AIRPORT ROAD 12

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

© 2021 Electra Street

Front and Back Cover Design

by Rayna Li

CO-EDITORS

EDITORIAL BOARD

Mary Collins Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha Yasmeen Tajiddin Baraa Al Jorf Tala Asiri Karno Dasgupta Charlie Fong Jana Hossam Jianna Jackson Fiona Lin Price Maccarthy Joanna Orphanide Srinika Rajanikanth Kateryna Yesiyeva

FOUNDING EDITOR

Sachi Leith

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Deborah Lindsay Williams

PUBLISHER

Cyrus R. K. Patell

Issue 12 Winter 2021

CONTENTS Mary Collins, Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha,

and Yasmeen Tajiddin, Introduction....................................................... 7 PROSE AND DRAMA

Angad Johar, Notes from a Funeral............................................................ 15 Fizza Shabbir, Rupture [play]...................................................................... 25 Jianna Jackson, Reflections of He Who Has Done the Unimaginable......... 39 Gentle Ramirez, Waiting on white supremacy to end is waiting for jesus

to return. AKA Death to America.................................................... 42

Jamie Uy, Elegy With a Death Star Inside It................................................ 43 Kaashif Hajee, New York, Interrupted......................................................... 57 Sherry Wu, In Response to Channel #8...................................................... 74 Nada Almosa, Documenting Sanctuary #1................................................. 77 Hamza Kamil, The Deep Meaning of Things............................................... 80 Klethon Gomes dos Santos, Red Root...................................................... 70 Aathma Nirmala Dious, What Haunted the Men on Hamdan Street........... 88 Fizza Shabbir, Lost Word......................................................................... 103

Anonymous, Homecoming: A Journey Home to Myself: An Excerpt......... 108 Gentle Ramirez, Keep Pledging Betrayal.................................................. 122

POETRY Cassandra Mitchell, Adoring Earth............................................................. 11 Nada Almosa, Tickling Games #2.............................................................. 12 Abigail Koomson, Musings........................................................................ 14 Nur’aishah Shafiq, Becoming Jonah.......................................................... 18

POETRY (continued) Mary Collins, Billy Graham’s Wife Stages Her Rebellion.............................. 19 Archita Arun, witness................................................................................. 22 Nada Almosa, Excerpts from Sarah Hegazi’s Letter in Exile........................ 48 Nur’aishah Shafiq, Protest......................................................................... 51 Oscar Bray, Two: A Ghazal......................................................................... 52 Gentle Ramirez, There’s No Such Thing as a Bronx Accent........................ 55 Andrew Riad, Home?................................................................................. 68 Nada Almosa, Documenting Sanctuary #2................................................. 78 Mary Collins, Ars Poetica........................................................................... 82 Naeema Mohammed Sageer, Peter Pan .................................................. 84

Fiona Lin, you were;................................................................................... 87 Fizza Shabbir, Immigrant Speech............................................................. 116 Oscar Bray, Monolinguiosis...................................................................... 117 Maryam Almansoori (translation by Tom Abi Samra), ‫ أين؟‬/ Where?....... 119 Joanna Orphanide, Strain........................................................................ 120

VISUAL Yesmine Abida, Rediscovering................................................................... 10 Pamela Martinez and Emília Vieira Branco, In Front of Us......................... 13 Hannah Greene, To new beginnings........................................................... 17 Nontaporn Silruk, Authenticity.................................................................... 21 Salama Almheiri, The Sunset We Saw That Day........................................ 38 Pamela Martinez, Diasporic Migration........................................................ 47 Pamela Martinez, The revolutionary childhoodness.................................... 50

VISUAL (continued) Cassandra Mitchell, Golden....................................................................... 54 Hannah Greene, Electronic Society............................................................ 56 Pamela Martinez, Embodying the Utopia................................................... 69 Quim Parades, Discover............................................................................ 71 Kyle Adams, Saloon................................................................................... 76 Hannah Greene, Becoming Okay............................................................... 79 Michelle Hughes, I paint pretty things (because it makes me happy).......... 83 Kyle Adams, King of the Fae...................................................................... 86 Nada Almosa, Melting.............................................................................. 102 Baraa Al Jorf, Almost............................................................................... 107 Quim Parades, Snake Vision.................................................................... 118 Michelle Hughes, Structured Saadiyat Sunset......................................... 124

INTRODUCTION We began working on this issue on the heels of the Summer of 2020.

After a summer marked by an overwhelming amount of losses due

to COVID-19 and anti-Black violence across the globe, artmaking felt

small. As we worked remotely with our editorial board, we were forced

to interrogate what art has to offer in the face of loss and violence. How

could art help us survive? How could it help us connect when many of us were separated from friends and loved ones?

The works within these pages reflect the perseverance of art in times of upheaval. Through memoirs and paintings, plays and collages, poems

and photographs, these artists have reminded us of the significance of

creating work in a time when it may feel like nobody is listening. The more we looked over these pieces, the more we became convinced that there is something intrinsically rebellious, even revolutionary, about the act of

artmaking itself. “Revolution” became the unofficial theme of our editorial process, guiding the way that we considered the connections between

these works. Some pieces display this rebellion quite literally, examining the power structures that govern our daily lives. “Strain” juxtaposes

personal reflection with government statements; “Tickling Games #2”

documents the narratives of a refugee camp; “Witness” reminds us that it is “daily acts of resistance” that comprise a revolution. Some pieces

turned to questioning language itself, examining the ways in which the languages we speak (or do not speak) impact our identity.

Other pieces struck us as embodying revolution in that they imagined a different world than the one we live in. In the collage “Rediscovering,”

an astronaut floats in a space between nature and the unknown—white daisies below, retro logos above. A broken couch lies in front of a

dilapidated brick building. A vast expanse of space stretches out above it.

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Is the astronaut tethered to the ground, or are they heading for the stars?

Is this an image of isolation or an image of discovery? By juxtaposing these disparate elements, the collage offers a whimsical challenge to

our preconceived notions of place and meaning. It is surreal yet familiar.

“Rediscovering” is one of several collages within Airport Road 12, each

one reminding us of the transformation that is central to so many artistic processes: the radical act of picking and choosing components in order to create your own artistic world.

This transformation can be seen not only in surreal works of art, but

also in works that focus on the simple beauties of the natural world. In “I paint pretty things [because it makes me happy],” the artist captures the

peaceful beauty of hummingbirds perched on a bird feeder. Both the title and content of this painting suggest that artmaking is valuable for the

sake of aesthetic pleasure itself. This perspective subverts the notion that art must present grand statements or engage with pressing conflicts in

order to be worth making and sharing. Enjoying beauty in and of itself is an act of defiance.

When we finished compiling Airport Road 12, we knew that the issue needed a cover that celebrated the ingenuity and resilience of the

artwork within it. We were fortunate to work with Rayna Li, an incredible designer who brought this vision to life. Rayna describes the cover as a

commentary on limitations and resistance: “I think revolutions necessarily involve confrontations, which is the element I explored in my front

cover design. The red crosses (X) are generally associated with what

is considered wrong or forbidden […] Have I been going too far? Am I

forgetting my manners? How dare I think this? At the same time, it is often the case that with this likely first instinct to self-correct and retreat comes a subtle but stirring urge to resist.”

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We intended this issue to serve as a space for artists in our community

to reflect on the summer through the lens of revolution. In doing so, we

were reminded that art is not frivolous. There should always be space for artmaking, especially when many of the things we know to be true begin to dissolve. When reading this issue of Airport Road, we hope you are

reminded of the power of art to document, process, and reimagine the

world around us. We hope that in reading, you find new understandings of what revolution is and what it means to resist. Most importantly, we hope you find new truths to anchor you as we enter the new year.

Mary Collins

Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha Yasmeen Tajiddin

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Rediscovering Yesmine Abida

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Adoring Earth

Cassandra Mitchell Watch her

you have eternity to do it.

Watch her dosey-doe between Moon and Sun

spinning, skirt flipping, ripping, unending squealing with glee.

Watch how Water and Air wrestle within her tumbling, falling

drawing in and throwing out in

out

a gyre

joyous and violent

The centre always holds.

I said watch her Do you see?

Since the first dawn coming and going

moving and flowing she is a revolution she is a revolution

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April 11, 2019 / Interview with Professor Nasser Isleem Childhood in Refugee Camp Al Aqad Tickling Games #2 Nada Almosa

We used to hunt wasps.

The wasps

play Arabs and Jews

We would look for them

Catch them in a very complicated way In an open dumpster area The wasps

The wasps gather

knock at night

We would take our shoes We go and

our stones

[He slams his palms down onto his office desk] Shoot at them 1.

Hit the wasp

2.

Slowly lift the shoe

Look at them 3.

Look for its needle

Tickling 4.

5.

Remove the needle using a pin Tie it from its leg

The winner is the one with the most living wasps winner

living

I will never forget the games of the camp.

Did you?

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In Front of Us Pamela Martinez and Emília Vieira Branco

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Musings (after The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon) Abigail Koomson

Things that make me feel Cheerful: disturbing

Things that make my heart beat Faster: annoying little things

Here on campus things [that] cannot be Compared: a room

Things that look and sound Ordinary: flowering plants

But become extraordinary when Written: topics of poetry

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Notes from a Funeral Angad Johar

Manmohan Rai Johar, retired fighter pilot and avid golf player, grandfather, leaped onto his barely functioning steel bicycle—rusty knobs and wobbly screws, much akin to his own joints—one December morning, never to come back home …

… and I could already see her, History, smoking an old bidi, standing in

the corner behind his desk, and she was laughing at the all too probable repetition of that other day seventy years ago, that day when ancestors unbeknownst to me hurriedly packed up memory in an old, leaky suitcase, and when …

… and that desk, old and mahogany, had, over the years, become a

reflection of him, as withered pieces of his soul inevitably leaked from all

the orifices of his ageing body, with the cracks in its varnish reflecting the wrinkles on his sagging skin and scattered inkblots rearranged to mirror

its discolorations, and on the very desk where he kept that photograph of Montgomery, a non-place, phantom town …

… ah, the inkblots! I wonder what words they would have been if

they weren’t flicked off of his Russian fountain pen during his many uncontrollable fits of shaking anxiety…

… I’m anxious, tugging at the tufts of my whitening hair, a premature

curse, as my bedridden grandmother wails in mourning, surrounded by her old friends in flowy white salwars, like a confluence of lilies…

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… it was our curse, to live and die, in exile or in escape. And she was

sniggering at me, History. There she stood at the exact spot where he, in his last fit of deliration, decided to find his way back to a non-home that lay beyond razor fences and border security forces, skies overcast with

bullet fire, when they left the door open and the table set. I’m left with the

remnants of his memory, scattered in a room, whispering to me a tongue I don’t understand …

Manmohan Rai Johar, survivor of Partition, was heard calling out the

names of friends he hadn’t seen in seventy years, his eighty-three-yearold body trembling as his bicycle sputtered along.

He never saw the truck.

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To new beginnings Hannah Greene Acrylic on paper with collage elements from magazines and brochures

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Becoming Jonah Nur’aishah Shafiq

Your first thought is that it is cold. Not: they really were right and you

really can swim through the arteries of a blue whale—they’re that big. Not: fuck, this is a terrible crazy idea and you’re going to die you mad fool.

You think neither of these things. But that you are cold, your fingertips already crystal, feeling almost cheated as you skinny dip towards the

heart. You expected warmth, coral-stained waters gilded with moonlight

and shadowed by palm fronds. It is summer after all and you seek release from your skin. But the whale is all silver rapids caked with ice; you, no

more graceful than a child sloshing through a tube slide. It is lonely here,

the lovely creature shuddering from your touch as it dies from the wound

you left behind. You didn’t mean to hurt, you never mean to hurt, but here

you are again, loathe to abandon the water park, abandoned all the same.

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Billy Graham’s Wife Stages Her Rebellion Mary Collins

It’s a foolish woman who expects her husband to be to her that which only Jesus Christ can be:

fold arms

neat above lap tuck ankles

one over another (never knees) turn on oven 6 a.m.

Ready to forgive, totally understanding, blue breaths early morning make coffee start car wait

you are in

the kitchen you are on the patio

unendingly patient, invariably tender and loving cram tampons into purse apply mascara hide

three hours of sleep

unfailing in every area, anticipating every need run alarm clocks wake children serve bacon

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and making more than adequate provision. tell son be good watch sunrise face traffic

you are not late

you are

never late Such expectations put a man under an impossible strain. take place in pew

The same goes for the man who expects too much from his wife.

