Shayma Nader

Being part of a Yoga community in Palestine is strange. Having a middle-aged Egyptian woman doing different asanas on the mat right next to me is stranger still. But this is Ramallah, with all its absurdities, an occupied/liberated city filled with European, North American and occasionally Asian foreigners. But almost no Arab visitors. It never occurred to me that we are so isolated from the rest of the Arab world until Nooran – I thought her name was a bit Egyptian – started talking about meditation in one of our Yoga sessions.