Nabihah was raised in the city of Ramallah in Palestine. Her mother was a scientist who mostly worked from home, writing articles for science periodicals, and her father was the Imam of a local mosque. People often would tell Nabihah that she inherited the strongest parts of both her parents. The scientific side of her mother and the faithful side of her father.
When she was ten years old she had a life-changing experience. She responded poorly to a series of vaccinations and was stuck at home for a week, very ill and running a high temperature. On the second day, her mother brought home a telescope, so that she could at least study the stars, there were only so many holovids you can watch in a row.
On the final night, as Nabihah studied the heavens again, she experienced a strange celestial event that she had never even heard of before. It looked like two stars dancing over the course of several hours. She studied these stars as the sun came up and the beauty of the event left her awe struck. There in that magical night she saw the splendour of Allah, and His divine grace inside all of the creations of the universe. She decided, as the sky turned blue obscuring her view of the two stars, that she will go out there and explore everything that He has created, discover everything that could be discovered. And maybe even seeing the true nature of Allah.
While she had been a courteous and dutiful child, her younger sister was a completely different story. She was born when Nabihah was twelve and she was trouble from the very beginning. Even the pregnancy itself was difficult and the doctors advised that there was a high chance of complications during childbirth. Rashida and Diya discussed ending the pregnancy early, but decided that the unborn girl had fought too hard for them to give up on her now. Fortunately, both mother and child made it through, but as a baby Farihah constantly cried, and kept them up at all hours of the night, She grew up to have a real rebellious streak. Having no interest in either science or faith she instead focused on her art and her skateboarding and her loud music. Things that Nabihah didn’t have any interest in either. So as the two grew older, they fell apart.
When Nabihah graduated high school, she immediately wanted to apply to Starfleet Academy, it was all she wanted to do ever since that night with the dancing stars. But after long careful conversations with her parents, she agreed to attend her mother’s alma mater, Tel Aviv University. She completed her masters at the age of twenty-four, after graduation she straight away applied to the academy, and was quickly accepted.