Walk to the pulpit and begin to preach.

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Authenticity Nontaporn Silruk

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witness

Archita Arun 2020 started with a revolution in my country

beauty preceding collapse, the women

of shaheen bagh came together

to make us listen daily acts of resistance

now visibilized

they cut vegetables

and nursed their children

while singing songs of freedom

hum dekhenge the walls brimming with acrylic

images of hope,

answering deliberate erasure with a legacy

of womanhood such is the power of collective femininity.

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palpable fear emerged,

could “silent”

public protest

finally make

this a country for women?

The virus came

and the first thing

the protestors did was whitewash the walls.

fragility of hindutva masculinity

the event

lives on, more

than a memory

a memorialization of a people

women who took up space,

so their infant daughters

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could live in a free state

the motherland that is equally accountable

to all her daughters.

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Rupture

Fizza Shabir tum ek khel khelti ho,

Jab bhi koi nazar aaye,

tum sochti ho ke tum wo ho.

Na keh tumhari ruh aur un ka jism,

Na keh tumhara jism, aur un ki rooh, Lekin is tarah,

Jaisey tum kabhi thi hi nahi

Jab khuda nei tujhe banaya,

Us nei tujhe yeh nahi bataya,

Ke kabhi tujhe aisa bhi lage ga.

Jab us ne tujhe yeh wajood diya, Us ne yeh nahi bataya,

Ke kabhi aise bhi lage ga.

Us ne yeh nahi bataya ke kabhi aisa bhi lagey ga Jaise apne hi jism ka qaidi khud hi hun mai.

1. Beginning I’m dead.

They buried me last night,

when the ocean stood still.

Time stopped bleeding at last. I was cradled back into the womb, to the beginning of everything.

The Alpha and the Omega. The perfect circle.

I saw colors of red, and white, and gold, and yellow, And blue, and pink, flashing before me.

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I heard God speak to me in a tongue that I didn’t understand.

He asked me if I wanted to go back,

Back to the beginning when there was no heaven or hell, Back to when there were no stars or the planets.

Back to when there was no sky, or the river. Back to when There was no love, or hate, or anger, or grief.

Back to when there was no you or me.

Back to when I only existed in the mind of God.

Back before I had a body. Back before I was turned into a slaughterhouse.

A graveyard, where life’s promises came to die. Hope and dream, and desire,

Squandered in between my legs like my unborn child.

Is that body so meaningless?

Is that body so devoid of pain?

Do I need dream when I sleep?

Do I not scream when I’m hurt?

Do I bleed when I’m scratched?

Do I not love?

Am I so different from you?

Do I exist?

2. Collapse “blackout: statistics show that most men end up with bruises on their fists, while most women, with bruises on their body” I am split in two.

Fractured in the middle.

My body begins to bend to one side.

I pour myself out, desperate to clean. To purify.

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To cling to the parts,

That are left unspoiled. Untouched.

My blood is replaced with shame.

The body becomes an apology.

The girl becomes a grenade.

She leaves only hurt and despair The casualties, Her flesh, Her soul Her god Herself.

5. Unravel – Maa, mei darri hui hoon – Kyun

– Agar mei aap ko bataoon, aap khwahish kareingi ke aapne mujhe

kabhi nahi peda kiya hota

(a beat)

(she hands over her eyes)

Mujhe seedha raasta nahi dikhta.

Ye dekho meri kaan

(she hands over her ears)

– mei aisi khwaish karun gi?

– ye dekho meri aankhein

Mujhe in ki zaroorat nahi

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Mujhe khuda ki awaaz nahi aati

(she hands over her feet)

Ye dekho mere per

Mei khare khare thak chuki hun

Ye dekho meri hadiyan

(she hands over her bones)

ye jaga zaya karti hai

ye dekho meri pasliya

(she hands over her ribs)

wo meri hafazat nahi karte

(she stands motionless with her daughter’s body parts in her hand)

Mujhe in ki zaroorat nahi

Mujhe in ki zaroorat nahi

mujhe in ki zaroorat nahin

mujhe in ki zaroorat nahi

– ye lo iss liye taa ke ek dusri beti bana sako..

Aisi jo aap ke hukam par sar neecha karey.

Jis ka jism dosron ke liya na saans le.

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Jo kabhi tumhe sharminda na karey.

Jo moashre se aapko beh dakhal na karey,

Jis ki wajah she aapko kabhi dukh nah pohonchey

Kya tumhara dimaagh zehar se bhar chukka hai?

Kya suraj aaj maghrib mei se nikla hai?

– Mere massom phool, tum aisi baatein kyun kar rahi ho?

Kya asmaan mei se saarey sitarey mar chukey hai?

Agar yeh hi hai, toh meri baat gor se sunno,

(she begins to pray)

Wad duhaa

After sunrise

Wal laili iza sajaa

And by the night when it is dark;

Ma wad da’aka rabbuka wa ma qalaa

.

Your Lord has neither forsaken you nor hated you

Walal-aakhiratu khairul laka minal-oola And indeed the Hereafter is better for you than the life of this world.

Wa la sawfa y’uteeka rabbuka fatarda And your Lord is going to give you and you will be satisfied Alam ya jidka yateeman fa aawaa Did He not find you an orphan and give you a refuge?

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Wa wa jadaka daal lan fahada And he found you lost and guided you Wa wa jadaka ‘aa-ilan fa aghnaa And he found you poor and made you self-sufficient Fa am mal yateema fala taqhar Therefore, treat not the orphan with oppression Wa am mas saa-ila fala tanhar And repulse not the beggar Wa amma bi ni’mati rabbika fahad dith And proclaim the Grace of your Lord

– meri zubaan kat chuki hai

mei uss se kaisey baat kar sakti hun?

Mujhe nahi lagta, wo mujhe sunna chahta hai

– Jo bhi hota hai, Khuda kei hukam se hota hai

Dunya mei ek patta bhi, us ke hukam ke beghair nahi hil sakta.

– lekin phir Khuda, apne bandon pe zulm kyun hukam karey ga?

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Khuda apney bandon pe aisi bimari kyun laye ga?

Khuda apne bandon ko mazoor kyun bannayega?

– Sab kuch us ki raazi hai.

Yeh bhi ek imtahan hai.

Apne imaan par bharosa rakho

Apne aap par bharosa rakho phir dekho.

4. Prayer The body never belonged to myself, So I gave it away, Slowly,

bit by bit,

First to my mother, Then to my father,

And then my brother, My uncle,

His father,

My grandfather, My neighbor, And his

And his,

To my city, My nation, My god,

Until I had none left for myself.

Nothing but fragments.

Fragments that spun into shards,

Shards that concealed themselves, First in religion, Then in poetry,

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And then,

In Shame, In Guilt.

Dear God,

My memory is frail,

And so is my mind,

But how do you expect a cripple

To find a cure for his wounds,

With feet that are too heavy for one’s legs?

7.Remembrance I have searched for answers, That I cannot find.

Is it better to know?

or live unknowingly?

The memory drifts,

Like a wavered child,

It does not know where to go, What path to take, Who to trust.

There are times,

When I want to smother it, Kill it at the root.

Take its life,

For my own.

No longer a reminder, of things I wish to erase.

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Does it matter?

What would it change?

The past cannot be undone by the present.

7. Family tree I unearth the roots of my family tree, And trace it back to the start,

I question the women, if they too had to carry their entire selves together, shut, sealed,

afraid to unravel, collapse, to fall apart,

and they tell me that

“This is not the first time.

Pain traverses like

Your mother’s eyes,

Or the outlines of your palms, You inherit it in the womb.

Decades of trauma,

And abuse, you carry it Within you.

Your body is history.

So if it feels heavy with Sorrow or grief,

Remember that it is not just your own.

How do you reconcile with an eternity of suffering?”

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3. Dissection I wonder if I cut myself open,

Take a knife and create an incision, Top to bottom,

Pull my flesh apart,

Turn myself inside out, What would I find?

Maybe I’d find the beginnings, Of when the wind turned, When life left its hue,

When death peeked over the horizon, and courage cut its wings.

Or maybe I’d find my childhood, Covered in rust,

Hidden away in some deep crevice where no one can find it. Or maybe,

I’d find an answer, A mirror,

A reflection But all I find, Are guts,

And tissues And bones,

And blisters, And fluids

Inside an empty carcass With a heart,

That refuses to beat.

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8. Baba (in a dream) Kya mei jag rahi hun? Kya yeh koi khwaab hai?

Kya yahan dunya khatam hoti hai?

Kay bas yehi hai? Kya mei hun? Ya nahi?

Baba, mei kamzor hoon.

Mujhe maaf kardo.

Mei apne khayalaat se dochaar hun

Aisa nahi ke jaise mene koshish nahi ki, Mene ki, lekin is mei bohot takleef thi.

Ye dekho, ab mera jism nahi, Sharam ki alamat nahi.

Lekin sirf wo, jo aap ki beti thi.

Kaash mei aap ko ye behtar samjha sakti, Lekin mere mai itni himmat nahi, Ke mai aap ka pyaar mere liye, Khatam hota dekhoon.

Shayad kisi aur zindagi mai

8. Rupture “How can you not remember?”

“Are you sure it happened” “How do you know”

“How can you be so sure” “What if they are lying” “It was her fault”

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“You can’t be sure?”

“Are you sure?”

“She must be lying” “She is lying”

I wonder what he thought, when he ripped me apart, my spirit, my soul,

when he broke me in half, I wonder if he thought,

That this body was his to take.

I wonder if he knew,

That this was the final push.

The rupture in between my spleen, A broken mind is hard to mend, But even more so, a broken life

tum ek khel khelti ho, jab bhi koi nazar aye,

tum sochit ho ke tum wo ho,

Na keh tumhari ruh aur un ka jism,

Na keh tumhara jism aur un ki rooh, Lekin is tarah,

Jaisey tum kabhi thi hi nahi, Jab khuda ne tujhe banaya Us ne yeh nahi bataya,

Ke kabhi tujhe aisa bhi lage ka.

Us ne yeh nahi bataya, Ke tere hi jism pe,

Dusrey ek jang khelenge.

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Us ne yeh nahi bataya,

ke tere hi wojood pe dusrey apna naam likhenge.

Us ne yeh nahi bataya ke kabhi aisa bhi lagey ga, Jaise apne hi jism ka qaidi khud hi hun mai.

(End of Play)

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` The Sunset We Saw That Day Salama Almheiri Oil on canvas

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reflections of he who has done the unimaginable Jianna Jackson

It has been five weeks since I left the skin of the bull and set sail atop

the old vessel with her scrubbed down deck and formidable masts. Five

weeks, my crew and I have withstood a tempestuous journey riddled with opposing forces in man and sea in hopes for riches. Five weeks, spent

enduring the ire mire of oceans that thrash my boat about to the ends of the Earth and the monotony of seagulls cawing in competitive flight.

Two weeks I have spent of the five weeks endured, dwelling in trepidation and fearing for my life and livelihood. Every baited breath I take, the

suffocating stench of eagerly-awaiting death clouds my nostrils and fills my lungs. My crew, albeit not audibly, cries for my assassination.

’Twas the piercing of their eyes which spoke to me louder than the shrill of any mouth.

“Sir, you have led us astray,” they said to me. “You have taken us from

the warmth of our women to die in the nothingness of your dreams,” they

said. In these glances, in the bitter reminder of company I had asked for, I saw the limit of my time here.

Accusing faces tried to offer hopeful smiles, but all I saw was my impending end.

Guttural terror halted at the cry of an incredulous “land ho”; its ebullience rang true throughout the ship and had caused us to congregate on the

deck to debunk what seemed like a farce. Yet small dots of green (one: the size of a man’s hand, the rest: reminiscent of drops of iron gall on vellum) emerged from the horizon like a gift from God, Himself.

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Embittered trepidation was displaced by smug satisfaction and the fear was traded in for joy. It was no farce. We had, in fact, found land that

would be ours, and, most likely, an insurmountable volume of riches and gold. For reaping of the lands to come. For discovering the true form

of our terrene. Then after pride, came relief, for my life was no longer in

jeopardy. Not less than a day’s journey after the joyous announcement, we sunk our anchors and relaxed our sails, and when the men had

reacquainted themselves with the comfort of soil, we laughed unironically at the oxymoronic strength of the sands beneath our toes.

