Justice

It's a funny thing considering we make up all the rules. It is us, human beings, who decide what is just and unjust in the first place; what is right and what is wrong, what is ethical and what is unethical etc. What is considered humane and inhumane is perceived by us and us alone. Higher judgment, or God, will reveal all in a different life. But who decides whether or not we should stand trial now, in this lifetime?

I watched a fantastic film once called 'God on trial'. It was about the concentration camp prisoners putting God on trial to decide whether or not He was responsible for abandoning them in their time of desperate need. It was touching and poetic, sad and pathetic, helpless and hopeful. But most of all, it was distressing. The mammoth feeling of abandonment struck me. I wondered what it would feel like to wake up and realise God had just walked out of your life.

The BBC documentary I just watched achieved the exact same thing. A journalist decided to embark upon a journey to Germany, Hungary and Austria to find the world's most wanted Nazi war criminals. These men, all in their mid-90's, are (directly or indirectly) responsible for the massacre of 11 million people; jews, gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled and many more. These men, frail and often disorientated, claimed they had no recollection of what had happened. Some admitted their past but refused to take any responsibility; claiming they were simply following orders as soldiers. Others were completely oblivious to the scale of devastation caused by the Nazis. They were convinced it was 'exaggerated' and felt betrayed that the plight of the German people who were also displaced and made to evacuate their homes was not represented in equal measure to the suffering of the Jews.

Drowning in alcohol in the early hours of the morning, unable to face the reality of their past, they sit determined to avoid the subject altogether. Looking at their wrinkled, pale faces; their withered eyes and their shaking hands, I wonder how anyone can put these men on trial now. Am I a fascist like them? Does this make me a Nazi? No. Does it make me compassionate? Am I fooled by the exterior, unable to recognise the men who once killed brutally without flinching? No. Instead, I am convinced that the only judgment which now matters, which will bring justice of unprecedented levels, is the one that awaits these men at the end of their lives.

Facing the end of their lives alone is a kind of justice in itself, I guess. But admittedly not enough.

I think of my own past. Have I done things I regret? Yes. I haven't killed anyone or intentionally harmed a soul but I'm sure in passing I must have. So, put me on trial. Whose to say the judgment of those on Earth, those equal to me, will affect me in any way at all? The thing that petrifies me the most, the thing I'm convinced petrifies all of us the most is death. I will enter an unknown terrain alone, stripped of any agenda or ego, grovelling undoubtedly and unsure of what awaits me. At that moment, every last remanent of guilt that lingers in the shadows of my conscience will unwillingly rise and stand trial. Just like those men, at the end of their lives, I will have to be held accountable for everything I've done and everything I haven't. Every single one of us will. So, why do we deny it so adamantly?

For some reason, the human mechanism is designed to deny anything which jeopardises its interests. Deny the holocaust, by all means. Just know that one catastrophe isn't greater than another. And the suffering of one person or one race isn't more or less colossal than another. The real injustice is done when you deny the suffering of another for the sake of saving your own skin; skin that was never yours to save in the first place. Skin that isn't mine, either. It is only the choices that belong to us, that are owned by us. And upon those, we await judgment.

Pillars of family

I remember when I was little, I'd often hear the adults talk about how the family was suffering once the watchful eye of an elder had long gone. I never understood it then and never thought I would.

Reflection is never far from those who are obsessively committed to analysis, re-analysis and over analysis. Yet, for some reason, at this time of year my brain goes into overdrive. Maybe it's because I recall so much of what was good about this time of year, so very long ago.

Eid, I remember, was a reward for the month of sacrifice, strength and determination that came before it. New clothes, new jewellery, money, feasts - all very extravagant and rich. What I failed to observe as a child, however, was that Eid wasn't at all about those things. It was simply about family and love. And we all loved our grandmother. She was the centre of my universe and most definitely, the most important person to all of us individually.

