like, yes brenda, i know using a random vid with overlaid text that says ‘this and yap’ doesn’t sound good but it WILL get more views than a carefully thought out piece to camera, pls I’m begging you to trust me

keenly welcoming any tips and tricks from other VO performers etc

as though UNICEF, international courts and international aid & humanitarian organisations haven’t been sharing the same death stats. As though they haven’t been saying that what’s happening in Gaza is a crime against humanity with genocidal intent.

as though countless real time videos of flattened homes and bloodied bodies and lifeless babies and families screaming out in agony haven’t been reaching us for over a year.

So in the spirit of #EidMubarak, tell your family that you love them. Do something nice for someone. Share in something sweet and joyful together with your community. Be grateful for what you have and smile in thanks for your many blessings. And go demolish some baklava. (END)

But when I think back to my family’s sacrifices, and the way they managed to find & create small joys and comforts (admittedly, largely thanks to my grandma), in what must have been an otherwise wildly isolated existence, I feel nothing but pride and gratitude. (7)

It’s easy for the kids of first gen migrants to feel resentful frustration towards their parents: it can be enormously confusing, painful and testing to grow up trying to belong to multiple cultures and identities and feeling simultaneously like you belong nowhere. (6)

When I think about these memories of a little family doing what they could to nod toward their own culture in a land that knew and celebrated nothing of it, it makes me realise how much my parents gave up & changed their lives to move and start a new life elsewhere. (5)

So my grandma, being the elder of our little displaced community of Turks, always did 2 things: she would buy or prepare sweet treats to share - to signify the sweetness of the occasion. And, she would drop off clothes at a charity shop, which I would help her put into bags. (4)

We would also see more of the other Turkish families living out in Brisbane & have meals together. In Turkey, the end of Ramadan is also referred to as ‘şeker bayramı’, meaning the festival of sweetness, indicating the good will, charity & courtesy expected of the celebrations. (3)

We lived in Australia, far away from any of our family. On the 3 days intended for celebration that followed Ramadan, the house phone would be busy with my grandma calling relatives in Turkey & them calling us - all to wish each other a happy Bayram (Turkish for ‘festival’). (2)