a recap of moments: walk by battery park at night with my daughter and looking at nyc thru her eyes, listening to françoise hardy again and feeling this profound emotional tug, remembering donald sutherland in ‘ordinary people’ and the extraordinary brilliance with which he talked about sculpture in one of his interviews, attending a gaza fundraiser organized by global feminists for palestine at jaishri’s studio in brooklyn (yes, that’s suheir hammad in the black veil) and being in community with other artists and writers, and finally dinner at tacombi’s with the lovely zeenat – it means everything to me to spend time with my friends’ kids and know that they are thriving.
friday june 14th in new orleans: started the day with a big breakfast at who dat cafe – had many brunches there back in feb. best biscuits and homemade jellies. arrived at cafe istanbul a bit late – apparently there is another ‘istanbul cafe’ on royal st and that’s the address i gave uber by mistake. so went on a longish car ride just to loop back to where i started. attended ‘collage & poetry’ followed by ‘time & fragmentation: collage theories.’ clive knights’ presentation intrigued me as i’ve been thinking about fragmentation in the context of war and its impact on the social/ political/ individual body. met the wonderful jenny veninga, a fellow activist and scholar, who shared other brilliant ideas with me. attended ‘getting organized: collage projects’ and then after a quick lunch at st. roch market, was inspired by ‘take me to the water: a baptism in collage,’ a workshop with the amazing lavonna varnado-brown, who talked about claudia rankine’s book ‘citizen’ and the idea of the body having memory – a major inspiration for my work. watch ‘the body has memory’ a video poem i created in 2022 and for which i won best in show at a juried exhibition organized by the huntington arts council in ny. link in comments
ended the day with collage & kiki, at the john thompson legacy center, hosted by lavonna varnado brown and jennella young. created collages with other artists and spent a lovely evening. so thankful to kolaj institute for creating this wonderful space at the intersection of art, activism, and academic research. hope to make this an annual ritual inshallah.
i want to scream. what is this effing world where burning and decapitating children, refugees living in tents, is ok? where the atlantic can publish a piece about ‘legally killed children’? where language has become so corrupted, so debased, that it is practically meaningless? where old white men can try weapons of mass destruction on the bodies of brown and black people and make billions while families burn? yet life goes on. we meet our friends, we hug our children. for hours, we forget the images we see on our phones. it shouldn’t be so. the world should be on fire. stop the annihilation of palestine. stop the massacres. stop the genocide. as ali abunimah said: ‘that the genocidal enemy can continue these atrocities hour after hour, day after day, is an indictment of the whole world. “israel” needs to be sealed off from humanity, sanctioned and blockaded to oblivion until it stops.’
cate blanchett wears a dress at an award ceremony with some of the colors of the palestinian flag and everyone is thankful. it’s so little, folx. so very little for someone with that kind of platform and privilege. celebrities, except for susan sarandon, are useless. they will risk nothing, not even a tiny role in a film or a random award, to speak out against genocide. tiktokers urging people to block celebrities have the right idea.
Went to see Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People at the Circle in the Square in NY last Sunday – a Broadway revival directed by Sam Gold, w Jeremy Strong and Michael Imperioli.
The stage is long and narrow, surrounded by audience members, lit by oil lamps, with various scenes taking place at different ends. It’s the late 1800s, we are in a Norwegian coastal town. The tone is set in the beginning, with actors singing Norwegian folk songs.
Jeremy Strong plays the protagonist, Dr Stockmann, w warmth and intensity. As my daughter said, the ensemble comes to life as soon as he steps on stage. He radiates sincerity.
The story is well-known. The economy and future of the town are intertwined with its recently opened Baths, which are meant to transform it into a health resort. Stockmann discovers that the waters are contaminated and his brother, the Mayor, goes to work doing everything he can to suppress his brother’s report and turn the townspeople against his “theories” which will destroy local businesses.
Stockmann is a typical Ibsen anti-hero – upright and courageous, yet also deeply flawed. There is a brief detour into eugenics and part of Stockmann’s crusade for the truth is activated by his arrogance, but Jeremy Strong endows him with vulnerability and earnestness, and breaks our hearts when the doctor is attacked and humiliated.
The parallels with our present reality cannot be overstated. As people are targeted, fired, silenced, and turned into pariahs for speaking the truth about settler colonialism and genocide in Palestine, we are seeing the same kind of crucifixions by ideological mobs.
I loved Strong’s performance in Succession, where he finessed his role into a complex Shakespearean character. Film is polished and controlled, whereas theater is raw, visceral, unfinished. Strong is absolutely brilliant. The end of the play is abrupt, and he was visibly shaken – still trying to sort his emotions as he took the final bow.
Amy Herzog’s adaptation is a seamless update of Ibsen’s language, a trimming down of the story and characters, and apt humor. After being pilloried by the townspeople, Stockmann thinks about moving to the US: “This could never happen in America.” Prolonged, raucous laughter from the audience.
