Sheima Benembarek

1 week ago | maisonneuve.org | Sheima Benembarek

The Sandwich GenerationOne afternoon last year, Amy Coupal went to visit her eighty-seven-year-old father at the retirement facility in Toronto where he lives. She soon realized that a medical need he hadn't told her about was going to extend what was supposed to be a brief drop-by. With a pair of thirteen-year-old twins at home expecting her, focusing on her father was going to require some pivoting and reorganization.

2 weeks ago | thewalrus.ca | Sheima Benembarek

Sometime in the seventeenth century, during military operations in the Netherlands, British soldiers came across a particularly strong juniper-flavoured Dutch spirit called genever. When they brought it back to the homeland, it quickly became the drink of the masses—easy to produce and cheap to access. What followed was the “gin craze” of the 1600s and 1700s, an epoch in Britain marked by a boom in gin manufacturing, consumption, and, eventually, its regulation.

Dec 11, 2024 | thewalrus.ca | Sheima Benembarek

« Choisis un nom », demande un des deux activistes de Londres marchant avec moi sur la rue Grosvernor. « Nous n’utilisons pas nos vrais noms pour une question de sécurité. » Je propose, sans trop réfléchir « Canada? » Ils éclatent de rire. Apparemment, choisir un nom de code à consonance colonisatrice, c’est drôle. Au bout du compte, je choisis « Maroc ». Pas subtil, mais je ne suis pas activiste et la scène est assez nouvelle pour moi.

Nov 17, 2024 | thewalrus.ca | Sheima Benembarek

“Pick a name,” says one of the two London activists I’m walking down Grosvenor Road with. “We don’t use our real names for safety purposes.” I barely think about it. “Canada?” I propose. They burst into laughter. Apparently, choosing a colonizer-sounding code name is funny. In the end, I go by “Morocco.” Not subtle, but I’m not an activist, and the scene is pretty new to me.

Aug 15, 2024 | broadview.org | Sheima Benembarek

For seven years, award-winning Canadian journalist Sadiya Ansari reported from three continents to uncover a century-old family secret, culminating in her new book, In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother’s Secret Life. Her investigation looks into why her grandmother (Daadi) left her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a small village in Punjab — a man whom she eventually also left. Ansari wanted to understand who her grandmother became when she was neither a wife nor a mother.