There is a particular kind of Thursday that doesn’t announce itself.

No special occasion. No milestone on the calendar. Just a regular afternoon in a city you have called home for the better part of two years, and somewhere between the bus ride and the stairs and the walk along the river, something shifts quietly inside you.

This is the story of one of those Thursdays.

The Bus Along the Amstel

It was 4pm. I was on the bus along the Amstel, watching the river keep up with me through the window, and I had no idea what the afternoon was about to become.

I got off at the science park at 4:25, walked through to the north, and met one of my closest friends. We ate at an Arab restaurant where the food was warm and the conversation warmer. And then we did what we always do. We walked.

Along the river. Through the nature. Past the trees and the water and the quiet that Amsterdam hides from tourists but gives freely to those who stay long enough to earn it.

His laugh filled the spaces between sentences the way it always does. And somewhere on that walk we started asking each other the questions we usually avoid. Who will we love? Will we be enough? What does our future actually look like when the student years are behind us?

We didn’t have answers. We rarely do. But there is something sacred about asking the questions out loud with someone who takes them seriously.

The Stairs and the View

We climbed endless stairs.

If you have spent time with me, you know this is not a metaphor. We always end up climbing something. And at the top, as we always do, we stopped.

Shipyards. Water. Trams on the left. People getting in and out of their ordinary lives, completely unaware that two young men were standing above them having something close to a revelation.

I felt like a child again. Free. Present. At one with all of it.

And then happiness arrived without knocking.

That is the only way I know how to describe it. It didn’t build gradually. It didn’t announce itself. It simply settled into the afternoon like it had always been there, waiting for me to stop moving long enough to notice it.

And almost immediately, standing there looking out at that endless view, I felt the nostalgia begin. Because I knew. Next year he will be in another country. We will no longer be students. Amsterdam will go on without us, the way cities always do, indifferent and beautiful.

I went quiet.

I didn’t know happiness could be so painful until that moment.

The Flower

On the walk back, I found myself holding a wheat flower.

I don’t know exactly when it came into my hand. It just found me, the way the best things do. And I stood there looking at it, this small, unremarkable, perfect thing, and it stopped me completely.

The flower is not trying to be anything other than what it is.

It has no strategy. No persona. No carefully curated identity. It simply grows, blooms, and exists with complete unselfconsciousness. And that, I realised, is precisely what makes it beautiful. Not its colour or its shape or its rarity. Its complete and utter commitment to just being itself.

The ancient Greeks inscribed “Know thyself” at the Oracle of Delphi. Rumi wrote of the rose that does not explain its fragrance but simply blooms. Two traditions, centuries apart, arriving at the same understanding. That to know yourself fully, and to express that knowing honestly, is the most profound thing a human being can do.

The flower already knows this.

I am still learning.

On Jestora, and Why I Am Letting Go

For a long time I wrote under a persona I called Jestora.

Jestora was the trickster. The playful one. The mask I wore when I wasn’t sure the world was ready for Muaad without armour. There was real creative energy in that persona, real joy even, and I don’t regret the time I spent there. It taught me things about performance and play and the relationship between seriousness and lightness that I will carry forever.

But standing there with the flower in my hand, I understood something clearly for the first time.

The mask was never the point. It was a bridge. And I have crossed it.

I am Muaad. I write poetry to understand who I am and how I feel. I let emotions come out and I look at them and I turn them into art using methods and systems that poets have used for centuries. That is the whole practice. That is all it has ever been.

And there is beauty in that. Not despite its simplicity, but because of it.

So these final weeks of my student life, I am writing under my own name, with a barley flower as my symbol and blue as my colour, and a tagline that says everything I need it to say.

Know thyself, know the world.

On Transition

This is a closing chapter and an opening one simultaneously.

I am finishing my Master’s degree. My thesis is submitted. The student years that shaped me, challenged me, broke me open and put me back together in a better shape, are drawing to a close. And Amsterdam, this city that became my refuge, the love story I didn’t know I needed, is preparing to let me go.

There is grief in that. Real grief.

But there is also something else. A readiness. A sense that everything that happened here, the late nights, the long walks, the conversations about who we will become, was necessary. That I needed Amsterdam to become the version of myself who can now leave it.

The flower does not mourn the season. It simply blooms while it can, and releases when it is time.

I am trying to learn that.

The Poem

I wrote this poem on the bus home, using the O’Hara method, a practice of writing in the present tense, placing yourself inside the moment as it happens, trusting the ordinary to carry the extraordinary. I have never found a method that suits me more.

This is what the afternoon became:

4pm, Thursday

It’s 4pm in Amsterdam, a Thursday,
yes it’s 2026,
and I’m on the bus along the Amstel,
watching the river keep up with me.

I get off at 4:25 at the science park
and walk through to the north,
where we eat at an Arab restaurant
and the food is warm and the conversation warmer.

We walk down along the river,
and his laugh fills the spaces between sentences,
the way it always does,

and we ask each other the questions
we’re too afraid to answer
who will we love,
and will we be enough,
and what does our future actually look like?

And my legs get tired because we always walk so much,
and we climb those endless stairs,

and at the top I go quiet.

Shipyards and water and trams on the left,
people getting in and out,
the whole city just living,
and I felt like a child again
free, and present, and at one with all of it.

And I realised happiness had arrived

without knocking.

I know we won’t be here next year.
He is leaving the country.
We will no longer be students.
The city will go on without us.

And it makes me so nostalgic I go quiet,
and I didn’t know happiness could be so painful.

Amsterdam, you have been my refuge,
the love story I didn’t know I needed.

–

In the end, we just have to be ourselves. The way flowers are.

If you like today’s blog please follow @