I didn’t expect a DNA test to change how I move my body.
Like most people, I was pulled in by pure curiosity. My grandfather on my mother's side, as far as I understood, was Syrian. But in 2018, a family member told me I had an Egyptian ancestor along my maternal line. This sparked my interest, and I wanted to get a closer look.
I took a DNA test to dig further into my ancestry and found out that my genetic map stretched across the Middle East; the entire region lit up, and it didn’t stop there.
These visuals set my imagination on fire. How did my ancestors meet? Where did they cross paths? How did they move across continents? What drove them to leave their homelands?
Once dissected and pored over, this curiosity morphed into empowerment. It reminded me that identity, for many of us, has never been a fixed place.
The breakdown did give me supposed fixed numbers for those ancestors, however. About 63.2 per cent of my DNA traces back to Arab and North African roots. Within that, somewhat surprisingly, the largest share was Peninsular Arab at 36.4 per cent, followed by Levantine at 18.9 per cent, despite my mother’s side being Syrian and my father being Iraqi.
There were clear markers of Egyptian and southern Levantine ancestry across Palestine and Jordan. I even learnt that I have at least five living relatives in the UAE.
What struck me wasn't just the diversity, but the lack of orderliness. I was more Peninsular Arab than Levantine, despite what I thought I knew about my own family.
Then there was another layer: 32 per cent Mesopotamian, centred on Baghdad, less surprising since my father's family is from Baghdad, and some traces specifically from northern Syria, hinting at an Armenian or Assyrian lineage further back. Beyond that, East African ancestry, Ethiopian and Eritrean, which might explain the trace Coptic percentages that appeared. Even within a single lineage, identity refused to follow a clean line.
I've always been drawn to questions of race and identity, which led me to study anthropology at university. I was driven to understand what it really meant to be Arab, a category so often flattened into something singular. So much of my experience and culture growing up simply didn't fit the stereotypes and assumptions of what it means to be Arab in the western world.
Genetic anthropology has long challenged that simplicity, and that's why I was drawn to it during my studies, and why I have always been curious about DNA testing.
While I maybe should have anticipated the diversity of my results, I hadn’t expected that the most immediate impact would have nothing to do with identity. Instead, it had everything to do with how I approach exercise.
According to the report, I carry a genetic variant associated with muscle composition commonly found in elite power athletes – I was flabbergasted. The note was buried in a section on genetic traits: markers linked to health, appearance and physical performance, and it took me completely by surprise.
It’s the kind of detail that is easy to dismiss. The science behind this is probabilistic, not deterministic. But it planted a question I hadn't considered before.
For most of my life, I had told myself that running simply wasn’t for me. That I wasn't fast and I wasn’t built for it. The report went on to explain how the genetic marker meant I had fast-twitch fibres, which generate short bursts of speed and power, often associated with power sports such as sprinting and weightlifting.
This small note, which is easy to miss among the details on the report, reset the assumption I had made about myself. So I decided to give it another shot. Eight years later, I am still running. I do a lot of HIIT sprinting and lift weights. And I love it.
While DNA testing took me on a global journey and led me to a new hobby, I'm fully aware that it isn't always linked to a joyful experience for all, especially for communities whose ethnicity is politicised. In some cases, it has even been weaponised – some platforms have been criticised for erasing Palestinian heritage, for example, demonstrating that even data can be shaped by power.
And yet, for all its limitations, there is something quietly radical in what these tests reveal, particularly for ancestry from our region. It points to histories that stretch far beyond the borders we now defend so fiercely.
For me, the most tangible impact was far more personal: dismantling a belief I previously held about myself. Now, as I tie my trainers just before heading out for a run, I often think about those ancestors who passed down a genetic trait for speed.
