if words could come to ease the pain
or tears to ease the rage
too late to let him know the truth
the mask you wear your cage

As Lancelot loved Guinevere
and Camelot did fall
Relationships will crumble here
If you choose to speak at all

................
These words were scribed by an anonymous writer somewhere around the world, as part of a global anthology of poems put together by a leading publishing house in England. My poem had been published in that book also, likely the only reason why I have it, but that wasn't quite as remarkable as the fact that to this day I can't recall as single verse from the poem I wrote.... but these 8 lines have stuck with me for over 14 years.

14 years later, the words couldn't have been more apt for what I feel right now.....

-F

Why I look at pictures now of people getting married, I want to scream.

Run. Don't do it. It's a scam.

He will break you apart into so many pieces you won't recognize yourself anymore. You will be the animal you never wanted to be.

Sometimes I think back to that exact moment where my heart gave in to him and I just want to wrench it away and say  no no no no no for God's sake..no. This will not end well.

I don't know how I ended up here and I don't know what happens next. I don't know if I should go or if I should stay. I don't know if the rest of my life will be filled with my questions and your lies, and I really don't know if that's what I want.

Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari

I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you soul; So that no one can say hereafter, that you are are someone, and me someone else. -Amir Khusro

today he lives for her.
tomorrow she'll die for him.

When we finally got through the door that night, exhausted from having taken his cousins all over Manhattan in the 97F+ weather all day, we were met with a sore sight. Well, I was met with a sore sight as I walked down the stairs into the basement.
Our entire overhead kitchen cabintery was half hanging onto the floor, barely supported by the kitchen sink and the dish rack. Fortunately, the cabinet with all my plates, glasses, spoons and expensive ceramic serving dishes I had bought from Cancun was intact, having caught onto the dish rack which prevented it from toppling and shattering everything onto the floor.
Eventually me and syed heaved it up and settled it onto the floor, and had to put everything back later the next day.
What I will not forget is how he came to me later that night, apologizing for the dismal state of affairs, for the accidents every couple of days in the basement, the no dryer, the allergies, the no a.c, the floodings, and told me I deserved better.

I don't know what I deserve, but I do know that my living condition is barely on the list. There are so many more important things I do deserve, like love. respect. security.

I may have lost hope.....but I'm not done here yet. Up and on you go eedz.

novel fodder

she stood in the New York winter cold, looking at the dewy haziness shining off the metallic towers and thought instantly of Mordor, but also(and now chuckling to herself), of Karachi. Those early winter mornings bundled in blue cardigan over coffee colored uniform, walking across the long fields hazy with dew settling on the grass in her convent school. It reminded her also of Dubai, but the haze was golden bristling sand in the sun, masquerading around twisted metal and steel sculptures.

One of the other side-effects of diaspora she thought. Not only did it never really leave your genes, but also, you found a little bit of one place in ever other place you ever went. Or maybe, you were so busy trying to make one place less foreign and more like everything else you had ever known, that its own uniqueness was completely lost to you. Unless that is, you moved again, and then the nostalgia would re-shape every dusty mote into a gleaming gold memory you would now long for.

.............

Nomads never really stop longing, do they?

....................

Razia bano spread her gharara over the divan, tucking her legs gently under her and conscious as she did so that Bai peeped at her from behind the wooden jalli, sniffing her dis-approval. Maybe it was all in her head, Razia thought. It was winter after all, the season for the common cold and Bai Ama was old. Bai had been around for generations, almost as long as the neem tree in the verandah of their house, which ... had told her, had watched over the five Khan-nawab generations and the Single Heirs.

Razia wondered if Bai had ever known about the story of the lost son, and resolved to ask her when Bai wasn't sniffing at her, cold or disapproval.

'Raz, my jaan' ..... sauntered over and seated himself on the Divan, creasing her perfectly fanned out gharara. 'There is much hubub on the street today. You should thank my lucky palmlines I made it back alive'

'And which of your lines should I thank for forgetting my paan, again?' she asked, absent-mindedly taking his hair off his eyes.

The many years at Oxford had done nothing to dull ....'s casual elegance that came so easy to the Nawabs. He sat cross-legged at ease in his kurta and still looked suave despite his goofy smile.

