Ella Al-Shamahi

I had been told my whole life that my hair was like, and you've got to cover up because it's a fitna, it corrupts the earth.

It's a bad translation, but it's all these things you've got to do to not...

I don't know what it was, because let me tell you, nobody cared.

Like, nobody cared.

Nobody cared.

I cannot express this enough.

There were no men dropping from my sheer beauty.

Nobody was fainting.

Nobody was doing anything.

Like, nobody cared.

And it was so funny.

But it was, you know, it was quite an adjustment.

It was like, I've got to now learn to fit in.

And it's funny because I think anthropologists traditionally, and as you know, I am a paleoanthropologist, you know, you kind of go and sit with these exotic and inverted commas tribes and you kind of learn their ways.

and I was like my exotic tribe is just central London that's it me and I would sit there studying people's behaviour and like going alright so this is how they act okay so this is okay alright so that's you know I wrote a book about the handshake

Writing a book about the handshake does not come because somebody is like just casually not questioning.

Writing a book about the handshake comes when you are obsessively reading the behavior of every person around you.

Because in your culture, you never shook hands with men.

I had this one friend who was just like...

oh, you must be so relieved to be free.