Ten years ago today, I was in Soho an hour before a neo-Nazi group bombed the area. I wrote about what happened that day years ago, here. It’s a significant anniversary. I’m caught up in remembrance. 7/7, 9/11, other significant days when people (lovers, brothers, mothers) died in the name of hate. But today’s date holds incredibly personal significance for me, because I was there that day. Because it happened in my neighbourhood. Because I spent hours with a phone in one hand and my heart in the other, looking for people I loved. The relief when I found out they were okay is something I have never felt at any other time. Hearing the relief and love in other people’s voices when they found out I was okay drove home the fact that I very easily couldn’t have been there to see it.

Fear of losing loved ones. The biggest fear I have ever experienced. Scared of the void people leave behind. There were so many tears during that time. It was really, really dark. As dark as the military-enforced curfew in Khartoum in 1989, but I wasn’t old enough to fully understand the implications of gunshots heard in the night. Old enough to understand fear brought on by senseless violence. Remembering that fear makes me grateful to be here, in Toronto, despite this city’s shortcomings.

Fear is palpable. The thickness in the city, the tears shed by strangers on street corners, the imposed sense of solidarity in the face of an enemy threatening your own personal safety simply because they don’t believe you have a right to exist in certain places. Did you know you could taste sadness? It’s sooty, unpleasant. The air becomes dense with it, makes it hard to breathe, each inhalation getting stuck, chest feeling thicker. And it’s not just the post-explosion smoke.

I only realised the impact that day has had on me since when 7/7 happened and I was watching the news. Seeing familiar neighbourhoods in the same state Soho was in brought back that day in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Uncontrollable sobbing, hours of shaking and trembling, sadness that I still carry with me.

And that feeling, the knowledge of senseless, hateful murder comes up at different times. Sometimes irrationally, even. Seeing walls pockmarked with bulletholes. Loud bangs in the street. Unexplained smoke wherever I am. The number 18.

This is dedicated to the memory of those who died in London, in all three bombings in April 1999. This is in support of those still affected, physically and mentally. This is to remember.

catharsis on an hourly basis overnight. vivid dreams, ransacking rest. right now, my head aches, not with tension, but with pushing through all this emotion. passively observing, on a paranoid streak. not so true. the death of something inside me means its life is flashing before my eyes. reconfiguration of my positionality and complicity within certain situations. it’s all good. i thought the universe was testing me, but it’s not. it’s gifting me with a retrospective, a warped episode of “this is your life.”

was looking for validation, faith, and security in the wrong places. i’ve been so blessed – that’s always been there, in the friend dedicating his day off to help me create, in the check-in phonecalls responding to cryptic updates. it’s there in the people who allow me to be myself, who turned their homes into havens when they saw i needed a rest stop, way before i realised it myself. it’s in the physical contact that magically showed up when needed, in neighbourly visits, in rides home. in yellow, and in new moons. in i-love-yous and i-care-about-yous. in the music. always in the music. i don’t need to fight to receive love. i’m well taken care of, more than anyone has any right to ask for. huge.

i was spiralling inwards, falsely confident in my own ability to notice when the Darkness came. almost got me there. almost dragged me down so deep. subconscious side-stepping turned into a dance, a game, catch-me-if-you-can. 24 hours ago, i was dark, heavy. today, the morning after the night before, surrounded by sawdust and scratch perry, the import of last night has me rejoicing in newly-discovered strength.

once this headache’s done, i’ll be all right. i’m not taking anything for the pain.

I started writing a piece last night, about barbed wire. But that piece has changed into this one. Earlier this year, I noticed for the first time that someone, once, had put barbed wire up around me. When I first noticed it, I thought it was for protection, erected in the name of love. I was touched until the implications sank in. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. This twisted metal had been cutting the palms of those trying to get close to me. There are trails of blood around my perimeter. We all bleed sometimes. I don’t want the barbed wire there. So I started slowly taking it down, cutting my own palms in the process. I stopped, because of the pain.

