When Somaya thinks about her future career she thinks it might be in photography or teaching. She feels like teaching is a respectful job and likes the idea of sharing everything she has learned with her students. Somaya works as a teacher inside the camp and says about this experience;

“There are times that I don’t feel good as I’m headed to class, but once I get there we talk and laugh together and it makes me feel better. It gives me peace.” 

In her free time Somaya likes to watch youtube videos with subtitles to help her improve her English. Her goals as a photographer is to be able to travel, to speak to a lot of different people and photograph people from different regions. Some places she would like to photograph are Greece, Iran and Switzerland. She says;

“They say Switzerland has a lot of colorful trees. I would like to go there myself and see them and photograph them.”

IN her FIRST SEASON WITH REFOCUS, Somaya developed significant filmmaking skills, working on documentary, narrative and social media concepts. In her first film project our students were guided by teaching artists Magda Zambrycka and pawel rozek. BOTH FROM POLAND, WHERE THE NOVEL AND NETFLIX SERIES “THE witcher” is a cult classic, they asked our students to develop a concept centering upon what makes people in society special, almost super-human. When asked Somaya said, “Our students Najma, Nargis, Rahela and Somaya filmed and edited their first short film, with the prompt: “If I was a superhero how would I use my powers?”

Here’s what Somaya had to say about the experience: 
“I especially liked the project when I realized what the subject is about and having the opportunity to express our dreams in our mind. Something that in real life we are not about to change but at least in our dreams...yes.”

on subsequent projects Somaya and her fellow filmmakers worked on creating social media videos for a client-partner @waveofhopeforthefuture and other partner organizations at @onehappyfamily

SOmaya also worked with her fellow filmmaker Najma yaqubi on their own short narrative film “this magic moment.” For Somaya, these early filmmaking experiences were “exciting to produce a film for the first time. My favourite part was the filming because it was a new experience.”

- Follow Somaya on Instagram- @s.m.y.h.q.n.ai.i_official_