By Reem Ahmed
She never had a clear idea about her future career. She was like any other kid, dreamt sometimes to be a doctor, scientist, astronaut, and even the light of fame attracted her as she also dreamt to be an actress, singer and artist. She started with many dreams and ended up with a specific one – a journalist.
Her name is Reem and she was born on 1st May 1997. She grew up in a small city in Yemen called Taiz. She was raised by a single mother along with her one year older sister.
It was a medium house but the biggest in her small eyes, her grandparent’s house where she lived in her childhood period with the rest of her mother’s family side. She used to talk a lot, especially to herself, telling stories from her own imagination and people around.
She used to sing all the time, acted up to people as if she was in her own show performing, and that when her mom started to involve her with events and ceremonies, most of them were for charity and others in her school, where she used to sing, act, dance, perform declamation, and host the events sometimes.
She moved into another house later with her mother and sister at the age of 13. They were always three together and life. She was the kid with great marks back then in school and that is how she perceived herself to be loved by her family. She used to study in a private school owned by her aunt but in elementary school, she moved to public school for the first time, and there her best memories were made.
But later she had to move to another private school for her high school when she joined a demonstration in the school that had agonised the manager who used to force her political ideology to students during the time where the country was unstable politically, and many voices raised had antagonised the president and the government. She never thought that that would be the beginning of the endless war in her country which has never stopped until today.
She graduated from high school with a 91 percent grade which was not the highest grade in her family history but was good enough to get her to study what she wanted. Everything was fine but the problem is that the dreamful little girl had disappeared and a young lady she became. She did not really know what exactly she wanted to be or what she liked to do anymore. Her future was blurred and she felt like she could fit anywhere by her hard work but not her passion.
She has a good taste in music and movies, she always preferred visuality over anything, for example, she would prefer to watch a movie based on a novel rather than reading it. And she believes that is the orientation of this generation where visuality (like movies and dramas) overcomes reading materials.
Her mother always encourages her to read so she ended up loving reading especially novels. She likes writing and she used to write anything at any time, she also always has that dream of being a writer and having her own book, she tries sometimes to start writing, hoping that one day she would collect all the writings and compile them into a book.
Reem thought a lot about her university study but never found a true passion. Media studies has always been on her mind and people around her kept encouraging her for that major as they see the good potential. She saw herself as a reporter, broadcaster, interviewer, radio DJ, and that is what she decided to go for.
In 2016, the war in Yemen had started and Reem had not even begun her undergraduate study. She encountered the war for six months with her family, then travelled to Saudi Arabia and stayed there for one year. As there were not many opportunities in Saudi Arabia for foreigners to study, her sister and she tried to apply to many universities outside the country. But also due to the Yemen situation at that time, many countries did not really welcome Yemeni citizens. Later they heard about Malaysia and how the government gave out special visas to Yemeni people, and so her new life began.
She is currently a fourth-year Communication student specialising in journalism. Her full dream begins to take shape as she is almost graduating and about to begin her career soon. Learning journalism is an endless process and also all media fields keep on developing throughout this digital age and for an unknown future.
Now Reem is exploring all aspects of journalism including writing, reporting and interviewing as she sees good potentials in herself to be a skilful journalist by continuing to learn and improve on those aspects. She believes that freedom for journalism is a major factor in democratic societies and journalists are the agents of change by raising people’s voices and providing them with information that matters to their lives, and that is what attracted her to journalism in the first place.
As she is also interested in psychology, The psychopath test is a very interesting book that she recently read about a journalist who had interviewed the maddest creatures ever to explore the concept of psychopathy and the mental health industry. The book is written by an investigative journalist Jon Ranson, who is also an award-winning writer and a documentary maker. Jon Ranson and other journalists like Bob Woodward and Anderson Cooper have always inspired her dream and career.
Al Jazeera and all its branches such as AJplus are always the first sources of information she would resort to, and now she dreams of working especially with AJplus, for its unique digital news and storytelling project.
Now Reem sees herself in four years’ time as a journalist always looking and searching for truth, equality and human rights, to create changes by bringing up powerless voices to be heard, starting from her own country.***
(This article is written as part of individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)