In Qatar we have very interesting climates. Two years ago, maybe three years ago, we had a really bad flood in October, and that is super uncommon for us. Like the rain season doesn’t usually start then, and also the drainage system wasn’t prepared because it wasn’t time for the rain yet. And so there was a really really bad flood in the country.

And then this year, in 2022, we have this running joke of four seasons in one day, because literally it can be sunny in the morning, dusty in the afternoon, raining, and then windy. We can experience so many kinds of seasons in a day, and we’ve been… blessed—always blessed—but we’ve received the gift this year of sandstorms.

Like, we always have sandstorms, but this year was different because they came out of place in random months. It’s not anything consistent. And they were really more aggressive than usual. I was born and raised here, I’m almost 23, so we’ve had sandstorms our entire lives, but this year is different.

I can tell that it’s different. It’s more aggressive. It’s the way it’s affecting us, like the allergies and the symptoms you feel have changed, and the visibility driving to work… It was never this bad. It was never—like it just feels like It’s getting worse.

And at the same time, everything stays normal. We still go to work. Nothing, nothing changes. We still have to drive. We still like—we obviously just minimize walking outside (and here we don’t walk a lot outside in general, because it’s usually really hot except in the winter months.) But yeah. That’s kind of what I was thinking of.

[Second voice: I have never experienced a sandstorm. What does it smell like?]

It smells like dust.
Like pure dust.
Like sand.
You can’t breathe, and ana, I have allergies. So the pressure in the sinus and in the head is just constant, because it seeps through the windows. We get to a point where we also put wet towels under the doors to block the—because otherwise there’s gonna be a new layer of sand in the house every day.

It’s interesting. I don’t recommend it, but if you’re curious, you’re more than welcome to come experience it. Although honestly, haram, it doesn’t happen that often. It’s just the timings this year… very random.

[Second voice: What color is the sand?]

Hold on. let me try to find… (scrolling through photos on her phone) It’s like the entire sky becomes like beige…

(Finding a photo)

So you can see this is all the cloud, it’s all like sand coming at the city.

This is the city. This is my way to work.
(Okay, I’m trying to get no reflection. I apologize.)
It’s just there’s… nothing. Normally you see buildings.

There’s no buildings.
It’s like a sandstorm.

[Second voice: Wow. I also love that you called it a gift.]

I don’t wanna say—
Ya’ani—
Everything’s a blessing in one way or another, whether we recognize it or not.

I have a story about a hurricane.

So last year, I was working on a play at the end of August in Boston, and I had actually planned to take a weekend off and go to the beach. I had even invited some people, including my partner and his family, to travel up from New York and go with us.

And then it was announced that a tropical storm was strengthening in the Atlantic Ocean, and it was turning into what was looking like the first hurricane to make landfall in Boston in 30 years. The news said that the storm was headed straight for the city.

It had already been a wild period in terms of climate. I had recently watched my family in Texas deal with power outages due to spring ice storms, and the previous autumn, smoke from wildfires on the West Coast had turned the sky above Boston—which is like 3,000 miles away—completely orange. And the week prior to this incoming hurricane, there had been both tornadoes and hail in the area—both pretty unusual in New England.

When I was a kid, my family lived in another part of the country where there were often tornadoes, so I felt like I understood the need to take serious warnings seriously—to be prepared. And there was the mayor of Boston on TV, telling everyone in the city to put together a supply kit, including a flashlight, extra batteries, nonperishable foods, copies of identification papers. It was very serious. And it felt just like the stories I had watched unfold on TV over and over again in Florida and Texas, which are dealing with these types of storms more and more often.

So as the mayor was issuing these warnings, I was arguing a little bit with my friends about how much we needed to prepare. Because I think of myself as being very serious about climate. And I told my friends, “We have to take this warning seriously and get ready, because if we don’t, it will be too late.” And they thought I was exaggerating. They were like, “It’s gonna be fine.”

So I wound up going to the store alone. I put on all of my rain gear and went out into the city, and I bought a battery-operated lantern, and a bunch of toilet paper (because I remembered how crazy everyone had been about toilet paper at the start of the pandemic). And I looked for a radio, but I couldn’t find one. It was too late.

Then I was hauling all this stuff back home, and I noticed that the city had a really weird atmosphere. It was kind of gray and still, not raining yet, and there were a few other people like me, running around getting supplies like the mayor had told us to. And then there were some other people like having brunch on the sidewalk with like, you know, mimosas and coffee and avocado toast and whatever.

And that discrepancy was maybe my first indicator that something was kind of off. An hour or two later, just when the storm was supposed to begin, it was announced that a powerful wind had blown the storm off course at the last minute, out to sea, and it was not going to hit us at all. It never came. Long story short, the press called it a “nothingburger.” The sun was shining. We could have gone to the beach.

And I felt lucky that we hadn’t been hit, but I also felt grumpy. I felt sort of crazy, because I had been the one insisting that this was real—that the global problem was finally turning into something local that I could respond to in a tangible way, in a way that I couldn’t prepare for the crises that I was watching happen from afar in other parts of the globe or the country. I felt like a climate change denier’s most stereotypical image of an oversensitive liberal: there I was, standing under a sunny sky in a raincoat, holding toilet paper and a battery-operated lantern, making a fuss about an emergency that never came.