Waking up in my grandmother's house is a feeling I have never experienced again. She'd be sat at her special, mahogany chair by the table with a bowl of Quaker oats cereal and her newspaper. Her matt gold-rimmed glasses would sit just above the tip of her nose - miraculously glued in place, defying gravity altogether. I'd watch as she'd turn the pages of the newspaper; so engrossed in what was happening in the world. At that age, I was completely oblivious to the fact that my grandmother was completely uneducated. And yet I have never observed such poise, sophistication and etiquette in any woman.

She had such a beautiful smile; comforting and playful and a voice I had never heard before. That sounds odd, I guess. Voices tend to be individual. But I guess to me - to us- everything about my grandmother was untouchable, incomparable. She called me her 'shaizaadi', the same term she used for all of us. And yet she somehow made it seem so personal, so unique. Her tone was different, I guess. She'd look at us all differently. We all had a special relationship with her.

At this time of year, I miss her face. Her loving gaze as I'd walk into the room; her warm embrace; her comforting smile; the way she'd affectionately tuck my hair behind my ears when I'd lean against her shoulder; her smell. I would have given the world for my grandmother.

During the years she was ill, I'd sit beside her and she'd secretly make me promise her things. She made me promise I'd be happy and successful. She made me promise I'd be a good person, a kind person and that I'd take care of my mother. But most of all she made me promise that I'd never forget I was her 'shaizaadi', her princess. I'd look at her lovingly and make all these promises. Then, when her illness would soothe her to sleep, I'd go upstairs into the bathroom and weep. I still remember the way she'd look at me after she was diagnosed with cancer. It was a changed look. She was still familiar, still the same - but she knew something that I didn't. As I'd sit on the floor and take her feet in my lap to lather with creams and oils, she'd look down at me from her favourite chair and her loving smile would morph into something else. I never understood what it was until the day she died.

Six years on and whenever I hear someone say 'grandma', there's a little pang of bitterness that sweeps swiftly through my body. And then just tiny remnants of her memory linger until I brush them away and convince myself there's no room for them in reality.

The day we buried her, we all gathered in one room and got under the covers: all eight of us. Something shifted in the universe that day, something happened. Between that day and today, six years later, not one of us have felt any desire to celebrate Eid. We moan, we bicker, we laze - anything we can to avoid embracing something that was once so beautiful. The first Eid without her was classified by the adults as being non existent, 'She's in this room with us', they said. 'Her spirit is here; in each and every one of us'. As I looked round the room at my girls, we all shared one expression - resentment. Resentment for something that we deemed untrue. Her spirit wasn't good enough; we wanted her. We wanted to hug her and touch her and tell her how much we loved her and missed her and how Eid and everything else would never be the same again. We smiled to each other knowingly and one by one, got up and left the room until we all ended up - rather coincidentally- in what used to be her room.

Second to second best.

Browsing through anxious faces; their eyes frantically scanning ink-stained sheets to prove their overpowering success or disastrous failure, one easily forgets that they too belong among that sea of hope. And then suddenly, before you’ve had a chance to digest, there it is staring you in the face – elation. One very easily forgets the ales they carry buried in their own heart when joy slices through the air of dread so easily, so sharply… However, contrary to popular misconception, this is called denial not selflessness.

Looking back through my life, I fail to pinpoint a singular instance in which I wasn’t petrified of letting someone down. Tired of searching the vacant eyes of many whom I idolized for a reassuring acknowledgement of well doing, I eventually became my own worst critic. That, however, isn’t altogether true. One may even suggest that the entire concept of ‘my own worst critic’ is simply a defense mechanism; to alienate yourself from the reality of notorious judgment that will inevitably follow you throughout your ‘knowing’ life [I refrain from using the term ‘adult’ as that signifies somehow that adolescents or youths experience little or none of the aforementioned ‘judgment’, which I recognize to be highly untrue if not, sadistically dismissive!] The reality is, the opinion of those you love will haunt you most of your living life – I should imagine even thereafter but that so far remains an inexperienced terrain…

