Dearly Beloveds,
Oh no! and at last! our journey has come to an end.
I hope tomorrow to make a dent in my stash of emails and to eat my way through the day, all the while being grateful that I have food to eat (which I really am) and water to drink (hip hip hooray).
We’ve gone past Ramadan hump day and into the end.
I thought, in the interest of gratitude, for all that each of you has given me by reading along, I would give everybody a break from what La Paloma termed my “bittersweet” musings and instead take you toward the mind of one of my favorite artists, Sa’dia Rehman.
This past Friday, Sa’dia graciously invited me to a video tour of her works-in-progress.
If you go to Sa’dia’s website, you too can take a studio tour.
What’s textually contained below are some reflections inspired by Rehman’s art.
This final Ramadan 2021 post is dedicated to my beloved friend Debbie Kelly who passed away last year. She was supportive of this blog and my writing, and whatever the reason, she loved it most when I wrote about visual art. She’s reading this from Jannah, rest assured.
The world is a frightening place right now.
Sa’dia and I met soon before she went to her MFA and soon after I had finished mine in creative writing.
It’s impossible to separate a star from a constellation once you’ve seen the big picture.
Everything afterward is a heavenly line between what came before and what comes next.
One night in Brooklyn, we stopped at Ginger’s and then stumbled down those glimmering streets and into a bodega.
“This works,” Sa’dia said, pointing to a New York Magazine in a stand. “I’m substituting images of my family onto the front page of the papers and then taking photos of the papers in bodegas across New York. Sometimes, I give it to the bodega owner to hold.”
What is newsworthy? she’s always asking. What is artworthy?
Her work ties together the intimacy of a family portrait within the larger geo-political context of being a Pakistani American Muslim. Within the even larger geo-political context of what it means to her to be a member of the Rehman household, its family line.
Family as safety and danger, both. Security and Confine. Love and What is never knowable cannot yet be loved.
One reading of Sa’dia’s work: we are all refugees from our family, desirous of that return to peace and to what once was, afraid that on the other side of liberation we will no longer know where, or who, we are. What brought us here is a letter we’ve been composing in our heads for a very long time. It does not look how we imagined it to be when it comes out.
These images are from the Center for Art and Social Engagement at The Columbus Museum of Art.
Justice in America exhibition detail:
From Doorway to Mihrab
When I see the doorways that Sa’dia’s created, I wonder about the choices of museums and other high art spaces to utilize their featureless white doorways. They seem so bare without the staccato dots, the layering of shapes that blend together to form texture. There is the understanding of alternate timelines. Not only before the doorway and after the doorway.
There are two doorways.
Enter one and you will get to a museum.
Enter the other, habibi, and you will get to Mecca.
She tiles, squiggles and layers her way into meaning.
She creates the structures that will guide your body.
We want not only to go, we want to go somewhere.
What is white and blank has become a stand-in for race and the upper crust/class, presupposing in its dominance that the blank space is also occupied by whiteness.
When Sa’dia draws upon the doorway, it recalls both the wild doodling of childhood, but also a cultural challenge. The door without the drawing takes us to the static and current world order. Her doorways are an act of resistance, portals to a dimension where countless Muslim families reside, and not just those families, but their bars and oppressors too.
Sa’dia invites us to a new land.
We can walk through the same unremarkable doorway everyday. Or, we have a choice, to ascribe every doorway with personal meaning, to make it adventurous and rich, to stop taking for granted that there is a place we want to go.
That place is beyond.
Muslim culture is deeply giving. Did you know about Zakat? It’s a requirement and one of the five pillars of Islam. 2.5% of your personal wealth must be given to the poor and those who have not. It’s an incredible tool for wealth transfer in the world.
I think it’s inspirational. Whether or not you are Muslim, I hope you have enjoyed this year’s writing. Chances are very high that you already give. So I thank you for that, and thank you for at least reading about some of the groups I’ll mention here on this last day of Ramadan.
This Ramadan, once again, my thoughts have centered around abolition. Abolition is part and parcel of what it means to say Black Lives Matter. I ask you to consider donating to organizations that support freedom. Abolition means the end of something.
What speaks to you? What would you like to see come to an end?
Superimposition
“I’m using tyvek paper for a lot of my work these days,” Sa’dia told me. “You’ve seen it around many construction sites. It protects the building from all sorts of things, like rain or dirt. As drawing paper, it’s really useful because it’s tough. You can’t punch through it.”
