I left a mountain to find out what it was for.
Igiwer N’ufrak is made by one person with a microphone, a reading habit, and a stubborn question: what is a free life actually for?
From the Atlas to the St. Lawrence
I grew up in a village in the Moroccan Atlas where the day was measured by light and the year by rain. I was the first in my family to leave for university, and then the first to leave the country. In 2013 I landed in Montréal with two suitcases, a linguistics degree nobody asked for, and a winter coat that was not enough.
For the first years I did the immigrant arithmetic — shifts, transit, night classes, phone calls home timed to the cheap hours. Somewhere in a rented room I started recording myself thinking out loud about the books that were keeping me steady: Epictetus, Simone Weil, Mouloud Mammeri, Rilke. I posted the first episodes with no expectation. People wrote back. It turned out a lot of us were carrying a mountain around and pretending it was hand luggage.
Ten years later the show is a life. I still do the reading. I still call home during the cheap hours.
Four things I keep coming back to
Meaning is made, not found
Nobody hands it to you and no landscape contains it. You build it with attention, work, and the people you refuse to abandon.
Freedom is a practice
Not a document, not a border crossed once. It is a set of small daily refusals and one or two large ones.
Roots travel
A language spoken by twelve people at a kitchen table can hold a whole philosophy. You do not have to choose between where you are from and where you are.
The interview is a form of love
To ask a real question and then be quiet is rare. Most of this show is just that: a chair, a light, and enough silence for someone to tell the truth.
A short timeline
Come have the conversation
Guest suggestions, disagreements, and long emails are all welcome.
A podcast and a book about meaning, exile, and the quiet courage of a free life — told through philosophy, books, and Amazigh voices who carried their mountains into the world.