This reflection is part of SyriaUntold’s week-long collaboration with Ecologìas del Futuro on science fiction and imagining the future in the MENA region. We asked writers, artists, journalists and filmmakers from different countries across the region to send us short audio messages or reflections on the future and their relationship with it.
Scroll down to listen to this piece in its original audio format.
Fiction is a certain reality that contributes to change and transformation—what I think about, I work on. Ideas are free and roam different worlds.
Science fiction is accessible to anyone who thinks about it in depth, calmly and methodically. After thinking, the images come, and then answers. True, the obstacles are many. But by traversing them with thought, we can counter them and create a dream.
An Arabic speaker thinks in the same way as a speaker of any other language. The important thing is what to think about and why.
I reach out to the distant future with a passion for knowledge. I think about it often. I imagine it and see it differently based on science, knowledge and dialogue with others, and with distant cosmic civilizations.
I see the Middle East and North Africa of 300 years from now with a different perspective. The region will be better off than it is now, and my country, Iraq, will be a sight to behold. After all, it is the very cradle of human civilization.
Listen to Khadija Al-Saadi’s original audio recording:
