Author: mara.ahmed

a kind way of speaking

so used to calling my close women friends jaan (urdu/farsi/hindi: my life, darling), habibti (arabic: beloved, my love), and all manner of affectionate words/terms of endearment. also used to saying “love u” frequently. maybe it’s just rochester and the closeness we feel towards one another, that wonderful sense of community and of being accomplices. maybe it’s the people i’m lucky to have in my life. i think others outside of that circle might sometimes do a double take or pause. it’s nothing personal really, just what i’m used to: a kind way of speaking.

Reasons For Being Alive by Afsoon | The Warp & Weft

Friends, as you know, The Warp & Weft archive of multilingual audio stories from across the world is an ongoing project. Today I am honored to share a new story by London-based artist Afsoon, whose work I have seen and enjoyed in NYC. She writes about seclusion, art, dreams within dreams, and the tenuous line between reality and fantasy. It’s a beautifully layered, carefully measured story and includes poetry by Forugh Farrokhzad. Listen to Afsoon talking about the shifts our minds go through in isolation.

#afsoon #afsoonart #thewarpweft #thewarpandweft #archive #audioarchive #multilingualarchive #storytelling #oralhistories #yearofthepandemic #maraahmedstudio #maraahmed #art #dreams #london #2020andbeyond #poetry #farsi #forughfarrokhzad

an evening with south asian women artists

so many thx to the beautiful Safia Fatimi whom i met when we exhibited together at Westbury Arts (a wonderfully organized exhibition in which artists were invited to speak about their work) and to Jaishri Abichandani who introduced us to each other. safia invited us to a lovely evening at her place on friday where her talent for “oasis making” was evident. wish i had taken a picture with her. but here is a picture of us together at westbury arts. such a treat to connect with other south asian women artists <3

#southasianartists #southasianart #southasian #longisland #womensupportingwomen #womanpower #summerevening #oasismaking #hospitality #thankful

change is hard

this picture came up on my phone. so much nostalgia… this beautiful, one of a kind couch (i chose the fabric and design) from a store in rochester that no longer exists. i had to get the doorway to our living room widened to get this couch in. this couch where family and friends sat and talked. where i took countless power naps. where the kids would sleep when they were sick so i could tend to them as i cooked and worked around the house. this couch where phoebe, our dearest pom, rested and dozed off almost every day, many times by my side. i gave this couch away when we moved. too large, too heavy. i didn’t want to but had to make many hard, practical decisions. it’s been more than two years now, but i miss my life in rochester. i miss our house. i miss phoebe. change is hard.

Dasht-e-Tanhai – A Desert Soundscape

Dasht-e-Tanhai (The Desert of my Solitude) is one of my favorite poems. It was written by the great Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. I translated the poem in English more than a decade ago, in 2009. This year I took a recording of that translation and the original Urdu poem to Darien Lamen, a genius at sound design (and much else), and together we created the soundscape for Dasht-e-Tanhai. I wrote about the poem, my translation, and our collab in this piece. The audio and text were published today in The Markaz Review. This is the kind of work I love. Pls read the piece but most of all, listen to Dasht-e-Tanhai here.

“To me it’s a love poem brimming with scents, sounds, landscapes, and textures. It speaks to movement and physical phenomena, to disconnection and union. Perhaps to the cyclical nature of life itself. Faiz wrote the poem while in prison, from a place of sensory deprivation and seclusion, and therefore all the physical world’s vividness and intensity are contained in his words. The poem demands more coloring in, more relief than words on a page.

[…] For me personally, as someone who is permanently déracinée, who lives in between homes and languages, and feels a particular ache for Pakistan, Faiz’s words of love and wistfulness set off untold emotions. I tried to read Dasht-e-Tanhai in Urdu at the Spirit Room, in Rochester, New York, in 2018. I could see my parents and husband in the audience. The import of releasing Urdu poetry into a wintry space, a world away from the fragrant jasmine Faiz describes, overwhelmed me. This recording is a way to be able to say all the words, finally.”

Photo by Rabah al-Shammary

The Stranger by Albert Camus

From ‘The Stranger’ by Albert Camus

Illustration by Yeji Yun

-There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled little wave that broke on the sand. I was walking slowly toward the rocks and I could feel my forehead swelling under the sun. All that heat was pressing down on me and making it hard for me to go on. And every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the thick drunkenness it was spilling over me. With every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a piece of broken glass, my jaws tightened.

-But most of the time, he was just a form shimmering before my eyes in the fiery air. The sound of the waves was even lazier, more drawn out than at noon. It was the same sun, the same light still shining on the same sand as before. For two hours the day had stood still; for two hours it had been anchored in a sea of molten lead.

-All I could feel were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me.

-When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man. For example, I would suddenly have the urge to be on a beach and to walk down to the water. As I imagined the sound of the first waves under my feet, my body entering the water and the sense of relief it would give me, all of a sudden I would feel just how closed in I was by the walls of my cell. But that only lasted a few months. Afterwards my only thoughts were those of a prisoner.

my review: elvis

went to see ‘elvis’ yesterday with my sister and nephew. first baz luhrmann film i’ve ever liked. it’s obvious that he’s a devoted fan, so he reins in his frenetic (sometimes grotesque) filmmaking. three things: austin butler is electric – he plays elvis with intense physical and emotional energy and heart. i love that elvis’s career and music are situated bang in the middle of black culture and musical brilliance. and finally, the film allows us to connect to elvis as a human being. that might seem superfluous but for someone who was turned into a larger-than-life brand and money-making machine, it’s moving to break through all that dazzle/packaging and come face to face with human vulnerability. the hold his agent, colonel parker, had on elvis feels abusive and suffocating. reminded me of brittney spears and her struggles and how fame in a hyper-capitalist society can trap, oppress and even destroy.

more about elvis in the film vs in real life here.

#elvis #elvismovie #elvispresley #bazluhrmann #austinbutler #filmreview #maraahmed

opening of ‘uncommon threads’

at the opening of ‘uncommon threads’ at huntington arts council today with my mom and dad. so lovely to connect with the art community on long island, where i’ve felt very welcome so far. and what a treat that my dad got to see this tribute to his mom as part of an exhibition in huntington, ny (my mixed media piece is at the center) <3

#uncommonthreads #juriedexhibition #huntington #longislandartists #longislandartistscommunity #longislandartgallery #opening #maraahmed

#gratitude

with ammi abbu at west meadow beach this evening. how i love the long island sound, the atlantic ocean. smooth sand, then layer upon layer of perfect blue. the sunset like an orange highlighter, selecting a few important lines from the sky’s infinite stories. ammi found someone from lahore and made a new friend. vanilla ice cream to conclude the day.