Amira “Princess” Abdula

I took my car into the shop to get some work done and had a few hours to kill, so I went for a little window shop up and down Main Street. I walked past this young person who kept running up to random strangers on the street and giving them hugs - not entirely out of the ordinary for downtown Vancouver - except these strangers seemed to be completely unphased and appeared to know this person. I kinda chuckled to myself at the oddity, but didn’t think about them much further than that. I continued on with my fruitless window shop, and on my travels back up to the mechanics shop, I noticed this person again, except this time they were sitting on top of a picnic bench, nervously smoking and appearing worried and lost.

I stood on the other side of the street and watched them for a minute or 2. Their leg bouncing up and down on the seat of the bench, unable to cease as if it were stuck in that centrifugal loop. When I decided to go and talk to this person I didn’t know what to expect, I’d never done this before, earlier in the day I attempted to go and chat with a few people down at the beach but were turned away like I was trying to sell them life insurance.
What do I say? What am I supposed to do? How do I even start a conversation like this? Clearly this person wasn’t entirely all there, would they physically get up and run away? Would they attack me? Would they start instantly going in about how Christ is coming and the world is at its end? All of these thoughts were bouncing around in a scar ridden pathway brought on by preconceived notions of my own external experience of walking around downtown Vancouver. As someone who grew up here, I’ve been accosted by the “crazies” in about every way one could.

Fuck it. I’m just gonna go introduce myself and ask if I can sit and chat with them for a second.

Deep breath..

“Hi, my name’s Threads, I’m a writer and photographer” they shuffled to the other side of the table nervously and slightly surprised, “I’m working on a project where I go around and talk to everyday people about their lives and then at the end I take their picture,” they let out an audible nervous groan, “I was just walking down the street just now and saw you run up to a few people who seemed to know who you were and I watched your face light up as you did it. You seem super interesting, and I was wondering if I could sit with you and chat with you for a minute?”

“Yes.” They said. “But no photo’s.”

“No problem.”

I sat up on the table and looked them in the eyes and just simply asked, “What’s your name?”
“Amira Jahar Abdullah, but you can call me Princess, that’s what my name means in Arabic.”
“Nice to meet you Princess.”
They transferred their Marlboro Red to their left hand so they could shake mine with their right. Their leg stopped bouncing.

“How are you?” I asked.

It was as if no one had genuinely asked them that question in years, and what followed was the most incredible, most coherent, most interesting and heart breaking conversations about someones life story I’ve ever had.

Amira “Princess” Abdullah, as she would introduce herself as, is a trans woman from South Lebanon. I asked Princess about her experience growing up in Lebanon.
“I left in 1996 when I was 3, and ended up in Toronto until 2004. I had to go back to Lebanon for a year and half and then I went…actually it was two and a half, because my father was marrying my step mom. Then the war. And then Israel started attacking us in 2006 and we had to evacuate to Windsor Ontario.”

We stopped for a second to chat about Windsor.

“Oh Windsor! My family from there!” I said. “Not much to impress the eye there huh?”

She snapped back at me, “No way, I love WIndsor! It’s so beautiful! The parks, the tree’s, the amazing skyline looking across the water to Detroit.”

“You’re right, it is pretty beautiful.”

She jumped back into her story.

“And then after I went to Jordan where I went to the same school as the Army brats from the US embassy, which kinda sucked because it was just a bunch of snooty airheads that were just like, ‘I’m better than thou because I have Abercrombie and Fitch, and American Eagle, and even the Middle Easterners were trying to be white, which was really fucking cringe, and sad.”

I was shocked at how pure and articulate Princess was. The story of her life was linear and passionate. On the surface I had nothing in common with her and her life experience, but on a human level, I could relate heavily to her emotions.

“How did you end up in Vancouver?”

“I went back to Lebanon for my last three years of high school, and then I came here in 2011 for film school, and went to Emily Carr in 2018, and then I graduated in 2022.” She replied.

“What did you go to Emily Carr for?” I asked.

