Airport Road 10

AIRPORTROAD ISSUE 10

AIRPORT ROAD www.electrastreet.net/airportroad NYU Abu Dhabi 19 Washington Square North New York, NY 10003 Send inquiries to: Cyrus R. K. Patell Publisher Airport Road NYU Abu Dhabi PO Box 903 New York, NY 10276-0903 nyuad.electrastreet@nyu.edu

© 2019 Electra Street

Front and Back Cover Design

by Neyva Hernandez

CO-EDITORS

EDITORIAL BOARD

COPY EDITOR DIGITAL EDITOR

Chiran Raj Pandey Vamika Sinha Bana Alamad Salha Al Ameri Aathma Nirmala Dious Evangeline Louise Gerodias Máté Hekfusz Munib Mesinovic Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha Yasmeen Tajiddin Jamie Uy Wilder Worrall Einas Alhamali Chiran Raj Pandey

FOUNDING EDITOR

Sachi Leith

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Deborah Lindsay Williams

PUBLISHER

Cyrus R. K. Patell

Issue 10 Fall 2019

CONTENTS Chiran Raj Pandey and Vamika Sinha, Introduction......................................7 PROSE Mary Collins, Postcard to my Sister from the Swamps...............................14 Aathma Nirmala Dious, Picture of Home—I Mean Abu Dhabi—

I Would Draw on a Postcard.................................................................20

Neha Reji John, Arabikatha 3.something....................................................22

Scout Satterfield, The Beach.....................................................................25

Amal Al Shamsi, Pink Chicks......................................................................38 Chiran Raj Pandey, Hangover Day In Kathmandu ......................................58

Tan Tzy Jiun, Maternal Instincts................................................................73

Dominique A. Joaquin, 21........................................................................75 Meg Nakagawa Hoffmann, The Renowned Orders of the Night.................82

Sarah Afaneh, Bracelet...............................................................................89 Sarah Afaneh, Constitution......................................................................101 Marium Shahzaib Trunkwala, Departure...................................................112

POETRY Fiona Lin, going.........................................................................................12 Bhrigu Bhatra, Nejd Plateau—Dhofar, Oman............................................16

Vongai Christine Mlambo, Multiplayer Machine...........................................43 Arthur de Oliveira, I am Interactable. 124 Years of Diplomacy

Collide Interests at H&M.......................................................................46

Jaime Andres Fernandez Uribe, An Inconvenience...................................48

Vongai Christine Mlambo, The Flames That Burn.....................................50

POETRY (continued)

‫ ماذا يحدث لو تركنا شعرنا يرقص مع الهواء؟‬.......................................52 Bana Alamad,

Mary Collins, Weatherwoman.....................................................................54

Bhrigu Bhatra, Palimpsest........................................................................56 Emily Broad, To My Grandmother..............................................................63

Arthur de Oliveira, Zaisu...........................................................................66

Nur’aishah Shafiq, god of none................................................................69 Máté Hekfusz, Memories I.........................................................................79

Isabel Ríos, Cuando cantan los cantaros.................................................96 Bana Alamad, ‫نسيت‬ .................................................................................99

Emily Broad, Carolina on my Mind..........................................................106

Maria Jose Alonso, Exceso de equipaje..................................................108

Katie Paton Glasgow-Palmer, Tamaki Drive.............................................110 VISUAL Isabel Ríos, No vi un gato.........................................................................11 Wilder Worrall, Sad Sight for Exploring......................................................15

Emily Broad, Liwa Shack...........................................................................18

Melika Shahin, Bridge................................................................................19

Ndabhiti, #myNYUAD.................................................................................23 Ingie Baho, Migration.................................................................................24

Ria Golovakova, Caramel..........................................................................36 Meg Nakagawa Hoffmann, the taste of color...............................................37

Nada Almosa, Social Anxiety.....................................................................41

Baraa Al Jorf, Shattered.............................................................................42 Wilder Worrall, Who is Captive?.................................................................44

Anthony Chua, Untitled..............................................................................45 Aya Bouhelal, Berber Woman 2.................................................................47 Luis Carlos Soto, Volcán de Fuego.............................................................49 Hafsa Ahmed, Perched on the Edge of Two Worlds.................................55

VISUAL (continued) Rayna Li, Is That All There Is?....................................................................57

Amna Al Ameri, The Sails...........................................................................62 Zain Raef, Machines at Work.....................................................................68

‫ تفضل‬.............................................................................72 Luis Carlos Soto,

Fatema Al Fardan, Her Sunny Disposition.................................................74 Rayna Li, Song of the Sunny Pass..............................................................80

Luis Carlos Soto, Curfew...........................................................................81 Wilder Worrall, Many Wishes.....................................................................88

Isabel Ríos, Mina........................................................................................95 Melika Shahin, White.................................................................................98

Zain Raef, Serenity..................................................................................100 Muhmmad Shehryar Hamid, je ne regrette rien.......................................105

INTRODUCTION At NYUAD, we speak English, often as our second or third language.

English is the language of instruction and, for the most part, professional communication. Our use of English is not evil; it is not in the service of neo-imperialism—at least, we would like to think it is not: it is simply

a means to counter what would otherwise have been a Babelian blur

of languages. “Today,” as Chinua Achebe wrote, “for good or ill,” our

language of communication must be English. While this monolingualism is perhaps necessitated by the demands of the workplace and the

classroom, for a journal like Airport Road, it presents several problems.

In the past, Airport Road’s position as an English-language journal has excluded the works of several of our students who composed in their

native languages. In an effort to pay explicit attention to the multiplicity of languages at NYUAD, we decided to solicit works in non-English languages from our student body for Issue 10.

In soliciting works in all languages, we stipulated that submissions must be accompanied by English language translations. Our reasons for the stipulation were twofold. Firstly, our editorial board would still need to judge the submissions, and the only plausible way to do so would be

in our shared language, English. Secondly, Airport Road still remained, for better or for worse, an English-language journal by virtue of its

university-wide readership. This fact meant that the non-English language submissions would have to be made accessible for all our readers, and English was the one common language upon which our community is explicitly built.

Translation, however, presented more problems for our editorial board.

When faced with an Arabic language poetry submission titled “What

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would happen if we let our hair dance with the air?” several questions arose. On what merits should we judge this submission—and how, in any case, should we judge its Arabic through the English-language

translation? Language is central to poetry, and in the case of a language like Arabic, whose script, syntax, cadence, and poetic register is so

markedly different from English, the evaluative task seemed impossible.

We had Arabic readers in the room, but that was no answer to the

question, and it hardly made the highly subjective work of judgment easier.

We therefore began to design a rubric with which to approach the many submissions-in-translation we received this semester. We suggested we should read the translation for ideas, contexts, and themes, and

especially odd things—like unfamiliar phrases, oddly foreign syntax—

that we thought might capture an innovative impetus in the original text.

Translation, we posited, creates yearning: it is a truism that something is lost in translation. So, we asked of the submission: does the text in translation make us want to read the text in its original language? We suggested that a work in translation is meant to provoke a sense of

yearning for the reader who does not have access to the original. If, in

reading the submissions, our editorial board members felt this yearning— needless to say, a subjective experience—for the original, we concluded that the submission was worth including in our issue. For those of our readers who are versed in Arabic, both text and translation would be

accessible, while for those who are not, the translation was meant to

evoke a desire to know, and to want to know, the text in its original form .

Early in the semester, we also organized a workshop conducted by

Professor Maurice Pomerantz, a scholar of pre-modern Arabic literature.

Professor Pomerantz, also a scholarly translator, designed this workshop around a famous poem by Abu Nuwas, titled “Don’t cry for Layla, don’t rave about Hind.” The poem was circulated both in the original Arabic and in English translation to the participants of the workshop, and

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the task was to closely read the two texts to consider the generative

problems, limits, and opportunities of translation. The workshop was

immensely useful for both speakers and non-speakers of Arabic. For us,

both unable to read Arabic, the poem’s metacritical narrative concerning poetry, its interplay between classical and colloquial Arabic, was entirely inaccessible. When Professor Pomerantz and other Arabic-reading

participants suggested that this “wine poem” was Abu Nuwas’s treatise on poetry and aesthetics, we were left in awe. Without access to the

Arabic, we, too, felt a deep sense of yearning, among our peers, in an

institution situated in the Arab world, for the lyrical experience of the short qasida.

The present issue collects four non-English texts alongside their English

translations, including the contested Arabic language submission, “What would happen if we let our hair dance with the air?” To prepare it for publication, we sat down with two other students to go through the

Arabic, learn the poem in its intricacies, and better the translation. The

translation presented in this volume was done by Lina Elmusa, an alumna of NYUAD’s literature and creative writing program. Elmusa’s excellent translation uses the term “attar” instead of the more common English

“scent” to signal the translation’s translatedness: “attar,” according to the

OED, is genealogically linked to the Persian and Arabic “ʿiṭr,” translated as

“perfume essence.” It is also this same term, “attar,” that is used in Nepali and Hindi, the languages of our homes, to refer to perfume. The multiple

meanings and evocations carried by this single linguistic entity embodies the inherently creative and generative work entailed in the everyday translational environment of NYUAD.

In organizing this issue of Airport Road, we therefore wanted to emulate the sense of movement and fluidity entailed in the act of translation,

linguistic or otherwise. Thus many of the submissions which make Issue 10 are concerned with movement: migration, travel, leaving home, and

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coming home. Aathma Nirmala Dious and Neha John’s prose texts situate this movement in the context of the UAE, as do photographs such as

Emily Broad’s “Liwa Shack,” Melika Shahin’s “Bridge,” and Ndabhiti’s “#myNYUAD.”

Our cover, too, attempts to capture the translational movements within Airport Road. Neyva Hernandez, an Interactive Media major, designed

the cover after several conversations during which we sat down to talk

about our goals with Issue 10. We provided her with “provocations” about translations, a number of quotes from writers and thinkers like Teju Cole, Abdelfattah Kilito, and Emily Apter. The intricate texture of Hernandez’s cover moves the viewer’s eyes across the page, the lines of the texture

bouncing between the large, circular elements of the illustration, like holes

or absences that suggest Apter’s “translation zones.” The dynamic, frantic motion of the texture is stabilized by the individual figure forming from the

abstract shapes, whose lips, according to Hernandez, enact a speech act that leads the viewer back into the unending labyrinth of lines and things and translations.

Airport Road is translation. We are, in Cole’s words, “the ferry operator,

carrying meaning from words on that shore,” the private notebooks and

intimate diaries of our students, “to words on this shore,” the beautifully

curated conversations of Airport Road. We are obsessed with movement; we have to be. Our predecessors wrote in Issue 9 that “we are always

moving.” We are. Very soon, we, too, will be leaving, onwards to other

shores. One day, we might settle, and when we do, we will have no need for this journal, because Airport Road is about movement, not about settlement. We begin with “going” and end with “Departure.”

