Episode: 18 — "Co-Parenting with Mother and Daughter" · Full Episode #18
Date: 25 February 2020
Language: Libyan Arabic, English code-switching
Audio: MP3
Mounia Atiga (منية عتيقة) and Waad Bayou (وعد بايو) are mother and daughter. This was the first episode of Damiri to feature two guests together.
Mounia spent 20 years in oil services, working with the UN and Schlumberger among others. She is outspoken, direct, and described herself as someone who hates hypocrisy — specifically, the performance of being two different people in public and private life.
Waad was 20 at the time of recording. A law student and content creator, she speaks five languages. She became briefly internet-famous after a photoshoot in traditional Libyan rida'a at Piccadilly Circus went viral, partly because of a chance encounter with Libyan singer Ayman Al-Atar.
Waad participated in an "East meets West" photoshoot — wearing a traditional Libyan rida'a in central London. During the shoot at Piccadilly, Ayman Al-Atar happened to walk past. They took a photo together. It went viral. The comments were brutal — people attacked what she was wearing, her appearance, the context. Waad's response was to laugh.
See: The Viral Photo
Waad described the pressure from peer groups to choose a side. In her social world, people sorted themselves: you were British or you were Libyan. She refused the binary. She did not frame this as bravery. She framed it as the only option that made sense, because she was both.
Mounia's central position was a rejection of The Double Life. She described people who presented one version of themselves in public — respectable, conservative, proper — and lived differently in private. She found this intolerable. Her parenting philosophy was built on consistency: be the same person in every room.
The episode itself was the demonstration. Mother and daughter sat together, disagreed openly, corrected each other, and treated the conversation as a live example of how they function. The co-parenting model was not a theory. It was the format.
Mounia rejected the idea of "being two people." She saw it as the core failure of diaspora culture. (EP 18)
Waad was told to go British or go Libyan. She chose neither and both. (EP 18)