If you look closely at the pictures front and center, you’ll see Sa’dia playing around with juxtaposition.
This confluence of images, especially with the police or military on one piece, and the idea of a huddled mass on another piece, harkens to our current forces of opposition.
Light turns to shadow with a curve.
When Sa’dia stencils the figures, she also places them on top of each other as well as next to each other.
The conversation here is ominous. I too wonder about the cycle of violence, how organizing in a group is frowned upon these days for the purpose of liberty, and yet much of this country sees the image of armed police or troops, and contextualizes it as order.
The borders give way to movement.
A strugggle between the state and the people.
The closeness of the motifs on the right are a message that we must discern a pattern.
We are at war.
We are confused about the facts.
We are at war.
To restore ourselves to stars would require more movement, rearrangement, yet we can see that the etchings are not that far apart, how resistance is the natural outcropping of oppression.
DESIRE LINES
I was so struck by this work-in-progress that I asked Sa’dia to send over a photograph.
Yes, she’s re-introducing color back into her work. She’s planning some very cool aqua, chevron drawings in between the red lines.
Yes, those are drones.
“Did you know those red lines are called desire lines? Usually, they’re found on a map to indicate where you would like to go, the route you would like to take.”
Again, that sense of motion, but Sa’dia’s work invokes our dread of the military and also the longing of our hearts.
What could a drone desire?
Drones are unpiloted aircraft. No human pilot is on board.
Sa’dia’s art reminds us of the gravity of the situation. We depersonalize violence with guns, the ease of the trigger. We depersonalize life with drones. The United States military buys many of its drones from Israel.
Israel is soaking in Palestinian blood. It’s the largest exporter of drones in the world.
Perhaps Rehman is reminding us that there is a human operator behind the facade of the drone. It is a human’s desire for power, for greed that charts the course.
Drones are not, as advertised, unmanned.
The opposite is true.
While many of us grew up, rightfully fearing and loathing anti-semitic hatred, we cannot give in to trauma-informed justifications for harm in Palestine. Having your loved ones killed must not justify displacement of people of color. It does not justify killing civilians.
Look closely, sometimes the drones are in focus, and sometimes they soften at the edges.
The speed at which death travels is slow sometimes.
Quick at others.
Sa’dia and I discussed much more of her art than I could place in this blog.
I very much wanted to end on a light-hearted note, but that’s not possible for me at this moment.
The best and worst of blogging is that you really can only write into the moment.
Thank you to Sa’dia for sharing art that is deeply personal and conjuncted so inextricably with current events.
Sa’dia’s art speaks to the terrors of the day and to the trajectories that will arrive if action is not taken. The immediacy of her work pushed my words.
So, I’ll end on this personal request that if you’ve enjoyed my blog, please continue to financially support the organizations that matter to you. Even if the pandemic is ending. Even if Ramadan is ending.
Give sustainably: more important than financial relief, is the call that many groups have made that you not give simply out of charity or a savior complex.
Please look, as Jonathan Livingston Seagull said, with your understanding.
Please set your intention toward awareness, even if it’s daunting, even if it’s overwhelming.
Breathe it in. A little at a time.
True solidarity can begin with a phone call to an official, to a friend, to a family member, to a community member. It can begin by reading a humble sentence.
Please do take a closer look at what’s happening right now in Palestine. That’s as important as a chunk of change. We want people to give steadily, over a lifetime, if possible.
One voice I trust is my friend’s, Professor Noura Erakat. I’m grateful that Noura was a fellow organizer during law school. We were there at a time where even minimal support for Palestinians was labeled anti-semitic. We’ve come a long way due to the hard work of activists such as Noura. I’m grateful for the strength of her voice and her guidance in solidarity with people of color. Here’s a CNN clip with Noura from Tuesday about the situation in Palestine. Here’s a piece Erakat co-authored with Mariam Barghouti about the situation regarding Sheikh Jarrah in the Washington Post.
“The largest prison in the world: Gaza” – Hasaan Zeenni in khutbah for Islamic Center of Southern California
My beloved friend Brass sent along this link to donate to Palestine’s Children Relief Fund. They also sent along a directive to donate to Afghanistan, a poverty-stricken country that just donated $1 Million USD to relief efforts in Palestine. Here’s a link for Muslim Relief efforts in Afghanistan, where 50 children were killed, mostly teenage girls by a school bomb.