Anyhow, failure is inevitable. Life, like tennis, serves up so many matches or games that we are obligated to play that it becomes impossible to always win; or as the pessimist bluntly puts it, to disgracefully lose/be beaten/FAIL! The infamous horse analogy has plagued the minds of many determined, strong-willed individuals; ‘get up again!’ their subconscious screams – even if the fall fractured the spinal chord and you’re lying there paralyzed… such, however, is the nature of the human mechanism. ‘Paralysis or not, I WILL mount black beauty again’… I had that tale on my bookshelf when I was young. The illustration on the front cover was beautiful; a stunning, black stallion; muscular and forthright, with a wild yet altogether tentative look in his eyes. His mane was pictured swaying in the wind that one could only imagine how he ripped through the skies; the air parting in fear of his obvious determination to overpower. The clear blue sky above him was tantalizing; it served as a reminder that I could have anything I ever wanted, just like black beauty – as long as I worked at it with fearlessness, ambition and desire. Black beauty never came with a manual for life, however. There was no chapter entitled ‘circumstance and how it may throttle your will completely’!

Still, circumstance serves as a reminder that experience can never really be wholly relied upon. How often we fall and how terribly every fractured bone and muscle of pride aches… Stripped of the bravado confidence so convincingly aligns across your invisible armor, it’s either fight or fall. Which do you choose?

Nothingness

There is nothing at all so grand about nothingness; nothing quaint, chic or even remotely liberating.Vacuums exist to be filled, supposedly. Though we appear to relish so marvelously in emptiness sometimes.

There is nothing in so much…

The train door opens and a complete stranger appears; suddenly there is somebody, anybody – right there. He is nameless, unrecognizable, and incomprehensible and yet, I know him. He becomes an extension of me; my thoughts, my emotions, my vision and perception of the day; the time, fate, the redness of the central line, the angle of the sunlight as it hits his unknown yet altogether familiar face…

I lift my eyes, ever so gently – as if my face were made of porcelain, my eyelashes; flickers of cloud. I peer into his nameless palette. ‘Hello’…. I spell the word before my eyes…Hello. I part my lips, the word does not form and it cannot form. A blink. His face evaporates –

He is no one, nothing at all – yet, as the doors of this rocket ship shoot open, I turn back. Do I expect to bid him farewell? Maybe. I dare not defy convention.

Defeated, I walk away from the waiting doors; exasperated in their pursuit to unite me and the no-named someone. I peer through the dying concrete of the crumbling station; am I so easily sold the fictional reality of x-ray vision? Light shoots past my eyes and when I regain focus, I am left with the train track imprints – on my nothingness.

Isn’t that just what nothing is…?

Nothing is the first gush of air that hits my artificially concealed face like a million tiny bullets; mercilessly ripping away the material flesh to conquer buried vulnerability as I gently protrude my head from the giant hole in my wall – sunrise.

Nothing is the poised, arrogant seduction of jazz at unforeseeable hours – the caress of sounds all too familiar, which taunt indecision and cackle boisterously at the word ‘cultured’.

Nothing is the arch of tiptoed feet on cold, uninviting marble as the mind seeks nourishment in the undefeatable darkness of the schizophrenic kitchen.

Nothing is in the uninhibited, formless sway of the candle flame that caresses the warm midnight air, illuminating empty eyes in golden brown and orange – speaking poetry in the form of dream, aspiration, endless opportunity…

Nothing is mine and everything I want it to be.

Qawwali

Saanson ki maalaa pe simruun main pii ka naam
apne mann ki main jaanuun aur pii ke mann ki Ram.....
[On the rosary beads of every breath, I chant the name of my beloved
I know of my heart, and God knows the heart of my beloved]

Ek tha saajan mandir mein aur ek tha pritam masjid mein
prem ke rang mein aisii dubii bun gayaa ek hi roop
prem ki maalaa japte japte aap bani main Shyam
[One lover stood in a temple, the other in a mosque
I, drowning deep in the colour of love; emerged as one soul.
Chanting on the rosary beads of love, I myself became Shyam]

It's a mystery to me why the beauty of qawwali is so understated. For one to employ the human voice as an actual instrument is beyond comprehension; it surpasses what we commonly know as singing, it becomes an elevated form of expression. Someone once said that qawwali, with all it's Sufi poetical substance, is almost an intrusion by the listener onto a man's one-to-one conversation with his God. The mere fact that we are allowed to eavesdrop on such an intimate, personal communication is where the beauty lies in this art form; it stresses a commonality, a unity between us all. Yet, here lies the basic contradiction; this circle of elevated unity can only be experienced by one who understands the poetry, the language. I find myself constantly frustrated when I am unable to conjure up adequate words in the English language to translate Urdu poetry in a way that still communicates its magnificent substance to all my friends who I want to share this wondrous art form with. Unfortunately, I often fall short. Yet I wonder, is translation itself an art form?

