End of vision

 

Length. Length of string and extended hopes of flight. The invisible connection between this grilled rectangle rooftop and a square of colored paper stretched over wood sticks and set against the unknown, as if to say, it’s possible to rise. Careful measure of slack and tension, both ends tug to give you shape though you continually defy us and carve your own path in the sky. I hold an end of you in my hand, feeding more of you into infinity, lengthening you with my intentions.

And when the head of your purpose bursts off like a plump bud, you plummet as well but without the violence of falling. You drift gently towards the familiar element of earth; bound to its gravity just as you’ve floated above it, it is another home. I wonder where you land and trace your journey back to my hands.

I wind and reel and retract and you inch along the streets. Knotted around and amongst the coarse and crumbling barked branches. I pull you through a Banyan tree, the tree that named my first home in India, where roots crowd in curtains, draping down and dangling towards the soil they’ve left, making beginnings ambiguous in this swarm of life and growth. You run across the back of a street dog, cradled in dirt, her home wherever she can be unnoticed for a little while. You dip into the communal steel pot, triangle cuts of white plastic falling near the gas cylinder, mouths of milk releasing sharp streams, leaves loosening brown/red color in a seething bath. This moment is home for all those whose thoughts press into glass cups.

You weave a dance past commotion, sliding between the feet of four people staggered in the backseat of a shared rickshaw, feeling for ripeness on stacks of round and taut skin. The movement that crosses you never ceases your steadiness.

And soon I see your tail crawl up the side of the building, over the terrace wall, the spool in my hands containing your ephemeral journey and all I can think of doing is launching you out again and again because you don’t belong here, so tangible and material in my hands.

Cantaloupe Carcass

*Summer 2008*



You’ve carved out

Any flesh

Clinging to the lacey,

Pink,

Walls

Of my melon hopes,

Gourding my insides

Ravages of pulp

Splashing on the floor,

Lines of life

Following

Veins in tiles.

I need a thicker skin

To kiss here.

This flimsy farce

Of protective pricks

Turn inward,

Puncture brutally,

So-called roughness

Betrayed

By excessive bruising.

I’ve drained my respect

To wet too many lips.

Craving fleeting romance

Because it flees

So I can lay alone afterwards

Suffering,

Drying my penetrated sanctuary

With salt and endless sun,

Too petrified and hallow

To be vulnerable

To intrusion

Anymore.

Untitled

*Summer 2009*


At age ten in my basement bathroom, I still needed to be reminded to clean myself. Already in ten years I had attracted layers of dirt, wearing sin like double skin, wrapped in the poison of the past, awaiting purging. But as my mom settled the metal loto in the drain dip of the sink with a rush of bubbly water rising to the brim, I knew this cleansing could not penetrate the permanency of scars. Dirt would grow back in clumps as scars taught them to, to make immorality seem washable.

My mom gripped the silver half moon handle of the loto carrying it from sink to toilet and cold water that mimicked its container’s reflective curves spilled over edges. At one end was a spout extending from the base of purity to reach my raw folds, source of defecation, of shame, of intrusion. I sat ready, accepting duty, on the edge of my seat and my mind wondering how to begin, what she’ll think, how she’ll comfort me, how she’ll fight for me.

My mom mistakes my unwillingness to inherit and make routine this ritual outward, superfluous washing for inability. She leans the loto and the laser liquid stream hits at an angle making me numb, drowning the random assemblage of skin I haven’t yet learned to name, or look at, or touch.

From the top most point of my creases the stream travels an arc with a triumphant gleam of success. I am fit to be inspected by my family, my society, and my God.

I acknowledge the victory over perceptible sin but then let trauma surface from the core of anxiety through pores of now regenerated dirt so that my mom can perceive of the impurity even ritual cannot dissolve.