Chiran Raj Pandey Vamika Sinha

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No vi un gato Isabel RĂ­os

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going

Fiona Lin i look from a tiny round window a little dirty and scratched

and outside staring back at me is all i ever had

soon a rumble passes through a purr that rolls within me

but i feel it speeding up and up jostling me in my seat

a little small a little scared but a little full of wonder

i hear a crackle overhead and people begin to murmur

it’s too quiet and it’s too loud i cannot hear a thing

they say it twice but both unknown and then i hear a sound it’s sharp and flat goes on and on

and then my ears explode gone gone gone

my ears are gone

i must be dying now in that moment

the thick fog lifts and

my ears are back with me

my chair is leaning slightly back i could almost fall asleep

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the window still beside me the ground feels far away and all is right except now i’m on my way

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Postcard to My Sister from the Swamps Mary Collins

Remember the frogs on your dresser? It’s like that, only heavier, and I

don’t know why the stew is bubbling over. There was this scarf they tied

around the porch deck, dipped in ice water, but even that is boiling now.

Moths flock to our card games. It’s a farm, you know—feathers and eyes.

Earlier today, I looked at the wooden planks supporting my body and

there might have been a dozen fire ants between the cracks, but then

again, there might not. My feet feel close to falling off, if I’m being honest.

Sometimes the sun makes a halo-shaped haze above the flat and sings some of those old fairy tales. Sometimes (you wouldn’t believe it) most

of the crocodiles stay at home. Sometimes (I wouldn’t believe it) some of

the ants creep into my oatmeal to deliver messages in Morse code. Tip tip tap, dot dot dash. I don’t know Morse code, but I assume they are talking about the weather and not laughing at the color of my hair or the way I

spread butter on burnt plates. I assume we’re not close to dying or being poisoned by the bog.

Talk soon?

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Sad Sight For Exploring Wilder Worrall

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Nejd Plateau—Dhofar, Oman Bhrigu Bhatra Flint is scant

From where we start. Rounded rocks lie in a riverbed thousands of years dead.

We climb up.

At 500 meters above sea level

We have flint. It’s chert—short curt grey beds of untouched rock.

Useless.

A hundred meters higher

The rocks blacken. An exposed seam of limestone.

Plates of slate, nodules of flint, exposed to oxygen.

The mountain’s been whisked away by the still wind. The landscape is lunar.

So dry, it scorches the soul.

The air smells, so gently, of salt.

Here. We find a site. A Nubian stonemaking industry that knapped these rocks,

Fractured them into sharp flakes,

Fossilized the human hammer force Into ripples and scars

Edges brushed off by the wind.

We handle the samples—cores, flakes, and mistakes,

Half a million years old. An inscribed human presence, long before script.

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Identify by couple color rocks—a rough black pitted skin of silica oxygen on the dorsal surface, Facing the elements,

A smooth silky hard caramel surface on the ventral face—the interior of flint.

They cut our hands as we drop them back To rest for another half million years.

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Liwa Shack Emily Broad

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Bridge Melika Shahin

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Picture of Home—I mean, Abu Dhabi—I Would Draw on a Postcard

Aathma Nirmala Dious

The first view I have of you, my city, is through a window. Car

windows, taxi windows, green-tinted bus windows, apartment building windows. Sunsets from my small apartment window are trapped in colored pink-purple-orange-blue sand layered

in glass bottles to sell to tourists. Your name in your language makes me wonder what it will take to call you mine. * In the shadows cast by your many concrete fingers walk my

people on the lines of your palm. My people—your people—

make an anthem of all the words for home we know and sing it to you.

* Catch the glint, in the many dark eyes like mine, of dancing

lights in this electric skyline. In the alleyways of your buildings ricochet the crack of cricket bat hits ball and small slippers

hit tiles. We are the oil that keeps you smooth, shiny, wheels

turning. They call you a machine but forget how much life you

are. You love our hands and our smiles, so we hide the parts of ourselves you wouldn’t love in your shadows.

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*

Your white street lamps in-between small roads was my

moonlight, and under it, I sang love songs to you in Malayalam.

My Acha harmonized with me. He waits to sing to you like this

someday. You told him long ago to save his songs for when he has to leave you. Some songs can’t be kept inside so he sang

them so softly to you, only I would hear them. I sing you into a veedu, a home. You tell me to only call you by your name. * You taught me how goodbye felt long before I learned the word. Malayalam does not have a word for goodbye.

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Arabikatha 3.something Neha Reji John

I remember dozing off in the back seat of my dad’s old Jeep. My sister’s

head resting on my lap. My mom pulls out a plastic bag filled with biscuits and snacks we bought from the neighborhood baqala before we road-

tripped to Fujairah. The crumbs of digestive biscuits and stray drops of Al Marai laban linger in the backseat of his car, as he warns me not to spill anything on the floors.

I listen. I hear words of conversation from the front seat. My father and mother speaking of the magnificence of God’s creation as I look out

the window. I see mountains and rock faces. Strange beauties absent

from the landscape of Dubai, absent from the landscape of home. In the

distance, the ocean rises up over the roads that rise and fall between the mountains.

We’ve already started talking about lunch in Khorfakan. We always eat at

the Indian place right across from the beach. True and tested. We’ve been there every year. The employees are never the same. I wonder where

they’ve gone. Home to an ailing mother? To wives and children? We’ve

been on the road for what feels like ages. I still see odd graffiti on the rock faces: the face of the Sheikh, a few crossed-out names and hearts with arrows through them.

I wake my sister up as we drive past goats and camels. We have goats in India, but these goats mean something else. I am already thinking of

when we will return home. Buildings, sand, then mountains. Waiting for the mountains to turn to sand and then to buildings again.

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` #myNYUAD Ndabhiti

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Migration Ingie Baho

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The Beach

Scout Satterfield

You walk along a stony beach you worry isn’t real. To your left, an ocean mirrors a murky sunset. Every moment is darker than the next, clouds create a constant shade through which only hints of red show.

You look down and realize you are wearing a long black coat. You have a

suspicion that if you were to look at your hands, you would not recognize them. You hold your hands out. You are wearing gloves. It is much too cold to remove them. You decide it is better to leave some questions unanswered.

You walk for an hour, or maybe it was only a few minutes, do you

remember? After an hour or a few minutes, you come across a woman.

The woman is wearing a long white dress, it buttons up to her chin, the

sleeves run all the way to her wrists, the skirt covers her ankles and dirty black boots protrude from under the lace. The woman stands before

an easel, a pallet of paint brighter than the sky sits like a ring on her left thumb.

At the sight of another person, you suddenly feel quite lonely. You approach her with a Hello.

The woman does not look up from her painting, but sighs, It’s not right.

She looks longingly at the ocean, the canvas, the pallet-ring. Never at you.

You move beside her to look at the painting. You are surprised to find that it is an exact replica of the ocean scene before your eyes. Yet, you note,

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the sunset is quite murky, the clouds dim the colors of the sky. Is it an ugly picture?

She seems to finally sense your presence, when, still without looking at you, she asks, Who are you? Do I know you?

Unsure whether she is addressing you or the view, you say, I am just here.

She considers her isolated thumb in its pallet-ring as if for assurance before she replies, Yes, I am here, too.

She snaps her head up to the sunken sky and says, It’s dark now. She packs her paints and easel.

Once the woman is gone, you begin to believe she never existed. * You walk along a stony beach you worry isn’t real. To your left, an ocean mirrors a murky sunset.

You walk for an amount of time which only you can know but don’t

remember. You come across the woman in white. She is sitting at her

easel, only a few feet further down the beach than where you found her the previous evening.

Hello, you say.

It’s not right. She speaks to herself.

You move closer to see a canvas identical to the previous. Is it still ugly?

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Where do you live? You ask the woman.

She frowns. I live … She frowns deeper. Does she not remember where she lives? She twists her upper body to look behind her, Oh, yes, I live there.

By saying so, she brings into being a large white house, peeling with time, surrounded by a tall brick wall dripping with moss. The edge of the wall

is just a few yards from where the stones end and the grasses begin. You wonder how you missed its looming visage till now.

An asylum, isn’t it? You are surprised to find that you know this. Even though the building’s very existence has eluded you till this moment.

I’m not crazy. She looks at you for the first time. Her eyes are a static black. They let me paint. They don’t let the others paint.

At the mention of these “others,” you hear it. Quite suddenly, as if a

switch were flipped; tortured laughs, broken screams, a constant murmur beyond the wall. You wonder why you didn’t hear it before. Your skin crawls, you blame the cold.

And where do you live? The woman asks, no longer looking at you but packing up her easel and paints yet again.

The oddest thing happens now. You search your memory, but you cannot remember where you live at all. You turn around to see where you walked from, but you only see the beach stretching out into a growing darkness

and fog. You can’t remember where you live. You must know! It is where you eat your meals. Where you sleep every night. Where is it? Tell me, I

need to know so that I can write it here and the woman will get an answer.

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Where do you live? You screw up your face in a moment of panic trying

to remember something that simply is not in your mind. Your heart beats faster and your breathing turns heavy.

I… The woman has packed her things. It’s too late to answer her now. You calm your heart by deciding that there’s nothing wrong in not knowing some things, such as where one eats and sleeps. I too, think it’s okay, since the woman does not seem to really care anyway. You begin to breathe normally again.

Once the woman is gone, you begin to believe she never existed.

It is much darker now. You wish there was a bit more light to see by. As you think this, a small light does appear in the distance. You wonder at its existence and walk towards it. You approach, and the light moves

higher and higher into the sky. You realize that it is shining through the top window of a lonely lighthouse. You somehow know that this lighthouse

has been abandoned for quite some time, but you believe you have never seen it before. How could you have known it?

You walk up to the lighthouse door and knock firmly with your gloved

hand. After a few moments, a very old man opens the door and, as if he was expecting you, says: Finally. Do come in.

You enter the lighthouse. Wooden planks constitute a spiral stairway

along the outer-edge of the wall, leading to a top-floor where you believe you saw the light from outside. The ground floor has a few bookshelves

with volumes covered so thickly in dust that you cannot read the titles. A bed that bends in an odd way at its middle, wearing sheets riddled with stains of different hues. A pile of clothes on the floor. You see a rat run

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without fear from one end of the room to the other and disappear into a

crack in the wall. The smell of forever-damp wood and isolation clings to everything.

The man begins to climb the wooden planks to the top floor. You follow

him, though you don’t know why. Only a moment or two behind him, you realize how strongly he smells of seaweed and sweat. His green coat

drips on the steps in front of you. You wonder how you missed the rain.

The top floor is a bit less dusty than the ground floor, yet much more

crowded. Various devices of all shapes and sizes riddle the floor and a

large desk sits next to a window, on which is a burning oil lamp. Some of

the devices are moving and clicking, others look as if they haven’t moved in years. One is swinging a stick of graphite back and forth along a piece of canvas, another frantically spins a metal arm around in a circle.