“Animation. And yeah, I’ve been unemployed ever since COVID because everything changed after COVID - of course - and the world’s falling apart and - “

Her leg began to shake again, I could sense her anxiety returning so I interrupted her runaway train of thought for a second.

“How does that make you feel?”

“Well, it’s been a pretty tough time lately for me since 2022.” She continued. “The last four years have been a lot of heartbreak in terms of I can’t become a sufficient person at all. But I discovered community. I discovered the value of people. I discovered how much I like that. Not everything has to revolve around your capital or social status, that you can be loved simply for existing. And that’s wild to me.”

“Princess. That’s beautiful.” I responded.

She cracked a bashful smile for the first time in our chat, and went on.

“All my life I kind of struggled, I came in and out of psych wards and I have bipolar schizophrenia, that’s what they diagnosed me with anyways. And fun fact, I’m a trans woman of colour. I didn’t transition until February 2021 when I took my first batch of hormones, and now I’ve never looked back ever since. It’s tough transitioning while the world’s falling apart. It’s like trying to put your pants on when the building is collapsing.”

I’ve never heard anyone describe their experience of going through such continued adversity in such an unbelievably powerful, and poetic way. “Like trying to put your pants on when the building was collapsing.”

What a fucking mic drop of a line.

Princess went on. “It’s really hard, but like, I’m glad that I’m more fortunate with my journey in many ways, and not just transitioning. Like I know I sounded like and acted like a girl - what ever that means - all growing up, which is silly because I’ve always been a girl my whole life, even before I transitioned.”

“I grew up with a single father who still loves me to this day, who still takes care of me to this day, and he especially knows how hard it is. He’s still pushing me to get a job and never give up, but it’s hard you know, It’s just hard sometimes.”

Princess’s story is one of extreme bravery and triumph. The unsung heroine. In society we look to Hollywood for our example of bravery and heroism, we’ve been trained to think that if we don’t save a baby from a burning building that we aren’t a hero.

What about saving ourselves from our own burning building?

The real truth is far from what we perceive on TV and social media. Everyday people are in a state of complete crisis, now more than ever it seems. But that’s where we all become the hero’s of our own story. To survive through intense adversity and through intense trauma, is to be as strong and brave as any superhero that’s ever been created.

Amira “Princess” Jahar Abdullah is a hero. She is the reason I started Tiny Little Threads. That by sitting down and talking to everyday people about their day to day struggles of just how fucked up it is to be a human being in 2026, we learn that we aren’t all that different from one and other. We’re all in pain, but we also all have the capacity to turn that pain into love and empathy for one and other. To take pride in our community and to smile at the fellow soldier in arms as they walk by, instead of cursing at the stranger as they accidentally bump into you on a busy sidewalk.

Our conversation continued on for another 5 minutes or so. She went on to talk about her view of the world and the empathy and anxiety she feels for all the generations that live in it.

“Even boomers can’t retire peacefully. They don’t have enough to retire. So it’s kind of scary to see the generation that claimed they had it all, now have nothing.”

“But the thing that gives me hop is that the community here understands. Everyone that I know, they understand what I’m going through. They have mercy on me. And you know, no matter what happens, everybody here want’s to see me succeed. They want to see me happy. And I love seeing them happy. And I know it weird, I don’t have a fucking penny to my name at this point, but I can still give them a lot, I don’t know how I give to them, but they like my energy. They like my positive attitude, they always smile when they see me. I admit I act like a brat most of the time, but well…I can’t help it, you know?”

We both burst out laughing at that.

I never would have known Princess if I didn’t remove my preconceived notions about what a person looks like and acts like on the outside, and just sit down and give them the time of day to talk about their story. If I could have anything arise from this social experiement I’m on, is that people read about stories like Princess’s and they drop their guard a bit when they come across a stranger in the street. That instead of getting mad at the barista because they’re taking too long with their non-fat, oat milk, half sweet vanilla latte, they stop and think, “maybe this person has had a hard day, a hard week, a hard life? What’s my rush anyways.”

“I like your positive energy Princess, the world needs more you’s.”

“All this is about all.” She said with a warm and gracious smile.

“If you want you can take a photo, it’s ok, I’m ok with it now.