saw this amazing one-woman play off broadway last night. written and performed by khawla ibraheem, a playwright, actor and director from majdal shams, in the occupied golan heights, the play tells the story of a woman and her family trying to survive a war. although written in 2017 about another war in gaza (there have been countless), resonance with the present genocide charges the play with so much more meaning and emotion. the story starts with everyday life, which continues even as bombings form a kind of unhinged backdrop, but builds up to something obsessive and paranoid. how to plan an escape after the first “knock on the roof,” when smaller bombs are dropped on one’s building to indicate upcoming annihilation. one has 5-15 minutes to assemble loved ones, pick up the bare necessities, rush down the stairs (no electricity), and sprint as far away from the building as possible. 5-15 minutes. madness. what does one pack, how does one wake up a drowsy child and aging mother and ready them for escape, how fast and far can one run while holding on to the most precious possessions of one’s life? as mariam dedicates every passing hour to practicing and mastering the perfect escape, we see snippets of her childhood, her marriage to omar who is finishing his master’s degree abroad, her childhood dreams, and adult frustrations. the play becomes darker as tension builds to a crescendo and mariam begins to disintegrate. the end takes one’s breath away. there were audible reactions in the audience – people wept as the lights came back on. a stunning physical and emotional feat. at new york theatre workshop until february 16, 2025.
Category: self-authored
my review: conclave
so about the film ‘conclave,’ which is generating oscar buzz. i was excited to see it when it came out because of the cast – ralph fiennes, isabella rossellini, stanley tucci, john lithgow – all actors i like. the setting of the film is interesting. most of the action happens during a conclave – an assembly of cardinals who self-segregate until they’ve appointed a new pope. remember the smoke rising from the sistine chapel, signaling that the next pope has been elected? that selection comes out of a conclave.
as i’m watching the film, i’m thinking to myself how wonderful it is to see this thriller with these masterful actors set in a completely different context, constructed with meticulous replicas of the vatican and full of elaborate costumes and rituals. v catholic of course.
towards the end of the film, there is an explosion in the midst of the conclave. there’s a hole in the building where the voting is taking place, with debris and pulverized dust everywhere. the camera begins to shoot at an angle, ralph fiennes is hurt, we feel disoriented.
my first thought is: it’s a dream. fiennes is under stress so he’s imagining the end of days. no such luck. this is actually happening. we soon find out that this is a terrorist attack – a suicide bombing to be more exact – which triggers a disgusting islamophobic rant from one of the cardinals: “we can never work with muslims, they are animals.”
at this point i say to myself: “this can’t be. they will probably reveal that the attack was the work of some christian sect or extremist group. they’ll flip it.” nope. the bombing is immediately assumed to be a muslim thing and that gut reaction is proven to be right.
now i’m thinking: “there will be strong pushback, this cannot be allowed to pass.” in fact, there is some pushback by one of the cardinals, but it’s not political. it’s simply meaningless generalities about not hating anyone (even suicide bombers).
for a film about catholics, taking place in the vatican, where the central theme is the election of a pope, this bit of last minute anti-muslim racism is so arbitrary. or is it? in the midst of a live streamed genocide of mostly muslim people, with propaganda deployed to invert reality and turn the killers into victims, perhaps every film that comes out has to fulfill a certain quota of islamophobia, even if it’s a side story randomly added at the end. my husband and i paid $20 per person to see this bs at a movie theater. it’s hard to tell what’s what when we are picking films. there are racist traps embedded in every bit of western culture.
new year’s eve 2024
as we step into 2025 (an arbitrary threshold with just one meaning at this moment – the shattering reality that a holocaust has been enabled and supported for more than a year in full view of the world), i feel unsettled. the cognitive dissonance that many of us have experienced since october 2023 (or since forever) seems heavy. on the one hand, i am thankful for my family and friends and the fact that we live in relative security, on the other, i am intensely aware of the suicidal gluttony, violence and vulgarity that underpin all systems promising safety in exchange for genocide. the brutal murder of robert brooks in a graphic video that’s impossible to watch, reminds me of the bodies being starved, exploded, pulverized, and piled into mass graves in gaza. i want to write something about the racial dynamics of it. the word ‘dehumanization’ is so overused, it’s lost all meaning. what is truly happening when the black or brown body is savagely penetrated, its skin broken, its borders breached? the mind boggles at the viciousness embedded in white supremacist colonial ideologies, and the widespread silence, convoluted justifications, and hardcore denial they entail. i have no faith in any of these systems – capitalism, the nation state, settler colonial logics, imperial bs, or international ‘rules’ and pompous political rhetoric. the only thing that makes sense is community, resistance, and indigenous/ palestinian ways of living in concert with the land and its inhabitants, with respect and generosity. may 2025 be a year of peace and connection. may 2025 be the year we celebrate palestinian freedom.