Every day at nine-three, nine-and-three, the man hums to himself. He walks over to the desk and opens a large, stained book, the pages covered, every inch, in numbers.

I was once a weatherman. But now I am so much more, he says to the numbers on the page.

You think, though, that he doesn’t look like much at all.

The clouds have chosen me. The weather whispers to me. Can you hear it? He asks the book softly.

You only hear the clicks and whirrs of the machines.

Soon, it whispers … Soon.

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* You walk along a stony beach you worry isn’t real. To your left, an ocean mirrors a murky sunset.

The cries and hysterical laughter of the hospital inmates flow over the

walls, carry on the wind, tickle your ears. When you close your eyes, you believe that you are on the other side, crying with them.

You walk for an amount of time which only you can know, but don’t

remember. You come across the woman in white. She is sitting at her

easel, only a few feet further down the beach than where you found her the previous evening.

You try to remember what happened last night, but all you can remember is meeting the man in the lighthouse. But how did you get home? And how did you get here now? Only you know.

It is all wrong. She sighs.

The familiarity of her words calms you. You look, the painting is the same.

You decide it is ugly. But what do you know? Are you an artist?

Have you met the man in the lighthouse? You ask her to avoid my question.

She frowns, lighthouse … she muses. No, there is no lighthouse around here. She has decided.

Now the light is gone, and she begins to pack her things. She pauses and whispers to the ground, The wall. It is how you know if you are sane, by

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what side of the wall you stand. But what happens if you jump over?

Once the woman is gone, you begin to believe she never existed.

You continue walking, and despite the woman’s words, you find the

lighthouse again. The old man in the dripping coat is standing outside. He is waiting for you.

The wind is calling me away! He half-yells this to you as you approach, before disappearing into the lighthouse.

As you enter, he is already halfway up the stairs. You join him at the upper level, and find him standing at the window, looking out.

You must stay here. I am being pulled beyond … He points out of the window.

For the first time, you look beyond the hospital and see a large hill,

towards the peak of the hill, you see a cluster of lights; the town. How

did you forget about the town? It’s right there on the hill. You even forgot

about the hill. You swear it wasn’t there any of the other evenings? Roads wind from the lights of the town, down to the beach and the hospital, but you have never seen the roads, the hill, or the lights from the town until this moment. You decide to keep this revelation to yourself. The man points more towards the sky than to the town anyway.

Nine-three, nine-and-three, you must. He whispers out of the window. He is asking you to continue the vigil.

He turns to you very suddenly and says, voice ringing out as if speaking to a large crowd, When was the last time you saw the sun?

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Without waiting for your answer, the man runs with the surprising

quickness of a much younger man down the stairs, out of the lighthouse, and disappears in the darkness, heading towards the town. * You walk along a stony beach you worry isn’t real. To your right, an ocean mirrors a murky sunset.

The cries and hysterical laughter of the hospital inmates flow over the

walls, carry on the wind, tickle your ears. When you close your eyes, you believe that you are on the other side, crying with them.

You are taking a break from watching the machines spin and whirr in the

lighthouse. You have already recorded forty numbers and discovered that three different machines are actually broken. You recorded their readings regardless.

You walk for an amount of time which only you can know, but don’t

remember. You come across the woman in white. She is sitting at her

easel, only a few feet further down the beach than where you found her the previous evening.

She does not look at you, but says, I worry. It eludes … She looks out

over the water, the clouds reveal only dim patches of purple, this fades quickly. You are left in the dark of night.

You wonder how long she has spent in pursuit of this perfect scene.

As if reading your mind, the woman murmurs, Maybe forever …

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She packs her things. Before she walks away she says to the ocean, Perhaps tomorrow evening.

Once the woman is gone, you begin to believe she never existed.

You return to the lighthouse and record more numbers in the big book.

From the open window, the screams of the lunatics continue. It is a morbid music.

You lay down to sleep in the broken bed and begin to wonder who you are. You realize you forgot to look at your hands when you took your

gloves off, but when you hold them up to your face, it is too dark to see.

You think darkness is for the best.

* The next evening, you begin to record the numbers again; but wait.

Something is different. What is different? Do you hear that?

Silence.

The lunatics have stopped their screaming. You go to the window and

look down, it is still in the early hour of sunset, and from up this high, you can see down into the yard of the hospital. The other side of the wall.

Too many to count. The lunatics wear white uniforms. This allows them to

be seen easier in the growing darkness. They are, instead of being spread throughout the yard, huddled together in a corner against the wall. A

horde. They push themselves against the wall. They are wild. The souls in front are trampled, forced to breathe dirt into their lungs, the others crawl upon their bodies. They climb each other to climb the wall. A solid mass

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of white cotton and flesh. The first one manages to reach the top of the wall. He stands on the edge. The wall is much too high, how will he get down?

You watch him. He waits a moment. On the edge of the wall, he looks toward the sea. He turns and looks up the hill, towards the town. He jumps off of the wall.

You look away when he falls, and you imagine you hear his legs break as

he lands. You know you can hear his screams. Different than the screams on the other side of the wall. This scream is full of pain, yet somehow it is triumphant.

You are shaking. You open your eyes and look back to the wall, the man lays on the ground, twisted.

Another one makes it to the edge of the wall. They too jump. Another,

and another. They jump and fall and twist and pile up, and eventually, one jumps and does not twist. They land on the mountain of broken bodies and climb down safely.

Once they land, where will they go? For a moment you believe they will

run into the sea. And it does seem that the ocean is calling to them; they

all look towards the ocean before they turn and run up the hill. They sprint along the road that leads to the town. The broken ones on either side of the wall are moaning. You wonder if they understand the sacrifice they

are. Some bleed to death, others lie in pain, bones protruding. You believe you hear laughter intermingling screams.

Though countless lie dying, it seems that even more manage to survive.

All together they run up the road. None consider the lighthouse.

34

The sun is almost completely set, darkness rapidly descends. The first

few lunatics make it to the edges of town. Moments later, new screams, faint at first, emit from the top of the hill. The army of the insane have commenced their invasion.

Within minutes, the last of the lunatics has entered the town. The screams get louder. A bell tower rings; another melody within the cacophony.

The darkness is complete, but then a red flicker appears at the edge of

the town. It spreads. You watch as the blaze jumps from house to house, body to body.

Maybe this is the day the old man predicted.

You walk along a stony beach you worry isn’t real.

The sounds of terror, pain and death roll down the hill to meet you as you walk.

After some time, you come across the woman in white. She is still here,

even after the sun has set. She has turned her easel around, and instead of facing the ocean, she faces the hill. She is entranced in her canvas.

Without looking up she says, I’ve finally found it! Isn’t it beautiful?

You look over her shoulder at the red and orange creation. The town on

top of the hill, engulfed in flames. You look up at the light. You think there is something beautiful in it.

35

Caramel

Ria Golovakova Acrylic on canvas

36

the taste of color

Meg Nakagawa Hoffmann Acrylic on paper

37

Pink Chicks

(A Response to Inger Christensen’s Alphabet) Amal Al Shamsi

Pink chicks, pink chicks, blue chicks, pink chicks do not exist.

The box they came in, cardboard brown, does not exist.

Childhood fury on a hunt that did not exist, chasing chicks down and they do not exist.

Being right does not exist, a hundred percent does not exist, perfect mangoes without pits in them do not exist. Silence

does not exist, there are sounds you can buy that can trick the mind to shut off and not hear other sounds, but silence does not exist.

True anarchy does not exist, trust does not exist, the smile

shared with colleagues and the cashier at the supermarket

does not exist. Putting your plastic bags in the trunk of a car, the windows don’t exist and the fresh-grown grass doesn’t, police tires roll over it, privacy between neighbors does not exist.

One more minute does not exist. The way the sunlight falls on

the back of your neck, once there, now not, will not exist again.

The first time walking along a freshly paved road barefoot

cannot exist again. Sometimes when people walk out of the

room, they don’t exist. The beat of that one song will not exist.

38

Having enough does not exist, eyes are always keener on the other side, caps on desire do not exist, limits do not exist. A

one-minute phone call does not exist, it is either less or more.

There is not enough that does not exist. I can’t wait to say that zoos don’t exist. Buying human lives, loneliness, any choice

other than living. Things, hollow things, sitting and collecting dust, so that we can put other things besides them.

Unnamed things don’t exist.

Perfect replicas don’t exist, there will always be an “I could

tell,” it’s not the same. Being completely in a moment does not exist. Patterns do not exist except posthumously, a

complicated coping mechanism, applied to things like weather and human interactions.

Reverse weddings, scorning of the dead, spinal scarves,

walking stick on wheels, the global riddance of debris. Cats and children that listen when you call, the perfect globe of

orange without the stringy parts or sour patches in between,

weightlessness and the ease of getting up after falling that last time. The perfect photograph does not exist.

39

The Hamriyah castle does not exist, only the sand around it, they broke it down and returned it to Buckingham, he said.

The end of a father’s story does not exist, listen to the way

that he picks up the remote and stays quiet in his head. The

end doesn’t exist, if it were the brain’s choice, it would go on

forever. Absolute control does not exist. Lifetime companions,

in the whole sense of the word “lifetime,” do not exist, probably for the better. Fully getting rid of something does not exist,

the certainty of the law of the conservation of mass, of the, of the, but you can make something unseen, to the naked eye, equipped, so on.

40

Social Anxiety Nada Almosa

41

Shattered

Baraa Al Jorf Copic markers, fine liner, and gelly roll pen on marker pad paper

42

Multiplayer Machine

Vongai Christine Mlambo

My mind is a pinball machine exploding with fluorescent color, bursts of joy whistles of worry whizzing wildly in a confined space

what I think are expertly executed plays are just rationalized accidental crashes but I choose to lie to myself preserve my sanity

even if it may not exist Do you want to play?

let’s make organized chaos

write mathematical equations

predict the trajectory of the ball only to discover

it does not obey any of our laws we will watch together our futile strategies

and play again and again You don’t want to play? too late

I can hear the clangs of metal

the jarring music when the ball hits the wall there’s a pinball machine in your head too

43

Who Is Captive?

Wilder Worrall

44

Untitled

Anthony Chua

45

I Am Interactable. 124 Years of Diplomacy Collide Interests at H&M. Arthur de Oliveira

Two places. intersections of a sweater the image of a tiger. the fluff of exoticism,

beards on an animal

extensions of hair, ruffles on a sweater. shifting planes, there is a sticker on it ; it’s all experimental.

geological movements of modern expression.

a connection:

corporate branding. the shine on a sweater.

beads on an animal brand that image.

brand poachers documentary.

the same sweater can be taken a picture of in

different places by the same entity in two halves.