“Now that we are here, my lord,” the ship’s captain said in a strained voice with a poignant look in his eye, “what is to be done with the people?”

Shock beguiled me from my state of euphoria. People? Had I not been

the only native of the west beyond the east as of this very moment? Had I not made the first discovery of the ages? Apparently not. Soon, figures

began to appear. Figures of copper that were not our own and were not to be mined in the ways we knew how. They would pose a serious threat to our conquests and my claim for glory.

Obdurate selfishness would cause them to hide the riches of the land from us.

“Castrate them.”

I said. And for good reason, as the dark and puzzling heathen were most

unusual; with an unhealthy lack of propriety and a worshipful appetite for sex and stones… what use would they have to my King and Queen? All painted their faces; none knew of sophisticated languages. The women

wore no chemises much less proper clothing and the men wore nothing

at all. Upon my order, they perished at the caress of my men’s bloodlust.

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Their blood whet the land they stole and their cries pierced the skies and their gods were not listening … only staring and staring still.

Duly, one particular battle struck out to me as I retell, I see it in my

dreams. A heathen male, was sparring quite remarkably with me until a

girl-heathen, darted out foolishly in the midst of battle and towards him.

His fierce look of determination softened in her direction and his stance faltered in concern and I took that opportune time to plunge my sword

into his unguarded side. The little girl stopped running towards him, stood stock still, peered up at me with eyes as watery as the seas, mouth ajar in disbelief and screamed until time stood still and she collapsed under the force of her grief.

“Efface and erase,” I reminded myself when grief found me too; my service is to my King, my Queen and my legacy.

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Waiting on white supremacy to end is waiting for jesus to return. AKA Death to America Gentle Ramirez

And they said, we ended racism / Anti-trans violence, white supremacy

/ That Jesus returned down to earth just to see it. / And witnesses finally believed Jesus wasn’t the only one able to perform miracles. / And they ask how, and I say, together / me and my trans / me and my queer /

me and my Black selves / me and my community / we all we got. / We,

today, blasted our favorite song and danced. / Let a tragedy be a tragedy. / Looked for a way out and found it. / Held myself as a nurturer would.

/ Mourned for another person I did not know. / Knew that it could have

been me. / Mourned at the frequency that happens. / There is no way to

make a virtual funeral sound poetic. / Nor a viral funeral and so I won’t. / I

tell them the story of the time I did not need my grief to be inspiring. / And wrote this to truth to remind myself that I am among the living, / to always take a time to remember, / to be tenderly loving to myself as I live, some more.

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Elegy with a Death Star Inside It

after Larry Levis, “Elegy with a Darkening Trapeze inside It” Jamie Uy I. At Disneyland, the father is shouting. I don’t know why he is shouting at the Happiest Place on Earth but his son is at the bottom of Space

Mountain scrunching up his eyes as if his father is a bad outtake. An

animatronic ghost in a haunted mansion, the yeti in a dark rollercoaster

we all paid too much to ride. Then he grips the boy’s wrist and the son is wailing, bleating, Bambi-like, and screams YOU ARE NOT MY FATHER and the father swoops in, picks up his son, disappears on Main Street

into the throng of too-bright balloons and butter popcorn and fake Fire

Department trucks. The parade continues. I don’t remember what the boy was wearing, only that his eyes were preternaturally blue. I wonder if the father remembers what kind of shirt he picked out for him, from the dirtcaked drawers of their cramped motel, for his birthday.

The problem with fathers is that they were once sons and their

connections to their own fathers is like rope dangling from an apple tree, ragged and frayed, a noose or a naval knot.

II. My submission to Women’s Psychology Quarterly’s FATHERING IS A FEMINIST ISSUE read:

“It is easy to see the parallels between Joseph Campbell’s The Hero

with A Thousand Faces, George Lucas’s Star Wars, and Shakespeare’s

Hamlet. Consider: Yorick’s skull. Consider: Luke Skywalker’s vision of his

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own severed head in Darth Vader’s helmet. Consider: my father watching the first Star Wars movies in a theater under the totalitarian regime, with bated breath, the last of his pocket money, and the ghost of his father’s crimes hanging above him. Position yourself as the spectre/spectator:

my father, looking at Luke looking at the husk of a man that is his father, his lightsaber ignited. Thesis: the daughter, Leia, looking at her father’s

greatest weapon firing on her home planet, looking so much and so little like her father in the glaucous green of the laser cannons.”

III. Death is expensive. Because I am the firstborn, I catalogue what I will inherit:

A deed for a house I did not grow up in

The need to go to church

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Twenty-three of father’s ties, including my favorite, with teal diamonds Filing boxes of business documents, which I should shred A Costco membership

A last name that is a bastardization of a translation Too many plaid shirts to count Five cartons of Asahi beer

A Hot Toys statue of Han Solo, frozen in carbonite

Unopened photo albums, with clippings of my baby hair 1998 books, such as Rich Dad Poor Dad A crippling disposition to please

A one-year visa-free balikbayan stay from the Filipino Embassy Blu-ray copies of all nine Star Wars films

IV. Fun facts about Star Wars: Did you know George Lucas was supposed to direct Apocalypse Now,

Francis Ford Coppola’s harrowing film adapting Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for the Vietnam War?

Did you know that the Philippine-American War was the first war the U.S. fought in Asia, decades before My Lai--and that Gen. Jacob H. Smith (who has my brother’s first name), told his men to “kill and burn, the

more you kill and burn the better it will please me” in retaliation for the Balangiga massacre? (Did you know about the Balangiga massacre?)

Did you know that the Ewoks, those furry, harmless aliens with their

arrows in the Battle of Endor, from Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, speak Tagalog?

V. As kids, we loved the explosion of the Death Star. We bought cheap

Chinese copies of Star Wars, where “Jedi” was translated as “Hopeless Situation Warrior.”

My brother enlisted in the army and earned the rank of second sergeant.

After field camp, he said point-blank: you’re fucking lucky to have been born with a vagina.

I have always wanted Princess Leia to become a Hopeless Situation Warrior.

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VI. The night my father became a man,

he was in a bar with his friends from San Beda High, smoking so much they almost didn’t see it—

the students storming the palace, from Ortigas Avenue.

My father was the fastest runner in the rebellion.

They took the half-eaten fish, all the good silverware, the wife’s jewelry boxes, and presidential diapers because the dictator’s bladder was failing.

The emperor had fled, like my father’s father, to America. When my father called him,

he thought about the undersea telephone signals,

how strange the stars above San Francisco would look, and then he realized he would likely never see them.

The night my father became a man,

they brought baseball bats and pillboxes, radio transistors and prayer cards.

The soldiers greeted them at the gates.

The moon shone something awful, hypothermic and supercharged.

I imagine a hero’s burial.

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` Diasporic Migration Pamela Martinez

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Excerpts from Sarah Hegazi’s Letter in Exile Nada Almosa Ana Mithliya

I miss my mama

The officer covered my eyes The voice of a man The car

A dirty smell A moaning

A cloth in my mouth My hands were tied Mama

It did not stop My torture

Was electrifying

It can’t with words on a paper It can’t with words It can’t

A black dot

Buried in the soul Bleeding blood A dot

Could not be treated Yes

Mama

I lost the power to look at others I was afraid

Family, friends, and the street,

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Chasing me

The fear stayed And in exile

I miss mama A desire for silence and Problems remembering I won’t forget

The moaning people Chasing me

The dirty smell

My torture was electricity It can’t with words On paper Yes

[Author’s note: This poem is composed of fragmented segments of Sarah Hegazi’s essay, “A Year since the ‘Rainbow’ Incident: A System Detains, Islamists Applaud,” published in Arabic on the online platform, Mada Egypt (‫مصر‬

‫)مدى‬. The essay is written in the wake of Hegazi waving a

rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert in Egypt in 2017. This act led to

her arrest and torture. Once released, she sought asylum in Canada, but

isolation from her family and community and the trauma of her experience in prison led to her suicide. Published in 2018, the essay recounts

Hegaz’s experiences and what ensued. My poem arises from a desire to highlight Hegazi’s voice, her experience, and the incredible loss that her passing represents for the Arab LGBTQIA+ community.]

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The revolutionary childhoodness Pamela Martinez

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Protest

Nur’aishah Shafiq

Dolphins walk among us, translucent

with suicide. We watch them shuffle past

in all their gleaming dead-eyed glory, sea slipping from their skins until our shoes are eaten through. So many ruined

Nikes and Manalo Blahniks and red-bellied Louboutins. I want to laugh, a veteran in my splattered saline-proof

wellingtons. But I was just as proud

my first time, when the turtles came to die

and I wept the morning after, scrubbing them from my trouser hems. By dawn,

the dolphins too will be gone, but now,

their glowstick organs do not yet flicker, do not yet litter pavements,

lungs tracheas diaphragms bleeding ocean into our socks. Still, people are beginning to squirm.

It’s not the nicest feeling, yes,

the wet warmth of it all but no one leaves.

The dolphins march, a tide

of phosphorescence melting

beneath the shadow of skyscrapers.

When it’s all over, and the last of the crowd

return to their beds, I kneel down on the empty, wet pavement to taste the salt.

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Two: A Ghazal Oscar Bray

When the animals marched into the great Ark two by two, It was no grim procession: they frolicked, like us two.

Can’t follow you down downy beaches in Vanuatu, But we can still dance anywhere. Just count the beat, one, two.

A deathtrap wheeled by, our cat was crushed, whereto I asked how many lives were left and it cried twice for two.

People say that life is hard and others say “me too.”

Work all day, cry all night over tea for two.

She stares at you repentantly, pathetic dead cartoon.

How many others would stay with her? Only two?

After all the secrets I have shared, the promises you took, I ask for just three words and your pretty lips give two.

Tiger stripes adorn the arms with keloids like tattoos.

Body turned to husk by choice that afternoon at two.

He speaks like an automaton, eyes flitting like a stooge.

How many nights of horror? He holds fingers up. Two. The streets were rife with bodies, some were ready for a tomb.

Fists clenched for guns and chokeholds, bays for blotched blood in round two.

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Wounds scraping the backbone force a stifled cry: et tu?

They were like brothers once but there was just no room for two.

By the synapse ’neath the nerve of the enamel of a tooth, I lived but my heart skipped not one bold beat but two.

The mind I can calm, with jewels my body I’ll festoon, But it still won’t calm the conflict that defines and wrecks the two.

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Golden

Cassandra Mitchell

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There’s No Such Thing as a Bronx Accent Gentle Ramirez

My mom speaks with a bullet in her throat.

That means we from nowhere else but the Bronx.

From this hood we can’t teach anyone who not from where we from what we know how to do and the way we do it.

The way we swallow swords down our throats for breakfast That with a knife down our spine we cook dinner and know how to do it with sazón, sofrito, and a smile.

How tired be more familiar than The Good Lord himself.

My mom, in this master of a marriage, keeps her mouth shut— Waiting for things to get better the same way she’s waiting on Christ to return, yes—Men speak two languages, English and over

Women

My mom waits too long for a man that takes too long to die, And ain’t that everything and a shame.

That men don’t have to like you, but they have to need you.

That god-fearing-husband-fearing women don’t get divorced, because all the church walls would grow teeth and the

ministers would throw stones. Dare a woman dare respect.

Aint that everything and sad, that women

get to live their lives after their husband loses his.

So, what do we do with all this exploited freedom? Have you finally understood the irony? Of all these screams that will go unheard, of all the crying drowned in a sheet of salt—

the bullets falling like cadence—to the pulse of a slammed door.

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Electronic Society Hannah Greene

Acrylic on paper with collage elements from magazines and brochures

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New York, Interrupted: My Introduction and Farewell to the City Kaashif Hajee

It was my first time in New York, and the US in general, for that matter. I

was a brown Nick Carraway, getting my first taste of the American Dream, only a century later. It was the year 2020. The roaring twenties were back, this time with their own set of promises: discovering a new city, the most

iconic and storied of all time, the one most of my favourite movies and TV shows were set in.

On the very long flight there, I imagined what this magical land would look like, the one I had seen extensively through the gaze of motley

writers, directors and cinematographers. I imagined a wholesome land of friendships and camaraderie, that of Central Perk and MacLaren’s. I imagined the realm of Blair Waldorf, Carrie Bradshaw, Harvey Specter, Jerry Seinfield… all the Goodfellas. I imagined the territory of Alex the Lion, the king of New York City.

I also imagined the streets of Travis Bickle. The basement of Rupert

Pupkin. The psyche of Arthur Fleck. The neighbourhood of the Central Park Five. The romance of Fonny and Tisch. Theirs was a land of

alienation and resentment, of injustice and oppression. These worlds had nothing in common, yet were portraits of the same place.

What was it about New York that was so special? I had to find out.

I had to explore all the places these characters inhabited: the Upper East Side, Central Park, Grand Central Station, 5th Ave, the Empire State

Building, Harlem, Queens. I had to see everything in flesh and blood, this time through my own lens. I had to see the famous Times Square, the

place that’s always under attack in most thrillers and superhero movies. I

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had to walk on the Brooklyn Bridge and sneak a peek into Captain Holt’s 99th Precinct.

Finally, my flight landed, turning my imagination into reality. I walked through JFK Airport, carrying the heavy weight of twenty-one years

of anticipation. I was going to NYU, the college Payton Hobart settled

for, the one where Dr. Ross Gellar taught palaeontology. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the adventures I’d have, the Broadway and Late Night

shows I’d watch, the friends I’d make, the women I’d meet: I too was

going to meet my Holly, my Sally, somewhere in Soho, or on the Subway.

This was it. The time was now.

*** Unfortunately, my anticipation had to brave the immigration queue before

it could be put at rest. I stood for two long hours that felt like days, amidst predominantly East Asian fellow immigrants, most of whom wore surgical masks. “What the fuck are they wearing those for?” I thought to myself.

“Why are there so many people? Can’t this move faster already?”

Here’s what happened over the next three hours: I got through the line,

was asked one too many questions by a suspicious immigration officer,

convinced her that I’m not a threat, collected my baggage, realized that

I have to pay for a baggage trolley here, grudgingly paid it, wearily made my way to the exit, and then, finally… I froze. That’s it, I actually froze.

It was January, and such levels of cold were alien to me. I did not know

the world was capable of producing them. Within moments, I lost feeling

on my nose and ears and fingers. The icy air engulfed me. I was not ready for this. In a fit of desperation, I hailed a yellow cab.

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Oh my god, I’m in a yellow New York taxi, I exclaimed to myself, as I

cupped my palms over my face and gently blew into them to warm my

fingers and nose, taking stock of all my baggage and belongings. “Have

you reached home yet?” a text read from my mom all the way in Bombay.

“I’m on the way, maa, in a taxi.” I replied. “All good.”

After a few such text messages and small talk with the driver, I arrived at my dorm. 400 Broome St. That was my New York address. That was… home?

*** The first two days were a complete blur. I remember trying to get to my

friend’s building, just 8 minutes away from me, on Lafayette St. I took a while to get ready: checking the temperature, planning the number and intensity of layers accordingly, to beanie or not to beanie? Do I need a

scarf? And after I ensured my comfort and warmth, I also had to consider how it actually looks. What if I met my Sally on the way?

In the short walk, I passed through four cafes and five potential places to

eat. I tried flagging each of them on my Google Maps, only to be snubbed by an angry walker each time. I even tried to take some boomerangs of cars moving on the streets, only to be yelled at by someone else.

I kept walking — Oh, there’s a Chick-fil-A! I need to eat that fried chicken burger, I thought, as I planned to note that down at the next signal. But there too I learned that only some people follow the signals, and only some of the time? Alright then.

I decided to jaywalk the next one. I almost died. There is an art to

jaywalking in New York, I learnt. Check for cars coming, know what signal

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will open next, make space for more seasoned New Yorkers to jaywalk

ahead of you, and follow their lead: there’s a whole unofficial guidebook.

I had much to learn, but for now, I decided, I would seek necessary comfort and familiarity in my friend Laura’s room. I needed it. *** It was day four in New York. I still did not know my way to classes: NYU

buildings are spread out so you have to figure out where each class is and remember the route to it separately. I missed the coziness and close-knit community of my Abu Dhabi campus.

But I was starting to enjoy walking on the streets. The smell of coffee,

cigarettes and marijuana, the sound of many cars moving at the same

time in different directions, the unconventional rhythm of the walkers: I was starting to get used to all this.

I reached class early — with a latte in hand, like a New Yorker. “Today we will take the Staten Island Ferry,” said the professor. “Come, let’s go.”

The Staten Island Ferry was very much on my to-do list. But I wasn’t

prepared at all. I didn’t have my camera, nor the protective gear I would need for the wind. This would also be the first time I ever rode on the

subway: what was I going to do? I didn’t even have a metrocard and was too nervous to tell my seasoned New Yorker classmates. *** Cold breeze blew on my face, numbing my nose and ears, as I squinted in the glare of the afternoon sun, my eyes panning through all the marvels of New York City: the famous Statue of Liberty, the iconic Manhattan skyline

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and the frothy deep blue water of the Upper Bay. I made it to the Staten Island Ferry. I not so discreetly bought a metrocard, feigned confidence

and stuck with the herd of my classmates. It was no big deal. The subway

felt oddly familiar. I am a Bombay boy, after all: crowded trains don’t scare me.

On the ferry, our professor made us all read aloud, huddled in a corner, a

brilliantly eloquent poem by Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” The poem celebrates the beauty and majesty of the speaker’s surroundings

on the ferry, and emphasizes the profound sense of interconnectedness

he feels with his fellow passengers. Exuding energy and enthusiasm, the

poem is a rousing call to be present and absorb all the glory and wonders of your surroundings.

My co-passengers, however, missed Whitman’s memo. For them, this 25-minute, 5-mile voyage was an utterly banal, quotidien reality. Most of them were seated on the rows of brown wooden benches inside,

transfixed on their smartphones, a book, or the newspaper, completely unbothered by their surroundings or each other.

As I looked at the still, scattered heads dispersed across the mostly

empty seats, I wondered, at what point does this mesmerizing view get mundane? Perhaps the repetition of an experience everyday gradually erases whatever wonderment comes with it, making it feel more

monotonous each time. But would this eventually happen to me as

well? Would I too start finding this utterly enchanting and eclectic city

boring, only to discover that all the hype was yet another myth of western exceptionalism?

These thoughts quickly wore away.

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Over the next few weeks, I ticked off many things from my list: I walked

the Brooklyn Bridge with my friends and my camera. I went for brunch at

Shopsins. I ate pizza at Grimaldi’s. I got an AMC stubs membership. I had

halal cart lunches and bubble tea snacks. I even started listening to music on my wireless earphones and ignoring people who smiled at me. Ok, not really, but I was getting there.

I was finally living my own New York movie, with my own version of Dave

Blume’s legendary score playing in the background. Things were perfect.

But I had no idea what plot twist the act 1 turn had in store for me. *** Monday, March 9—my late grandfather’s birthday. It was 19 degrees

celsius in the afternoon. The sun shone on the streets, people populated the parks, a new energy engulfed the atmosphere. T-shirts, shorts and

sundresses replaced warm winter woolens. Spring was upon us. Excited, my friends and I had lunch at Washington Square Park, each from a different food truck.

We were going to leave for our Spring Break in Puerto Rico in two days.

As we soaked the sun, we discussed many pressing issues: what type of car would we rent there? Can we get a convertible? Will we all go scuba diving? How many of the nights will we spend clubbing?

And amid these questions floated another: is it safe to go? What about the coronavirus?

Ah, the coronavirus. In February, NYU Shanghai students were brought to New York to attend the semester here, because their campus had to be closed. We’re so lucky, we thought. We’re so far away.

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But today, it had reached New York City: the first case was reported

exactly a week ago. As of now, there were around 60 cases. No need to

worry. We could go to Puerto Rico, where there were no cases at all, and

come back before things get too crazy. So, we discussed our plans over a good lunch in a populated public park.

That night, my friends cancelled on Puerto Rico. It’s too dangerous to leave New York, they said. What if we can’t come back? They,

instead, made a handwritten Spring Break Bucket List for New York to compensate for the tragedy of having to cancel our travel plans.

We would go to the Whitney, MoMA, WTC Observatory, and the 9/11 Museum. We would sit on the MET steps and take cute pictures. We

would have picnics in Prospect Park, Central Park and Hudson Park. We

would go to Spanish Harlem, the Bronx Night Market, Time Out Market. A number of bars were on the list too. And “at least one” jazz club.

The length of the list was meant to sooth the pain. And it did. Nevermind

Puerto Rico: life threw a curveball at us, and we must take it in our stride,

bounce back and adapt. Spring Break in New York seemed promising. We just had to dodge the coronavirus.

*** Wednesday, March 11 — I slept in today, chose to order in for lunch. I

didn’t step out of my room all day. Every hour, I would refresh my news feed, anxiously looking for updates on numbers or developments. As a social science major committed to social justice issues, checking the news was not new. But my privilege usually insulated me from being directly affected by most catastrophes. Not today.

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For the first time, I felt crippling insecurity and vulnerability: Will I be safe here?

I tried to brush off my concerns. I had my first online Zoom classes: two back to back from 3:30 to 9:30 pm. I prepared for them, trying to be as professional as possible. But it was impossible to concentrate. I kept

drifting off in the middle of discussions, sometimes to check the news,

other times Instagram, Facebook, anything that wasn’t the Zoom screen.

It just didn’t feel the same.

One thing was clear: I couldn’t keep doing this. Classes had to resume after the 27th, as the university said they would.

At 10pm, a couple of my friends came over to my room. People had

started leaving New York, or at least making plans to. I thought it was

ridiculous: there were less than 200 cases at the moment. I could stay here, power through. NYU would keep me safe.

But Trump made a crucial speech that night: “To keep new cases from

entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the

United States for the next 30 days,” he said. “The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight.”

This impulsive speech, in typical Trump fashion, sent shockwaves among all of us. Travel bans? Does that mean if things get worse we may not be able to go home?

When I called my parents at 12am, they told me to get on the next flight back to India. In less than 12 hours. But I had to at least bid farewell

properly to New York: the city I had watched on screen for years and

dreamed of coming to one day, the city I had finally made my home for the past seven weeks.

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“I need two days, Dad,” I said. “I have to tie up loose ends and pack up my life here.”

“But what if they stop travel to India? And you get stranded there?” he

warned. The idea of this nearly drove me into an anxiety attack. I felt an

unbearable heat through my body, as all the worst-case-scenarios played out in my head.

I bought a ticket for Bombay on 14 March, at 21:30. I had less than 48 hours in New York.

*** Thursday, March 12—After a long night of insomnia, I decided to walk around my block for one of the last times. I wish I could say I began

noticing things more clearly than I did before, or that I felt more present. I didn’t. My senses felt hazy.

The only thought I remember, the one nagging me unbearably, was that the soul of New York, its raison d’etre, was at stake. What makes New York New York is the amalgamation of motley people—from different

nationalities, cultures and social classes—on the streets, in the subway,

around food carts, inside parks and cafes, and all over the city. How could New York survive “social distancing,” when its very essence is the coming together of people?

Today, my friends and I decided to go to the Clinton Street Baking

Company for brunch. It seemed the apt choice: some comfort food for the emotional turmoil. The blueberry pancakes and fried chicken and waffle— food that the New York Observer described as “anything but ordinary”—

could not slow the spread of the virus, but could certainly numb the pain of it, at least momentarily, especially soaked with rounds of bellinis.

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Even as it was kicking us out, New York was here to ensure that the goodbye was memorable and meaningful.

In the evening, a couple of my friends came to my room to keep me company as I packed. Listening to songs like Hallelujah and It’s a

Wonderful World, I mourned the loss of all the possibilities 2020 had for me. The chance to wear that new H&M hoodie when I’d visit my friends

in Chicago. The opportunity to make a documentary in New York. At NYU Tisch.

How could I move from planning my spring break trip to leaving New York in less than three days? What about the spring break bucket list? Can’t I go back to when the biggest tragedy was losing all the money we spent on Puerto Rico?

I spent the rest of the evening wallowing in my misery, with the help of my next door neighbour Eileen’s cheesecake for companionship.

