The grief has been slow mounting, percolating, seltzer-like and cool, then hot all at once. I never really knew to give it a name before, but it is teaching me. Yesterday, the sky cracked open and I saw the edge of things. It happens. Happens not often but it does. A moment arrives and my … Continue reading prose// life cycle part i: deliquescing
Blog Posts
prose// on the beginning of a second semester (where can i find the river?)
Starting a PhD program from your childhood bedroom is incredibly lonely. Never mind that you painted the walls over and bought new curtains and new furniture and never quite finished, it will always be that bedroom. Never mind that you like to be alone, that you don’t want to talk on the phone and haul … Continue reading prose// on the beginning of a second semester (where can i find the river?)
prose// a portrait of wudu (the story of my great grandfather)
jiddu HagMusa, preparing his wudu pictured here, is my father's paternal grandfather, Hag Musa, may Allah have mercy on his soul. this is the first image i have seen of him, as he passed away the year that my parents were married, the same year my mother's paternal grandmother passed away, (a year of sorrow/ … Continue reading prose// a portrait of wudu (the story of my great grandfather)
prose// for Mama Nafisah
the people i love are dying. my great-grandmother, a great-aunt, my father's eldest sister has too been tucked underneath the earth. i clench my jaw laying in my bed. it is all i can do to save myself from jumping out of my blankets and running to the airport to leap on the first flight to Khartoum that i can book. i wouldn't even know where to go looking for the right graveyards, for where to lay down on the earth and press my heart as close as I can to where theirs used to pulse. i want to be loved by the people in my family who knew Allah.
prose// ramadan, ya ramadan (please, be gentle, I am fragile)
Last year was the best Ramadan of my life. I am afraid of what is supposed to take place on Thursday, the birth of a month as old and as familiar to me as my own family. I keep thinking, was that the peak? Will I never experience a Ramadan like that again? When I … Continue reading prose// ramadan, ya ramadan (please, be gentle, I am fragile)
prose// time and its selfishness, death and its callousness
Today, I cried. Over many things (life is heavy, I am fragile, tears are easy to self produce), but one of them was seeing the faces and names of the elders in our Muslim community who have passed away over the past few weeks, days, and even hours. I am in shock I think, at … Continue reading prose// time and its selfishness, death and its callousness
poetry// (bearing witness)
I have sunken into the twin bed at my parents’ house. We are one and the same: the mattress and I, the ancient-ness of this bedroom, the loss of so many things, the having of so much and the knowing I have done nothing to deserve any of it. (i am so small, so not … Continue reading poetry// (bearing witness)
prose// coping mechanisms (come undone?)
sometimes I wonder if I didn’t do it to myself. the way I have always escaped to the imagination, taken the corners of my own mind as solace, only ever really trusted myself with the full color of my dreams. I wonder how fragile I have always truly been, within myself, the shell of a … Continue reading prose// coping mechanisms (come undone?)
prose// birth anniversaries and the witnessing of classrooms hallowing
I have felt it today, maybe for the first time in four years, maybe not, it is hard to recall. The texture of knowing, the feeling, “oh wow, this is what I have been doing for four years”. You know, the part of the Toni-Morrison-novel-reading-journey when you finally catch a glimpse of “it”: the arch, … Continue reading prose// birth anniversaries and the witnessing of classrooms hallowing
prose// stained glass and yard gazing
I wonder why I am unable to do the things that I need to do. It is astonishing the capacity of the human body, even more jarring the way anxiety can take a person and turn them to quicksand. Everything sinks in me. Nothing floats. I make everything I cradle in my mind for even … Continue reading prose// stained glass and yard gazing