Wrapped in Piano Strings

I sank into the sea
Wrapped in piano strings
Few words could open me
But you knew them all

Tripping Over Contradiction

From the moment I tie the strings of the ridha under my chin and position the hood carelessly over my hair, knowing it will slip down in minutes, and step out into the wilting Ahmedabadi street, I feel like I’ve draped my body in resentment. Its instantaneous and it builds. Each step I follow, each step I mimic feels like a betrayal. I’ve become a following body, empty of sentiment and sincerity. I walk over to the rickshaw, fumbling with the gaagra, either hiking it up too far and revealing the hidden legs that carry me reluctantly or tripping over the thick, border band of beaded flowers and weight. I feel clumsy. It becomes impossible to guide the me that prefers kids to adults, cannot sleep to a ticking clock, has never felt as free as when on my bike, and the one sloppily layered on top and conjured from past persuasion to keep others happier than myself. Entering the small gali leading into vohradom, my masi and mamu’s muscles untensed as they’re ushered into an environment that happily absorbs their matching wardrobes into its homogenizing herds, I want my only exposed parts to radiate the difference I won’t articulate. I wear conformity awkwardly, the zipper of my gaagra driven open at my hip, my hair refusing to be matted and flattened, poking out in short unruly tufts, my arms often undone until my elbows, because it is hot, because the fulcrum of generosity should not be invisible, because I don’t know how to connect tucked into passivity and passing and pardah. There are no connections to be made here, at least not with the living. Except the occasional met glance of a child, performing just as I am but without the cognizance of contradiction. These moments are pure relief for me amidst the graves. Spotting some careless subversion, some accidental and unknowing deviation from the crowds, in a dance, a rally of bouncing laughter and puffed out cheeks and teasing tongues, not meant to be here, soon to be disciplined back into the collective temperament of mourning, draws out the revolutionary within me, draws out forbidden joy and freedom. So that within a scene of solemnity I can recognize my body and my thoughts are distinct and my own. Such is the powerful transgression of hide and go seek in a place where people come to honor the dead with garlands and maim the living by decapitating consciousness.

            I’m struck by the beauty of this place. White gleaming marble underneath us, rows of inverted protruding coffins, reinforced by and reinforcing a steady stream of pilgrimages so that they’ll never sink into earth as they should. We touch fingertips to stone and then forehead and then lips, rapidly, mechanically, repeatedly, sometimes using two hands and increasing speed and coverage. We have a battlefield of living dead to cover. We skip the qabars without red stars because in our resurrection of distant deaths, there is a difference between lives lost and lived. Some deserve prostration, others indifference. Others, still, deserve height. Platform. Stairs that I see a woman ascending using just her arms, grabbing at railing and heaving her body with devotion, the crowd barely clears for her when she reaches the sculpted silver doorway, struggling. I take queues. Bow, bend, kneel and kiss. I skip steps on purpose, miss contact, rush through worship, to plant tiny rebellions by never fully resigning to ritual. With careless contempt, I endure. If I could slip into observer, researcher, as I’ve been trained to, erase the familiarity and my complicity in it, hold my heart high, at arms length from meeting the tragic realization: my thoughts and actions are estranged from each other. 

                  And in a most desperate moment, I look up from guilt and see a peacock. Symbol of resurrection, transformation, gatekeeper of death, immortality…I gaze at its proud pronounced neck and say, “Some things should die.”                                                        

A Way to Begin

*April 2011*



We left an empty, echoey Gandhi hall, filled with more pillars and respect than people, and in a shock of dust and sun, boarded an auto rickshaw to meet Rihanna. With just a thin skin separating us from the street, we were lifted by every bump, jarred by the vibrations of metal sewer grating, aware of every near collision as we barely spared or were barely spared in frantic movement to arrive. I loved the rickshaw. All window, all bodies, all cramped corners and dodged disaster. I felt the city heave around me and was carried by its pulse. We took a quick turn towards the veggie and fruit stands, away from the 6-lane street, inside living. Vendors lining dirt paths, people carefully proceeding, methodically even, no surprise or disruption in their faces as motorbikes weaved chaos and the slit of movement grew more and more narrow. Thopies and ridhas and ornas never slipped off their heads, in haste or in heat. This was the Muslim quarter Yasmine told us about. Dad and I got off at the pawn novelty parlor, shrunk in between some shade spotted in the overlap of stand, store and sky and waited for Rihanna and where she would lead us next. Rihanna came towards me, bright, a sturdy and beautiful definition outlining her eyes, they spoke at me and took my hands in their reflection. Her face at once rough and taut and completely unapologetic and yet smoothing over self-doubt and lack in its brown persistence. Every movement direct and with purpose, she quickly turned in the direction of her office, my dad and I following, with his right hand on my left shoulder in its usual place of support, his staggered, labored walk needing a companion in confronting constant pain. I like the way it feels to have his hand cup my shoulder, sometimes I linger in front of him in anticipation for his hand to seek stability and my shoulder to rise up and grant it. There is a steady balance the pronouncement of that dependency reveals, one that keeps my eyes protective and my steps cautious and proud. I need his surrendered weight just as he needs to relieve it.