T minus 24 hours in New York. *** Friday, March 13—the last morning I would wake up in New York. But now was not the time for melodrama: I had lunch plans, of course:

Murray’s Mac & Cheese, followed by a Levain cookie dipped in obscenely overpriced milk. Maybe we were overdoing the debauchery, I worried.

This is a crisis, after all.

But I was the only one with such concerns. Levain Bakery still had an unreasonably long line. Clearly, nothing could stop New Yorkers from getting their favourite cookie.

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Many tears and tight hugs later (social distancing be damned), it was time to leave my dorm. To leave New York. I left just as I came seven

weeks ago: in a yellow New York taxi, responding to concerned texts from an anxious parent back in Bombay. On the endlessly long flight

home, I worried about my future: what would happen to Bombay when

the coronavirus hits it? Will I ever come back to New York? When will this nightmare end?

I browsed through the inflight entertainment for distraction, only to be

reminded, ever so painfully, that New York is the most iconic and storied city of all time. It would haunt me, through most movies and TV shows I watch. It would soon dominate the news as well.

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Home?

Andrew Riad

‫بیتي كان في یوم من‬ ‫االیام‬ ‫شئ اعترف به‬ We zay baiti, kalami El masry 7aga A3taraf beh

But over the years

I lost my mother tongue

And with it the foundation Of mon maison

et j’aspire à mon ancienne maison Et ma langue maternelle

à l’intérieur de la maison.

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Embodying the Utopia Pamela Martinez Oil on canvas

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Red Root

Klethon Gomes dos Santos There are roots everywhere, and I am rooted. They are red roots in the

middle of the red, soft earth. I hear voices, sounds—my world shudders.

Someone is crying, and then I cry too. My gory world, what could it be?

There are no clouds, but what are clouds?

There are so many questions, but there is no time. I’m blossoming in my red world, and I only know the sweet, sharp voice of chance. Why am

I here? Why am I rooted? There is no answer, yet little by little, I cease

to be liquid without counting the infinity of time. I transmute myself and acknowledge my existence as I feel that something will happen.

I look around: my world gets smaller. I cry. I am confused; I kick the roots.

I provoke pain, and I feel it. My world then contracts itself, and I hear a scream. Where does it come from?

I shrink myself. I am red and lonely. My world keeps diminishing, and I don’t know what to do. I am scared of what might happen if my world

reduces too much to the point I can’t fit into it anymore, so I push against the walls and my sky. Will I stop fitting into my world? I don’t know, but I

am overpowered by something deep inside me that moves me to fight for myself.

I hear a sharp cry. What happened? Is there another me? No, It’s her.

She’s sad, lost, and tired. I feel her, and I hear her because we are. She loves me more than anything else. She told me so, joyfully, while also

saying she would protect me. She told me many stories about a world

that doesn’t look like mine. I don’t know what her words mean. I can only trust her.

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As the infinity of time grows, I realize: my world is not getting smaller; I am getting bigger. My existence gets huge and selfish. I need more space, so I scream in fear. I do not want to die. I’m blooming—I need to be!

I feel words forming on my growing lips while I lift myself immensely,

immense in questions, thoughts, and desires. I recognize a sound that echoes from within me: “tum, tum, tum ...” I feel my development in

progress: hands, legs, and eyes, getting more and more firm and curious.

I feel so many things all at once I can’t even distinguish them. I don’t know what I’m turning into, but I’m curious to find out.

I am now as vast as my world. Moved by a sort of force more potent than anything else, I look around and realize that something bigger than me

and my land is screaming for me. I want to go, but I don’t know where.

I feel compelled to cross the frontiers of what I can see, although I am

afraid and confused as never before. The phobia of being alive suffocates me, but I want to solve the mystery of who I am. So, I finally decide to

accept my universal living destiny: set myself free from my Homeland.

I tear the roots away from the land that formed me. I hurt my world, and

she screams in pain. As I untangle myself from the roots that nurtured me, I see the light for the first time. I beg for help. She shouts again. Different voices from abroad shout at her. She cries in profound pain, but my

action is unstoppable. As tears run through my face, I touch the light as if everything I saw and felt took me up to that moment. I cross the uterus, my Homeland, to meet the unknown. I leave my roots bathed in blood

and tears. I depart from the land that formed me, a mysterious red world, to find an entire range of lightful possibilities.

As I abandon my small world, I take dreams and the essence of the one that begat me with me. Even amidst so much distress, she smiles with

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hazy eyes upon seeing me for the first time. Her eyes hold secrets and

her dark skin, the powerfulness of an entire universe. She and I carry the secret of transformation. We are the mother earth; we are the evolution.

We are blood, we are tears, we are the overlap of contrasting feelings,

and we are our most intriguing mysteries; we are lives, and we only have eyes for each other.

As I leave the womb changing everything, lights and voices echo. I am

trembling as never before. When the essential cord that unites us is cut, the dream-filled life I have taken from my creator is now definitely mine.

I feel guilty. By realizing what she has done for me and the pain I

provoked, I blame myself for coming to the world, for stealing her

essence. My existence kills part of her, but there is no turning back; I am

the seed of her future, of a millennial “us,” and nothing is more substantial than such a truth. When I finally breathe fresh air for the first time, the

breath of revelation reaches me, and now I know what love and protection mean, so I cry out my unintelligible truth to the entire world: “Forgive me, mother!”

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Discover

Quim Paredes Acrylic on wood, clear tar gel, pumice gel, and faux rust

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In Response to Channel #8 (2014) by Simryn Gill Sherry Wu

Ambiguity is what I like about black and white photographs. Because there is no color, there is a lot more room for imagination. Shadow,

gradience, texture take over the absence of color. Even in the absence

of color, I can tell the textural difference of the manmade and the natural.

It’s tricky because when manmade materials are so intertwined with and

entangled in nature, they become normalized and there is nothing jarring about industrial waste growing on trees or trapped in bushes. Yet, even

in black and white photos, I can easily distinguish strings of plastic from

wood branches. It’s more than the textural difference - the two materials have different heartbeats. Different personalities. Different life stories.

Plastic is invasive. It’s how that vicious ex treats you - uses you up

and tosses you around. It’s disposable. It’s colorful yet transparent, a

camouflage for a fragile self. It’s clingy - see how it’s attached to the twigs and the trunks. It’s shredded. Torn. Shattered. It’s an ambitious dream of

achieving mass production with little cost. It’s an adjective. For girls. A not so flattering expression.

Wood is therapeutic. It’s inflammable. When it’s on fire, it’s thriving while it’s dying. A tree is itself many things - leaves, water, roots,

microorganisms. And even when it becomes wood it carries every bit of

the self with it. It’s always giving more than it’s taking. It’s one of the five elements (Wuxing) in Chinese philosophy: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. It’s a balance in itself and in nature.

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Plastic and wood don’t belong together. They are fundamentally two

entities. So when they’re simultaneously the spotlight of a photograph, they may be physically merging, but they’re drifting apart in every

other sense. The two materials are attached yet detached. It’s not so

pleasant to look at them so deeply involved with one another. It’s rather smothering.

Plastic in nature is not a result of pure chance. We are the cause and the

effect of this situation, captured eternally by photography. We staged this absurd scene that bonds two incompatible materials. It is therefore not a still image that we’re looking at—it’s a cacophony of resistance. And

there should be nothing common about such imagery, so why does it look so familiar? Has it defined a new normality which we’re living in? It won’t be long till everything starts decomposing, and the future is doomed to

collapse if this is what we are living with. We are the reason for it. So we ought to be responsible for it.

May the trees breathe and the plastic rest in peace.

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Saloon

Kyle Adams Oil on canvas

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Documenting Sanctuary #1 Nada Almosa

In my teta’s backyard, there was a spot where a muddy puddle always

formed. My stuffed toy found its way into it once upon a time, and now

it’s all dried up. Looking up, you would see a garden divided into squares by leftover pavement blocks, creating homes for the different vegetation my teta has stubbornly grown in spite of Sharjah’s unrelenting heat.

Eggplants, tomatoes, cabbage, and okra numbered her green army.

Surrounding trees bore toot (berries), lemons, and provided shade for traveling street cats. A rest station. Teta hated the cats, especially a

ginger tabby cat who liked to flatten her herbs into a bed, no matter how often she chased him away. Mint, headstrong, grew like a weed and

claimed every drop of water from a drain nearby. Later, its leaves would find their way into black tea saturated with sugar. Baba would say “this is sugar with tea, not tea with sugar,” as he watched me place another heaping spoonful into my cup. This garden whispered of the times my

cousins and I played Shurta wa Harami (cops and robbers), when my sido had his heatstroke, and when heavy cat mothers felt safe to birth their

litters. My teta still tends to her garden, with her two artificial kneecaps and a walker.

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Documenting Sanctuary #2 Nada Almosa

To teta’s sister, whose name I can’t remember I have forgotten your face

My lasting memory of you

Is of when we sat at the kitchen counter, eating

Watermelon, and you swallowed the seeds whole I was scared that you would have Them sprout in your stomach And manifest a family

Of murderous melons Inside of you

You laughed at me Toothy, loud As if to say

It would not be the first garden To make itself home Inside of you

It would not be the last

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Becoming Okay Hannah Greene

Acrylic on paper with collage elements from magazines and brochures

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The Deep Meaning of Things (Automatic Writing) Hamza Kamil PART 1 I will let my hand write whatever comes to my mind in these more than difficult times:

The day I spent a beverage thought the shrine, the best kind of our time

emerged. My passion for it has tremendously shined in front of my head.

It was really surprising. My heart has broken. Le monsieur de l’autre

côté de la rue a passé ses jours à pleurer. Quelle tristesse. I write several

languages. Why am I writing in French? Bref, the giraffe was enforceable.

The domestic actors engaged in a several questionable peace of writing.

1, 2,3. Death. Laugh with the friend. Hahahah, Am I crying of laughing?

One month, I created a magnificent post-it. Green beverage.

NOTA BENE: (The word beverage came two times automatically, what does it reflect?

Am I addict of tea? Maybe).

The outlet holds three things, a gospel, a touterelle, and a huge computer.

THE END OF PART 1

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PART 2 I will let my automatic phone writer write whatever it proposes: And for the inconvenience of disturbing the others’ meeting. You are or

now you are in danger for me. While the first place is in line, it is very well placed on the set of the group.

THE END OF PART 2

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Ars Poetica

after Jericho Brown Mary Collins

This is the stuff we tear through now.

Cut our claws on body politics.

Cut our claws on the body politic,

scraping past monarchs to find a song.

Scraping past monarchs to find our song a shattered switchblade, dirt, decay.

A shattered switchblade, dirt-decayed, inconsequential except to one; inconsequential except to one,

who sees a wheat seed in the weapon.

Who sees a wheat seed as a weapon?

We can’t plant imaginary gardens.

We can’t eat imaginary gardens.

This is the stuff we tear through now.

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I paint pretty things [because it makes me happy] Michelle Hughes

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Peter Pan

Naeema Mohammed Sageer in 30 lines I hopped on a ride from Toys “R” Us Rode off into a secret sunset,

Stopping when the pixels waved black and white Brown paper bag baskets

Created make-believe worlds

We’d shoot hoops to cheers we couldn’t hear Dust jacket science became armor

I picked hardcover lies over paperback truths, The Kessel Run now a physics problem “Let’s draw an imaginary line

Call it the horizon and use it to guide us” We don’t fantasize in The Real World™ But change isn’t the only constant.

Coke-stained sofas are déjà vu

Interrupting movies too profound for us— A reminder of a glorious era

Little league is as far as I got

Now I have the Post-Olympic blues No DeLorean to take me back

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Pluto knows what that’s like

A fall from grace in your arsenal

Your early years a Helix memory All the world’s a stage

Cumulative Gimmick Point Averages And performance evaluations

The phantom of the opera beckons And the haunting commences

A little trip to the good ‘ol days It’s here now,

My ride awaits in 3 lines Soar higher, they said

But what happens when a bird runs out of blue sky?

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King of the Fae Kyle Adams

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you were; Fiona Lin

my love, you were not born to be happy you came to be under an unlucky star

the stars aligned just so to greet you with calamity this, you know.

did you not hear them in childhood?

ill-fated birth ill-fated life ill-fated death my love, you were not born for warmth

you were birthed to crisp air and white breaths a dusting of frost across your skin they could not touch you

shivers ran up their spines; they were choking on ice your season was built for loneliness my love, my heart, my soul

you were born to look in the mirror and whisper, quietly,

my love, you were not born to be loved

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What Haunted the Men on Hamdan Street?

