Babylon, Albion untangles the relationship between identity and land

Over the last few years, there have been intense, often bone-chilling debates across mainstream and social media about immigration. With the unprecedented popularity of Nigel Farage’s Reform party in the UK, Donald Trump’s executive orders in January clamping down on immigration, and the rise of the far-right in many European countries, there is no denying that migration and movement between countries are being treated as increasingly urgent national issues. These world leaders and their political rhetoric treat the border – an arbitrary geopolitical divide – as sacrosanct, distinguishing citizen from migrant, native from “alien”.

In Babylon, Albion writer Dalia Al-Dujaili problematises this warped narrative of migration, questioning instead what it could mean to be native to a land through an exploration of heritage from an ecological perspective. “Migration is the most normal phenomenon on the planet. If life stood still, the planet as we know it would not exist. There would be no civilisations, there would be no trees or forests,” Al-Dujaili tells Dazed over video call. “Today, because of man-made political intervention, the movement of people and the natural world is policed. Not only are they forcing a sedentary lifestyle on thousands of years of human migration, but capitalist greed is also stopping the natural world from moving freely, which causes the loss of several biological species and eventually, ecological collapse.”

She speaks to this notion across the four chapters in the book through fact-based scientific research and folkloric knowledge, dissecting how humans and the natural world have existed and moved as one through. This mixing and melding of methods of inquiry is generative and persuasive: instead of explaining our relationship with nature through empirical knowledge, she describes the feeling of being woken up by the coos of a pigeon or of watching a tree shed its leaves in October. In one instance, Al-Dujaili compares the migratory instinct codified in the DNA of the monarch butterfly to the distinctly Iraqi gestures and mannerisms that are second nature to her. She writes: “So do my mother’s and father’s memories become my own? Are they imprinted into the landscape of my body?” 

As the name suggests, Babylon, Albion is filled to the brim with the myths and traditions of the ancient Mesopotamian civilisation (modern-day Iraq) and Albion (the ancient Greek name for Britain). In ‘Holy Water’, a chapter about the significance of water bodies, Al-Dujaili writes about the marshes of Iraq, referencing biblical scholarship which argues that point in the wetland where the Tigris and Euphrates converge is the site of the Garden of Eden and, coincidentally, also considered the beauty of Iraq. In the chapter ‘Paradise on Earth’, she locates how the lion came to represent England by referencing Mesopotamian folklore and the Epic of Gilgamesh, which paints the lion as a marker of strength and ferocity. In the same chapter, she briefly picks apart the term ‘English Rose’, positioning it as a symbol of cosmopolitanism rather than synonymous with the old-fashioned idea of Britishness. 

Much like with the ‘English Rose’ and the lion, Al-Dujaili constantly questions ideas of national identity in her book, explaining how myths and localised stories traverse modern-day borders to influence literary texts and cultures. She calls this an extended act of cultural pollination. “When people pass through a place, they allow their culture to evolve and thrive. The story we find in Genesis of Adam and Eve almost reflects the Myth of Adapa, a Mesopotamian story of a person made from clay. This creation story travelled from the Middle East to Europe because people were moving and there were no such things as borders,” she says. “There were seas and rivers to cross, but nothing else stood in the way of people moving freely.” This sentiment also extends into how the book positions non-native plant species as natural elements that bolster the local ecosystem. “The idea that a native tree needs to stay in its native land or is inherently invasive because it doesn’t belong anywhere else is not true,” she continues. “We absolutely need to be supporting native species of trees, bees and other insects, but that doesn’t mean that we need to ban everything foreign.” 

Inspired by books such as Sonia Shah’s The Next Great Migration, Al-Dujaili also ties in her own experiences of growing up in Britain, spending summers in Amman, and familial accounts of Iraq in the book. She notes a childhood spent outdoors as a source of knowledge and a reason why she felt inclined to write about stories of the natural world. “I loved being in nature as a child, so as I got a bit older, I became concerned with the state of our planet from an environmental perspective and overwhelmed with ecological anxiety,” she explains. “Through that anxiety and the fear of losing what we have, I started to look at what plants, trees and rivers meant to us in the past, why we cared about nature so much more than we do now and where that value has been lost.”

These questions led her to stories that were mythological, folkloric and rooted in community, starkly contrasting the individualistic, capitalistic lens through which we are primed to look at the earth and its resources. “A lot of the ecological degradation that we deal with today is rooted in capitalism and colonialism, and so I wanted to look at things that were at the opposite end of the spectrum, like community, healing and gardening,” Al-Dujaili shares, noting how she does not want the book to offer an answer to these problems. Instead, she hopes it guides the reader to a place of feeling more connected to the earth beneath their feet. 

“A lot of the ecological degradation that we deal with today is rooted in capitalism and colonialism, and so I wanted to look at things that were at the opposite end of the spectrum, like community, healing and gardening”

What is particularly exciting about Babylon, Albion, is how it simultaneously addresses intimate familial histories, age-old myths, and grounded research. Within the space of a few pages, she notes how Black and Asian children in the UK statistically have less access to green spaces while also writing about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the fig tree in her mother’s garden that is blooming against all odds.

“So much of the book is written from childhood memory and hearing my parents speak,“ she explains. “I was also collecting oral interviews and sitting back and hearing my mom talk or grandma talk. The book has vignettes of dialogue between my mom and me, which I love because it brings it back to a very familial and personal place. I also spent some time in Amman talking to my grandmother and other elders, collecting wisdom.” While reading the book, this aspect of her research process and the speculative truths that arise when a family member narrates a story shine through, almost acting as the antithesis of colonial archives and scientific books on ecology that are focused on absolute facts and figures. 

The power of gossip as a form of storytelling is also crucial to Al-Dujaili, who sees it as a form of myth-making: “Talking to my grandma is not like looking into a glass vitrine when you go into a gallery; her stories are more potent. Sometimes, figuring out what is truthful and what is a half-truth is annoying, as our grandmas exaggerate everything, but it’s part of our culture, and I love it so much,” she says. “This reflects the stories that originated in Mesopotamia, which changed depending on who was telling them and where they were narrating them.” Movement and change are central to Babylon, Albion; it permeates each chapter and is reiterated almost cyclically. It is a lush, lyrical reminder that our cultural, ancestral and ecological roots are never static but are reaching and entwining across borders. 

Babylon, Albion is available now.