When she was growing up in London, Radiya Hafiza used to love reading fairy tales, losing herself for days in the timeless magic of Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. It wasn't until years later that she realised something was missing from these stories. People who looked like her.
And so, bored in a temping job, Hafiza began to play with ways of incorporating her Bangladeshi heritage and some aspects of her Muslim identity into a children’s book.
“I started imagining myself in Rapunzel’s shoes, trapped in a tower,” she remembers. The wonderful guiding principle to her debut came quickly afterwards – “Rumaysa, Rumaysa, let down your hijab.”
That take on the Rapunzel story is emblazoned on the front cover of Rumaysa: A Fairytale, published this month. It's a remarkable achievement; rather than simply amending these well-worn stories with names, locations and cultural references recognisable to South Asia, Hafiza embarked on something far more ambitious.
Her hero, Rumaysa, starts off in the tower recognisable from Rapunzel, but then drops into another story to assist Cinderayla, finally helping Sleeping Sara find her freedom.
What’s more, these are retellings where not everything ends happily ever after, a Prince Charming whisking them away to save the day. These girls are heroes in their own right.
“The characters began to take on lives of their own,” says Hafiza, “and as they did, it became apparent that they could save themselves; they could make their own happy endings through their celebration of sisterhood and friendship.
“You know, a lot of these classical tales do have some problems when it comes to the role of girls and women in society, and I wanted to write something that felt truer to my experiences.”
Imagine if I had these stories growing up; maybe I wouldn't have felt so different, so alienated
In fact, all three storylines feature girls who are desperate for escape. And while this isn’t in any sense a political book – these are gloriously readable fairy tales for children and their families – it does make some nuanced points about empowerment and gender equality.
“Growing up, I definitely felt that sense of specific things being expected of me as a girl, or being decided for me by society,” says Hafiza. “And so it was quite important that the book could have people breaking out of situations where they feel trapped.”
Hafiza first started to write about these expectations and prejudices in her wonderfully entertaining blog, The Good Assistant. Written anonymously – although she has since outed herself – it's a perceptive, witty and semi-fictional account of being "the Muslim" in a publishing office. "A banterous take on all the wild stuff white people say to anyone who … isn't white," as she puts it. It got her noticed by agents and publishers, and the blog and her children's debut share the same sense of wry, matter-of-fact humour.
One of its more powerful entries is You Will Not Fit In, in which Hafiza's character grapples with the difficulty of getting a job when she does not have an English-sounding name. When she gets that job, she has to then field "their incessant fascination with discovering how oppressed I am".
What she hopes Rumaysa can do is normalise the conversation at a much earlier age. Hafiza admits that when she finally did come across books with a “brown perspective” they usually featured arranged marriages, extremists or terrorists.
It’s not just a fun read, either. Rumaysa looks wonderful, the adventures brought to life by Rhaida El Touny’s expansive illustrations. When Hafiza first saw the picture of Rumaysa throwing the scarf down the tower, it was an emotional moment. “It just hit me then; imagine if I had these stories growing up; maybe I wouldn’t have felt so different, so alienated. I mean, I used to believe people like me couldn’t feature in stories – I didn’t start writing from a Muslim perspective until I went to university.
“So yes, it’s so powerful for people to be able to see characters on a page with brown skin, just hanging out and going on adventures,” she says.
Rumaysa’s adventures in the world, you sense, have only just begun.
PULITZER PRIZE 2020 WINNERS
JOURNALISM
Public Service
Anchorage Daily News in collaboration with ProPublica
Breaking News Reporting
Staff of The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky.
Investigative Reporting
Brian M. Rosenthal of The New York Times
Explanatory Reporting
Staff of The Washington Post
Local Reporting
Staff of The Baltimore Sun
National Reporting
T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi of ProPublica
and
Dominic Gates, Steve Miletich, Mike Baker and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Times
International Reporting
Staff of The New York Times
Feature Writing
Ben Taub of The New Yorker
Commentary
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
Criticism
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times
Editorial Writing
Jeffery Gerritt of the Palestine (Tx.) Herald-Press
Editorial Cartooning
Barry Blitt, contributor, The New Yorker
Breaking News Photography
Photography Staff of Reuters
Feature Photography
Channi Anand, Mukhtar Khan and Dar Yasin of the Associated Press
Audio Reporting
Staff of This American Life with Molly O’Toole of the Los Angeles Times and Emily Green, freelancer, Vice News for “The Out Crowd”
LETTERS AND DRAMA
Fiction
"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Drama
"A Strange Loop" by Michael R. Jackson
History
"Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America" by W. Caleb McDaniel (Oxford University Press)
Biography
"Sontag: Her Life and Work" by Benjamin Moser (Ecco/HarperCollins)
Poetry
"The Tradition" by Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)
General Nonfiction
"The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care" by Anne Boyer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
and
"The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America" by Greg Grandin (Metropolitan Books)
Music
"The Central Park Five" by Anthony Davis, premiered by Long Beach Opera on June 15, 2019
Special Citation
Ida B. Wells
RESULTS
5pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Maiden (PA) Dh 70,000 (Dirt) 1,600m
Winner: Samau Xmnsor, Abdul Aziz Al Balushi (jockey), Ibrahim Al Hadhrami (trainer)
5.30pm: Maiden (PA) Dh 70,000 (D) 1,600m
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Winner: Maaly Al Reef, Bernardo Pinheiro, Abdallah Al Hammadi
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8pm: Handicap (PA) Dh 70,000 (D) 1,000m
Winner: Al Sail, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
THE BIG THREE
NOVAK DJOKOVIC
19 grand slam singles titles
Wimbledon: 5 (2011, 14, 15, 18, 19)
French Open: 2 (2016, 21)
US Open: 3 (2011, 15, 18)
Australian Open: 9 (2008, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21)
Prize money: $150m
ROGER FEDERER
20 grand slam singles titles
Wimbledon: 8 (2003, 04, 05, 06, 07, 09, 12, 17)
French Open: 1 (2009)
US Open: 5 (2004, 05, 06, 07, 08)
Australian Open: 6 (2004, 06, 07, 10, 17, 18)
Prize money: $130m
RAFAEL NADAL
20 grand slam singles titles
Wimbledon: 2 (2008, 10)
French Open: 13 (2005, 06, 07, 08, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20)
US Open: 4 (2010, 13, 17, 19)
Australian Open: 1 (2009)
Prize money: $125m
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
RACE SCHEDULE
All times UAE ( 4 GMT)
Friday, September 29
First practice: 7am - 8.30am
Second practice: 11am - 12.30pm
Saturday, September 30
Qualifying: 1pm - 2pm
Sunday, October 1
Race: 11am - 1pm
The specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Transmission: seven-speed
Power: 720hp
Torque: 770Nm
Price: Dh1,100,000
On sale: now
