Category: self-authored

ashwaq’s beautiful son

ashwaq and i became friends in 2017 when i had a chance to invite her and others over for dinner at our house in pittsford. a young teacher from gaza, she was visiting the US thanks to a state department program. she radiated warmth and optimism. there was an immediate connection. we stayed in touch on facebook since that day.

in 2021, she participated in the warp & weft project and contributed a story in arabic about the unique problems of managing a pandemic in gaza, a densely populated concentration camp, cut off from the rest of the world. later ashwaq was kind enough to join us for a zoom meeting, where many warp & weft writers gathered, even though it was the middle of the night in palestine, that too during the month of ramadan. there had been israeli air strikes on gaza right before then. ashwaq told us patiently how she and her family had managed to survive, yet again. always gentle and gracious, my dear ashwaq.

i kept checking in on her after oct 7th. she would respond whenever she was able to get online. she was still ok. trying to leave gaza and move to canada where she has family. but the canadian government kept delaying her application. when she was finally allowed to evacuate, israel destroyed the rafah border. she was trapped along with millions of others. i kept checking in, feeling like a useless robot who offers the same empty words of concern and solidarity. like a dull broken record. do prayers actually work? do they? i don’t know.

i had not heard from ashwaq for a while. yesterday i saw the picture of a beautiful young man looking in the distance. he had been martyred. ashwaq and her family were tagged. i couldn’t breathe. my friend’s son, a vibrant young man, full of smiles, full of life, full of hopes and possibilities. gone. i saw a video of my friend praying over his body. he was wrapped in a white shroud with blood stains on it. oh god, i too have children. what horrors are these? what incomprehensible horrors. what incomprehensible pain. why are some humans permitted to act like apophis and deploy limitless hatred and savagery? what have they done? such unspeakable harm and irreversible injury. such final death. we ask for justice, god. nothing less than justice. may such evil be extinguished. ended.

may justice prevail. for my friend and millions of others. may justice shake the world to stillness and wash over us like rain.

inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.

congrats arshad nadeem

in a world full of violence and death, some stories manage to sparkle like drops of sunshine and make one’s heart sing. look at imane khelif who grew up in an algerian village and sold scrap metal to pay for bus trips to the city where she trained as a boxer. her dad is a welder, her mom sold couscous to support her daughter’s dream. now arshad nadeem from a small village in pakistan, who built his skills in javelin throwing by practicing tent pegging, has broken olympic records with a stunning throw of 92.97 meters. his dad is a mason who makes as little as $1/day at times. when gas bills got too high, the family was forced to use a coal pit for cooking, but they made sure arshad continued to have the diet he needed. to rise from such humble beginnings and become the best in the world, to compete with athletes trained by states and given an abundance of resources, to come from the global south and win in colonial empires – what incredible power and audacity! u make us proud!

btw still boycotting the olympics. come across these stories on social media and in whatsapp groups 🙂

“I am tired, my friend”

Ismail Al-Ghoul was a Palestinian journalist and Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza. He was born in 1997 in Al-Shati refugee camp, north of Gaza City. A brilliant journalist who refused to leave, his reports became a mainstay of the news from the north of the Gaza Strip. He was assassinated along with his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, in Gaza City today. He was younger than my son.

“Let me tell you, my friend, that I no longer know the taste of sleep. The bodies of children and the screams of the injured and their blood-soaked images never leave my sight. The cries of mothers and the wailing of men who are missing their loved ones never fade from my hearing.

I can no longer bear the sound of children’s voices from beneath the rubble, nor can I forget the energy and power that reverberates at every moment, turning into a nightmare. It is no longer easy for me to stand before the rows of coffins, which are locked and extended, or to see the dead people more than the living who are fighting death beneath their homes, not finding a way out to safety and survival.

I am tired, my friend…”

More than 165 journalists have been killed in 10 months by the Israeli occupation.

a garish spectacle in paris

i will not watch the olympics when an apartheid state in the process of exterminating palestinian children is allowed to participate and flaunt its genocidal talents. but the images i’ve seen so far are from a dystopian novel, full of garish spectacle including a bloody, guillotined head. so disorienting/ nauseating when i’m also watching footage of medics in gaza collecting the soot-covered head of a little girl and placing it gently into a body bag next to her tiny beheaded body. this and then reading ridiculously servile posts from fb liberals about joe biden’s shining legacy and patriotic sacrifice. what a violently racist, warped world we live in folx. the west is a lurid collective death cult. ceasefire now.

i am with sonya

i am with her. sonya massey, a 36-year old black woman who called 9/11 for help and was shot in the head by a cop. she’s not the only black woman murdered by police in her own home. so were breonna taylor and atatiana jefferson not too long ago. and before that charleena lyles, korryn gaines and deborah danner.

did it matter who was in the white house when they were killed?

white supremacy is a bipartisan project. the death cult that applauds a war criminal fresh from butchering children in gaza, is the same racist system that slaughters black people in america. the utter dehumanization of palestinian children, so that their bodies become receptacles for untold savagery, means that brown and black bodies here at home are also stripped of rights and protections and will be equally open to incomprehensible brutality. not only that, they will be blamed consistently for their own extermination.

people of color in high places will not guarantee our safety. vote ur conscience, but pls look beyond mercenary politicians (of all skin tones and anatomies) for long term change. our survival depends on it.

i am with hind

i am with her. hind rajab, a 6-year old palestinian child who was trapped in a car with the bleeding corpses of six family members, all killed by israeli occupation forces. she was able to call for help before being shot by israeli soldiers with more than 300 bullets.

i am with the children of gaza who are being incinerated, shredded, and shot deliberately in the head by israeli snipers. see comments for more details.

of the 186,000 people killed in gaza (according to a lancet study), a disproportionately large number are kids. mountains and mountains of dead brown children.

how to describe the cringe-inducing tributes to genocide joe except as american exceptionalism? how to grasp the enthusiasm for top cop harris except as more of the same bipartisan imperial/ capitalist bs that has brought us to this ignominious place in history. there is a holocaust going on right now funded directly by our dollars.

end the genocide in gaza. isolate israel and throw it in the trash can of history for making a joke of international law. vote for candidates who articulate this as their priority. otherwise, who are we?

in new york city

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.

last day at kolaj fest

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.

stop killing children

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.’

block celebrities

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.

Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People

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

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.

uncle razi passes away

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: free palestine

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.