Aathma Nirmala Dious

TW: sexual harassment/assault, mentions of blackmail, revenge porn, and sexual exploitation.

Abu Dhabi, February 2018

“It’s the twelfth one this month,” Papa muttered.

Anagha looked up at him or rather the newspaper he was holding up to read mid-sip of her late-morning chaya.

“What was the twelfth time?”

“What?” Papa folded the newspaper and placed it next to his phone. “Oh ... another man getting hurt ... near that Burger King place. Jobin uncle

sent me a message on whatsapp yesterday night … I am surprised they actually reported it today—”

Amma slapped the table, startling Papa and Anagha. The older woman

was still in her orange nightdress and looked frazzled even with her hair clipped away from her face.

“Finish your chaya! It’ll get cold in that mug and I don’t have any more milk to remake it. This house …”

“Where’s Gopu?” Anagha asked as Amma left to grumble at the state of

the laundry, while slowly tearing off a piece of the soft, fluffy appam. “He’s not here yet.”

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“Your brother is playing football. He went before you woke up.” Papa

said, his voice resonating in disapproval. Clean shaven and pepper hair meticulously combed in place, her father was a man of discipline and

was not a fan of Gopu’s laid back attitude. “His 12th standard exams are coming up, and he will only wake up early to play ... che.”

Anagha did not know what to say. At least her brother could go out

without a whole investigation as to his whereabouts. However, a recent joy for her was that for the first time in years, Gopu, her older brother

who was allowed to stay out till late night, got the same curfew of 8 p.m. that she had. Papa said they’d reconsider it once these “animal attacks” ended. Anagha joked the whole day the curfew was imposed that Gopu

could no longer go to Shisha with the boys and Snap about it. He threw a pillow at her in response

The “twelfth man” was among the latest of bizarre happenings on Abu

Dhabi’s Hamdan Street. It started three weeks ago after an incident where a man who owned a trading company was found dead on his way back home in an alleyway near Hamad center. The newspaper said it was an attempted robbery that went wrong and they were investigating. Not

that any newspaper here would admit to a crime they cannot solve. The Baqala uncle told us the week after that he had walked by the scene

when the Police came and it was like a large cat clawed the man apart.

Then came whispers of wails in the night rattling all the windows to the

highest floors. A home center employee opened the store two days ago

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to find utter wreckage, lights broken and pillows torn apart. Men reported feeling like they were being watched and followed. Some who went into alleyways to smoke or stare at women came out covered in scratches, their voice boxes dysfunctional for a week.

“Are you still going to study with your friends today?” Amma asked, bucket of clothes in hand.

“Yes?” “Hmm. Be back by seven. Be careful.”

Anagha was almost done with her Appam when her phone buzzed. She

tried to ignore it and it buzzed again, making the table vibrate and Papa’s right eyebrow raise high.

“Who is it?”

“No one. Maybe just Priti. Or Sarah. They want to know what books to bring.” Anagha moved the phone from the table onto her lap to check the message. Even before she saw the notification and entered the

passcode, Anagha knew it was Don. That is the last thing she wanted her Papa to know because technically, dating was out of the question for her.

Sometimes she wished she was Gopu. Neither parent seemed to know or care about his social circles.

The last month had felt like a fairy-tale, with cute texts, covert dates and kisses in the staircase of his building, which conveniently did not have

cameras. Don was perfect. There were times he would get annoyed when she did not respond immediately. Anagha would always make up for it by staying up to talk to him, even if she was super tired the next day. There

was also the rumour that his ex left the school because he broke up with

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her but Don insisted it was because her father got a new job. Otherwise, he was perfect.

“Are we still meeting at 5? new Tim Hortons right? :) ”

Anagha’s thumb flew across the keyboard to type “yes” as she scarfed down the last of her breakfast.

____________________

Hamdan street was loud with traffic, the cars on their way to their

respective houses clogging up the many tri-colour signals that interrupted the otherwise serene orange sunset. As she got out of the lift, all dressed up with her curly hair in a french braid, Anagha’s mind pushed away the guilt she felt for her lie about meeting Priti and Sarah. She deserved to have this fun.

The wind generated by the fast cars lifted her blue skirt up to reveal

more of her stockings. The thought of someone seeing her hastened her attempt to keep the skirt from misbehaving in front of the area’s Baqala, whose owner knew her parents. She did not need more stares than she already got.

Soon, the letters of the new Tim Hortons glowed in the twilight as she

reached it. The wall length glass windows exposed its red, cream and

brown interiors, filled with teenagers scoping out a new hangout spot and parents buying their children donuts. Anagha spied a donut covered in Nutella and her mouth watered.

“Who are you looking at?”

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“Ah! Don!” Anagha turned around to face her boyfriend and her surprise

dissipated to butterflies in her chest. She was among the taller girls in her class and the fact that Don was a head taller than her made her swoon.

“Don’t ... scare me like that? And I was looking at the donut.”

“Aw, but it’s fun. You should have seen your cute face when scared.” Don put his palm under her chin, his fingers squishing her cheeks. “Also, do you need more donuts? Look at those cheeks.”

She froze and her stomach churned as Don removed his hand from her

face. Were her cheeks that bad? Her Amma always commented on how

she could be a little thinner. Was she right? Priti and Sarah insisted boys

liked curves though. Don agreed that her curves were in the right places, which is why he always asked for photos. She indulged him sometimes

through Snapchat since photos disappeared as soon as the receiver sent them and she trusted him. The compliments he sent after seemed worth it.

“Come on, let’s get you that donut. You need a treat after that trash science test yesterday, na?”

Don took her hand and pulled her in. It would have been romantic

but Anagha could not shake off the weird feeling that hit the pit of her stomach. It was the AC giving her the chills, right? ______________ “Don, I should get going soon—mmph!”

They were back at the stairs of his building, standing in the corner next to the fifth floor’s door, two floors down from his apartment on the 7th. His hand moved up into her hair and her hands found his shoulders as they kissed.

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“Stay a little longer. This is fun.” Don’s lips whispered as they moved to her neck. This was new but it felt good to her.

“Amma said ... I had to ... be back by seven.” Anagha tried to push at his shoulders and he didn’t budge from his position. Don stopped and met her eyes. Anagha squirmed at the disappointed gaze he gave her, She

hated it when he did that, looming over her to make her feel small all of a sudden. “We’ll meet again, soon.” Anagha moved away from the wall

and was startled by Don’s hand touching her stomach, pushing her back.

“Babe, I need to go or Papa will get super mad—”

“Anagha.” Don’s tone changed and so did the pressure of his hand on her stomach. She found herself struggling to move away from his grip as his

other hand was fiddling with the edge of her shirt. Her arms had no effect on him. “Do this for me, right?”

“Do what? We already—” Anagha choked on her words as she felt his hands touch her bare stomach. “What was that? Please—” “Don’t you want me to touch you?”

Anagha stopped. The weird feeling had become alarm bells buzzing in

her, making her shake despite the warmth of the humid staircase. “No—I mean, yes—but not now.”

“So you can send pictures but not do this for me?” Don grabbed her

hand, making her flinch as his other hand roamed from her hips to her chest and back down again.

“Don, no, stop!” She slapped his hand, shocking him for a second before his eyes narrowed .

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“Or what? If you don’t—” Don dug his fingers into her hips, and Anagha gasped at the sting of his nails. “I can start telling people of the kind of pictures you send boys.”

Anagha stared at her boyfriend, who was no longer smiling. She felt drops of sweat drag down her back. “You won’t ...”

“I won’t ... if you listen to me.” Don pressed her hand against the wall,

his full weight on her. Anagha’s mind flashed back to the rumour about his last girlfriend. Was she too backed into a corner of his building’s

staircase? Nausea bubbled in her as the pads of his fingers moved up her skin. Her free hand pressed on his chest and her nails dug into his shirt, but he did not stop. Anagha wanted him to stop. Stop. Stop. Stop— The lights buzzed and flickered. Then the staircase went dark.

“What the hell—Ah!” Anagha pushed on his chest and before she could process it, she heard the thump of his back slamming against the wall opposite her. Don

screamed and reached for her. Her hand grabbed something as she

stepped forward. She heard a hoarse voice speak Malayalam in her head.

It sounded like an older lady.

Go. Now. “Anagha! It hurts! It hurts—” Anagha’s arms moved forward in its own accord. Another thump. Silence.

Red eyes looked straight into hers. The lights flickered on.

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Don’s face was a light tinge of blue. The skin around his neck was shades of purple marking the imprint of fingers around it. blood oozed onto his

white tee shirt, torn up with what looked like claws. Her nails had red on the underside as she looked at her shaking hands.

No words, not even a scream came from Anagha’s lips, as she ran down four flights and out of his building, She ran and ran, not caring for the

cars whizzing across Hamdan or what the traffic lights told her as she ran back.The tears blurred her vision but her feet would not stop, until her head bumped into someone.

“What the—Anagha? ” She stumbled back to see Gopu holding a plastic bag with milk in it. “Where the hell are you running to—wait, your eyes— have you been crying?”

In response, Her arms wrapped around his midsection, burying her face into Gopu’s chest like she used to when they were little, when she did

not want to cry in front of the other kids they used to play with. Within a second, his arms were around her.

____________

Since coming back, Amma and Papa had taken turns asking her what

happened, but nothing came out of her mouth. Only tears streamed out of her eyes. Amma tried to give her the chapatis and chicken fry she made

but despite the pit of emptiness growing in Anagha, there was no hunger to be found there. All she could bring herself to do was lie down in the

dark, listening to Halsey in max volume on her phone, which she made

sure was in silent mode. Priti and Sara were blowing up their messenger group chat, wanting to know about the date. What can she tell them?

Maybe that she was an idiot, a freaking idiot.

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“Ammu, come on.” She heard Gopu ask from the doorway. He has not used her nickname in a while, even if she always called him Gopu or

Chetta instead of his name Anand. “Amma’s freaking out. Did you fight with your friends or something?”

“Leave.”

The silence ballooned around them for a while and then the door slammed shut. Anagha buried her face into the pillow.

“You should tell them.”

It took her a few moments to realize it was not her inner monologue

speaking but a woman’s voice, in the same hoarse malayalam she had heard at the stairs.

“Who ...”

“Here, child, the window.”

Anagha felt a breeze from her left and turned. The curtains were spread apart and the window was wide open. The mix of moonlight and

streetlight streamed onto a lady sitting on the floor, legs crossed and eyes

closed. Her straight black hair flowed from her head to the carpet, framing a face that looked like it was carved into white marble except for her

stained red lips. A white sari covered her body and Anagha could see light scars stretch across her pale arms and neck. For a second, you could think she was the light itself.

“Don’t scream, girl. I don’t think your Amma can handle seeing me.” The woman laughed, her fangs flashing. The lights flickered for a couple of

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seconds. Anagha scrambled out of bed. The woman opened her eyes.

Red.

The eyes at the stairs.

“You …”

“Did you not hear no stories about me? I cannot believe that. You should know what my kind are, as a woman. We were like you before—” The woman looks at the mirror on the door of the closet. Anagha realized there was no reflection in it. “We become this.”

The teenage girl blinked a bit before the word came to her head, the name connected to a story her Ammachi told her as a child during summer

nights in Kottayam. Of woman whose bodies were dumped in the forests after being ruined by men, who then re-emerge from Banyan trees,

summoned by black magic, with revenge twisting their soul into bloodlust, forever haunting the site of their death, sucking the lives out of the men

who fall for her charms thinking they too can break her like the man that made her.

“A Yakshi.” Anagha whispered. “A Vadayakshi. A female demon. Ammachi told me the story after I almost got lost in the forest.”

The Vadayakshi’s red lips twisted to a sinister yet gentle smile. “Good.

You know your stories, even when you are far from its roots. The white man thought of us as their Banshees or Vampires. The Arabis here

would call me their Jinns. We are both or neither. Beyond human time or thought.”

“But you aren’t in Kottayam. You’re ... here. In Abu Dhabi.”

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“We do not need Banyan trees to exist, child. Only a man’s cruelty and

ill-fated timing. I do not know what stars and planets were in the sky to make me this.” the Vadayakshi shrugged.

