite belong there either.
It led to a looming feeling of inadequacy which made me feel like I belonged nowhere. I felt isolated, misunderstood and very often rejected. It made me believe I was neither truly French nor truly Tunisian. Never good enough, knowledgeable enough, to belong in either culture.
This all changed, when I was about 9 years old. One day while watching a cartoon, I finally saw another way to look at my situation.
In the cartoon, this creature was trying to find its place. Rejected by beavers and pushed away by ducks, it felt alone and vulnerable. Until one day, it met another platypus. It realised instantly it was another breed altogether and that attempting to fit in the beaver world or the duck world could never work but that he could navigate to them whenever he chose to, while being from another world altogether.

Suddenly, I was able to see myself in a new light. Perhaps I was neither Tunisian nor French, but something else altogether. I was no longer bound by rules. As a different breed altogether, I could come up with my own set of rules. Choosing when to be Tunisian or French, and always free to be neither or both at the same time.

The move to Australia presented the struggle of reconciling cultural roots which was reminiscent of my childhood. A familiar feeling that I was facing another chapter in a series of cultural displacements that would require me to adapt. Just like many immigrants, it’s easy to feel inadequate when you don’t seem to fully belong to either your country of origin or your new home. My experience was tainted with the occasional racist remark and latent discrimination; with the feeling of being an outsider to an impermeable world.
However, reflecting on my childhood and the platypus cartoon, I knew to see this new challenge in a different light. The platypus story, where a unique creature eventually finds pride in its own identity, became a metaphor for my own journey. Just as in this childhood cartoon the platypus learned that being different was his strength, I began to understand that my mixed heritage and immigrant experience were not barriers but opportunities.

Moving to a new country forces you to become a new species altogether as you learn to integrate a new culture, never forgetting your roots but seeing your original heritage evolve or even fade. Yet, with the lessons from the platypus story, I learned to view this not as a loss but as a chance to craft a unique identity. Embracing this hybrid-self allowed me to blend the best aspects of my past with the possibilities of my present, creating something richer and more nuanced.

While I may never fit perfectly into any single cultural mould, I’ve also come to see that my diverse background offers a unique strength. It’s not about losing who I was but about embracing the opportunity to merge my experiences into something new and valuable. The challenge of feeling like an outsider in multiple places has become a way to forge a distinctive identity that draws from all my backgrounds, making me a bridge between cultures rather than a displaced fragment. It allows me to free myself to break cultural rules here in Australia too and to play with them to change, perhaps improve and bring into it a bit of me – The part that understands that there is no division, and instead the ability to make anyone feel like family, hence fostering a strong, healthy and diverse community.
Just like the platypus found his place by being true to his unique self, I’ve learned to take pride in my mixed heritage. My identity is a rich, multi-layered tapestry that’s something to champion, not hide from; something to rally people around rather than let divide. So, here’s to being a hybrid; one who brings a little something extra to the table.

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