Elizabeth Catlett’s work at the Brooklyn Museum
A couple of weeks ago I saw Elizabeth Catlett’s work at the Brooklyn Museum. I had already seen ‘Target’ as part of the exhibition ‘We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85’ in Buffalo, in 2018. It’s a beautiful bronze bust of a Black man, his distinguished face seen through the crosshairs of a rifle scope made of metal and drilled roughly into the wood block that holds the sculpture. Fierce.
‘Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) was an avowed feminist, a lifelong activist, and an astutely observant artist. Spanning 75 years of diverse production, Catlett’s career was guided by her bold creative artistry, rigorous practice, and deep commitment to social justice and political activism.’
The first thing one sees in Brooklyn, as one enters the exhibition, is an exquisite terra cotta sculpture of a woman’s head. I was completely overcome by the delicate beauty of the piece.
In 1946, Catlett moved to Mexico as a guest artist at the printmaking collective, Taller de Grafica Popular. It was in Mexico City that she learned the terra cotta technique she later employed in her work (building a hollow shape from coils of clay) from the artist Francisco Zuniga. This indigenous technique, which allows the gentle definition of features, was in use long before the Spanish invaded and colonized. ‘Tired’ which depicts a physically depleted Black woman claiming a moment of respite and ‘Mother and Child,’ a smaller piece which brims with tenderness and the sense of safety we should all be allowed to feel in our parent’s arms, are stunning. The mother’s muscular legs seem to be rooted in the soil beneath her and reminded me of Soviet monuments and Diego Rivera’s murals.
‘While ultimately becoming a Mexican citizen, Catlett never lost sight of the Black liberation struggle in the United States. She embraced a political radicalism that merged the goals of the Black Left in the United States with the lessons of the Mexican Revolution and international feminist movements. Her transnational identity fueled a critical understanding that Black Americans and Mexicans were linked with other oppressed people around the world in a struggle against poverty, racism, and imperialism. As a result, she developed a rich visual language through which she articulated her solidarity politics across various media.’
Her sketches, lithographs, woodcuts, lino prints, watercolors, and sculptures bridge the gap between aesthetics and politics.
Catlett’s work will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum until Jan 19, 2025.
Bapsi Sidhwa (1938 – 2024)
Bapsi Sidhwa has passed away. She was a national treasure. I read ‘The Crow Eaters’ when I was in college. My friend Najeeb had just finished reading the book and was kind enough to lend me his copy, with much enthusiasm. What I loved most about the book was its location – the vibrant, bustling, mythical city of Lahore, the city of my birth. The story took place during British colonial rule and focused on the Parsi community, a Zoroastrian community settled in the Indian subcontinent since the 7th century. The writing, in English, was sharp, colorful, bawdy. I had never read anything like it before, least of all from a Pakistani woman novelist. The bright intensity and earthiness of her work stayed with me. I read ‘An American Brat’ soon after I moved to the US in my 20s, and it spoke to me loudly – as an immigrant trying to find an emotional anchor to a new home and a young woman configuring and reconfiguring the various pieces of her identity. Later I read ‘Ice Candy Man,’ the book about the partition of India that inspired Deepa Mehta’s film, Earth. Many consider Sidhwa’s book to be an important intervention in the telling of the partition story. Countless papers have been written about its decolonial approach, its feminist lens, its centering of minorities, its understanding of spatiality, its hyphenated perspectives, and polyphonic narrative experiences. It’s a book that’s semi-autobiographical and shows how the violent tear of the partition was multi-tiered and enduring. Sidhwa had been living in the US since the 1980s. A true pioneer. May she rest in peace.