46

Berber Woman 2 Aya Bouhelal

47

An Inconvenience

Jaime Andres Fernandez Uribe

Hello.

Hello,

how can I help you?

Sorry to disturb you,

but we are being killed.

Where is your home?

I come from up the mountains

down the valley through the forest where the river

mourns. Faraway.

Yes, corpses paved the way.

Ticket number?

I don’t know sir.

Grab a ticket to the right, wait in line.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

48

Volcรกn de Fuego Luis Carlos Soto

49

The Flames That Burn

Vongai Christine Mlambo

You live for a piece of paper

The one that says you belong

The one they made you bleed for

At the immigration desk, because You cannot be a patriot Of this country for free You have to suffer

Just as much as the forefathers

So you can occupy the servants’ quarters In the house that they built

Sweeping your dignity under the carpet So that you cannot feel it

The pieces of you, wasting away The flurry of papers make anxiety

Each time they pause too long on the letter You materialized from sweat and tears The tremble in your fingers worsens

Like there’s an earthquake in your nervous system You have learned to read between the lines Of the requirements

Foreigners play by different rules

If they say jump, you’d better leap

Three months bank statements—bring six Police clearances are not enough

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They release the hounds first, questions later You are guilty before proven innocent Self-seeking before desperate Will they ever realize

You only jump out of the pot Into the fireplace

When you are sure

That you are going to burn either way

51

‫ماذا يحدث لو تركنا شعرنا يرقص مع الهواء؟‬

‫‪Bana Alamad‬‬

‫ماذا يحدث لو استيقظنا كل يوم على علم أن هذا اليوم سيصبح أجمل أيامنا؟‬ ‫ماذا يحدث لو تذوقنا مرارة القهوة‪ ،‬واستنشقنا رائحة الياسمين؟‬ ‫لو استشعرنا برودة الهواء‪ ،‬ولو متعنا نظرنا بجمال الحياة؟‬ ‫ماذا يحدث لو رفعت فيروز صوتها بأذني‪ ،‬ولو أخفت‬ ‫العبري المتردد حولي؟‬ ‫ّ‬ ‫ال أريد هذا اليوم أن ينتهي‪،‬‬ ‫أو هذه اللحظة أن تختفي‪.‬‬ ‫تختفي بمتاهة الذكريات‬ ‫بين انعكاسات‪ ،‬ظالل وآثار التفل‪.‬‬ ‫ماذا يحدث لو تركنا شعرنا يرقص مع الهواء؟‬

‫‪52‬‬

What would happen if we allowed our hair to dance with the air?

Bana Alamad

Translated from Arabic by Lina Elmusa What would happen if we woke up every day knowing it will be one of our most beautiful days?

What would happen if we tasted coffee’s bitterness, and inhaled jasmine’s attar?

If we felt the coolness of the wind, and dwelled our vision in life’s beauty?

What would happen if Fairuz raised her voice in my ear, and silenced the Hebrew around me?

I don’t want this day to end, Or this moment to fade.

Fade in the maze of memories

Amidst reflections, shadows, and coffee sediments.

What would happen if we let our hair dance with the air?

53

Weatherwoman

(after Maggie Smith) Mary Collins

The forecast for this life

is floods through the desert; is

an ice-cube melting, awfully short;

is meditations on a scorched pine. Still, though,

the outcome is uncertain. In this pack of chattering optimists, I am the worst one. I stand like a flamingo, one-footed, to keep my good eye on the clouds. To keep this unbridled, wild place tucked away from harm. I fight the forecast with my

own self-interest. I want my children

to breathe clean, canopied sun; to live life

in calm, unfiltered places. I want to know the world is

full of people living and fighting—scraping up the short time that they have. The outcome is uncertain, and the fight is rigged. It’s hard to count the claims I’ve

seen crumble, the parachutes lost. But each time the shortened

coast sags we still carry water to the sand, saying Take this. It’s mine.

54

Perched on the Edge of Two Worlds Hafsa Ahmed

55

Palimpsest

Bhrigu Bhatra

Night alone end of July with monsoon rain pounding into caustic dirt of garden

next door St. Bernard asleep belly fur sodden

as I slip back onto footmarked marble floors, home alone after a journey spent reading half asleep

the flavor of the words tumbling through my drowsy mouth foreign but more natural to my tongue, leaving smoothly replaced by native articulation unheard in this sound of storm rain pouring

above my shuddering mortal frame soon asleep in the dusty dark roaring rain quieting dreams and voices

comforted by smell of old incense in the walls, burning awake in time for a crack in the morning clouds inking their edges and the sky a light lavender

temple bells and rhythms of a dead verdant language through the sound of a quiet rain still falling

56

Is That All There Is? Rayna Li

India ink, china markers, charcoal and collage on wood panel

57

Hangover Day in Kathmandu Chiran Raj Pandey

Ought to have stayed in bed. What a mistake, he thought, as the students lined up in front of the bus. The bus driver looked angrily back through the rear mirror. Your lives in my hands. Oh, shut up, he said to himself,

counted the students, smiled unwillingly and felt his cheeks hardening as

if they were cement, signaled to the driver, and sat right at the front of the

bus, which rumbled with his empty belly and, left signal, then got onto the road.

Was it too bright to be early morning? On the way to Kathmandu the

roads were lined with the cut-off insides of brown-and-black hills looking like the cross-sections of muscular systems in children’s anatomy

books. Streets were empty save for a few trucks which had to have been traveling since late last night. Paranoid at the sight of these trucks, he thought, remembering one that had rammed into a small car and two

motorbikes on Satdobato a few years ago. Driver had been driving for

thirteen hours without a break, just cigarettes and loud music. White noise from Satdobato traffic must have put him to sleep. The two riders of the

motorbikes had both died. Spot death. Newspaper reporting. Crowd had

gathered and no space for the ambulances to come through. He imagined running through the throng, shouting at the mouth-open passersby, you

have no sense of compassion or respect, what are you doing, ambulance trying to enter, look, ambulance, people dying. Lights, camera, ughction.

Last night was gone like nobody’s business. Four am when he got back

home. Six when he left for this damned bus. Would rather have slept early and pretended to be together on this trip. Happy and smiling and singing, sitting back and talking to the lonely kids who looked out the window

58

the whole way, much better that than the putrid mess he now was.

Nausea, the way the bus moved, as if nothing could stop it, as if there

wouldn’t be a crater in the road only two-hundred meters from where they were. Cause of current state: overconsumption of alcohol. Symptoms.

Diagnosis and prognosis both bad. Advice: home to sleep, recommended half-a-year of sleep in bathtub with water running, will allow hydration through osmosis while ensuring cleanliness (forget not to add soap).

Bump in the road. Ooof. Sounds like an orchestra tuning in there. Just

noise. Sleep. Eyes closed. Sleep. Make sure none of the kids puke. Each their own plastic bag. Just do your business, chuck it out of the window.

Make sure no motorbikes underneath. Ooof.

Topic of the debate at Kalanki Vidhya Ashram: Nepal can only be

developed when all its citizens are fully educated. His students were OPPOSING THE MOTION, and here they were, eager on this ugly Saturday morning to please teachers and parents and grab their

certificates of participation, seated around the table, happy that they

could come for school-work dressed in outdoors clothing, excited for the chicken-roast dinner Principal had promised them if they win the debate.

All ready. Good morning everyone, welcome to KVA, we are gathered here on this fine morning … Better for it to be a funeral. Children’s squeaky voices plus English in a single tone – no inflections, Nepali style – and

fake sincerity, fourteen-year-old skirt-wearing-girls and suit-wearing-boys, gender roles (TICK). Kathmandu kids with better English, he thought, how amazingly untrue. One thing his students might feel better about tonight.

Whether they win or not. Hope they get the roast dinner regardless.

For-the-motion began. Mahatma Gandhi said … (he groaned) the pen is

mightier than the sword. Misattributed quote. Picked up from Facebook?

Good research. Education is our weapon to fight the fiends. Yes, we get it. Great debate, let’s move on. Opposition, his students, one of

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the younger ones who was smarter than all the others began: What do we mean by education? she asked. Is education only attained in the

classroom? If the answer is yes, then I am hundred percent disagree

with the motion that says education is the key to development in our

country. But for well-develop country we need all type of education, not

just formal education like in our school and university. Plumber also need

education, driver also, cleaner, seller, all need their own type of education.

My opponent argued that education is important, but they only talk about school education. In fact we should expand the meaning of education.

All people need education but not the same type of education. Good, he

thought, as applause went through the house and landed at the girl’s feet: she picked it up gently and smiled a gentle smile. Humble. She knows

what to do. Would be better if she could have spoken in Nepali. He had

heard her talk. Measured anger in her voice during the lesson about social evils in social studies class (he allowed his students to talk in Nepali even in the English classes). That kind of language, the language she had,

could destroy every other person here, student or teacher (a KVA teacher stood at the back of the debate hall, his body convex toward the sitting audience, tracing the beautiful round shape of his rice belly. His face

looked disturbed, his thumbs banged impatiently against the side of his fist. Time for snacks soon).

Soon it was clear that they were the winners. He relaxed a bit. Time

had passed since the achy hangover morning. Snacks came and went, he didn’t touch it (noodles in a plastic bag, ketchup passed around in a reused plastic water bottle like sick dancing in a heavy wind). One

student from the opposing team came to pay his respects: the student,

Hemanta, had recognized him from an earlier debate session, two months ago, when after the match Hemanta (Hemu as his friends called him, oh, terrible name when the respectful “ji” followed it) came and told him: I

am actually your relative. He had feigned surprise; he knew, of course:

60

his father’s step-uncle’s daughter’s son, in the ninth grade at KVA. (The

morning before his mother had called him just to tell him that. No hellos.

Just that: your younger cousin brother goes to that school.) How is aunty? he asked Hemanta and looked pleased to hear that she was doing well.

Talkative child. What do you teach, how long have you been teaching,

what about your wife, you are not married?, are you planning (had aunty put him up to this?). This time, knowing what was coming, he looked in

Hemu’s direction and, walking close enough to say hi to him, walked right past and met the bus driver, who was skulking in the corner, an extra bag of noodles in his hand. For later.

Still hadn’t eaten. Just enough water to keep him awake. Hungry acids mixed in his stomach and rose through his mouth as hangover stench.

The chicken roast dinner was cancelled: Principal called to tell him that

they had not planned for the team to win, he should announce dinner for another day. He hung the phone and swore loudly, then looked to check

if his students were anywhere close. No. All safely on the bus. He waved at them and they waved back. The bus, framed by sunset’s dying light,

trembled in the light breeze that met him across the school’s parking. His eyes burned with longing for rest.

61

The Sails

Amna Al Ameri

62

For my Grandmother Emily Broad

Introduction Michael’s skeleton lies unaccompanied, Save the centipedes that form colonies, In places of death

Adjacent to New Jersey’s highways When I partook in Kriah

I understood that tearing the coal ribbon

Would provide you solace in last year’s bloodless February “Blessed are You, Adonai Our God, Ruler of the Universe, the True Judge.”

You extend your grief to abandoning your home, The only constant of my childhood.

This is an attempt to inscribe its memory on a headstone

I. Kitchen In simmering summers, I sat with Mister Michael On barstools made of the legs of men While my siblings were forced From my Mother’s womb

A decade passed since I last saw

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Peaches and pears fermenting in Jars on the mahogany shelf

Where has the powdered lemonade gone?

I long for the smell of your husband’s cooking

II. Guest Bedroom At night after Thanksgivings and Christmases You tucked us into bed,

Thirty tiny toes protruding from the covers Michael’s ghost-like presence never gave embrace I knew he was waiting for you To slip out of the room

III. Your Bedroom The indents inlayed on your spongy floor Grasped at my foot soles

When playing hide-and-seek I entered the closet of tigers and palms To hide amongst dancing pant legs In a reenactment of Narnia

As I waited for Mister Michael’s arm Now decayed to uncover me

Grandma, my memory is bright

64

When I recall the crystalline obelisks Of your clip-on earrings

And you gifting me a four-leaf clover brooch Did I strip you of your luck?

These moments are replaced by the smell of death, Final streams of blood flowing through channels, As you held him while his body Incinerated itself from The inside out.

Conclusion So, as I stood there in late winter,

I watched our families come together To bury the body of a man That I barely knew

But I do know that he loved model cars, Cooking on Yom Kippur,

Dissecting himself and dishing it out In the smallest doses to others.

But, most of all, he loved you.

65

Zaisu

Arthur de Oliveira

The interest of a chair is a specific choice.

Correctional posture a

pop up advertisement

on the neck.

The price of a chair: unique. color camouflaging

with modern.

A habit of consumerism gives

distance rubber band qualities.

Printing a shade’s texture on skin,

but a limited surface area is only available. the weight holds on bad habits. correction with no legs

putting nasal nothingness into post nasal

nothingness. the result is on the carpet floor.

66

There are four-five options

240 discounted chair into finding about a new word:

chair.

67

Machines at Work Zain Raef

68

god of none

Nur’aishah Shafiq

Immortal ape, god of New Religion,

weep not. This is what you wanted— a faith of faithlessness, to forsake fellow man.

now You stand alone, a kingdom of One.

This barren world your altar; Eden is dead.

Gone is the ice, behold absent forests and ashen skies.

Urban metropolis and brilliant slum are but

skeletal memories underwater, a ghostly homecoming.

The progeny of Atlantis, brethren of

submerged Tuvalu, drowned Kiribati— Your real estate empire.

Evening stroll through hallowed ground, of death yard abound.

Your tears water the bones of Gen Z’s unborn,

bleached white by harsh heat of sun, spooled in by Your Almighty Indifference --

You’d teeter on Inferno’s border,

forever chasing empty standard.

But You are god now --

highest among high in this wretched thing You call Earth.

but still You cry. why?

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Your divine sorrow cannot resurrect.

Lazarus has no place in this world: a world of water and sun.

Of seas bloated with the corpses of cities, sunken futures in their billions;

the land scarred by human hands tempting, goading Planetary Armageddon; unleashed.

protesting bodies protecting life were Your false prophets.

.. ... .... OgoniNine#NoDAPLGuajajaraGuardiansChipkoAndolan .... ... .. predictions, projections truths unheeded.

But blessed black gold,

those veins of celestial enterprise; Markets. Markets. Markets.

They are yours now, those black fountains

spewing forth, Tartarean, all the wealth of Hades— Yours.

so rejoice deity,

in your resources.

Gone too are the cannibals,

playing civilization in platinum suits, GDP their only shrine of worship.

I know You were no flesh eater, but You let them run free, gorging on Gaia and her children until their bellies swollen

70

burst corrupt blood, drowning followers and victims both— leaving only You,

immortal ape, new god.

You courted this solitude, lonely religion,

when You stayed Your blade,

whilst Your fellow man took arms and lost.

Live, alone now,

if such hollowness can be deemed life.

71

‫تفضل‬

Luis Carlos Soto

72

Maternal Instincts Tan Tzy Jiun

My mother phones to tell me that my sister’s friend fell off a building

because she attempted bungee jumping without an umbilical cord. Did

she like the view, I ask. This is no laughing matter, and can you please buy me that key tracker from Amazon because I have started to lose things.

She tells me that she has started buying things in pairs. Phone chargers, insurance, rice bags, pants—in which case there were two pairs—and

soap bars. She starts repeating her sentences so that they come in pairs, too. And then her voice breaks into two. My two mothers then ask if I

had eaten, if I still talk to my ex, if I know where their car is parked, if blue

comes after green, if grief is sad or joyful, if wars are over forever, if I need new underwear.

I offer my hands in response. They check my every finger. Don’t fret, there are still two of them. But worrying is an art that mothers master. Come

home, they plead, tugging at the phone cord. I go torso-first. The flights are all paid for. No stranger is rude. I wake up in her bed. Find that she has been sleeping for a long time.

73

Her Sunny Disposition Fatema Al Fardan

74

21

Dominique A. Joaquin

My father will never understand.

21 I don’t usually write long posts like this, but since today is a pretty special day I thought now would be a good time. For 21 years, I’ve been loved and taken care of. For 20 years, 6 months, and 3 weeks, my dad took care of me. I will never be ungrateful for that. But I have had enough.

Every family has its problems and I wouldn’t air out dirty laundry if I wasn’t desperate. I am. I am desperate to be heard. So here goes nothing.

A week ago my dad shouted aloud that we (my mom and I) are no longer

anything to him. I wish I could say that hurt me, but we’ve been nothing to

him for a long time now. We were accessories, designed to make him look good. Everything, shoes, clothes, jewelry ... held a hefty weight over our

shoulders. Such gifts meant: smile, look nice, act nice, “ look at what I ’ve given you and be grateful for it.” And accompanied by Facebook posts,

every photo, like, comment, and smile pushed the two of us further into a

tiny corner. We lived in a box, where neither of us could move. And I could only leave when I had to go for uni. We live in that box right now. And I have had enough.

When people, especially those that have known me for a long time, ask

me how things are, I say I ’m okay, we ’re okay, we’re happy. Because if

material objects made people happy, then I should be. I have everything I need and really, I have most things that I want.

75

It’s not like everyone needs to know that to get money to go grocery

shopping, my dad gives my mom the dirtiest look, as if asking for five

hundred or a thousand pesos was the worst thing she could do. Or that when mom and I ask him where he’s been, he snaps and asks us “Why do you care?”

My mom is a housewife. She raised me, cooks for me, does my laundry,

and she asks for nothing in return. I’ve been a very spoiled and loved only child. Everyone who knows my mom knows she’s a good person. I don’t have to say it, but I feel like I have to. Because I know he’s told other people that she isn’t.

Countless times have I heard people tell my mom: “Why don’t you just

get a job and get out?” I’ve said that to her too. But whenever my mom

goes out to get a job, or even when she worked at home online, my dad

takes his seat at the dining table, with an angry look on his face and asks “Where’s breakfast/lunch/dinner?” and if it’s there but it isn’t “fresh,” he clicks his tongue and says “Ba’t hindi mainit?” (Why isn’t it hot?) “Mas

inuuna pa niya yung trabaho niya keysa pamilya niya.” (She’d rather put

her job first rather than her family.) But then he’d also complain that mom doesn’t help with finances. How is she supposed to work under these circumstances?

If I explained all of this to my dad’s face, he would say that I only defend

her because I’ve been brainwashed. But who does my mom have left if I don’t defend her?

A week ago he said this: “You take what your mom says like it’s the word of God.”

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When I confronted him a few weeks ago he didn’t look at me, he looked at her. When I gave my reasons for being angry with him, he laughed

in my face as if my concerns were nothing. When I cried he told me to

cut the drama, because of course, a woman’s tears are just that, to add drama. hey aren’t because she is sincerely hurt, or that she’s frustrated

because you talk over her and refuse to look or listen to her. I have never felt so disrespected, disregarded, and completely and utterly helpless until then.

Fall semester of Junior year, I told a professor about my family problems.

I had to, because I had, at first, wanted to write a story about it for my

capstone, my final undergraduate project. I told them I wanted to tell a

story based on my mother’s life. But I couldn’t even summarize it to the professor without breaking into tears. That professor told me then that underneath all my tears, they felt a really strong sense of anger.

I am angry, I am frustrated. And I don’t expect anyone to fix my problems, I don’t expect this will get my dad to listen. In fact, I don’t expect anyone to change their opinion of him. I have lived most of my life, smiling and

accepting all the praise my dad gets. I am used to being told to “Get over

it” that “He doesn’t mean it.” Because he’s good to others, he’s good to everyone around him. Because he’s good to them, I’m supposed to just

take it. I’m supposed to accept that this is the way things are. That no one

will ever think I have it bad because “your dad is such a smart and good person.”

But in all 21 years of my life, I have never heard my dad say a sincere

apology to anyone. A sincere “Sorry.” I have never even seen him type it

out to someone in a text. And that’s all I have ever wanted. “Sorry.” But I know I’ll never get it, and it’s not worth begging for, not anymore.

77

I don’t know how to end this. I guess I just wanted people to know

because I’m tired. It’s exhausting to keep up this facade. And for what?

For who?

Now that I’m 21, I’m supposed to be an adult. I can finally pry open the

box I’ve been stuffed into... and when I finally get out, I want to be able to take my mom’s hand and pull her out of it. I want to do the best with my

life and achieve bigger things. And I want it to be my own achievements.

Not because I’m the daughter of Mr. Bob.

I refuse to be an accessory, to be the kind of daughter whose smiles and

“love” is bought by expensive things. I refuse because my mom deserves better than to be told that she should have just married a tricycle driver.

I refuse to let someone terrorize me with their words, be it by text or

vocally. I refuse to let someone believe that money has that kind of power over anyone, especially their own child.

Love isn’t bought. Trust isn’t purchased. And my mom deserves better than this. We both deserve better.

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Memories I

MĂĄtĂŠ Hekfusz

Memories are the faculty of the mind by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved.

They are the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing actions perceived.

By definition.

The real mind is more like a patchwork.

A collage.

Highlights of the past collected by an Absent-minded janitor,

Randomly picking apart a montage.

Sifting through dusty corners of the conscious.

Yet it also is something constant: a lifeline, An unbroken stream of self, pure and Sublime.

