In March 1993, a bookshop in Washington DC was about to close, and Fatima Halioua was struggling with her English as she tried to explain to the assistant which book she wanted.
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It was to be a gift but time was running out - when in stepped Canberran John Killeen who was travelling (like young Australians do).
"He tried to help me find a book," Fatima Killeen (as she is now known) says.
The change of surname gives away the story.
One thing led to another and the two formed a relationship in Washington. But he returned to a caravan park he then owned in Queensland only for love to drawn him back to Washington and to Fatima.
They got married and then came to make their home in Canberra.
In Australia, she has established herself as an artist whose work is at the Australian War Memorial, the Australian National University, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the National Museum of Australia and the Islamic Museum of Australia.
She won the Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize in 2021.
And she is one of the artists featured in an exhibition titled Encompass at the Canberra Islamic Centre this weekend.
The artists are Australian women with backgrounds across the Islamic world, from Morocco on the Atlantic (in Fatima's case) to Palestine in the Middle East to Pakistan and Bangladesh in the east.
Much Islamic art does not depict people. It is often rich in colour and pattern. Symbolism is part of it.
And so it is with Fatima Killeen's work. She has created a print, for example, depicting a kangaroo made up of Arabic lettering reading from right to left "kangaroo".
The colour of the work is that rich red known as terracotta (which means baked earth).
It's the colour associated with Morocco where many of he family remain and with the centre of Australia.
"Living in Canberra fills me with memories of Morocco and feelings of isolation from my family. Every now and then I feel as though I am somewhere between here and there," she says.
"My work is a search for balance between the intricacy of Islamic design and the openness of the Australian landscape.
"Home is a combination of the two. It's finding the common ground - where you feel at home."
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The artist was born in Casablanca in Morocco and studied at the art school there before continuing her studies at the Corcoran School of Arts in Washington. Her marriage then brought her to the ANU School of Arts.
Politics burns in her, particularly what she sees as the Western oppression of Muslim countries.
"It's the continuous harassment towards the Middle East and African countries. There is an unfairness. You feel a derogatory attitude towards the Middle East and Arab countries and nations."
She doesn't think Western military intervention in Afghanistan or Iraq has achieved anything. "It makes me angry," she said.
That anger comes out in some of her work.
One of her most striking pieces depicts a pomegranate and a grenade. She says the French inventors of the grenade modeled its shape on the pomegranate, so her art work fuses a symbol of fecundity with an instrument of death.
- The exhibition runs from 10am to 6pm on February 11 and 12 at the Islamic Centre gallery.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