I think about this story all the time, because it feels to me like a test, and I don’t know if I passed or not.

But I do still have the lamp I bought that day, and I know exactly where it is, just in case there’s a next time. Just in case I need to be ready.

I was born and raised by parents who were Maths and Science teachers, and I am from a religious background. So when I say religious, I mean my parents are religious. Me and my sisters, we are like six, then we also stay with our cousins, so that makes nine. And all of us used to go together to church with my mom and dad.

I was quite attracted to the activities within the church, although I didn’t see the meaning of going to church to pray. I was into the music. It’s a catholic church, mixed with the culture around—which is music. So that got me into the dancing, the activities in the church, and the communal actions they had. I was very much attracted to that, and I used to go to the church on Friday spend the night and go back on Sunday evening… Because I know Monday to Friday I had to go to school.

That’s when I actually developed an interest in activities related to climate. Though I didn’t know the climate issue by then, we were managing tree seedlings and environmental education issues—but in my mind, I was just being engaged in activities connected with the church! When I was like 12 years old, I started going to talks, workshops that were also coordinated by the church, but they would talk about environmental issues, youth engagement issues… and then there was this one time…

(I wasn’t that courageous then, apart from the dancing, because no one was really looking at my dancing style, so I didn’t care about that. But my courage just in talking in front of people wasn’t there yet.)

…But at this age of 12, I went to talk to these people about tree seedlings and the nurseries that we were doing in church, and they told me that I was more ambitious… and then they started sponsoring my education. That was in primary school, and they also nurtured me in the environmental space and later, after Form 4, they called me to a workshop in Nairobi and told me they will continue sponsoring my education into a college of my choice, and I went to study Agriculture.

After that, I got out and started an initiative called Shapers… We would make kitchen gardens (using polyethene) in the slums in Nairobi for people that don’t have good housing or those that do not have spaces within their compounds. So, we did that for some months, but then we had a fallout, so everyone went ahead to tackle their own problems.

And then, um, another thing happened. I was going to actually visit my boyfriend. He was staying in a different nearby county called Thika, so I was going from Nairobi to Thika. So, uh, I got the shock of my life then [laughs]. Because when I went into his house, I found a picture of another lady wearing a graduation gown. And so I was very disappointed.

And I was like, “Ah, the initiative Shapers has fallen, my relationship has fallen, now it’s better if I go back home.” [Laughs] But I also had like… thoughts that I might be pregnant. Because we had been doing very silly things, so that made me also not want to go back home. It would be quite a shame—”you’re from the village, you go to Nairobi, you go back home pregnant, and you have not achieved anything!” So it will be quite a shame.

So I stayed in Nairobi for quite some time and came up with other ideas. That’s when I started The Polly Foundation. It started from the initial idea of Shapers, but I integrated it into a big spectrum of ecosystem restorations, where I would teach people basically about organic farming. I would tell them about tree planting in green spaces in town and also raise awareness on climate issues, and also waste management. (Because we were staying in slums—waste management was an issue).

So (laughing) that’s how I started my climate action activities. Yeah.

Hello. Okay. So I’m gonna tell you a story about my first love.

So, when I was seven years old, I remember just being extremely fascinated by this boy in my class. And I didn’t know that it was love, or falling in love at that time—I just remember being extremely fascinated by his green eyes, and his skin, and his hair, and everything about him.

So one day I decided that I wanted to give him something. I don’t know why. I just had the impulse to give him something, something precious.

So I went home, and I looked in my room, and I thought, “What is the most precious thing that I can give him?” And I ended up with this red plastic jewelry. That, for some reason, was the most important thing I owned at that time. And I took it back to school the day after. I had it in my bag, and I decided that I wanted to give it to him in the first break, and so I did.

I remember standing in the window in the classroom, looking down into the yard, and he was playing soccer with the rest of the boys in the class. I was gathering the courage to go down there, and I went down there, and I realized, “Okay, I have to stop him from playing soccer.”

So I just eventually yelled his name, and he came over to me like I was a stranger. I don’t think we had ever spoken to each other before that moment, actually, and I just showed him the jewelry, and I asked, “Do you want this?” And he looked at the jewelry, and then he looked at me, and he was like, “No, thank you.” And he went back to playing soccer. And then yeah, that that was it.

Actually, so the reason why I think I’m telling this story is, or the thing I think is interesting in this story is—I didn’t know what it was at the time. I was just acting on impulses. It’s only now, when I’m an adult, that I can see that it was my first love, and it was my first experience with being let down by love.

And I think that whenever I try to get my head around this existential question about climate change, I end up in a very concrete story, because it’s like reality is too complex in some way. And I—I really don’t want to rationalize too much about this story in this context.

But I think that if there was just one thing that I could take from this story, it is that it leaves me with the feeling that sometimes it’s so much easier to understand something when it’s left behind. When you look back at it. When it’s not there. It’s only now that I understand that this was about my first love.

Yeah. I don’t know.