THE FIRST HORSE BY TEGAN W MCLEOD

"That night, instead of the desert, I run with Kuhaylah down the streets of Gaza city. It rains, the wind beats behind us. We gallop past the empty windows, the hollow doorways, my hair streaming out behind me like Kuhaylah’s tail." 

Lamiah dreams of befriending a wild horse in Gaza and one day not only showing her brother that girls can race better than boys but breaking through the walls that imprison her family. 

Tegan McLeod was born in Iowa city, Iowa. She later moved to the UK where she went on to study English Literature at Oxford University. She began acting in the National Youth Theatre and her first play Never Such Rain (written at age 18) was a runner-up in the Oxford New Writer’s Festival. Tegan was awarded a full scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin as a Michener Fellow in Playwriting and Screenwriting in 2013. At UT she has had numerous productions, most recently a world-premiere of her first opera, produced in The New Works Festival, and entitled Rose Made Man; an opera about Trans identity. Her new play Girls in Cars Underwater was developed at Center Stage in Baltimore, featured in the Ignition Festival at Victory Gardens, Chicago 2016 and was selected for the 2016 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center: National Playwrights Conference. SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/06/gaza-riding-club-faisal