my khala, dureshewar aziz khan, passes away
our dear khalajaani, dureshewar aziz khan, has passed away. named after the beautiful princess durrusehvar sultan, daughter of the ottoman caliph abdulmejid, my khala was the star of a family of extraordinary people – writers, speakers, political activists, athletes, linguists, lovers of art and poetry but also sports and outdoor life. khalajaani excelled at her studies from early on. she graduated from medical school, became an OBGYN, and worked as a doctor for the pakistan army, attaining the rank of captain. this was back in the 1960s when women all over the world had not yet won some of the rights (however tenuous they might be) that we take for granted now. she married a dashing air force officer and lived an adventurous life, spending years in libya where her husband was posted and going on ski vacations at a PAF resort in the karakoram, the second-highest mountain range on earth. i still remember how their home in rawalpindi was filled with classical music and expressionist art. after we moved from brussels to islamabad, my mom and khala organized many fun excursions together. we would have picnics at lotus lake and climb trees that seemed as tall as hills. our moms were young, sporty, vibrant. the trips ended abruptly when khalajaani had to deal with a heartbreaking family tragedy. she did it with a reserve of strength, positivity, and intelligence that was nothing short of heroic. in middle age she became a psychiatrist perhaps to better heal herself and those around her. she wrote a book on the subject. in their 70s, my khala and khaloo made the courageous decision to move to the US, to be close to their only son. he was everything to them, and later his children became the heart of their existence. some years ago i remember khalajaani calling my mom. i picked up the phone and we began to talk. she asked me about my political and film work. i tried to be brief so as not to bore her but she asked a lot of questions. she shared her own ideas and then asked me what i thought. she considered my opinions carefully and even changed her mind at times. she was already ill and bedridden in those days, but her mind could still be as sharp as a tack. there was a lifetime of brilliance and intellectual curiosity to sustain it after all. may she rest in power. inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
[my khaloo is on the left, next to him is his friend, my attique mamoon, my khala is the beautiful young woman on the right, the one without glasses]
The liberal white man
The liberal white man:
-chronically limited by his two-state-solution imagination, in full view of a holocaust
-speaks an all-lives-matter language of non-violence and neutrality
-reads Noam Chomsky but has zero exposure to Palestinian intellectual thought or activist positions
-centers himself and his frailties when faced with simple provocations (such as wanted posters that highlight people with institutional ties to an apartheid state)
-cries racism/ antisemitism if his ego, fears, and vast knowledge about the world are not prioritized
-believes with incredible sincerity that struggles for justice cannot be successful without his stamp of approval or that of his fellow liberal cohort
The liberal white man is MLK’s ‘white moderate’ and we should be done with his policing and pedantic talking down
Martin Luther King, Jr, 16 April 1963
Letter from Birmingham Jail:
‘First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.’
Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad
Last night I finished reading Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative.
The first section of the book is based on her speech for the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University in September 2023. It’s a speech that’s remarkably erudite, as Rashid Khalidi has said, with references to the work of Edward Said of course but also Aristotle, Freud, Kanafani, Wynter, Lindqvist, Darwish, Ferrante and many more. The tone is calm, analytical, cerebral. I felt immense joy reading it for I was privy to an extraordinary process of sculpting with words, carving ideas and connections ever so gently until a flawless shape is achieved.
From Between the Covers Podcast: ‘[Hammad] looks at the middle of narratives, at turning points, recognition scenes and epiphanies; which explores the intersection of aesthetics and ethics, words and actions, and the role of the writer in the political sphere; and which complicates the relationship between self and other, the familiar and the stranger.’
Certain paragraphs brought tears to my eyes, as there was a shock of recognition. For example this: ‘Rather than recognizing the stranger as familiar, and bringing a story to its close, Said asks us to recognize the familiar as stranger. He gestures at a way to dismantle the consoling fictions of fixed identity, which make it easier to herd into groups. This might be easier said than done, but it’s provocative—it points out how many narratives of self, when applied to a nation-state, might one day harden into self-centered intolerance. Narrative shape can comfort and guide our efforts, but we must eventually be ready to shape-shift, to be decentered, when the light of an other appears on the horizon in the project of human freedom, which remains undone.’
The speech was delivered a few days before October 7th, before the genocide. Earlier this year, in January 2024, Hammad wrote an afterword to the speech, which occupies a third of the book. The style of writing has changed, it’s now direct, urgent, political, based on numbers and dates. It’s full of questions. She sees the proximity of humanism to European colonialism and colonial violence. It’s as if Hammad has reached her own turning point, her own scene of recognition. I was choked with emotion as I read the last part of the book, I took many notes so I could re-read paragraphs like this:
‘In his essay on Shatila, [Jean] Genet speaks extensively of the beauty of the Palestinians, who remind him of the beauty of the Algerians when they rose against the French. He describes it as “a laughing insolence goaded by past unhappiness, systems and men responsible for unhappiness and shame, above all a laughing insolence which realizes that, freed of shame, growth is easy.” The Palestinians in Gaza are beautiful. The way they care for each other in the face of death puts the rest of us to shame. Wael Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera journalist who, when his family members were killed, kept on speaking to camera, stated recently with a calm and miraculous grace: “One day this war will stop, and those of us who remain will return and rebuild, and live again in these houses.”’
afshan noreen qureshi (1955 – 2024)
she was a hero to so many – women and children whose lives she transformed. she never said no to any woman who needed protection, help or encouragement. one of a kind, fearless, but also extraordinarily generous, a pioneer and indeed a changemaker. we will miss u dear afshan. our community will not be the same without u. may u rest in power and may god give strength to sohail bhai and the kids. inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
what did we expect?
it’s a special kind of moral turpitude to expect people to vote for their own genocide and for the extermination of their own families, friends and communities. it’s interesting to see people change their profile pictures to black for the first time in a year and say, ‘well, now we will all suffer.’ that’s kind of the point. with a livestreamed holocaust of racialized, unwanted populations playing in the background, did we really expect anything but a more naked form of fascism?