“I—” Anagha closed and opened her eyes. The Vadayakshi was still there, looking at the mirror. “You— you cannot be real.”

“I am the reason nothing more ‘real’ happened to you.”

Anagha’s legs couldn’t handle the sight. She sat back on the bed and

looked at her hands. She had cleaned her nails five times since coming back. “It was you. How—”

“Don’t ask me how. I knew. We can sense it. I came to that ... boy ... ready to hurt you.”

Anagha could not believe her ears. The Vadayakshi did that for her ... or with her.

“Did your Amma not teach you to be careful about boys like that?

Those—” the Vadayakshi continued with some colourful malayalam

swears that Anagha knew would make Amma wash her mouth with soap and dettol if she uttered them under this roof. “—worthless men. They don’t deserve to live.”

“Did you—” “I’m not stupid. Just beat him around enough so that he may have some

... problems remembering what happened. Even if he did. Who will believe him when he talks of a Vadayakshi teaching him the lesson his family

should have taught him?” Anagha could not help but smile at how gleeful

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the Vadayakshi was tabout the whole event. “Oh, he just screamed and

screamed for mercy. Also, his phone broke as he ... fell down the stairs.”

“His phone ... the photos. Oh, oh my god. Tha—” The Vadayakshi held up a hand to stop her. “No need. I was alive in this city before you were born. I know how the men here with power and

money think. Whatever they do, you’ll be the one betrayed by their laws in the end. There’s no winning for us.”

Anagha did not know how to respond. It was uncomfortable enough that

Don did this to her while she was in the safest city. Safer than back home

in India at least Amma would say while glancing around at the staring men when walking Abu Dhabi’s streets. Safe nowhere, belonging nowhere,

justice nowhere. Such was Anagha’s reality in the city she chose to call home or the home her mother came from.

“They don’t know about him.” The demon stated.

Anagha nodded, looking at the floor.

“Of course. Just like you, your Amma did not talk about a boy she gave her heart to and her Amma didn’t too.” The demon woman sighed, looking around the room. “And in that silence, they’ll break us and

leave us in it.” The woman met her eyes again. “First lesson of being a

woman, girl. Do not risk yourself for anyone, especially a man. You don’t

remember that, you’ll be killed by the hands of one. Trust me, you’d rather die any other way.”

The Vadayakshi’s rage at the end piqued Anagha’s interest. “What’s your name? What happened to you?”

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“My name ... was lost to me the moment I died.” The Vadayakshi stood

up to her full height, twice as tall as Anagha, and looked out the window.

For a second, the demon’s eyes were almost a normal black, like

Anagha’s own irises. “I am the cautionary tale you tell women coming to the Gulf. I trusted a man with my heart and my passport. He took both, along with my dignity.”

She stretched her fingers and Anagha saw her claws grow longer. Wait.

Anagha’s eyes widened. “The man in the alleyway … all those men ...”

“So you know.” The Vadayakshi winked at Anagha and put a finger to her lips with a smile. Anagha closed her mouth. “Tell them. My family never got to hear mine.”

The room went dark. _______________ “Ammu? Darling, wake up. You need to eat something. Please.”

Anagha woke up to Papa gently nudging her awake. The curtains were still open but it was now bright sunlight that streamed into the room,

lighting her Amma from behind as she held a cup of chaya. Gopu was standing by the door, looking awkward. It was almost funny, the way

he leaned into the doorframe. Anagha cannot remember the last time everyone was in her room like this.

“Ah, you are awake!” Amma smiled, holding the cup of chaya to her.

Anagha noticed these puffy dark circles under her eyes. “Drink, drink, we

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have your favourite toast with Nutella ready. Wash your face and come— Ammu?”

Her eyes were welling up in tears, but Anagha knew it was now or never.

“He hurt me.”

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Melting

Nada Almosa Digital collage

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Lost Word

Fizza Shabbir Makina wasn’t dead, but she might as well have been, or so she thought to herself. Had the earth’s gravity not pulled her to the ground under her

feet, perhaps she would have floated long ago, approaching some distant planet by now. But that was not the case. She was here, and this was real. She was withering away.

It started when she was 8, the first time it happened. On the first day of

school, in the middle of April in Al-Wakarah, when the country practically felt as though it was placed on top of a giant God-sized cooker, in the

midst remained Makina and the forgotten word “from.” When the teacher questioned her, like she had every other student in the class so far, to tell

their name and where they were from, Makina felt an ache in her stomach that could not be remedied by any of the medicine found in the nurse’s

office, or for that matter even inside her grandfather’s Hakeem shop. She couldn’t understand what the question meant, for she didn’t understand what “from” meant.

Frantically searching her backpack of vocabulary for a word she never

anticipated using, she came to the conclusion that she never had it in the first place. How was she to make sense of something that she had never even known. How does one reach a location if there are no roads? The

ache in her stomach at this point had found its way to her throat, finally

resting in her mouth, as the words would not come out. She had always known what to say, but today was not one of those days. Today was a day that she would remember for the rest of her short-lived existence.

While those around her appeared in wonderful writing and lovely

drawings, Makina had come to think of herself as an accidental mark that

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had been left by someone trying to create something beautiful, but failing miserably, and in the midst forgetting to erase the unintended blot—a

fluke, she was. Like one of those “happy accidents” people would always talk about, but, unfortunately for her, there was nothing “happy” about

this. It was, as it appeared to be, only an “accident” An “accident” that

could not even bear to answer a simple question and could neither stand

the silence. Yet, for some reason, it was the latter that pulled her out. The need to say something always, to fill in the blanks. Where are you from?, Makina stared at the question that had leaped in her hands and gulped

the ache forcing it back into her stomach, only to utter the one word she had known to be true to herself: “Makina.”

As she sat back down, it is important to note that the repercussions of this incident wouldn’t be known to her until much later in life, as a girl would be rendered useless because of her language.

The embarrassment had eaten its way through her heart in the car ride back home, and that day when Makina stepped inside the walls of her house, there was no “Salaam” or “Hello” or “Hi.” She was determined to get to the bottom of this and so the routinely “hellos” and “what

happened at school” had to fall aside or for the most part, wait. For now, it was only her, the word and the unsolved mystery of its disappearance.

And so when she finally got back home, she ran to her bedroom and

sprawled all the words in her bag on her white bedroom floor. The words stood out on top of the marbled floor as she moved through each and

every one of them, looking carefully for the one word she couldn’t find.

She wondered if she had misplaced it, accidentally put it in her other

bag which contained only Urdu, but how could that be? She had barely touched the other one. How can a word just suddenly disappear? Was

it a case where the word grew its own legs and had walked off, as some adults might say to scare little kids when they wouldn’t care for their

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language? But how could that be? It was only a story, right? Right.

But somewhere deep within some corner of her mind, a blurred image

of a girl and a word displaced began to take shape. The memory trying to come alive in bits and fragments like one of those burnt film photos.

Makina could only make up parts of what her 8-year-old brain allowed her to—the rest she had to fill in with her imagination. No difficult feat,

Makina thought to herself, she was always good at filling in the blanks,

but she had failed to recognize the dangers of toying with memory. The thought that she might find something she would have been better off

without knowing had not even occurred to her. She was determined, but

like all determined heroes of the past, she was bound to fail. The sad part however? No one knew it would happen to her this early.

As the image started to take place and Makina began to fill in the blanks,

everything became just a little bit clearer. Although no way near to solving the mystery, it was now at least clear of when it had happened—the fatal incident of the lost word that would pull apart herself from herself.

Memory was unclear, but the questions poured unprompted. Nothing could prepare her for this moment. The pandora’s box was open and the lid was nowhere to be found. Was the word stolen from her as a

little child? Yanked out of her little baby hands? On the day her family

moved continents and enlisted her a lifetime of non-belonging, did she also lose something else? Or was it because of it? “From” nowhere to

be found, a lost child no one bothered to look for. She wondered had her

parents brought the preposition with them instead of her what would have happened. Was it her fault? Did she accidentally leave it somewhere? In

some terminal’s bathroom? Between the food trays of the airplane? In the middle of immigration lines? Did it accidentally slip from her passport or purposely hide inside a security conveyor belt?

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Makina was fading. Starting with her eyes and then slowly her nose and

moving to her lips. Makina didn’t know herself, and so her face started to disappear. Who knew how much a simple word meant to her existence.

On her last day, Makina nestled a prayer hoping one day even after she

was gone, the word would find its place back to her lap, and maybe she

would finally be able to know where she belonged. She wondered where “from” rested and if it too withering away like her.

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Almost

Baraa Al Jorf Digital art

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Homecoming: A Journey Home to Myself: An Excerpt Anonymous

Content Warning: Emotional Abuse FINLAND 2012 Over the summer before 8th grade, we moved from our shoebox of an

apartment into a decently sized three-bedroom apartment in Haukilahti, a well-situated neighbourhood mainly populated by elderly Finnish people.

When we moved, the yelling subsided and was replaced by a deafening silence. You might think that silence is better than yelling, but I was

surprised to find out that was not the case. Yelling meant that something was worth arguing over—that someone was worth engaging with. But

now, Hooyo and Aabo had graduated from simply disliking each other into full-blown indifference.

They eventually stopped talking altogether. When Hooyo was in the living room, Aabo would go into the kitchen. When Hooyo was in the kitchen, Aabo would go into his room. Years of frustration, disappointment, and resentment surrounded them like a forcefield keeping them at a 5m

distance from each other at all times. The air in our last apartment was

always crackling with electricity so that if you breathed too hard you might spark a flame. The air in this apartment was heavy, dimming my senses

and lulling me into a never-ending numbness. Nothing other than silence felt appropriate. We were all dragged into grieving the collapse of their twenty year long marriage.

Being in a constant state of indifference must have been exhausting, so every once in a while, Hooyo and Aabo would drag themselves out of mourning and insert themselves into my life.

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“Waryaa! Get up! Do you know what time it is?” Aabo would come

barging into my room on a Saturday morning. “Don’t you have homework to do? You need to do better than last year; you can’t just stay at that

level.” He would tut as he left my room with the door open, something I couldn’t stand.

Other times, I would get called out for the state of my room. My sisters slept in a bunk bed pushed up against the right-side wall of the room

and my bed was on the opposite end. A narrow portion of the window

overlooking our balcony and the road in front of our apartment separated our spaces and we shared the cupboards.

“Furqan, what is this on the floor?” Aabo would ask me in the mornings pointing at Zuleika’s socks lying on the floor of my bedroom.

“Aabo, it’s not mine,” I would whine back.

“It doesn’t matter Furqan. You are the older sister; you have to be

responsible and take care of this room.” Some variation or another of this sentence has been the soundtrack to my life since the second Zamzam was born. At the ripe age of five, my childhood ended, and I earned the cursed title of “older sister.”

Zamzam and Zuleika have never been beaten. They get away with

everything. They can scream and shout and throw tantrums and no one

will blink an eye. They’ll throw their clothes all around the house, not wipe the toothpaste off of the sink when they’re done brushing their teeth, talk back, and ignore orders and nothing happens.

If I tried to scold them, all they had to do is cry and Aabo would tell me, “Furqan, you are older than them. Please act like an older sister.”

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Hooyo would say, “If you yell at my children again, I’ll kick you out of this house.”

FINLAND 2015 I came home from school one unsuspecting Wednesday afternoon to find my mom sitting on the sofa. Something was off. I don’t know if it was

the way she was sitting, with her legs curled under her in the middle of

our L-shaped sofa, or her dazed eyes staring at nothing in particular. She looked bewildered, something in between grief and awe.

Standing in the hallway, I asked “Hooyo what’s wrong?” I didn’t want to go any closer. I must have thought keeping a physical distance would protect me from what she would say next.

“Your father is moving out today.” My stomach dropped and my lungs

suddenly failed me. I needed to sit down so I put my bag down and sat on the edge of the sofa. “I called your uncle, and the divorce is final so

he’s leaving today.” She turned her blank eyes to me, and I could see she had been crying.

“Ok,” I sighed, finally letting out the breath that had stopped in my chest earlier. “Ok. It’s going to be ok. This is what we wanted right? This is

good,” I tried to convince myself. We had been talking about divorce for the past three years, I had known this day was on the horizon and yet, I was stunned.