Set design and direction are inventive, with a light touch. The town hall scene begins with a bar descending from the grid, serving Norwegian Linie with music by A-ha. Audience members gathered on stage to get drinks but then the actors appear and the town hall begins right in that setting. A fantastic crossing over of time and geography. This is what theater should be – unexpected, exhilarating, moving.
what kind of eid can it be? when the massacres in gaza continued throughout ramadan? when people were breaking their fasts with boiled grass? this is a surreal time. any joy one might feel is complicated, accompanied by a horrible sense of guilt. guilt for being ineffective, for being complicit, for being american. so many beautiful people in gaza. so many friends and their families. u are in my heart, palestine. u will be free some day soon. we will celebrate together then. inshallah.
my dear uncle razi has passed away. verily we belong to god and to god we return.
he was my friend saba’s father. when i was studying at university in karachi, saba’s family was like my own family. i stayed with them often and learned consistently from saba’s wise and compassionate parents.
he was the embodiment of what we call a strong pillar of the community. in many ways, his story as a young man tracked the story of pakistan.
he was barely 15 at the time of partition, when his family left everything behind in india and settled in karachi, pakistan. he joined the navy and since every institution in the newly created state of pakistan had to be built from scratch, he was sent to england to train with the british navy. he was 17 when he left his family and headed for an entirely new country, culture, and language. he was a midshipman when elizabeth II was crowned in 1953. he remembered the naval review at spithead that accompanied the coronation.
in 2019, he did us the great honor of visiting us in rochester. i got to spend time with him and wrote about the remarkable stories he shared with me.
we ate out, went for a walk on the bridge by high falls, saw a film at the dryden theatre, went to canandaigua lake for a day. it was magical. my favorite part was sitting at the kitchen table and listening to him.
last year, i was able to visit karachi after some 16 years, and i got to see uncle razi again. saba and i had tea at his beautiful house. he received us at the door, smiling as always, impeccably dressed, with all the formalities and lavish treats pakistani tea aspires to. he had created a new group of friends and acquaintances, all over 80, who would meet regularly and enjoy one another’s company. he organized presentations on pressing medical needs, financial management, wills and real estate planning for the elderly. he was a force. unanimously admired and loved. a role model. something rare in this day and age.
u will be sorely missed by many dear uncle razi. still cannot believe u are no longer here. may u continue to excel and bring people together in heaven. inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.
on new year’s eve, at the threshold of 2024, i want to send my love and duas to the people of palestine, especially the beautiful children of gaza and their extraordinary families.
it’s been emotionally shattering to bear witness to the sadistic violence unleashed on them by the israeli government, its army and mercenaries, so i cannot imagine the horrors they have experienced on the ground. they are being subjected to hunger and thirst, bombs and snipers, torture and detention, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. they have lost families, bloodlines, homes, limbs, the very contours of normal human life that anchor our reality. there are no words. language fails to capture such extreme loss and torment.
yet palestinian communities have been able to come together, under perverse circumstances, to help one another: dig children out of the rubble with bare hands, bake bread in makeshift ovens and feed neighbors, console grieving fathers and kids with mangled limbs, bury loved ones as well as the bodies of strangers. i marvel at young journalists in their 20s, in the springtime of life, who refused to leave gaza so they could continue to tell their people’s stories and stop the genocide.
against these scenes of human compassion and courage, we’ve seen the deranged cruelty and arrogance of mainstream israeli society. it’s not just israeli politicians lusting for a gaza holocaust, it’s israeli soldiers hoping to kill more babies, and israeli teenagers drunk on racism and supremacist vulgarity. the difference is clear. settler colonies are ungainly cartoons disoriented by their own hubris. harmful to others, but ultimately also harmful to themselves. a kind of self cannibalism.
as humans, we come to this world with one and one certainty only. that our time on this earth is limited and that we will die – sometime, someplace, somehow. why not lean into that knowledge and live a life of connection and generosity. we can learn so much from indigenous communities.
vietnam, laos, cambodia, bangladesh, chile, east timor, argentina, bolivia, uruguay, angola, mozambique, iran, iraq, afghanistan, palestine… disastrous interventions, support for murderous military dictators, torture, genocide, and the destabilization of entire world regions. “the illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer,” he said famously. war criminal henry kissinger is dead. may he rot in hell.
I have known Ali Sajjad since he was a student in college and am proud of the crucial work he is doing for children’s education. This is the kind of investment in young people that we should all support. Pls consider making a tax deductible donation.
In Faisalabad, the historical city of Lyallpur, a team of socially conscious educators run a school that provides the kind of education we often dream of: meeting local and global needs while being holistic, building critical thinking, teaching science, mathematics, languages and technology, including music and the performing arts in the curriculum, and encouraging extracurricular activities (from sports to debates). It’s a school that focuses on inclusivity, social justice, and democracy as core values both in its student body and its staff.