Natural disasters are abounding. Here’s one way to contribute to efforts to help out where conflict and extreme weather are destroying the lives of the Yemeni people. UNHCR and Yemen Hope and Relief. To be clear, our politics matter here. Saudi Arabia bombings of Yemen which is responsible for countless deaths was (and is) receiving support from the United States, and while the political situation is unclear, be very aware of companies like Lockheed-Martin where I have family friends who work — and the truth about the continued use of their weaponry to take lives. Here’s one piece.
Please consider donating to groups trying to address the spread and impact of COVID-19 in India such as this awesome GoFundMe for COVID relief directed to trans and hijra people. Here’s an organization providing important support to Muslim communities in India impacted by COVID. Hayath Relief.
Please don’t stop there! Vaccine apartheid is real, and Americans can tell their representatives to lift restrictions on COVID vaccines, vaccine ingredients, and patents to send urgent aid to India now. Here’s an article from Equality labs about the issue.
ABOLITION NOW!
Let’s all keep engaging and thinking about the possibility of prison abolition. Here’s my most recent post on the subject, Ramadan Day 24 Abolition Art Project.
If you’re more inclined to donate domestically than abroad, there’s plenty here to do.
Again, I urge you to read and to think before acting.
Giving sustainably is about a commitment to giving, more so than one-off’s spurred by emotions.
First, grassroots groups that organize are usually my go-to. Find one in your area that speaks to you. As Angela Davis pointed out, abolition is about more than ending prisons — it’s about healthcare, housing, education. Fund these things. Continuing to strive in those spaces for equity is abolition. Or, please consider your local abolitionists. Critical Resistance does abolition work in the Bay Area, for instance.
Locally, Asian elders are being attacked and killed in Oakland, Chinatown. Donate to a group like Asian Pacific Environmental Network, a group that not only has mutual aid that supports our immigrant communities but builds toward environmental justice to help Asians. Please don’t call for more law enforcement. Shame on anyone who does that in our name!
Second, I do affirm: Black Mama’s Bailout, celebrating the recent Mother’s day? It’s not too late to donate — there are plenty of folks behind bars still momming all year long. #FreeBlackMothers
Third, I also appreciate: Believers Bail Out that frees Muslims from incarceration. My very own Doctor was sent to prison for being Muslim and not giving up other people to the government. I have never met a more generous soul, a more kind one. I know he kept his faith, and as their webpage says:
“And do you realize what is the steep road? It is the freeing of a human being from bondage“
(The Holy Qur’an 90:12-13)
Fourthly, I invite you to join friend and beloved activist, Gabriel Arkles by reading about the connection between QT Muzzies and Abolition in Truthout: “For Eid, let’s celebrate the Queer and Trans Muslims working toward abolition.”
As Firza puts it, “Studying prison abolition during Ramadan feels like one of the most Muslim things I’ve ever done during Ramadan.”
There is a distinction between earthly matters and spiritual matters in Islam.
Often, the two are opposed.
I leave you with this thought:
You are not leaving, or returning, at this time.
You are being.
Some favorite excerpts from Kazim Ali’s Fasting for Ramadan
And finishing writing–knowing you are at the end
of such a project–is like crossing a border as well,
seeking asylum. You come into the country with-
out any of your belongings, quite unaware of the
customs or language of the new place in which you
find yourself.
(Eighteenth Day)
In this empty month I find myself strangely turning.
From an external life, you would think, to an inter-
nal one, but really in both directions at once.
(Twenty-Third Day)
A month of fasting means you see day after day
through an entire heavnly cycle short enough for
one to experience this as a single “moment” but long
enough to feel it sink in.
And rigorous enough a practice that fasting literally
changes your body’s physical makeup.
You give some matter back to creation as energy.
Twenty-Eighth Day
All of these, the war, the end of time, the incredible
rage of history, the planet itself unraveling–we are
not ment in these times to merely live; to do so
would be as close as anything could be to sin.
Eden is over, if ever Eden was real.
I fast as the very beginning of an awareness of the
disappearing and dissolving world.
Thirtieth Day
EID MUBARAK!!!
If you’re looking for a great virtual Eid prayer — try this one: with FITNA, Feminist Islamic Troublemakers of North America!
Drunken Whispers 