It’s a memory so painful that for many years afterwards, I blocked it out. I was in Year 7 at an all-girls school in Oxford, and I was being bullied, so badly I dreaded walking through the doors every morning. On this particular day, my mum had come to collect me, but she couldn’t find me despite frantically searching for over an hour.
She had no idea I was locked in a nearby phonebox, crying tears of utter humiliation. A group of girls had pushed me in there and used a stick to hold the doors closed from the outside. Their taunts of ‘Saddam’ – a reference to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein – rang in my ears.
I am a manifesting expert, and I passionately believe in its power to transform our lives and enable us to create the lives we want. I’m so proud of the success manifesting has helped me to achieve and the self-worth it has helped me to build. But there were very difficult times in my past that, even now, I’m always working hard to process and let go of.
I’ve spoken openly about the struggles with drugs I had in my twenties before manifesting put me on my current path, but what I’ve never talked about until now is what came before, during my childhood – and how it cast a shadow over my sense of identity until I hated every aspect of who I was and where I was from.
Now, I’ve written another book about manifesting, this time for children aged eight and above, to give them the tools and guidance to help them learn how to be the best and happiest versions of themselves. Writing Manifest for Kids, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my own experiences at that age, and how different the trajectory of my life could have been if I’d known back then even a fraction of what I do now.
I was born in Saudi Arabia, the youngest of four siblings, but my Iraqi parents had to leave very suddenly when I was six months old. We moved to Oxford, one of the most quintessentially English places in the country, and for the entire family, it was a serious culture shock.
Growing up, I always felt different to everyone else. With my dark skin, hair and eyes, I looked nothing like the popular girls, who were blonde and blue-eyed. My home life was completely different, too. My family were devout Muslims who prayed five times a day and ate only Arabic food; my mother wore a headscarf. We didn’t celebrate Christmas, or even eat lunch – I remember being fascinated by the fact other children sat down for a meal with their parents in the middle of the day. From the start, I felt a strong sense of ‘otherness’.
I never particularly enjoyed school, but after 9/11, it became unbearable. Suddenly, Muslims were seen as the enemy, and Islamophobia flourished. Iraqis, in particular, were treated with great suspicion: in the run-up to the Iraq war Saddam Hussein was said to be hiding Al Qaeda and planning attacks on the West.
I began secondary school in 2002, the year after 9/11, and I was immediately singled out by the other girls as a target. I had no real friends and no sense of belonging. When two older girls started being nice to me, I was so excited and grateful that I became obsessed with them, but then they’d turn on me. It was my first experience of a toxic relationship.