I got up and walked to my room, probably sporting the same bewildered expression as Hooyo. Lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, I was reminded of the past three years in this house with Aabo. I couldn’t

understand why I was crying when I had been encouraging Hooyo to

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pursue a divorce all this time. I clearly remember the day I told her, “Hooyo why don’t you just get a divorce? It would make all of our

lives better.” After everything, how dare I lie here crying? I thought. My stomach was twisting and turning. I was disgusted with myself.

I lay there, heart racing, mind blank, tears streaming down the side of my face until Aabo came home. In my memory, it was dark outside, but my sisters weren’t home. Neither was Bilal.

I came out of my room to find Aabo packing up his books from the bookshelf in the living room. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Going back to my room and letting him pack alone felt unbelievably

cruel. Asking if he was okay felt wholly inappropriate. Crying would be

shameless of me, so I bit the inside of my cheek and said, “Aabo, do you need help?”

“No, Aabo macaan. It’s okay,” he said without looking up from what he was doing.

“Okay.” I didn’t have it in me to insist but I also knew I wouldn’t be able

to sit there and keep Aabo company without bursting into tears. I didn’t

want him to be alone, but I also didn’t want to burden him with my tears,

so I got up and went into the bathroom next to the living room. In there, I could cry as much as I wanted but he would know I was close by. That I was witnessing him, acknowledging his presence in this house.

I had been in the bathroom for so long that when I came out, Aabo had finished packing. My Aabo didn’t own a lot of things. Some might use

the fancy label of minimalist to describe his lifestyle, but he was simply a frugal man with a childhood history of poverty. I had never been

separated from my Aabo before; in the midst of my ever-changing life,

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he had always remained a constant. I don’t remember if I saw him out or if I hugged him goodbye, but I like to believe that I did. When Aabo left, something in my spirit left with him.

*** The empty bookshelf in the living room haunted me but not for long. After Aabo moved out, we took weekly trips to IKEA. Every empty space that

he left behind was filled and every trace of him, his personality, his energy, was erased and replaced with something red; Hooyo’s favourite colour.

We changed everything in our apartment from the carpet, to the curtains,

to the organisation of the furniture. We bought new plates, placemats, and utensils to match our new car and new life.

Some part of this was very exciting to me. Given my Aabo’s frugal

nature, we never bought anything unnecessary or uselessly expensive but Hooyo’s relationship to money was inherently different. Hooyo’s

entire character was built around keeping up appearances. Her pride and dignity would never allow her to prioritise financial stability over looking

impeccably wealthy. As a sixteen-year-old, this new luxurious life made

me feel special and valuable. I was one of the first scholarship students accepted to enter the International School of Helsinki, the only private school in the greater Helsinki area. Hooyo’s bougie spending habits satiated the financial inferiority I had been feeling since returning to Finland and threatened to overwhelm me at my new school.

None of this was for free. Aabo’s absence wasn’t only physical. As far back as I can remember, he was in charge of cooking, cleaning, and

helping my sisters with their homework. My Hooyo had no experience being more than a provider and so this transition was far less graceful

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than going to IKEA and upgrading our house. Bilal was out of the

question. As the oldest and the only son, no one had ever expected more from him than for him to exist and he delivered exactly that. Zamzam and Zuleika were both too young and would always be too young to have

responsibilities so naturally, only I was left. I cooked, cleaned, did the

laundry, kept the grocery list, helped my sisters with their homework. I

was also something of a full-time assistant for Hooyo. I helped edit her work reports; I listened to her workplace drama; I followed her to my

sisters’ parent-teacher conferences, and I gave advice as to what our next steps as a family should be.

After school, we would often meet up at a cafe and she would update me

on whatever exciting new drama there was going on in her office. I felt like she and I were friends, and I was immensely proud of my relationship with her. Hooyo was special. This was an indisputable fact. I often thought to myself that if she was God’s gift to her Hooyo, being related to her was God’s gift to me. I idolised her and simply by being in her presence, I could feel my value increase.

*** The high of our new life was short-lived for me. Around a month and a half after Aabo moved out, things started to change. Hooyo didn’t like it when I didn’t come home before 6pm so she told me that if I was ever late

again, she would throw my clothes from the balcony and I could sleep

outside. Hooyo hated that I spent so much time texting my friends from home so she would cut the Wi-Fi at 7pm. In fact, she hated my friends, period.

When a friend who had moved away came to visit Finland and I asked if I could meet her, Hooyo yelled at me exasperated.

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“What do you need from these friends? All the time: can I see my friends, Iris this, Kat that. What the hell are you doing that you want to always be with them?”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Wasn’t it normal for a teenager to want

to hang out with her friends? Especially when all of my friends were girls, didn’t drink or do drugs, and were also highly performing at school. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t like them.

She kept going, “Do you not care about this family? Do you hate to be home so much that every day you must be out there with those white girls?”

“No, it’s not that Hooyo! I—” “Shut up! You’ve always loved those disgusting whites since you were a

child. If you love them so much why don’t you go live with them? I know that’s what you really want.”

I had started crying, but my tears only fuelled the fire. “What the hell are

you crying about? Is it that heart-breaking to not see your little friends?”

Hooyo hated crying. When I would get in trouble as a child and she would hit me, crying only prolonged the beating.

Wiping my eyes with my head held low I asked, “Why don’t you trust me?

I’m not out there doing drugs or anything. We literally spend time inside, eat, and talk. That’s all!”

My throat was tightening again, and I practically whispered the rest, “I

work hard at school, I help around the house. My grades are good. You

know me Hooyo, I promise I’m not doing anything bad. You didn’t raise me like that.”

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I never knew what to expect next with Hooyo. Sometimes she was sympathetic to my feelings and opinions and other times she was

determined to assert herself as the ultimate authority. On this day, she was somewhere in-between.

After a few beats of heavy silence, she responded, “I didn’t have any

friends. I didn’t need them. I spent all of my time with my Hooyo and that made me happy. I can’t understand why you would need anyone else.”

But I’m not you, I thought to myself. My friends were the only reason I

was able to survive three years of hell at home. Even though I never talked with them about what was happening, spending time with them laughing about whatever young teens find entertaining made me feel normal.

But I could understand where Hooyo was coming from. The concept of friendship was completely outside of her range of comprehension; she had never had one.

“I promise I’m not doing anything bad. I wish you would trust me a bit more.” I pleaded, my voice coming out muffled and small.

I wasn’t able to convince her.

I didn’t know it then, but I had been mistaken that our relationship was a friendship. How could it be when Hooyo didn’t believe in friendship?

The harmony of our relationship was dependent on my subservience to Hooyo; she created me, so she owned me. I was to be an extension of

her and every time I behaved inappropriately, I was to be corrected and set on the right path.

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Immigrant speech Fizza Shabbir

We gorge on language

Our stomachs never full.

Build home within the gaps, for we had to leave ours.

My people are not new to thresholds They do it every day,

Crossing borders, like tongues Swallowing so easily

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the bitter aftertaste.

Monolinguiosis Oscar Bray

There is too much at stake to stick to your own kind,

But what does one do but hear: mute, dumb and obtuse, When the cries for freedom don’t stick in the mind?

I never learned as a child to decode and to find

The beauty in strokes, at least that’s my excuse.

There is too much at stake to stick to your own kind.

French was forgivingly florid, refined

By the Russian, but what words must I lose

When the cries for freedom don’t stick in the mind?

What I say has been sharp, harsh, boldly underlined Even when I have no right to accuse or abuse.

There is too much at stake to stick to your own kind.

I have no other home, just this weak privileged bind.

Is it enough to for me to free the foreign noose, the lesser muse, When the cries for freedom don’t stick in the mind?

Just a rich gweilo bitch who has never had to grind

On the tarmac. My face never bruised on the news.

There is too much at stake to stick to your own kind When the cries for freedom don’t stick in the mind.

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Snake Vision

Quim Paredes

Ink on print paper

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‫ أين؟‬/ Where?

Maryam Almansoori (translation by Tom Abi Samra)

‫أين؟‬

ِ ‫أين‬ ‫أنت حبيبتي شقائق النعمان؟‬ ِ ‫كم أشتاق لرؤية عيونَك ال َمالب‬ ِ ‫أين‬ ‫أنت بسمتي سوسن فقوعة؟‬ ِ ‫كم أحن لرؤية وج ُهك ال ُمهاب‬ ِ ‫أين‬ ‫أنت قلبي األقحوان؟‬ ِ ‫كم أسعى لرؤية خطواتُك ال ُم َحاب‬ ‫أين أنتم زينة الحياة؟‬

‫فبدونكم أبقى أنا ال ُمعاب‬ Where?

My poppy, habibti, where have you been?

My chrysanthemum, my heart, where have you been?

How much I’ve missed seeing your fragrant eyes.

How much I’ve sought to witness your forgiveness.

My Iris haynei, my smile, where have you been?

O life’s embellishment, where have you been?

How much I’ve longed to see your revered face.

For without you, I remain flawed.

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Strain Inspired by Natalie Scenters-Zapico’s “Notes on My Present: A Contrapuntal”

Joanna Orphanide With statements by various Cypriot government officials I don't like my body.

Some business activities

I don't like how it wakes up in the morning,

Broke the law

or how it goes about its day

illegally, so he had convictions

cleaning, feeding, exercising, straining,

You can still get a passport for two million

and cleaning; over and over again.

Nobody will say no.

I don't like my mind.

But those over the limit

I don't like how it forces itself on me,

are treated differently

or how it interacts with others

Nobody would admit that

thinking, listening, speaking, straining,

You cannot see this in any book,

and thinking; over and over again.

or any regulation.

I don't like me.

If there are issues and

I don't like how I see myself,

we want a passport to be issued fast,

or how I go about my day

go higher.

cleaning, thinking, straining, acting

How high? Up to you.

and reacting; over and over again.

The higher, the better.

I don't like us.

We help people to take a passport

I don't like how we see ourselves,

then, why not.

or how we see each other

You can tell him

speaking, straining, acting, reacting,

that he will have full support from Cyprus

and hating; over and over again.

without mentioning my name or anybody else.

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Speaking before listening to each other.

At any level

Acting before reacting,

political, economic, social, everything.

or reacting without acting at all.

Okay?

Straining ourselves and each other.

But keep it confidential.

Hating ourselves and each other.

Because I have to protect my name as well.

I don't like me and I don't like us.

So anyone gets away

I don't like how we strain ourselves

with anything.

or how we gnaw at each other

No exceptions.

I don't like it one bit.

Of course.

The cycle repeats until it breaks.

This is Cyprus.

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Keep Pledging Betrayal Gentle Ramirez

WE PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE RED, BLACK, AND GREEN, OUR FLAG, THE SYMBOL OF OUR ETERNAL STRUGGLE, AND TO THE LAND WE MUST OBTAIN; ONE NATION OF BLACK PEOPLE, WITH ONE GOD OF US ALL, TOTALLY UNITED IN THE STRUGGLE, FOR BLACK LOVE, BLACK FREEDOM, AND BLACK SELF-DETERMINATION. I pledge allegiance to myself for this body.

And to my transcestors and trans descendants who will never hear this poem.

I pledge to be thankful, for all it can do and all it cannot.

I pledge to feed you when you are hungry and to hold you unconditionally. And to gender dysphoria, I know you’ll choke.

Right hand right on the bible, I’ve been forcefed lies about this body and was told those lies were liberty, I tell you I drowned in the baptism pool with everyone to witness, my skin, not even my own.

Cried out prayers for anyone who would listen, After swallowing my own tongue for communion I addressed the prayer to myself.

I was made feminine before I was made free.

And so, I’ve been chasing this exodus, this justice, my masculinity For my own namesake.

I pledge allegiance to my body and to the liberation for which it stands.

To black trans people domestically and abroad, for all the godlikeness in us.

I pledge betrayal to gender. I say fuck it. What has it ever done for me?

Or black folx for that matter.

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The history of hysterectomies and gynecology tell us that gender is a white people concept if it tells you nothing else.

And so I tell you I got no interest in propelling colonization. That black little kids can be boys and girls and neither if they say it so.

That being non-binary got nothing to do with womanhood. And—that the most unprotected person in America is the black trans woman.

Imagine what black people could build, as one body, we’d be indivisible, fighting for reparations, with love and peace for all.

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Structured Saadiyat Sunset Michelle Hughes

Watercolor and ink on paper

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