The Exchange A True Story? The Show’s Writer Reveals How Her Single Mum in 80’s Kuwait Inspired The Netflix Series

In her own words, Nadia Ahmad shares how watching her mother take on the male-dominated workplace inspired her to never settle, never surrender and always challenge the status quo

Is The Exchange a true story? Writer Nadia Ahmad on the inspiration behind the incredible tale.

It is undeniable that the ’80s were loud. The music was loud, the hairstyles were loud, the clothes were loud, the colours were loud, and even the aerobics workouts were loud. And money? It screamed the loudest. In our part of the world, the Middle East, the ’80s were full of contradictions. An era of exuberant wealth looking to the future when it came to industrialization and modernization. Women in the ’80s had to be just as loud as their coifs to earn their spot in the male-dominated workplace and only a select outlier few could be that loud. This was not an act of rebellion but rather an act of self-determination, a plea for independence, a stance to prove, to themselves first, that not only did they have something to bring to the table, they very well could be the table itself.

I watched first-hand as my single mother dressed herself every morning; pencil skirts and tights, kitten heels and a waist-length blazer with the mandatory shoulder pads and her feathered Diana haircut; now she was ready to battle an estrogen-avert workplace and to do it with the grace and elegance of a princess. My mother was and remains an economic genius. Her job in the investment industry excited her, she was challenged daily. She couldn’t just coast by the way some men in the office could with a flare of entitlement. She had to go above and beyond. Every. Single. Day. It’s true that her main objective was to hold a steady high-paying job in order to afford my private education and all my extracurriculars, but she was also really damn good at her job.

As a child, like most other children, I was in awe of my mother and the exceptional women she surrounded herself with; defiant, intelligent, hard-working challengers of the status quo. They kicked down doors and shattered glass ceilings for a living. It was inspiring, to say the least, for a little girl like me. The ambient social pressures on girls and women were not lost on me, even as a child. I wanted to be like my Mama. I would sit at her boudoir and try to style my hair like she did, put on her lipstick and plop on her heels, parading clumsily around the house with one of her work files in hand and pretend to walk into a board room full of dishdasha’d men the way she would tell me she would, during story time in the evenings. These women I was trying to emulate were no ordinary women. They were being told every day and everywhere that their place was in the home, raising children.

Is The Exchange A True Story?

Enter The Exchange.

In Netflix’s The Exchange, you will meet Farida and Munira. Two women who embody the strong, goal-driven yet feminine women I grew up admiring. In a post-Manakh Kuwait, when conflict was centre stage, but with a sustaining influx of oil wealth, the investment and asset-management industry was booming. The Kuwait Stock Exchange represented a beacon of progress in the gulf; an advanced, complex economy. Farida, the soft-spoken, pretty divorcé; mother of the opinionated Jude, finds that she must now fend for herself financially after her father buys her freedom from her ex-husband. With only her skills in mathematical economics to serve her, and her sheer resolve to not accept defeat and provide the very best for her daughter, Farida fearlessly forges forward in her quest to buy herself a stake in the biggest money-making industry in the country. However, Farida must share this stake with her cousin, Munira.

Munira, a smart-mouthed, business-savvy vixen, runs the stock exchange testosterone-heavy floor amuck with her equal parts wit and sex appeal. She is the epitome of a modern ’80s working girl whose out to get her share of the money feast on offer at the exchange. Munira, driven by a need to validate herself amongst the big money-makers, learns the tricks of the trade quickly and doesn’t buy into Farida’s ethics crises at each moral-bending deal. She is an independent, strong-willed woman who challenges the status quo, again not unlike the women I grew up watching and haven’t gotten enough of since.

The Exchange, similar to our realities as women in the Middle East, is brimming with the barters we make as women on a daily basis to earn our keep in the professional world and at home. But if we’re lucky, we can look back at women who chose the road less travelled before us and find solace and strength. I find myself, today, making similar sets of trades my mother and the women around her made more than four decades ago, but with the privilege of their knowledge and collective experiences, I feel stronger, more prepared and ready to take on the plight. I am now surrounded by a new generation of women and girls who are taking the outlier journey with me. I’m proud of how far we’ve come, what we have learned on the way, and what is in store for us ahead. I am proud of all my peers and feel privileged to be standing next to them. I am also honoured to know a few mighty men who lift us women up and cherish us – we are blessed to have you. Together, the future is not only female; the future is human.

So let’s raise our voices, together and in unison and be loud like the ’80s. For the women standing up for their right to individuality and self-expression, let’s be loud like the ‘80s. For the women-shattering expectations, let’s be loud like the ’80s. For the women fighting for their right to an education, let’s be loud like the ’80s. For the women across our Arab world and beyond, and the men who love us.

The Exchange debuted on February 8th on Netflix.

Images courtesy of Netflix