Justmebreathing

“I’ve seen photographers get on their knees to capture an angle, And painters lay on their backs to cover their canvas, A lover gets on one knee with ring and heart in hand, And farmers bow their backs as they tilth the land, So why is it then considered so strange, For a man to fall in prostration in plain view Of all, in the middle of that street you know Is he not an artist, or a lover, with seeds to sow?”

“A Muslim today is a byproduct of a colonial mental mapping that makes it possible for the person to see him/herself only through a projected colonially constructed imprint. To ask who is a Muslim today is a difficult question since self-identification and entanglement with an idealized past ‘tradition’ is navigated through a colonial topography that produces and reproduces a dynamically constructed inferiority matrix. Seeded colonial debates about the Islamic ‘tradition’, ‘reform’, ‘interpretations’, ‘gender roles’, ‘power’, ‘state’, ‘economics’, ‘violence’ and rights are all colonial imprints and operate within the colonially crafted epistemic rather than being an expression of Muslim agency. Further, the constant demarcation between political Islam and Islam, Sufism and non-Sufism, modern and traditional, extremist and moderate are all shaped by colonially crafted binary epistemic relating to religion as theorized and experienced in the European context that is then universalized and constituted as the norm for all ‘sub-human’ colonized subjects and distant colonies to emulate. Islam in the colonial framework is the constant ‘sub-human and uncivilized marker’, rather than being representative of a coherent and fully developed system having its distinctive epistemology and meanings. The mental colonial project fosters an imitative imprint on the mind of the colonized to be nurtured into producing a state of self-helplessness and exclusively remedied through constant intervention by the colonial master or his internally assigned and intellectually trained (miss-educated) agents. We have interventions in every facet of life, under all pretexts and rationalizations including humanitarian imperial projects and the new modes of utilizing the NGO’s industrial complex to push softer neoliberal civilizational projects. You, the colonial subject, is unable to develop because it is you who is unable and not ready to do so and not I, the colonial master that is disrupting the progress so as to keep the flow of wealth to the north. Today, the colonial master/consultant/advisor says you can aspire to be ‘me’ once you let go of your backward ‘tradition’ and imitate what I have accomplished for it is the only road to become a superior and emerge out of your darkened inferiority. This colonial project is operative in politics, economics, social relations, media and religious discourses in the colonies. The outcome is an eraser of the mental framing and epistemic structures that existed and supported colonized societies for centuries to be replaced by a colonized knowledge rooted in structuring internalized inferiority. ‘I am inferior therefore I can’t’, would become the operable imprint on the colonized mind and needing the agency of the colonial master to start-up any initiative and draw meanings out of his/her life. Even when the colonized think on his/her own they are but recalling the colonial knowledge imprinted on the mind and become even more imitative despite thinking that they have achieved independence or asserted ones own agency. In this way, the colonized become doubly victimized in the colonial process, once through direct colonization and the second by dominating the sub-conscious to produce a false agency and a false self-identification. The world becomes colonial in the post-colonial and independence is shaped by the colonial epistemic and to never stray away from it. The first act of Muslim de-colonization is in the mind and it involves first emptying out the colonial, post-colonial and Eurocentric nationalist edifice then setting out to imagine a de-colonial Muslim world and through it shape the future.””

“the heart is a rock and a silk thread in the same vein. how malleable, how stubborn, how soft.”

“Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood.”

“There used to be a time when people read literature to confront stuff. To experience things vicariously—whether it’s a forbidden scene or a forbidden idea. I think now we’re looking to literature for an escape from that. I’m not sure why that is.”

“The Japanese have a phrase for this dual perception: mono no aware. It means “beauty tinged with sadness,” for there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay. For me, living is the same thing as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madwoman; I believe it can make me better at living, and better at loving, and, just possibly, better at seeing.”

“As women, when we’re children we’re taught to enter the world with big hearts. Blooming hearts. Hearts bigger than our damn fists. We are taught to forgive - constantly - as opposed to what young boys are taught: Revenge, to get ‘even.’ Our empathy is constantly made appeals to, often demanded for. If we refuse to show kindness, we are reprimanded. We are not good women if we do not crush our bones to make more space for the world, if we do not spread our entire skin over rocks for others to tread on, if we do not kill ourselves in every meaning of the word in the process of making it cozy for everyone else. It is the heat generated by the burning of our bodies with which the world keeps warm. We are taught to sacrifice so much for so little. This is the general principle all over the world. By the time we are young women, we are tired. Most of us are drained. Some of us enter a lock of silence because of that lethargy. Some of us lash out. When I think of that big, blooming heart we once had, it looks shriveled and worn out now. When I was teaching, I had a young student named Mariam. She was only 11 years old. Some boy pushed her around in class, called her names, broke her spirit for the day. We were sitting under a chestnut tree on a field trip and she asked me if a boy ever hurt me. I told her many did and I destroyed them one by one. I think that’s the first time she ever heard the word ‘destroyed.’ We rarely teach our girls to fight back for the right reasons. Take up more space as a woman. Take up more time. Take your time. You are taught to hide, censor, move about without messing up decorum for a man’s comfort. Whether it’s said or not, you’re taught balance. Forget that. Displease. Disappoint. Destroy. Be loud, be righteous, be messy. Mess up and it’s fine – you are learning to unlearn. Do not see yourself like glass. Like you could get dirty and clean. You are flesh. You are not constant. You change. Society teaches women to maintain balance and that robs us of our volatility. Our mercurial hearts. Calm and chaos. Love only when needed; preserve otherwise. Do not be a moth near the light; be the light itself. Do not let a man’s ocean-big ego swallow you up. Know what you want. Ask yourself first. Decide your own pace. Decide your own path. Be cruel when needed. Be gentle only when needed. Collapse and then re-construct. When someone says you are being obscene, say yes I am. When they say you are being wrong, say yes I am. When they say you are being selfish, say yes I am. Why shouldn’t I be? How do you expect a woman to stand on her two feet if you keep striking her at the ankles. There are multiple lessons we must teach our young girls so that they render themselves their own pillars instead of keeping male approval as the focal point of their lives. It is so important to state your feelings of inconvenience as a woman. We are instructed to tailor ourselves and our discomfort - constantly told that we are ‘whining’ and ‘nagging’ and ‘complaining too much.’ That kind of silence is horribly violent, that kind of insistence upon uniformly nodding in agreement to your own despair, and smiling emptily so no man is ever uncomfortable around us. Male-entitlement dictates a woman’s silence. If we could see the mimetic model of the erasure of a woman’s voice, it would be an incredibly bloody sight. On a breezy July night, my mother and I were sleeping under the open sky. Before dozing off, I told her that I think there is a special place in heaven where all wounded women bury their broken hearts and their hearts grow into trees that only give fruit to the good and poison to the bad. She smiled and said Ameen. Then she closed her eyes.”

“Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”

“may I never lose that terror that keeps me brave”

“Who am I if I am not with another?”

“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself for the outcome of all affairs is determined by Allah’s Decree. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come on your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it cannot flee.”

“And I dream too much and I don’t write enough and I’m trying to find God everywhere.”