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Song of the Sunny Pass 阳关曲 Rayna Li Book and glue

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Curfew Luis Carlos Soto

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The Renowned Orders of the Night (at the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain) Meg Nakagawa Hoffmann

For the first time in my life, I looked into a painting and saw the truest reflection of myself, one even more accurate than that in a mirror. I

understood in that moment the beauty of my loneliness and the depth of the endless emptiness in which I felt trapped.

Anselm Kiefer, The Renowned Orders of the Night, 1997

I was seventeen years old when I took my first solo trip. I was visiting my sister who at the time was studying in Madrid, and I decided to take a

few days for myself to explore other parts of the country. It had been my

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dream since I was fourteen to visit the Guggenheim in Bilbao, so with the little money I had saved from my part-time jobs, I booked the cheapest flight and hostel I could find and spent a few days in the quaint city of Bilbao.

As I stepped off the plane, I was immediately consumed by the beauty

of it all. Quietly resting on El río Nervión, enclosed by green hills, tucked

under the blue spring sky. For a moment I had forgotten that I was just a teenage girl, alone, in a completely new city.

Using my broken Spanish, I managed to get directions to a bus that took me to the city center. I got off at the wrong stop, and, lost in the city, I

wandered through unknown streets until I reached my hostel, at the end

of a dark narrow alley. “What have I gotten myself into?” I thought, looking at my surroundings. Fortunately, the hostel was brand new and the host

greeted me warmly. I quickly checked in and dropped my things off, and set out for the city again.

With no particular itinerary in mind, I fumbled through the streets of

Stumbled upon this view from an empty park at the top of the hill

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Bilbao, walking past countless cafés and kiosks, observing the people hurrying to their next location. Eventually I stopped at a little bar and

enjoyed some tapas while sipping on bitter coffee, trying to ignore the stares from people who could tell I was in foreign territory.

I walked up hills and stumbled into empty neighborhoods, crossed bridges and found small art galleries. Each street led me to a new

location, deeper into the city, closer to something or somewhere. I forgot I was alone. It didn’t even cross my mind that I had spent the entire day speaking solely to strangers. It was as if I knew that I had come on this

trip searching for an answer. “Search for the answer in the unanswerable,

find an explanation in the unexplainable,” I told myself, and wrote it down in my notebook so as not to forget.

The next day I found it.

For years I had dreamt about the day when I would visit the Guggenheim

Bilbao. The next day, the rose, guarded by Jeff Koons’s Puppy sculpture, came to life. I lacked the ability to express in words the emotions that overwhelmed me. I felt starstruck. Having studied the architecture of

Frank Gehry for so long, the building felt even more alive and spectacular in person. But it wasn’t the building that made me feel what it was I had come here to feel. It was a specific painting.

My body and heart came to a fullstop when I stood in front of The

Renowned Orders of the Night. The large painting took most of the wall on one side of the room in the Guggenheim. The night sky was painted as if it were made to suck you into its darkness. You could feel the

unbearable weight of emptiness as it rested on the man’s chest. One

breath wasn’t enough to take it in. For the first time in my life, I looked into a painting and saw the truest reflection of myself, one even more accurate

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Gehry designed the museum so that it takes on the shape of different forms from different angles. From down the street, the museum resembles a rose guarded by the Puppy sculpture by Jeff Koons

than that in a mirror. I understood in that moment the beauty of my

loneliness and the depth of the endless emptiness in which I felt trapped.

Everything was calling me to be in that room at that very moment,

looking at that very painting. For the first time I understood the difference between being alone and being lonely.

The painting reminded me of a phone call between my father and me a few weeks earlier. “I feel so empty,” I told him, “and I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what it is that I’m missing.” I remembered the tears on my face as I spoke to him. It was around this time that my

depression was taking a turn for the worse. I could not find joy in anything that I did, and I woke up many mornings feeling completely and utterly

empty. The painting brought back all of those emotions, but somehow, it all made sense to me. That emptiness inside of me no longer felt meaningless.

I was reminded that navigating through one’s teenage years is sticky and confusing. As Robertson Davies, one of my favorite authors, put it in his novel Fifth Business, “Youth is such a terrible time! So much feeling and

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so little notion of how to handle it!� Amidst the stress and depression, I had lost a sense of who I was as a person. I felt that the only thing that defined me was this feeling of emptiness, which seemed to follow me everywhere I went.

Sometimes the intolerable weight of loneliness becomes too much. It

consumes us, and we feel so lost in that dark void that we forget to see the beauty that lies deep within it. The painting was a strange reminder that these feelings are what make up who we are and how we are.

Sitting along the wall that overlooked the NervioĚ n, sun setting in the

distance and casting a warm orange glow onto the Guggenheim, I let everything slowly sink into place as I was enveloped by the scenery

around me. I still struggle to immerse myself in beauty. Beautiful moments

make me feel empty. But I look forward to the day they will make my heart full.

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7:28 pm in Bilbao that strange period of limbo in your consciousness between the physical and the emotional the abstract the objective and the subjective the void where words fail and emotions fail and the only form of expression is art

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Many Wishes Wilder Worrall

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Bracelet

(Inspired by Mai Al-Nakib’s Short Stories) Sarah Afaneh

June 1970

This will be a love story. Or it was supposed to be.

It starts with unpacked boxes, the smell of new furniture and home-

cooked meals filling the small apartment. New year, new city. But this city, unlike the three before it, came with reminiscence of home, of a culture

that Mariam had familiarized herself with from afar. It would become a hub of intimacy, of growth, of love—one that, in twenty years, Mariam would regret choosing to leave.

Amman was famous for its shawarma, at least in Mariam’s eyes, for that was her first memory in this new city, her first memory with Khaled. The first of many, listed in a note written in 1972, one that lived in a jewelry box on her desk. The memories that came after, ending in 1976, were

noted in the front of her journal, and moved from one journal to another with her. A parallel list was tucked into the small pocket of his uniform,

reminding him of a world beyond trenches, a world where he fell in love.

They met in a classroom, math. Or English? They fought over which

was true, but they would soon realize, those details didn’t matter. They

remembered the ones that did, or they tried to—the way she fiddled with

her fingers when nervous, the dimple in his cheek and the anxious look in his eyes, the slight brush of their arms against one another.

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A cute guy in my math class. His name is Khaled. He sat two

desks in front of me. Showed me around the school with a few other people. Sat with their group of friends at lunch too.

Uneasy anxiety diminishing. Familiarity sinking in. New normals.

Feels like it could be home. Mama seems to enjoy being around her family too, and she’s joined a few art classes. Baba’s at

work most of the time, but we’ve been exploring Amman—

downtown, Rainbow Street, Petra and Jerash this weekend!

Dead Sea soon!

Two months into school. Khaled went back and forth, unsure as to

whether or not to ask her out. Will she say yes? Will it be awkward if she says no? Quick glances and slight smiles. Thighs touch, then fingers.

His favorite color was blue. Lunch together became routine. She loved chocolate. She fiddled when nervous. He contained his nerves a bit better, but his eyes always gave him away.

Three months in. He asked. She said yes. A sigh of relief from both

of them. Smiles of young happiness. Memory of the question ran in

Mariam’s mind, details to be decided. Counting down the days. Two

weeks, nine days, three. White jeans paired with a flowy top and Nikes.

Too informal?

Shawarma downtown. Ice cream followed. Fingers interlocked. Walks on the beach. Blurry fragments of the rest of the night. Slowed down when his hands traced the sides of her face, her arms right above his hips, noses flirted with one another before lips finally met.

Memory unfading.

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June 1972

This will be a love story. It was.

Captured in a photograph, two young lovers on a couch, sitting with

fingers interlocked. A week after their wedding. Now: shattered glass

on Mariam’s living room floor. New boxes packed, slipped through her

mother’s fingers, vision blurred from tears. Mariam remembers the story of that photo; her father told it several times.

The frame on Mariam’s desk stared back at her, a photo of her, Khaled, and other friends taken at an ice cream parlor in the city. An image of

childhood and new beginnings and love and future, all a foreign world now. One she would never know again.

Shattered glass and broken memories, ice cream on a hot

summer day. Home was good, I think. I wish I knew. I wish I

saw. I wish I knew. Why? Morning filled with stomach-aching laughter, affection and intimacy in a newfound home. Home torn apart that same day. Left and never came back, no

contact, leaving objects behind to quickly be stacked into

boxes and stored away. Occupation of objects over a land

stolen by the departed. Photos and old trinkets, can I even call him my father? I wasn’t aware that was just a temporary label.

Memories of the last time I saw him replay at night, his face

turning, an apologetic look in his eyes I was yet to understand, the birthmark on his neck the last thing I saw of him.

Permanently on him, temporarily in my memory.

Shouting over dinner. I thought it was just another hot summer day. Fighting was rare in our family. A war in a foreign land, yet

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it was closer than I realized. I should’ve known. I wish I knew.

Why?

Mariam looked down at the bracelet that sat on her wrist, questioning her belief in the temporary, in the changeable.

She walked away from shattered glass, past a photo that would sit on that desk for years to follow, accompanied with a jewelry box and a

note, and down the long stairs of her apartment building, out to the busy streets filled with yellow taxis and loud honking. Sounds of newfound comfort, making her way through the streets to meet Khaled.

Memories of comfort—their first anniversary. May 1971. Young, pure

love. Simple. A moment of silence amidst piercing sounds elsewhere.

Recovery. A picnic, turkey and cheese sandwiches, a cool breeze, her favorite chocolate.

Pictures of them—one of them caught amidst laughter, one smiling at the camera and her favorite, the one with him kissing her cheek—framed in three white boxes atop one another: her gifts to him.

For her, a small blue jewelry box, wrapped with a silver ribbon. In between the box and the ribbon lies a small envelope, a handwritten note tucked

inside. And in that box, a bracelet: two small circles—the outer blue and

the inner silver with gold specks, shaped like a flower—with one blue dot in the middle, representing hope amidst the fallen buildings and houses aflame.

Mariam’s family was not one that believed in superstition—her mom

would call a bracelet protecting one from bad luck nonsense. Regardless,

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and without knowing if she truly believed in it either, Mariam only took that bracelet off once, on the longest day of summer in 1976, and never again.  

June 1976

This will be a love story. Until it isn’t.

It happened quickly. Letters arrived. Whispers spread across the city, rumors merged with official news, then alas the King spoke. Painful

confirmation. Reality, then dreams, then back to reality. One month turned

into a week into a day an hour a minute. Conscription. Required. Uniforms in the mail, names ingrained, sewn with purpose. A war in a foreign land.

For them, a war of love. A war in a land that seems foreign, turning a

familiar man into a foreign memory. A bracelet left behind, inscriptions of hope that he eventually lost, and perhaps she did too.

Longest day of summer, the longest period of pain, longest goodbye, longest love. Frantic fingers interlocked, one last goodbye.

