Omar El Akkad on One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
By Ansharah Shakil, March 10 2025—
Prior to his work as an author with the internationally acclaimed American War and What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad had an award-winning career as a journalist. Born in Egypt, raised in Qatar and Canada and now residing as a U.S. citizen, he reported from Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay for the Globe and Mail, and calls journalism his education.
His roots in that field began at the student newspaper at Queen’s University. It’s a background that has influenced almost every aspect of his writing, especially his recent non-fiction debut One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
Following the release, El Akkad will be appearing at a Wordfest event at 7pm on Mar. 11 in Calgary with a sold-out audience. In the book, El Akkad’s response to Gaza post-Oct. 7, he writes about the things people look away from and why we shouldn’t, interspersed with memories and essays that detail a loss of faith in the Western world.
“I don’t expect students to agree with any of these arguments,” he said. “I’m not trying to convince them of anything or point them in a particular position. Without fail, when I go talk to [university] students, I am talking to people who are far braver than me and who have an incredibly nuanced understanding of the world and who have incredibly well-functioning moral compasses.”
Though his heart was in writing, El Akkad has a degree in Computer Science — in his book, he notes wryly that being a writer wasn’t exactly a path you could aspire to as a child of immigrants in North America. While discussing a frequent habit of skipping class, something most students can probably relate to, he details his initial decision to get into student journalism because of the urge to do something, anything, to write about the historic events that were taking place after 9/11.
“My hope is that the book serves to get students thinking about certain issues and where they stand on those issues,” he said. “I’m trying my best to create space for conversations around some of the disastrous things that my generation and previous generations have done.”
The title of the book references El Akkad’s tweet on October 25, 2023: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
“I think all literature is political, either by virtue of its negative space or its active space. Every book I’ve ever read is political, either because it chose to address something or because it chose to look away from something,” El Akkad said.
It’s impressive that the book covers so much ground while sticking close to its main points. El Akkad discusses the subjects that changed him, the atrocities he has seen which now lead him to ask how it is possible to continue a normal existence, using historical examples to elaborate on his points. He also discusses subjects that are clearly close to his heart, like his family or when he asks what will happen to Palestine’s literature, poetry and journalism. Amidst his criticisms of nations, governments and companies as well as the writing and journalism industry, he finds hope in the positive actions of groups of people, lingering on the love and strength that still manages to exist.
“I tend to subscribe to what James Baldwin said about when you’re writing the work you have to believe that it can change the world, even if you know deep down that it probably won’t,” he said. “One of the most powerful facets of writing […] is that it tends to outlive the writer. Those afterlifes give literature an immense power to change the world, even if it takes a very long time.”
Another powerful aspect of writing to him is the ability to escape from yourself and consider the world from a different point of view.
“It forces you to look through somebody else’s eyes for a while, and that alone, I think can help change the world, even if only indirectly,” he said. “I’ve come away changed from every book I’ve ever read.”
Language is an important part of the book, not only through El Akkad’s precise use of vocabulary, but within the first few pages, where he writes about the ways in which English fails to translate the full breadth, the all-encompassing meaning, of words and phrases in languages like Arabic.
“An old high school friend of mine [and I] without even thinking about it, we slipped back into our normal way of speaking which is this bizarre mash-up of English and Arabic […] and it was the first time I felt comfortable in my own skin in decades because [it was] the closest thing I have to a language of home,” he said.
El Akkad doesn’t profess to have any answers, but poses questions that hurt, questions that make you think, alongside sharp observations and empathetic passion.
“To me the book is an interrogation of a deep uncertainty, about who I am and whether I belong to this part of the world, an uncertainty that’s been building a long time. What people get out of it, I honestly can’t tell you,” he said. “The only thing I can say is that the most impassioned responses to this book that I’ve gotten […] are from people who are grappling with the same uncertainty.”
In all the uncertainty of the book itself, there is a surety that its subjects are worth writing about, and they are given unadulterated, deserved grace. He talks frequently of fear, his own and the world’s, but while the book is not unafraid, it is brave enough to speak despite that fear.
More information about the book, El Akkad’s appearance at Wordfest and upcoming Wordfest events can be found here.