The Squatters (Novel), Abu Dhabi, UAE
The Squatters tells the story of an affluent multicultural town in England grappling with the arrival of a Muslim family seeking asylum.
“This novel explores the limits of society’s empathy for people seeking asylum, the forces that lead us to accept or transgress those limits, and the price we pay for those choices.”
I am a Muslim-American writer based in Abu Dhabi. I spent many years working for NGOs in California, first with South Asian family violence survivors, then as director of a clinic for unhoused adolescents, and finally for a private philanthropy supporting health care for marginalized communities. In 2014 I founded a program to improve conditions for migrant domestic workers in Abu Dhabi, and I currently work with displaced Syrian families. I received the Emirates Literature Foundation’s Seddiqi Writers Fellowship in 2023. I hold a BA from Brown University and an MPH from Johns Hopkins. The Squatters is my debut novel.