Cast Hexes

by SAFIYYA HAIDER

In limestone shadows I’m lost I find a child MY GIRL SELF coated in clotted blood

10 years underground earth’s leper Hazel eyes yellowed into a cat’s glow

They say I can’t feel pain. But I thirst for men’s blood she bites fangs indigo with otherworldly rot from the realm of unchained jinn where IBLIS IS OUR FATHER Jannah’s leper

I bring her nightshade the only food she eats death-bent

I. We dance loose-limbed—puppets-of-the-sky

II. We light candles

III. We pick poisonous flowers All to hex the man who separated us.

{Iamtumblingthroughthepsychologicaltundraofsexualtrauma. Don’t ask me for how long.}

Let’s build a sapphire home in anesthetic water and live there forever where no man can touch us where no man touched us NO MAN’S LAND

{In this negative dimension before time and space, I meet my mothers’ mothers and the men who scourged our land for diamonds and chai leaves they cannot read.}

I KEEP PULLING BODIES OUT THE INDUS RIVER spilled into the Colorado theylook theylookatme theylooklikemymother’smothers

I cup my hands for wudu but find an uprooted eye, whites kajal-blackened / crucified hands with a circle of henna and a hole impaled / singed hair flocculent / spells the bog subsumed

I can’t stitch myself together I-stitch-them-together.

We survive on wildflowers and wither, drinking bog water Only they speak my language of the dis em bo di ed float ing be tween psychic prisons and prayer prayer for the Pleiades to abduct us eli eli lamma sabacthani Allah, Allah, why have you forsaken me?

{In this enchanted karst world, I sleep on cold stone floors to remind me I’m human.} you cupped your palms like dua’a caught a firefly for me I AM THE FIREFLY no one will believe that black-outs anti-fairy tales of a child

Look at the person you made me: mud-faced bear-breathed gargoyle-hearted greenery gnarled in my eyes I’m lost in time with only the bat migrations yoking me.

{My childhood bedroom is haunted. How could you recite Allah’s poetry and desecrate me?}

Who will pray my janazah?

This last civilization has sinned forgetting my deformed corpse expelling it to sodden forest where magical mushrooms grow out of my back roots rip from my feet lifting off the ground I AM CURSED.

I want my name. I want to be pure.

If Iblis is my father the Mountain Cedar trees are my million mothers. In the thunderstorm emptying children from puddles I ask them for their fruits, sun’s breastmilk yes. O Punjaban, Daughter of Five Waters Thank you. Salam

Lightning! I AM ELECTRIC. MY BLOOD IS BIOLUMINESCENT.

I.May all that’s black in me be upon you.

II.May you reap what you sowed. carnivorous plants III.May you be castrated inshAllah.

In the cave all my bodies and I dance barefoot in mud and geosmin. We remember when we were one, before we were born. We are past lives healed with bluebonnets and limestone grinded to salt. They lift me on their shoulders we chant entranced in the occult language of trees and fire

Lunatic nocturnal birds sing Qawwali and I know our suffering has an end.

CURSE YOU

{The portal out of this arboreal unreality glows. I touch its warmth. Then the trees fall.}

THEY EXCAVATE OUR HOME

They say I’m alone and insane

They laugh at my whisper and three-tongued accent

But I can see visions you can’t!

IknowI’melectric.Theycan’talienatemefromthefull-moonedsky. I hear women’s hyena laughter! The eyes in my wild Medusa hair watch the undead!

A’oodhu. I seek refuge.

I can’t seek refuge in courthouses that aren’t my home. I find refuge with my mothers!

I’ve Lost So Much Don’t Ask Me Any More Questions the dust on this body that isn’t mine you tried to steal is holy

I AM DIRTY AND DIVINE THE CURSE IS BROKEN.

Glossary Islamic

jinn otherworldly beings made from fire

Iblis Satan before he fell from heaven

Jannah heaven

Salam peace, a Muslim greeting and farewell inshaAllah God willingly

A’oodhu I seek refuge. A’oodhuBillah, “I seek refuge with Allah”, is a Muslim litany

Cultural

Kajal traditional black eyeliner that protects from the evil eye

Punjaban Punjabi girl. Punjab means “land of five waters” in Farsi.

Qawwali Punjabi Sufi devotional singing (ex. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan!) a mimicry of self-created sculptures on human life imposing rebirth amongst those that belittle its might.

Vessels of chaos that collect tarrifs at river banks next to homes unbeknownst of their faculty, the waters wait to be angered to collect their tax.

So to those that don’t know of their destruction and can reside in the privilege of peace, know that the waters bade their time they say skin glitters in the sun they pull their sleeves off expose their hearts press their flesh flush against their clothes and glitter their arms intertwine her nails rake his golden hair, and their eyes touch their smiles become one their shirts flutter open, and i freeze but they’re free she loses herself in her pools of honey for eyes her glistening blouse catches the light and cascades an exhibit of luster her dupatta is a friend of the wind, trailing alongside it they say skin glitters in the sun, but she is the sun her nails rake through her luscious waves she smiles at her reflection for the first time her ghagra flutters up, but she pays no heed she’s finally free

Istifle a gag. How inappropriate. I pull down my pant legs. I was raised properly. Squeezed into textbook spines. Spit into greatness. I was here for a reason. I couldn’t let the sacrifices that built me blow in the wind. They’re a second skin, threading my veins – skeins of gold, invaluable. They had to be grounded: staked in the earth, shoved into boxes. Freedom wastes time. Shame yields success. I was raised to be hidden. From the shadows, I will emerge victorious. I couldn’t wonder about how the wind kisses my neck – how warmth caresses my shoulders. Sunlight shatters shadows.

Threads snap under tension. I soon grow into my mother’s hips. My threads become barbed wire. Foronce, my clothes cut into me. My shorts are nearly swallowed whole by my thighs. I instinctively try to hide. I promise I’m more than this! My breath cinches my throat. I can’t breathe, but I haven’t forgotten! I pull at my shirt, but I still can’t breathe. It all feels so mechanical.

Pull.

Pull.

Pull.

I collapse, trying to shrink myself to how I was, but the barbs have tethered me to the ground. The moon is out now – an amber smile. I watch her glow deepen and rotate. Is she grimacing at me? Watching as I let myself be suffocated. I yearn to scrape my mind of myself. Discard the ash and insecurity and anxiety. There’s a nugget of light embedded – one that yearns for my freedom. Yearns to pry open the bars of this imposed cage and stretch – stretch into a new era of sensuality with my Western friends. I sink my hands into my mind, rip the skeins from my flesh and gasp: copper! My suffering was for nothing!

In hiding, I shrunk myself. I shrink from my bare shoulders. Flinch at the reflection of my refracting curves. I pore over every dip, every bump. I’ve been suffocated for so long that I forgot how breathing felt like.

We used to be free, but somewhere along the way, we started to look down on freedom. Freedom comes with risk – show people too much and they use it against you. Our families came from worlds where freedom invited harm. Breathing showed the breathless that you could, and they would do anything to breathe. Gropes on bus rides taught our mothers lessons. Shame yielded safety for their young girls. They couldn’t put it in as many words because their mothers couldn’t. We were young and didn’t understand. We internalized shame that wouldn’t be due for several years for other young girls. Our bodies were merely skin suits, holding minds that would find a way out of this hell hole. But we’re not in Hell anymore. We have space to breathe. Our people have faced too much hardship to inflict more upon ourselves. We owe it to our future to be free. ■