SADEQ ALKHOORI (ABU DHABI)

Maryam Khalifa Al Shehhi, an Emirati researcher and an award-winning author, has spent years immersed in Arabic language and literature. But looking back on how she got there, she traces it back to one person: her grandmother.

"My grandmother is deaf and mute, and she raised five orphans, working to support them before the founding of the Union," she told Aletihad.

It was learning her grandmother's sign language and listening to her memories that changed how Al Shehhi understood heritage.

"From this individual story, I discovered that one woman's memory opens doors to reading a community's collective memory," she said.

Al Shehhi is a PhD student at NYU's Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, where she focuses on pre-modern Arabic didactic verse, its commentaries, and the relationship between grammar, poetry and pedagogy. She recently completed her MA in Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University.

Her research spans classical Arabic scholarship and children's literature, alongside preservation work on the oral heritage of the Shihuh tribe in Ras Al Khaimah. 

With the stories of her grandmother, her Shihuh project has become less an academic pursuit and more a way of retracing her roots.

"I revisited my Shehhi dialect, visited our neighbourhoods, and simply existed as a 'Shehhi'," she said.

Every conversation with elders revealed another layer of history, she said, convincing her that preserving oral heritage was no longer simply an academic interest, but a responsibility.

"Our elders are treasures of culture, heritage and history, and it is our responsibility to preserve and narrate their stories before they are lost to time," Al Shehhi added.

She describes herself as a "creative academic," driven by a mission to generate knowledge and preserve what may otherwise disappear. "I feel a duty to produce knowledge, not just consume or study it, and to archive oral history before it's lost.”


Early Inspiration

This sense of duty ties back to how Al Shehhi first came to Arabic. She said she finds herself rooted "in the crossroads of language": classical Arabic and Emirati.

Her relationship with the language began early. In sixth grade, Al Shehhi remembers making a schedule to memorise Alfiyyat Ibn Malik, the 13th-century didactic poem that organises Arabic grammar in 1,000 verses.

"As a grammar enthusiast, I grew up with a deep fascination for Alfiyyat Ibn Malik," she said. The text stayed with her for years, linking her love of poetry with her interest in how knowledge is taught and remembered.

For Al Shehhi, grammar is a way to unlock the depth of Arabic. "I always say that grammar is a toolkit for language," she said, adding that Arabic, as a layered and expressive language, needs that toolkit to be fully appreciated.

That belief has shaped her teaching. During school, she held study sessions for friends, using diagrams to simplify Arabic grammar. At Columbia, she taught Arabic to students from elementary to advanced levels, helping them see the connections between concepts.

She said she plans to continue making Arabic grammar accessible and enjoyable as she teaches Arabic next semester.

Beyond academia, Al Shehhi is a spoken word poet and author of the Arabic children's book "What Does It Mean to Belong?", which won the Sharjah Gulf Woman Creativity Award in 2025 and was included in the UAE Ministry of Education curriculum.

She said the book was her attempt to help children discover their own meaning of belonging, encouraging them to write and draw what they feel connected to.

A Living Archive

For Al Shehhi, Emirati Women's Day always brings her back to her grandmother and the women who quietly carried language, culture and memory through generations.

"I don't think of it as a formal or institutional role," she said. "It was, and still is, something women did simply by living, remembering, and passing things on."

She believes that heritage survives first in relationships before it reaches books or archives.

"Language and heritage aren't preserved in archives alone, they're preserved in relationships, in a granddaughter sitting with her grandmother and learning her sign language, her stories, her way of seeing the world."

"Emirati women have always been that living archive, whether or not history credited them for it,” Al Shehhi said.