Khaled stood by the door. Mariam stood at the other end of the room,

fifty meters between them. Words had already been exchanged, kisses on foreheads by mothers and sisters, pats on the back and parting words by fathers and brothers. All that was left was their goodbye. Words swelled in his throat, the distance between them seemed infinite yet both stood

still, scared to move closer. Mariam took a deep breath, her chest falling and rising, never losing eye contact with him. The clock ticked. She

took the first step, torn between maximizing their last time together and

denying that this would be exactly that, their last time together. Khaled’s feet shuffled towards her, unaware of the tears rolling down his cheeks, no guarantee of a future, no words coming out of his mouth, his breath

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steady. In and out. Forty meters, then thirty quickly. In and out. Mariam

could taste the salt of her tears as they met with her lips. Twenty meters.

In and out. Ten meters, their arms brushing against one another the way the ocean flirted with the shore, with hesitance at first, then all at once.

Memories of their first kiss. Now, their last.

Memories of the last time I saw him will never fade, his face

turning, a loving look in his eyes. Fingers holding on, refusing to let go. Time temporary, pain permanent.

Lost and bearing losses—those are two different things, aren’t they?

words spill on paper trying to make sense of the world surrounding me

the stutters of a heartbeat

a panic attack on the bathroom floor your lips on mine

the sounds of arguments downstairs tears on pillows

the laughter of my mother the tears of my mother my mother’s embrace

bracelet embraces wrist embrace me

put me back together,

for I have become a mosaic abandoned

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Mina

Isabel RĂ­os

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Cuando cantan los cántaros Isabel Ríos

Cuando cantan los cántaros La luna luce más llena,

Como si quisiera besar el horizonte

Para empapar el Atlántico y acariciar tus pies Con besos de espuma y sal.

Cuando cantan los cántaros

Tu aliento cosquillea mi oído y Escucho mi sangre borbollar En la caracola rosa, suave, Enarenada con tu esencia.

Cuando cantan los cántaros

La brisa me trae tu perfume,

Tus partículas bailan con aquellas de Un café recién tostado Tirado al sol sonriente.

Cuando callan los cántaros Es cuando cierro mis ojos,

Que triste es no soñar contigo al dormir Por eso me quedo despierta Al son de la arcilla y el agua.

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When The Pitchers Sing

Translated from Spanish by Isabel RĂ­os

When the pitchers sing

The moon appears fuller,

As if it wanted to kiss the horizon

To soak the Atlantic and caress your feet With kisses of salt and foam.

When the pitchers sing

Your breath tickles my ear and I hear my blood bubbling

In the pink and soft seashell, Sanded with your essence.

When the pitchers sing

The breeze brings me your scent,

Your particles dance with those of Freshly roasted coffee

Lying under the smiling sun.

When the pitchers grow quiet Is when I close my eyes,

How sad it is not to dream with you when sleeping That’s why I stay awake

To the sound of clay and water.

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White

Melika Shahin

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‫نسيت‬

Bana Alamad

‫نسيت طعم العدس‬ ‫وصوت األذان‬ ‫ورائحة الياسمين‬ ‫نسيت معنى العطاء‬ ‫وقوانين الناس‬ ‫واألساطير‬ ‫نسيت جزءا ً من نفسي‬ ٍ ‫في‬ ‫بلد ليست بلدي‬

I Forgot

Bana Alamad

Translated from Arabic by Lina Elmusa

I forgot the taste of lentils

and the sound of the azan and the odor of jasmine

I forgot what it means to give and people’s regulations and legendary tales

I forgot a part of who I am

in a country that is not mine

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Serenity

Zain Raef

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Constitution

(Inspired by Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book) Sarah Afaneh

Things that make your fingers shake. Presenting your work in front of

a class full of intellectuals. Talking to your parents about the decisions you are foolishly making in your life. Making those decisions with the

knowledge that your parents disapprove. A boy with a lopsided smile. The feeling in your stomach when your fingers brush against his. Making eye contact the morning after.

On a cool night when you are on a date with a stranger, be sure to cross your legs, it will stop him from realizing how nervous you are.

Things that make you feel homesick. The smell of oud. Two kids playing

tag in a park. A restaurant in the city that serves molokhia. Grilled cheese and tomato soup. Jasmine-scented perfume. Red lipstick.

On a particularly hot morning, you will make tea with mint and eat it with falafel and hummus and zaatar and warm bread.

Your heart will feel at ease. Tears of happiness and sadness alike will tint your cheeks.

Things that make your heart beat faster. Roller-coasters. Flirting with

a stranger. Ordering a drink at a bar, underage. Driving at 120 km/hr.

Looking into the eyes of your lover before you kiss him. Tip-toeing around the kitchen so as to not wake his roommates up.

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Things that you should never reveal. How nervous you truly are as you

lie intertwined with your lover. Self-doubt in your ability to please. Do not shed a tear in front of anyone, especially not your parents. If you wear

tight shirts to accentuates your curves, be sure that it conceals your fat.

Do not talk about yourself too much. Or your family. Private life should stay private.

Repulsive things. A man with an ego. A girl who competes with other

girls. The smell of oud. Fathers. Male relatives. Raw fish. Boys who fail to communicate. Assumptions. Cultural expectations. Messy bedrooms.

Incomparable things. The smile on your parents face as you walk on

stage at graduation. The smell of your boyfriend’s cologne clinging to

your sweater. The bracelet tied to your wrist, a gift from your best friend.

Waking up to a clear sky and the sound of chirping birds.

Moving things. A car speeding on the airport highway. Leaves rustling off

of branches in the crisp autumn. The amount of love your heart can hold.

Tears falling down your mother’s cheeks during your parents’ separation.

Rapid changes; from modest to revealing, from sober to drunk, from faith to disbelief.

On a breezy morning when you are surrounded by a family of your own, sitting on a round breakfast table, make sure you

share the stories of your past. Reveal the realities of being a

teenager, a life of experimentation. Do not silence your kids the way your parents silenced you.

Awe-inspiring things. How small babies’ feet are. The image of your

husband rocking your newborn to sleep. Writing articles about women’s

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rights and sexuality and religion. Wearing a tight black dress and a new pair of red heels.

A woman should never wear bright nail polish. She should never look

trashy. Wear skirts; not short enough to be a slut but not long enough to

be a prude. Appearance is impression. Beauty is pain. Standards are set.

Do not text first, wait for him to.

A car should never go over 120 km/hr. Wear your seatbelts. Be sure to

keep your lights on. Study all day. Sleep 8 hours a night. Eat one fruit a day. Go to the gym. Do not have more than one cup of coffee. Drink 3

liters of water. Choose respectable friends. Participate in extracurriculars.

Maintain good bonds with Professors.

A student should never smoke weed. Only beggars do that. Drink for

leisure. Never out of sadness. Alcohol is no place for tears. Travel to new

places. Adventure is not the same as risk-taking. Fall in love. Be weary of men. Do not pull all-nighters. Do not binge eat. Pressures are pressures, deal with them. Counseling is not okay. Private life is private life.

A boy should never cry. Built with strength, tall and composed. He is

allowed to participate in leisure but needs to know when to be serious.

Boys will be boys, but when it is time to be a man there is no turning back.

One chilly night, you will wake up next to a woman you love,

and you will reassess the gendered life you have thus far lived.

And you will want to cry.

Desert. Wadi Rum. Sand will get in your shoes. Walk barefoot. Ride a

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quad bike. Sand can be messy; don’t wear white. Wear sunscreen. And a hat.

At night, a dancer will perform and tea will be poured and dates will be eaten.

You will feel alive.

Sea. Dead Sea. Salty waters. Mud masks. Serenity. Sandwiches will be

pre-packed. Sand will be stuck between your toes. Water will burn your eyes. You will laugh about it later.

At night, you will skinny dip and laugh while you do it, forgetting any bodily insecurities you had prior.

You will feel alive.

Park. King Hussein Park. Memories of childhood live there. Swing sets

and slides and sand pits. Cultural events, bands once you are eighteen.

School field trips to the museum nearby.

At night, you will sit on the swings and hold hands with a significant other.

You will feel alive.

Valley. Wadi Aya. Waterfalls and rock climbing. Exhilaration and fear all in one. Water meets sand meets mud. You meet nature.

At night, you will let yourself jump off the side of a cliff into cold waters, and laugh while doing so, surrounded by people you care for.

You will feel alive.

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je ne regrette rien

Muhammad Shehryar Hamid

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Carolina on my Mind Emily Broad

North Carolina is seeping my feet into the coffee water Of wetlands in January

Only to have my toenails plied off

As they are released from rain’s tight grasp It’s sinking my teeth into buckets of fried chicken After sitting in mold-infested trailers, Pseudo-classrooms,

For six unending hours with my friends North Carolina is the vibrations of my lips

Flesh wrapped around the beginnings of sound As my trumpet blasts into a lustrous stadium

And we are all in the formation of a road sign Or the Great Pyramids, Or the state itself.

It’s packing crates of

Flamboyant fruits colored with fire’s brush

Into the back of a truck bed in early March

Just after retiring last year’s Christmas trees

Orange peels and pine needles scattering my bathroom floor It is seven bodies stacked on top of each other In a diner’s lipstick-red vinyl booth,

And it’s four A.M. when we finally receive

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Our stack of waffles,

New-born batter lining their edges North Carolina is my fourth family The generator of my friendships, The site of my first love But it’s also the waiting

The wanting to escape through I-95, And when you finally do,

You crave the Blue Ridge mountains

Swollen and rolling like the bellies of whales

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Exceso de equipaje María José Alonso Pesa la maleta,

carga con la memoria de vuelos perdidos

y con la angustia de no llegar al siguiente.

Bolsas de mano y de insomnio.

Pasé la noche en vela

pensando en el viaje que sigue, y el que le sigue,

y el que vendrá después de ese.

Números de vuelo en la pantallas.

Cuento los días

que voy a pasar en casa.

Más aviones

más aeropuertos

más principiante que nunca.

Cuesta respirar

y no se debe a la diferencia de altura.

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Air Sickness

Translated from Spanish by María José Alonso The luggage is quite heavy, it carries the memories of missed flights

and the anguish of losing another.

Hand bags,

insomnia bags.

I spent the whole night wondering about the next plane,

the one that will come after, and the one after that.

Flight numbers on the screens.

I’m counting the days

I’ll get to spend at home.

More airports

more airplanes

more like a beginner than ever.

It’s hard to breathe

but it has nothing to do with the change in height.