Language in itself is an art. Art is universal, but language is not. In all its raw beauty, it is very much a barrier as much as it is common ground, as Virginia Woolf once professed. In this common ground of expression, we are stripped of all pretence, agenda, ego or anything which may prevent the overpowering surge of emotion from manifesting in the human spirit. We are left completely vulnerable by the experience of something as inspiring and moving as qawwali. There is something altogether profound in that susceptibility of being overpowered that one experiences... the birth of tears from a single word which weaves its thread around a heart vessel immersed with memories, tightening its noose only to tear through the surface and wound the seal; prompting an onslaught of consciousness to ooze and trickle down an endless stream of thought is something so incomprehensible, even the creator of the word is left stunned.

We move from word, to melody. In Javed Akhtar's 'Afreen Afreen', which Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan inevitably gives an earth-shattering birth to, he writes Jism jaise machaltee huwe raghnee. Again, word for word translation fails epically in this instance. But he is communicating the essence of beauty; his mind sculpts a body which is as seductive as the curvaceous, dancing notes of the alluring melody. And the hypnotic and quite often seductive beat of the tablaa is all too intoxicating; heightening the experience to a magnificently cataclysmic one.

At the height of this creativity, the qawwal introduces sargam to his astounded audience. Sargam is essentially singing the names of the notes which make up the composition; varying the pitch, tempo, volume, pronunciation, tune and order. Though as a mere observer, the technicalities of the art are unknown to us; we identify with it simply through effect. And the effect is, quite naturally, otherworldly.

The beauty of qawwali exists in its chameleon-like nature; for one verse to soothe the soul gently to sleep and another so passionate and intense, that it shatters the senses into a million shards of emotion. Agreeably, there are many art forms which achieve a similar sensation. For me they include the undeniably authentic portrayal of characters by Meryl Streep, a canvas of literary perfection in the name of Virginia Woolf, the flawless symphonic composition of Mozart's 'Moonlight Sonata' and the impeccable demonstration of vocal range and agility as demonstrated by the magnificent qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

For the record, favourite version - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqjiXYemMlw&feature=channel> bar the obviously drunk, savage Pakistani men who have absolutely NO idea about the greatness they are witnessing!

To Overcome

On the shores of this consistency,

no battle cries emerge.

In the ferocity of these callous waves,

none too merciful stand guard.

My lighthouse is no shelter,

for he belongs to no one and none to him.

His reserve is a necessity

the depths of the ocean command.

Brutality in them is innate-

survival otherwise unfathomable.

Endless is the stormy peril from

streams all too conscious to really exist.

Gluttonous consumption

replaces a desire all too familiar

for satisfaction.

The wave cannot hear the waverer-

he floats amidst the illusion of fear.

Unbeknown to the fact

that immortality awaits at the

foothills of His rescue boat....

Broken Hearts

It isn’t human not to feel lonely and it isn’t human not to be afraid…

...screams Francesca Johnson at the man who, she tries to convince herself, is void of all human emotion and integral complexities. A man who she has fallen passionately in love with; a man who is the sole embodiment of a destiny she imagined and a desire long suppressed; a man who is consequently not her husband. A man who she has fallen in love with…in four days.

I wonder whether it's a personally profound interpretation or some unexplainable, other-worldly connection to a character, when you turn away from the screen and realise that you are the only one in the living room that feels anything but contempt for this adulterous woman.

