About Me

I am an author and a journalist who tells stories of ordinary people whose lives are shaped by conflict, borders and unjust immigration policies.

Of course, the reason that I do this is extremely personal.

It started in Palestine. I was a young, freelance foreign correspondent writing stories about ordinary Palestinians living under Israel’s occupation for The Daily Beast, spending time in Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I regularly traveled through checkpoints to cover breaking news across the country and became acquainted with the way that Israeli soldiers harassed ordinary people and weaponized passports, papers, permissions (or a lack thereof) as a means to crack down on their freedom of movement. It is one of the most dehumanizing practices that I have ever witnessed.

Eventually, my reporting got me kicked out of Israel—strapped with a 10-year-ban, that meant that I could no longer report in Palestine. Even though I was devastated, I knew that this was just a small taste of what Palestinians experience—and a lesson in how border regimes function around the world.

I moved to Lebanon—a place that I had always had curiosity about because of my Lebanese heritage—to document the stories of Syrians who had fled the civil war and were living as refugees. It was here that I first started to understand just how different one’s life could be depending on the passport that they were born with, how easily a war could make an ordinary person into a refugee.

I continued to follow these stories in Turkey, at a time when many people were transiting through Istanbul on their way to Izmir to board tiny, dangerous inflatable rafts to reach Greece. I quickly became obsessed with the story—even though someone like me could pay 25 euro to board a ferry that would take me to the nearest Greek island with no questions asked, a refugee had to pay smugglers thousands of dollars and risk their lives for the chance to escape towards Europe. Once they were on EU soil, they could seek asylum—as long as they could slip across borders undetected. It was here that I learned the bizarre loopholes of international asylum law, and the hurdles that people are forced to jump through if they are not lucky enough to be born with a strong passport. 

Overnight, the stories that I was covering caught up to me and my partner, Syrian filmmaker Salem Rizk, when he was not allowed to enter Turkey after being on assignment in Northern Iraq. As a Syrian, he couldn’t travel to Europe or anywhere else legally—I became intimately aware of the way that borders can disrupt a romantic relationship, and how lucky I was that my US passport allowed me to follow him to Erbil. I got my first job as an on-camera reporter, reporting from the frontlines of the war on ISIS for the Associated Press-affiliated channel, Phoenix TV.

Eventually, we were able to move to London, and Salem applied for political asylum—which gave us both an inside view into how the UK immigration and asylum system functions. I got a job as a Communications Manager at the Media Diversity Institute—a far cry from days as a feral freelance journalist—and gained experience as an editor and social media strategist, commissioning writers from around the world and piloting media campaigns to promote media literacy and combat disinformation. I turned my reporting attention towards the experiences of refugees across Europe and the rise of the far right and white supremacy movements around the world.

I brought all of these experiences together in my book, Love Across Borders (Hachette 2023), which brings together love stories from around the world that have been affected by conflict, borders and immigration policies. If you read the book, you will meet couples from Syria, Yemen and Palestine—but also Honduras, Mexico and the former USSR—who have all stood up to the borders to be with the people that they love. You will also learn about the history of borders—which have not been around for as long as you think they have been, and how they became the constricting forces that they are today.

Throughout the book, I also shared my own love story with Salem—and the way that my own experience of not knowing whether or not we would be able to be together to live our happily ever after allowed me connect to so many beautiful people around the world. Now, I am continuing many of the conversations that I started in Love Across Borders here, on Substack.

Since publishing Love Across Borders, I have continued to report on the ways that borders and immigration policies affect ordinary people—and embraced every opportunity to do this through love stories. I have been a freelance editor at both New Lines Magazine and The New Humanitarian and wrote a column in Hyphen Magazine exploring Muslim love stories across Europe. After October 7^th, I worked with Mondoweiss, filing news dispatches on the war in Gaza and produced a series of video explainers on Palestine for Instagram, which were filmed and edited by my partner, Salem. I have been deeply moved by how excited my followers were to learn more about Palestine and seen enormous engagement on my videos. It showed me that people are hungry to learn more about social justice issues, and are eager to look towards experts for information that they can trust—this inspired me to start working with organizations such as WITNESS and campaigns, such as the Free Humanitarians to start using video to raise awareness and give people the information that they need.

Now, Salem and I are building Katkout Productions, a social justice-focused video agency to help NGOs, human rights organizations and social impact-focused entrepreneurs harness the power of social media video to spread their message and inspire change. We are ready to help you produce anything from video explainers and social media campaigns to training and educational videos. We have built a video studio in our home in East London and offer video production, editing and digital strategy services to clients around the world. You can learn more about our services and how to work with us here.

I also frequently speak at journalism conferences and book events and have engaged with several book clubs who read Love Across Borders. If you would like to organize a book club or book me as a speaker, you can reach out here.

Otherwise, I am continuing to write and am available for freelance journalism and editing assignments. Please do not hesitate to reach out.