We come to an office, one wall pure door facing the street, with no reason or desire to be shut. Rihanna points to two seats at a back table next to three women seated facing each other but seeking a fourth. Rihanna signals patience to me and the women and suddenly I’m unaware if we’ve arrived or if this is just an incidental insight on the way to deliberate confession. Straightening her pant cuffs and draining a metal cup into her throat she begins. Han Bol. (Yes, speak)

Between the mission winding around the top of each wall and the women’s urgent negotiations, I tried to locate, to decipher, to take in this atmosphere. One woman turned to me unexpectedly and began enumerating her visits to this office, full on compassion and empty on knowledge I offered what I could. Rihanna dusted off a calculator with the edge of her khemis. Dirt settles and is unsettled quickly here. Designating a group leader they arrive at a sufficient loan for this month and its layered on top of the small and large tragedies of the last few years. While signing a stack of requests Rihanna glances up long enough to tell me she’s taking me to Anjum colony, one of the buildings where displaced Muslims were relocated after the 2002 riots.I know I'm not ready but have no idea what preparation means. I brace myself and say, "It's a way to begin."

Excerpt from "Love in the Old Cities"

*November 2010*
         I played in ruins in Balad Ash-Sham and traced my fingers along the cracks of history while my tongue was infused with ancient modern phonetics.  While Said and I stood, huddling above a ridge of green rocks at the convergence of Lake Tiberias and the borders of Jordan, Syria and Israel, as goats sped past in herds and stopped along the olive orchards to stand on hind legs and graze at low branches, Amira and I wandered through black stone in Bosra and lounged on the steep steps of the amphitheater watching dead stages crawl with life once again.  We sat in the back of a Syrian taxi cursing in two Arabic dialects.  We refused to be suckers.  We wouldn't budge, it was all we were prepared to pay for a 10 minute ride from the bus station to the ruins.  I knew the fares.  And I knew the onslaught of guilt soaked language that followed.  God protect us for cheating him, and his family for not being provided for.  Taxi drivers in Syria were vehicles not only of transport and of impatience with the crowded and less stealthy microbuses, but of social mores and social monitoring.  As cabs would always be needed so would their drivers' comments about society and religion and sexuality, though not always solicited, ring in passengers ears long after the fare was calculated with the old 'adad and the government regulated increases due to the rising price of mayzot.  I had quick journeys by cab in which I hardly acknowledged the chauffeur's chatter and dreamt out the window through long gazes at the squares we passed and swaths of government propaganda lining the city like government commissioned seran wrap preserving its essence and its flavor from the West.  And then there were poignant conversations about life...about lives.  The multiplicity of lives lived on the same planet but with such differing conditions and differing opportunities that even though these taxis represented freedom of movement for others, represented an alternative route, the excitement of reaching destination, these same taxis to the drivers themselves meant erasure of their humanity, meant imprisonment to the fate of embodying freedom and mobility for others yet ironically, monotony and repetition for them. 
            We talked about Fairuz, the beloved, the most loved icon and the most cherished, whose songs could unite all in a moment of joint nostalgia in a moment of joint hope for an altered landscape where justice and the materialized beauty of her lyrics reigned.  We talked about George Bush.  About government.  About loving people but always detesting the governments that exploit the power to represent them.  We talked about family.  Ages of children, ages of nephews.  Youth.  Childhood.  We talked about it with joy dripping from our fond descriptions.  We talked about India.  About Bollywood.  Of the fantasy that painted the screen in turmeric and red and floated images of coordinated dances laced with the jingle of anklets spicing footwork.  We talked of travel. Travel.  To escape.  To see the world as I have and was doing in that very moment.  To sit in strange taxis in strange countries and speak a strange language and hear about a strange culture.  To exchange views.  To embrace these views.  We spoke of fantasy I was living.  We spoke of me.