The Bridges of Madison County follows the story of Francesca Johnson, an Italian war bride living in Iowa whose glasshouse of compromised reality is shattered by the mysterious, world-renowned photographer, Robert Kincaid.
Francesca is essentially an extraordinarily exotic spirit, tamed by her surroundings and the stark contrast between her imagination and reality. She envisions an America that is greater than mankind; a place not only inhabiting opportunity and luxury, but the essence of true love - where free spirits, immersed in the many different colours of human emotion, caress each other with the soft tenderness of Yeats, profound, fulfilling conversation and experience beautifully intense physical desires towards that perfect entity - signaling a complete union.
Her reality, however, condones a rather less glamorous lifestyle. That is until Robert Kincaid...

"How [a room full of my cousins & two sisters, ask] can you fall so in love with someone in four days?! It's impossible."
"It's not love, it's lust!"
"She's so desperate - the bitch! She practically throws herself on top of him."
"It is essentially all about sex. That's all she wants from him".
"How can she do that to her husband?! Her kids! She's just selfish", they profess in outrage.

I, either in my obvious naivety or in my blind faith that they would appreciate a character as being three-dimensional considering she is after all HUMAN, raved about how wonderfully tragic this film was and how they'd all be in tears by the end of it. Quite the contrary!
It did, instead, spark a magnificent debate, which undoubtedly illustrates just how powerful the story is.

Love, says Francesca, does not obey our expectations. "Its mystery is pure and absolute". And so you ask yourself, does one ever really ‘love’ or does one simply love the idea of ‘being in love’ – essentially, falling in love with love itself. Is there a time frame; can you fall in love with someone in four days? Does one fall in love with another, or with the ‘idea’ of this other – or what he or she represents?
Undoubtedly, Robert for Francesca signifies the unknown – the unpredictable, untamable, adventurous ‘outsider’ – essentially, the life she had envisioned in her dreams. He appears as a saviour, rescuing her from the mundane “details” her life has become involuntarily infested with.
Yet, the reality still stands. Francesca made a choice; to marry, to have children, to leave Italy. The foundations upon which those choices were made are irrelevant on account of her adultery…right?
She professes, “When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected to move again only you don't remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself”.

Meryl Streep, unsurprisingly, plays Francesca Johnson with such great precision that one cannot help but become mercilessly consumed with the internal construct of this character. Despise her or pity her; Francesca’s impact is unavoidable.
So, we move on. Does Francesca strike a chord because she embodies multiple realities of women we all know? Or perhaps she possesses characteristics that secretly fester within each and every one of us.
Francesca declares, “You never think a love like this can happen to you”. Does she mean the love she feels towards Robert or the feeling of love itself? Perhaps she’s referring to the union between them, or maybe the love he bestows upon her. How does she reach this conclusion if a love like this has indeed, never ‘happened’ to her before? Where does the comparison stand?
If you’ve never experienced an emotion – any emotion – with such intensity before, is it right to give that experience a new name? Or even maybe a new platform of comparison?

For example, I know I’ve never felt this way before and I know I only felt this way upon his arrival. He fucks up and leaves. I experience a new emotion, with great intensity.
Categorically, I fell in love without knowing it, then had my heart broken and then realized I was either close to being in love or was, in fact, in love with the man who fucked up, prior to him doing so. Yet this person, who you supposedly fell in love with or were in the processing of falling in love with, broke your heart. In which case, does he not then become somebody else – and not, essentially, the individual you had perceived him to be? In which case, you couldn’t possibly have loved him – but instead, the ‘idea of him’ – an idea you constructed from perception and not from reality. Thus suggestively, you fell in love with the perceived idea of ‘being in love’.

Bitter, consequential reassurances? Maybe.

Or maybe, the truth about a truth that exists only in the subjective mind. One might even, then, fall in love with the morbid reality itself – a broken heart is incurable, after all. In every silence it looms...lingers; threatening to emerge from its dark slumber from within that consciously abandoned yet subconsciously occupied corner in your mind. It is, undeniably, as attached to me as [dare I say it] I am to it.
After all, what does one have left of the person who broke your heart but the broken heart itself?