You meet a lot of people [in Dubai] coming from a lot of different places. Even me, I'm always in transit. I don't stay anywhere too long. I like the energy that I found when I came here the first time. I start knowing people, and people start knowing me as well.

Sometimes the reading is related to something I do, sometimes it's not. I feel like every time I read something, there's a quote or something that comes [into the work] later. There's nothing that happens by coincidence. It's fate, I would say.

I've been working a lot with identity and roots, being part of your roots. I went into this topic where I was trying to break the stereotype of Arabic language. The non-translation work, this is where I make the switch, where you don't need to translate.

Art brings people back to their sensibility as human beings. This is the purpose of art: To bring people together and bring back the humanity as well.

"eL Seed" was inspired by the French play Le Cid by Pierre Corneille. It was seeing "Le Cid" coming from the Arabic name "el sayed," which means "the master, the man." So I called myself like that because I was 16; I said, "Yes, I'm the man." That's how it started.

It was an identity crisis. I was born and raised in France, but I never really felt French, so I needed to find something that I was more connected to. I used to go back to Tunisia every summer, but I was more into the language, my Arabic roots.

You meet a lot of people [in Dubai] coming from a lot of different places. Even me, I'm always in transit. I don't stay anywhere too long. I like the energy that I found when I came here the first time. I start knowing people, and people start knowing me as well.