Broadwood Central School is a testament to what Pakistan’s future can be. On account of its egalitarian/inclusive mission and the scholarships it provides to a large number of students, the school needs support to continue its work in the Faisalabad community. Please invest in the school and its students by making a tax deductible donation here.
the bombing of the baptist hospital in gaza: (1) israel asked for the hospital to be evacuated so they could bomb it, (2) israel had already bombed part of the hospital before this strike, (3) IDF spokesperson hananya naftali triumphantly tweeted that the air force had struck a terrorist base inside a hospital in gaza right after the bombing (the tweet was later deleted), (4) the israeli military/ government lie pathologically to manipulate the optics of their own violence (most recently they lied about beheaded babies).
but all of this does not matter. it is a distraction.
the leveling of gaza and the forced transfer of its population is ongoing. the blockade of food, water, fuel, and electricity is ongoing. the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the palestinian people is ongoing. israel continues to bomb mosques and UN school shelters, both war crimes under international law.
stop bombing gaza. end the genocide. no more racist settler colonialism. free palestine
I appreciate all calls to end the horrific genocide we are watching in Gaza, but some of the logic people formulate is extremely troubling.
For example, a ‘senior Israel-Palestine analyst’ on Twitter (who’s skirted around Zionism in the past) posted this:
“You don’t need to be a military expert to know that killing thousands of people with nowhere to go will leave entire generations scarred, will harden hearts and will breed more hate and violence.”
What a twisted, racist rationale for stopping a genocide. Any genocide.
It reminds me of an oft-used talking point during the War on Terror, which killed millions, that droning people of color will only create more terrorists. Well-meaning liberals recycled this argument with endless fervor as a reason to end drone strikes.
This is a racist argument.
The reason for not committing genocide is not that “they will hate us more for killing them,” but rather the fact that genocide is morally repugnant and inhumane. Genocide is mass murder, it’s the destruction of an ethnic, racial or religious group of people. It causes “serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicts on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.” This is why genocide is considered the “crime of crimes” under international law.
Why are brown and black bodies only viewed as either recipients or perpetrators of violence? Meaning that they can either be droned/genocided or they will drone/genocide themselves if subjected to “heart-hardening” suffering.
I find this unimaginative racist framing to be a narcissistic projection of the West’s own criminal tendencies onto the other.
End the genocide in Gaza because it is immoral, criminal, and vicious. It is the murder of families and communities. It is violently deranged and anti-life, and it also turns the perpetrator into a grotesque caricature of what it means to be human.
cannot sleep. using twitter to stay informed. apparently egyptians in arish which is 80 kilometers (50 mi) away from gaza are reporting that their houses are shaking from the bombing. israel has intensified bombing, while cutting off all means of communication. absolutely no news from gaza. there is no fuel or electricity either. it’s a complete blackout. israel has also initiated a ground invasion. i use this word carefully and deliberately, but what we are witnessing right now, with the gleeful support and encouragement of the west, is nothing less than evil. i don’t mean evil in a religious sense. i mean complete human depravity. i mean a well-planned genocide that will finish the job of settler colonialism. i mean shameless racism and islamophobia and a perverted supremacy that’s ugly to behold. i mean israeli influencers mocking palestinians by daubing their faces with fake blood, painting their teeth black and showing off their water bottles (there has been a blockade on food and water in gaza). these videos have gone viral. i mean that in the west bank, israeli settlers and soldiers tortured and humiliated three palestinians men for 6 hours, stripping them naked, taking their pictures, beating them, urinating on them, burning them with cigarettes. this is the thingification aime cesaire wrote about. this is the dehumanization that comes with colonialism. it did not start on october 7th.
In Scorsese’s film ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ a strong connection is made between the terror and murder faced by indigenous Osage people (with access to oil money since the early 1900s) and the Tulsa race massacre in 1921 which annihilated Black Wall Street and its wealth.
I want to take these connections further and compare Tulsa to Gaza. Images of the violence enacted on both cities speak for themselves (the first three are from the Tulsa massacre and the last three from the ongoing genocide in Gaza).
There is immense, unbearable loss of life in Gaza right now (more than 5,000 dead, half of them children). There is also an imperial destruction of all fundamental aspects of human life – social, political and cultural structures, housing, commerce, employment, transportation, familial and community networks, etc. This razing of the infrastructure of life, as we understand it, also happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in countless Native villages all across America.
The destruction of human (and non-human) habitats and ecology seems central to capitalism. Large swathes of humanity must be forcefully locked in ghettos of precarity and poverty in order for a small percentage of white elite (and their stooges) to enjoy unseemly wealth and privilege.
Black poet and activist Pat Parker understood this. In ‘Revolution – It’s Not Neat or Pretty or Quick,’ she wrote:
“The rest of the world is being exploited in order to maintain our standard of living. We who are five percent of the world’s population use 40 percent of the world’s oil. As anti-imperialists we must be prepared to destroy all imperialist governments; and we must realize that by doing this we will drastically alter the standard of living that we now enjoy.
…The equation is being laid out in front of us. Good American equals Support Imperialism and war. To this, I must declare—I am not a good American. I do not wish to have the world colonized, bombarded and plundered in order to eat steak.”
When we stand in solidarity with Palestine and other peoples and places being crushed by imperial greed and its technologies of extermination and containment, this is something we must consider.
Thank you Clarissa Brooks for reminding me of these powerful lines during a discussion on ‘Black Feminist Writers and Palestine’ organized by Black Women Radicals.