'What do you say Raz? Could you ever leave this? (motioning towards the open verandah in front of them) for an unknown in another land?'

'Depends. We are so comfortable here and the violence seems so far away. But then there's this'


to be continued.

Old writs

Re-claimed.

December 2009.
Karachi X-Rays,
Pakistan.

Garbed in this stiff blue surgical gown, I feel like I have been stuffed in a garish Halloween costume
which leaves me empty, bare, hollow.
Stripped of any piece of cloth, any accessory that defined me, belonged to me,
could be claimed as mine.

Blue blurs wander around like lost souls.
Apparitions of people past, people present, people that they will become.
Apparitions like clues,
memories.
I have been here before.


A blue blur among others, I want to scream at these rigid-faced nurses, these doctors that nod at me cursorily.

Bring me back my blue robe of 2 years ago, my discarded skin.
It might still have some traces of me, my faint perfume,
some preserved warmth of skin
which I can hold touch breath
reclaim as myself.

Let me inhale those rags and pour into my lungs the same fears the same happiness the same little quirky insecurities that congealed to form one broken whole.


Bring me back my discarded skin.
so that maybe I can recollect those pieces of me.
Maybe I can wrap them around my arms as shimmering bangles and drape them over my skin as golden ornaments and wear them with pride and add to my self like how sometimes clothes accessories and plastic little nothings define us as who we are and who we become.

Maybe in those blue discarded stitches of skin, I can find myself again.

Repost

Old writings.

Food Court.
Eaton Centre
Toronto,
4th August 2009.

I'm lit in the artificial.
Neon green halo's that spell 'Thai express! Thai food here!'
I am not Thai,
or English. or Canadian.

I have lived in 3 continents, 4 countries, 5 cities, known countless faces, innumerous identities or lack of, and still have no clue as to who I am, only

to who I am not.

Am I?

The modern artifact of post-colonialism?
Brown suede shoes, and black cardigan, I am a walking vestige of their Indian colony;
won and lost.

I cannot claim identity in history, having become
Western in my eastern skin.

Or eastern in my western skin?

Nothing to represent the east in the Mc Donald’s fillet in my hand, the Citizen strapped onto my wrist, the Costa Blanca on my back ,my skin

Conquered by them, 150 years ago?

Nothing, in my materiality.

How can I call this brown flesh,
exclusively mine?

-rewind-

Wrapped in a turquoise sari, single golden bangle, austere bun; each strand of taut, silken hair yelling for liberty,
like the voice of all her countrymen.

She was gathering fallen jasmines in my palms when they threw me out. House ablaze, men caged, the wail of a lonely child in the dusk,
The smell  of fire and ash and wilted, trampled jasmines.

‘You Indian Scum’

And the sounds of echoing gunshots.

 

-forward-

Me.
Feet resting on metal rims of the stool, fingers clutching my bottle of chilled Pepsi.
My head swims in the artificial,

kaleidoscopic advertisements, Gucci bags, fur coats,
the aroma of my jasmine scented Calvin Klein perfume I sprayed meticulously earlier in the day.

Am I?

Artificial?

 

Hollow?

 

Did I erase the memory of wars fought and being fought, the scent of jasmines and soil,

earth and life,

Did I get bought into the superficiality?

Every Mc Donald's, every Levi's, every global bland washes us all into

identical replicas, mimicking each other perfectly like images in a mirror-maze.

One uniform consciousness, One unconcerned existence,

One numbed whole

in the desensitizing cacophony of this fast-paced life.

One?

 

Am I

 

You? And you

Me?

 

 

you start writing when you cannot acknowledge to others things you really feel that you can't even believe you are feeling. truths that are easier to ink or type than to hear out loud, ringing like black molten tar in your ears.

things like, i never thought my father would become the person he did. that i could never beleive i would see him for how he is now. the man who was my role model and my pride and joy, who is now embarrassing to me only because of the actions he takes. no wife-beating, cursing, angry, aggressive, violent man is a father of mine.
i keep telling myself it is his disease, but he has been this way for a while, and my heart is almost afraid to ask how much of this is him, and how much of it is his illness? i do remember inclinations in him of this, but not all, of how he is now; but i could have never imagined this is how it would become.

i refuse to believe that this is how it ends. there is more to his life than this.