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Tamaki Drive

Katie Paton Glasgow-Palmer

The taste of a pie, the sound of rain

Even the golden-brown curtains, sometimes Remind me of the nights

That little corner by the couch Was ours

Alone at the top of Bastion Point

Walking around Mission Bay under gray skies Even parts of St. Heliers

Reminding me of the first time We laughed and joked

You told stories and we waited

For kebabs and time stood still

A warm night together watching movies When you ever-so-gently touched My arm for the first time

I know that none of this place is yours

You do not have the sole claim to my home But as I am unhinged from my community

As it hibernates studies works cleans sleeps I remember when you were with me Joining me in my private universe My confidante and companion To the point where,

With you, the wind and rain were comfort

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Walking along Tamaki Drive

I feel you in the pit of my stomach Buffeted by the gale

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Departure

Marium Shahzaib Trunkwala

DEPARTURE

September 14, 1933 Farheen

Yesterday was the worst night of my life. It all happened so suddenly. I have been lying on this couch all night and all day, people coming and going, flowers and condolences in and about, but I remain in denial of

Ali’s death. Just yesterday he kissed me on the forehead, just yesterday I ran after him with his forgotten office keys into the garage, just yesterday we enjoyed our favorite daal chawal and palak paneer for dinner. Why did God have to take my Ali away? He was the kindest soul, the best

husband, the most loving father. He did not deserve any of this. Please,

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God, please, let this be a nightmare, bring him back to me.

Please turn back time. Before 7 pm. Before the monstrous heart-attack.

Before the slow rattling gasps. Before Doctor Aslam shook his head and

apologized. “There’s nothing more we can do, I’m sorry.” These words cut right through me, dragging me into the eternal abyss of darkness I am in today. Aren’t doctors not supposed to give up? Aren’t they supposed to know how to save people’s lives?

I don’t want to move, just in case Ali walks through that door. That same charming smile, the strong arms wide open, asking for a hug. I don’t

even know where the children are. God bless the nannies. Oh God, at

least come home for the children, Ali! Qasim is just five, the girls are all

too young. Please come back. If not for me, for the seven little souls, our souls, that you have left behind. I can’t do it without you.

Mr. Bhatt’s been walking in and out of the hospital. He says I can’t handle the business. Qasim is too young. I should put all our money in a trust

and should name him executor of the trust. I understand he’s a lawyer

but there’s a time and place for the bloody English laws. I need time and space to process this loss, a loss I will never recover fr

February 2, 1934 Nadia

I don’t know what to think. Seven children. Two great losses in just

four months. Madam Farheen was the sweetest. We all knew Mr. Bhatt was evil. But who would ever guess that he could actually poison kind

Madam? He’s already taken the land for himself and asked us to move

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out before the end of this week. The poor children don’t even know. Only Qasim and Aisha understand both their parents are dead. It is not fair.

I have talked to all the other ayas. Each have agreed to take one child

into their homes. God knows what will happen to them otherwise. I told

them this is our chance to show how grateful we are to Sir Ali and Madam Farheen. They always took so much care of us. Helped our children get

married. Even helped when Moshin needed leg surgery. The children are

also well-behaved. We have to take the kids away soon. Before someone comes and takes them and then they will never know who their family was and is. We have to leave this mansion and separate the children.

Alhamdulillah, we can afford one child each, we will leave tomorrow morning.

August 13,1947 Qasim

Last week my sisters and ayas celebrated my birthday with a burnt-out matchstick pierced into a gulab jamun’s soft, squishy skin. We had all

lost hope. Last week I turned eighteen. I could now be the legal owner of

the family business of all my siblings, travel to Pakistan together, and live with them. I had applied for the legal documentation the very morning

of my birthday, but still hadn’t got the call to go to receive it. I could hear

Shehnaz crying in her room last night. I caught Aya Marya sobbing in the kitchen yesterday. Everyone knew today was the last train to Pakistan, the last chance for us to escape this bottomless pit of bloodshed and

violence together. Without the money, we would either stay in war-struck

India, or travel to an unknown land with each of our ayas—separated, torn apart, lonely.

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But our prayers were answered this morning. I got a call from the local magistrate’s office that if I collect the documentation within the next

two hours I will be able to catch the last train today with all my sisters.

Writing this now, I am on the way to their office. All our bags are packed.

I have informed all the ayas to bring my sisters to our meeting point at Chandigarh Station Platform 7 in front of the chaiwala at sharp 8pm.

This was meant to be. I cannot believe our luck. I have warned Shehnaz not to move from our meeting point and not to come looking for me but catch the train without me if I don’t return. God forbid.

InshAllah, we’ll be a family again. We’ll be safe just like our beloved

parents would have wanted us to be. I hope I am doing the right thing, being a good elder brother. InshAllah all will be good.

Hopeful.

August 13, 1947 Shehnaz

We stood there for four hours. We did not go looking for Qasim. We did

not move from in front of the chaiwala. Amidst the sweaty kurtas and the

sea of derelict chappals, we watched our friends and our neighbours, our

family and our shopkeepers, clambering on top of the train as if ants on a

pile of sugar. Hundreds. On the verge of spilling, the train sighed as bags, heavier than their owners, were flung over and little children were pushed to the top. Standing there for hours on end, I wondered whether, much

like the departing train, this last chance for us to escape our misery would

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fade right before our eyes, taking along the sprawling children and frantic adults who clutched onto any rail they could grab. But we stood there, stood there as the wait for Qasim shredded our insides.

“Sheni don’t move. No matter what anyone says, don’t move. I’ll get the money and come back to board the train with you all. Take care

of each one of us.” Qasim’s words played over and over in my head like a damaged tape recorder. I tried to block out the train master’s

announcement “Last train for Karachi. Last train.” Bones froze. Blood

thickened. Qasim was everywhere. Every face was his but none of them were.

We were going to Pakistan. All of us. A new life, a new home. Freedom:

we had waited for it in the Raj, we could wait for it till Qasim came back.

9:58 pm. 9:59 pm. With the treadle of the train, the grating, metallic shriek heralded departure. The final departure. Suddenly, it was as if an invisible

hand pushed all of us towards and into the train. We had promised Qasim we would leave if he didn’t come back. Did he run away with the money?

Did he get lost? Did they catch him? Did they kill him? Is he at the station now? Did we leave him all alone?

Finally having found space on the floor of the train, I settled all the sisters and gave them little Yasmin biscuits I found tucked away into one of the backpacks. As I rummaged through the bag for this diary to pour my

emotions onto, my fingertips tightened around something odd, a smooth, crescent-shaped object. It was the rock.

I still remember that evening. The amber glow, the warm sun stroking

our skin. We found our old paint sets while cleaning out our cupboards to make charity boxes. Once the little ones were asleep, we took the

boxes up to the terrace and did what we loved doing when younger—we

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painted rocks. Qasim was always different when it was just the two of us.

He was less stern or uptight, and more relaxed. I guess he had to be that way with the younger ones. He had always been the father figure since Mama and Baba left us.

I remember us sifting through rocks on the rooftop. We lay on our

stomachs and painted each of our rocks while I brought Qasim up to date with the gossip of the mohalla. As the night began swallowing

our shadows, we picked up our little artistic inventions, and entering

the house, we realised the rocks in our hand formed a heart when put

together. Struck by this coincidence, we used a knife to etch the date into our heart. Qasim went first and with a firm hand, engraved the numbers

1 and 9 onto his painted rock. I then imprinted the numbers 4 and 7 onto my rock, following his lead and binding our hearts together.

As I sit on board this jerky train, plunging inch by inch into a world

shrouded by the unknown, I crave for Qasim’s warmth and comfort,

pray for Qasim to magically appear next to me. I don’t know where he is, whether he is alive, or whether he will catch another train by some

miracle, but I do pray, from the innermost crevice of my being, that we are once more bound together because right now, 1947 is the year of splits and the halves of our hearts weep from separation.

February 6,1954 Qasim

Shehnaz. I hope she is well. I hope she is alive. I hope all the others are safe and healthy. I am so sorry. I am so sorry for not making it on time.

I am so sorry for not being a good elder brother and not being able to protect them. I wasn’t there.

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Someone was watching me on the way to the local magistrate’s office.

They had an eye on the money we had saved. As I stepped out of the rickshaw outside the embassy, three motorcycles with masked men

circled around me and kidnapped me. I don’t know where they kept me.

They fed me and Alhamdulillah, they didn’t torture me or beat me up

but just kept the money. I assume they would’ve asked for ransom but

couldn’t find any family so after more than six long years of isolation and misery, they blindfolded me and left me in a small village nearby. I was just freed this morning. First thing I did is write to Shehnaz.

I promise there was not a day I did not pray for them, for their safety and their wellness. I am so guilty for leaving them alone, and horrid thoughts tortured my mind every minute of every day. I do not know where they are. Yes, I wrote a letter but I did not have an address to send it to. I

submitted it to this organization set up to bring together those misplaced and separated during the war. I do not know whether this will ever reach them.

I just pray that somehow, through some miracle, I get in touch with them.

October 17, 1977 Shehnaz

Today the unbelievable happened. For years, I dreamt about Qasim returning back home, I dreamt of these thirty long years being a

nightmare, and I wondered about Qasim, dead or alive, happy or in grief.

Since Mashood and Shahid are getting married next month, I went to the Nazimabad Mithaiwala to get motichoor ladoos for the dholki this week.

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I needed to impress my daughters-in-law and their families, right? I’d

already called Imran at the Mithaiwala two days ago to order fifty boxes of fresh motichoor ladoos.

Anyways, once I reached the till to make the payment, I saw the cashier’s face crunch up into a look of puzzlement. Tracing his gaze, I found him scrutinizing an old passport size photograph stuffed into a transparent pocket in my wallet. It was Qasim’s. My Qasim. “This boy looks so

familiar. What’s his name?” Blood throbbed through my thirty-year-old gaping wounds. “Qasim,” I stammered. “Oh yes, I thought that was

Qasim. And he is your…?” The pronunciation of my Qasim’s name from

some stranger’s mouth made my heart explode in my chest and the hair

on my arm stand upright like soldiers on duty. He saw the shock register on my face before I could hide it and as I slowly nodded my head, his

curious look asked for more details. “He’s my brother.” Shock. Numbness.

The man lived in the same neighborhood as Qasim in India and through

his help, Romana got in touch with Qasim. Tears were absorbed through the phone’s speaker on both ends. Qasim’s voice—manly yet calm and composed—transported me right back to our evening spent painting

rocks, right back to when our hearts fused into one. Snapped into two and shoved in opposite directions, the halves of our hearts wept for decades, forlorn and in wonder of the other.

Now, finally, our hearts will meet again—and even though the paint may

be faded—the year 1947 will return from the dungeon of demise to repair the splinter and create the love and care we desired since the day of departure.

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January 14 1978 Qasim

I have just boarded a plane from India to Jeddah. After weeks of

paperwork and long phone calls, I have arranged a flight to meet my

long-lost sisters. Aisha and Romana have families in Jeddah, so I am

visiting them first. Shehnaz is in Karachi, but because I can’t get a visa

for Pakistan, we are all meeting in Dubai on the 19th. Alhamdulillah, God answered my prayers. I can’t be more grateful.

After thirty long years, we have found our torn-apart hearts and are once again the Ali family.

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