it’s not a coincidence
ok i try to be patient but no. if u post the meme with a bunch of afghan women in blue burkas, juxtaposed against pictures of afghan women in skirts, and think u are making a point about women’s liberation, i will have to say goodbye. will also part ways if u post the picture of an iranian woman in her underclothes and feign solidarity with iranian women. apparently the woman in question had a psychotic episode and was taken to a hospital. in the U.S. she might have been shot by a cop. that’s how the system deals with people having mental breakdowns. to have to see these reductive, ill-informed memes and the racist, islamophobic comments that follow, while muslim families are being starved and massacred in a large part of the world, is frankly too much. and not an effing coincidence.
the normalization of rape and torture
when abu ghraib happened, the world was aghast. there were articles in american msm. artists used the declassified documents and photographs to create powerful exhibitions about american hegemony. the site was closed and soldiers held to account – they were identified, vilified, an embarrassment. it’s always too little too late, but look how the system has adjusted. how the torture and rape of colonized brown bodies has become completely normalized. just an annoying intrusion into one’s lovely day out here in the west. this is z…ism. this is the state of isr..l. this is biden-harris and the bipartisan continuation of american empire.
early voting
we did early voting today and voted for the green party. it’s not on the ballot in ny, but one can fill in the bubble for a write-in vote, and write “jill stein/rudolph ware” in that box. i’m sharing this information for a number of reasons. 1) voting for a genocidaire, a sitting vice president who has greenlit a holocaust to which she continues to be committed (“let me be clear, i will always stand up for israel’s right to defend itself”), is not possible. 2) the electoral system/ politicians will not save us, we will have to do that work ourselves. but a multi-pronged approach has been effective in the history of social activism. 3) the two party system is a joke. it’s a gun-toting, earth-poisoning, sadistic, imperialist, one party system that will not stop until it eats itself. if stein gets 130,000 votes in ny, the green party will have ballot access for the next 2 yrs. break the two party system. 4) those who believe in the lesser-of-two-evilism theory, pls stick to facts, not imaginary outcomes. trump did not commit a holocaust of this magnitude – nothing is worse than mass slaughter. if u are worried about immigration, harris is competing with trump to be more xenophobic – a greater lover of militarized borders and walls. if u are concerned about women’s health and reproductive rights, read the lancet: “our colleagues in gaza, local physicians who face the horrors of this large-scale violence daily, report an unprecedented rise in maternal deaths, miscarriages, and stillbirths. the malnutrition that many pregnant women endure only exacerbates these outcomes…” if ur reaction is: “but that’s over there, not here,” pls look into ur stunning ability to otherize non-american, non-white, non-english speaking women. what does that say about your intersectional feminism? 5) american voters seem to opt for style over substance. consider reagan (elevated to the rank of american icon because as an actor, he could play the president quite well), clinton (who could exude southern charm and everyday greasiness while he dismantled welfare, introduced a devastating crime bill and pushed thru NAFTA) or obama (the drone president who dropped 26,000 bombs in 2016 alone and killed a ton of poor people but, hey, he was black and good at speeches). the distaste for trump is partly that – the inability of american liberals to digest his cartoonish presence. 6) i know that the words ‘crossing a red line’ have become meaningless, since so many lines have been breached in gaza. doesn’t change the fact that there should be limits (legal, political, social) to what is considered acceptable or bearable. whether one calls it morality or ethics, whatever the panorama of what one considers good or evil, some rules can never be violated. killing and torturing children, siccing dogs on the elderly and those with disabilities, gang rape, assassinating journalists, doctors and academics, starving 2 million people to death – the list is endless, israeli depravities unimaginable, and biden-harris 100% responsible. register your break from these war crimes and vote for a third party.
not interested in debating. sharing my thoughts with those who care to read.
thoughts on indigenous peoples’ day
today is indigenous peoples’ day and i am struck by this thought: would all the non-native people (settlers) who support and speak up for indigenous rights, still do so if we were in the midst of genocides on turtle island? does the distance in time, when atrocities are already a fait accompli, make it easier to acknowledge the native’s humanity? what u would have done in the 1830s, during the cherokees’ forced displacement and ethnic cleansing by andrew jackson, is what u are doing right now as indigenous people are burned alive in makeshift tents functioning as hospitals in gaza. u would probably have been silent. once the theft of land has been accomplished, it’s easy to decry historical massacres.
jabalia camp is under siege
jabalia camp, in northern gaza, has been under total siege for 8 days now. no access to food, water, or medical services. there are drones and jets in the sky and on top of every house in every street, killing anything that moves. for 8 days. 400,000 people are trapped inside jabalia. they are being systematically exterminated in full view of the world. go ahead and volunteer for kamala harris’s campaign. she is co-presiding over this holocaust. if u believe in any kind of justice, even if it’s poetic justice, remember this: we all knew.