tomorrow is father's day and i do not know what to say. this man has closed his ears, heart and every pore of him away from anything good we shower him with. no amount of love, attention or praise seeps through. he is bitter, broken, convinced he is a failure, convinced we are all out to belittle him and disrespect him.
he is agonizingly trying o protect his respect with aggressively defending anything he believes to be an attack on him, which could be almost any conversation with him nowadays. something as simple as please do not curse my grandparents out in front of me and especially in front of them becomes how dare you disrespect my decision to speak how i like?

so what do you say to that?

i will never say my mom is a saint, but i have never seen such a mismatched couple in my life. their marriage speaks to me of everything wrong with an 'arranged' marriage. his education and intelligence and career matched with her fair skin, beautiful laugh. They're both great people, in their own right. both kind, caring, funny, but a bigger personality clash i have never witnessed.

ammi is a mystery i cannot even begin to unravel. there is no rationalizing with her. she is stubborn down to the very core, nothing you can do or say to change her from her decision when her mind is set, even it means destroying heart, hope, love. she will never admit it either. so things she naively beleives are love, you cannot sway her from doing the very same thing in a different way if they can cause less pain, because she knows her way is the right way.

it is this stubborn, childish insistence versus abbu's broken down esteem and aggression that has caused utter chaos and mayhem in our house. maybe it is time to starting pointing fingers at people and not location. it is not canada that made my parents the way they are, it is their childhoods, their stories. one suffered in war and a fatherless upbringing that tormented one's soul, versus a loveless, military discplinarian childhood that kept the other thirsting for love their entire life.

you can't fix almost 50 years of story. through what? psychiatrists? drugs? re-locations? therapy?

there is no long term cure. and i because i am afraid to say it out loud to admit it, even to myself, have i finally started to write. atleast on this blank white page i can call a spade a spade.

-eeda

Hunger

is not too far from Anger.

Not in spelling, or in symptom.

it is Ramadan and everyone is h-angry, perhaps including me. Decisions that should take seconds take hours, my mind is a swirl, limbs cold, arms shaking. I do not know how i am going to get through the remainder of these rozas with my blood sugar dropping so low.

It is such a struggle, and i miss the comforts of my home where working and earning and commuting would mean I could come home and knock out and present myself at the table to just eat and sleep.

I believe there is n english word for nakhray, but perhaps spoilt brat would come close to it.


-eeda

also, isnt it funny. Nothing makes you write like anger, hurt, or a broke heart will.

Locations, continued.

Locations impact people. Change people. Mold people. Build. Destroy. Even Annihilate.

When my dad applied for immigration to Canada, he did it because it was a fad. It was cool, all his friends were doing it, and baad ki baat to baad men dekhi jaeygi. All too soon, he was here, Canadian. N starry-eyed successful immigrant story here, he arrived bitter and skeptic, wanting to go back Home.

We rented a house, and then scoured the area and bought another house. A house no one could believe our humble demeanor could afford. 

We did. No mortgage, upfront.

And then, the house consumed us. 

(If you think this is about to turn into a cliched horror movie plot, you are right.)

First one to go was my dad. He hated Canada. He hated the house that made him live like a pauper in a mansion. Plumbling, gardening, shovelling feet after feet of unforgiving snow, maintenance, groceries. He grew disenchanted. Restless. Home called him through the howling wind in blistering Toronto cold. He insisted, we must move we must move back

Slowly, his anxiousness spread to all of us like a disease. My mom started having fits. My sister started having seizures. I got terrible anxiety. My brother was depressed. It was a Nightmare.

It still is. We are still in that house. It is still consuming us. Literally.

My dad lost over 80 pounds. His cheeks sunk in, skin hanging off bones on legs, arms, torso. He started walking around like the weight of the world was doubling him over in agony. He became bitter. Quit working. Blistering furious Toronto winter turned into blistering furious angry Abbu.

Locations impact people.

I have never seen a place have the power to cause such utmost decay in a person's life as I have seen in my father's. 

He was at his prime when he came to Canada. Youthful, great career, new house , savings, kids in school, one about to get married.

You want one guess how long we have been in Canada and everything changed?

5 years. 3 if you start counting really where it all went downhill. 3 years destroyed EVERY morsel of sanity any person in our family held.

I am typing this not in melodrama but in horror. There is physical abuse, violence, cursing and swearing like you wouldn't believe. I might quit my job to go back and try and fix the damage a location did.

Maybe I am naive and i can't point fingers at people and blame who did what to whom. Maybe it's easier to blame places and believe ke waqai shayad jagah raas nahee ayee. I don't know. All I know is that the same country that destroyed me, and rebuilt me from ashes, and gave me the greatest love I have ever known, has destroyed my father and changed him into a man I hardly recognize. Physically, mentally and emotionally.

I don't know where to begin looking, where to find one small piece of land that will restore his soul like this land has claimed it.

Shayad jis zameen per maitha taik ker dua manglo wohi zameen kafi hai. Har zameen per matha taik ker dekh leya. Where do you find that zameen.

The theory of Hashtags

i dont even know where to begin this, my mind is such a swirl of stress and confusion and disappointment and heartache.
Locations have an impact on people-mostly in that they can be a huge determinant of who you will be. I am the worst version of myself when I am on vacation, I know this, but you take me anywhere near water and I am a different person altogether. All at once, full of life but also all at once, calm, peaceful, serene.

When we visited Spain two weeks ago, we went to the Mediterranean sea one night. I cried when I saw the sea, like an old long lost friend. I cried when I smelt the fresh sea salt water smell, the grainy sand between my toes, the color and hue only the Mediterranean could have. It was like meeting an old long lost friend.
Mostly, the reason I cried was because it reminded me of Libya, of one of the most special homes I have ever known, and more than that, it reminded me of a version of me that I knew I never again will be. I cried for that eeda because I remembered who she was, and who I am now, and how so much I want to slip out of this skin of mine and be that person again but I can't. It is like clutching at straws slipping through your fingers.

Locations can have an impact on people. Even minor locations, like who you are in the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. Imagine every 3 or 4 feet away lies a space that claims a different part of your soul.

When You are in the bedroom jaan, you are so different. You are caring. loving. you undress me gently out of work clothes I am too exhausted to take off, in my sleep. You hug me hold me, or ignore me to watch T.V but you are mine.
When you are in the bathroom, or the You post-bathroom.....that's a different animal altogether. Lost eyes, lost soul. Angry, memotional, restless, aggressive. I lose you to whatever demon hides in in that 8 feet of space you 'escape' to.
It is your escapades that terrify me. A space I cannot enter.

I stand outside like a child. Holding the door, hands splayed across the rough wood, trying to claim you as mine, without you ever knowing.Silly child, don't I know? Locations claim people. Scared and terrified to have you come out and not know Who you will be, what you will say. I pray through the wood hoping whatever battle you fight inside will not destroy us. It destroys me every night.

It is a burden I cannot speak about to everyone, anyone. I speak to the girls at work about minor displeasures to vent some frustration and they say, well, why don't you fill in the gaps. Gaps? Yes, holes in people's personalities, expectations, you fill with other people. I am confused. They explain that they have people who fulfill part but not all of what they desire, and they fill the gaps with Others. Hashtags.

#1 is your emotional one, protector, comforter, provider. #2 is your sexual. #3 is the backup. Divide up your attention and love so not one loss can destroy you. Divide and Conquer.

But you always were and always will be #1. The only hashtag I need. The only hashtag that consumes me, the only one I will allow to destroy me.

It is funny what locations do to how people think and approach things, even things like marriage or relationships or commitment. I sit and argue and try and understand their rationales, their 'heart and soul protection plans'. I don't have one.

That might be part of the reason why, when I can't take it anymore, I hold you androck you gently, crying into your tshirt. I have no backup. I love you no matter what location, what person you are, and it petrifies the core of me.

I just hope our locations, don't end up destroying us.

(tbc)

-eeda

So much can happen in a space of 2 weeks. To a phoenix soul, it is several lifetimes wrapped in a microcosm.
A thousand soul-crushing deaths. A thousand hopeful re-births, spluttering, fluttering of wings, tentative first steps back into the cruel world.

To the naive, the brave, the wise say,
do not go gentle into that good night.
rage, rage against the dying light.

....................................

Dec 04, 2014

There is poetry my soul sings I cannot hear.
Days when it blazes in vivid reds and yellows,
and days when it sputters and chokes, and barely makes a sound.

.....................................

-eeda