Getting rid of all of it is going to be harder than I thought. Because I don’t know how to. I’ve tried, but I haven’t gotten all of it. Last night showed me that, and it was intense, in more ways than one. Until last night I was getting ready to move on, maybe keep a little bit of metal as a memento. No such luck.

modern-day, my very own, basquiat. radiant beauty wrapped up in timpani. smash. take your dreams out your back pocket. i can’t be grateful. ? = not + touched. i’ve got a rooftop for you. circle a bicep, or better yet, a wrist – mine. for your master plan.

Three little letters keep on reappearing, the universe’s way of reminding me I’m not done yet. Deliberate false statement. Back to figuring out how to dismantle something that’s been there for so long. I need to get a wire-cutter. The cowardly part of me wants to leave it up, figures that if someone really wants to get through, they’ll risk the blood. I don’t want to include blood in the price of admission – the bleeding comes later, with the sweat and tears. I don’t even know if I’d bleed for someone else. I’m starting to become resentful because I didn’t put the wire up myself and I’m complicit in its remaining presence.

So: I’m not a bomb site. Last time, I checked, there weren’t any wolves coming my way. Besides, I have my own artillery, remember? I’m not your Rapunzel. Not since I shaved my hair off, and that was ages ago. Things weren’t just kept out. I was kept in.

This is ridiculous. Barbed wire love snags my jeans.

Words flow from me easiest at night. Late at night, when most people have gone to sleep. Until almost before the dawn. It’s hard to write of joy and laughter when the sun’s not around. Nighttime is for wistfulness, tears, and infinite sadness. Anything else that happens during the dark is a distraction from the journey through pain.

Even beauty at night, even that, is tinted with melancholy.

I think a lot at night. Navel and window-gazing too. Have I ever told you that I find solace in street lights? Late at night, less distractions mean I’m not focusing on getting through, running errands, earning a living. At night, time is luxury. Retrospection+memory.

I rarely think of the dead during sunlight hours. When the day is that young, death is hours removed. I rarely think of pain before dusk. And I never cry during the day. Only late late late at night.

Recently, I’ve been trying to maintain a normal schedule. Up and at ‘em by eight. I’m stopping that until I need to again. I need these late hours for sinking. When it’s warmer, I’ll start walking again. Let that orange glow hit my skin.

Written on a scrap of paper, 12.apr.09:

late 20th century migrant. fragmentation, post-NWO. move much? restlessness manifested to the nth degree. roots trying to push down, fighting through the concrete grounds of cities. little pieces of my heart scattered throughout the world. verandas in khartoum. alleyways in london. rooftops in toronto. balconies in muscat. fire escapes in montreal. car parks in regina. always in the city, and always left outside for the sun, rain, snow, and dust to beat down.

There’s been many conversations recently about fragmentation. Mainly fragmented families, and how they appear to be the norm. Both my parents come from fragmented families, bloodlines dispersed across continents, sibling relationships maintained online and on the phone. My story, and my parents’, is an immigrant’s story, re-lived and re-told.

One of my sisters lives in the same city as I do. I love having her close by, and I wish my other two siblings were closer. The last time we were all together in the same place was over a year ago. I haven’t seen my youngest sister since last summer. It hurts.

I see my extended family once every few years. My cousins grow up without me, and so do their children. I don’t know who suffers more. Probably me.

When I was a child, because of the family work situation, my father wasn’t around, and my mum was constantly preoccupied with work. Typical 20th century migrant family, doing pretty well so really, what do I have to complain about? I then left home for studies, moved back for a year, and have never used the family home address to receive mail. In fact, I’ve never lived at the first building that could be viewed as the family’s household.

Sadly, all too normal. The kids are grown now, and the future means we’ll just get more scattered – my siblings are each eyeing different continents in which to call home. I still don’t have home, although London had been filling that gap for a while. Toronto’s slowly edging it out, the main criteria for home having changed from where I left my heart (everywhere) to now being length of stay. I’ve lived in my current spot for over two years, the longest address I’ve ever been able to hold down by myself. This is an achievement.

This familial dispersion means that my culture doesn’t come easy to me. Proactive efforts made to learn, to absorb, to hold on to. Superficial cosmetic gestures to perform my cultural identity – incense smoke clouding my apartment, hibiscus juice in my fridge, cardamom to scent my tea, silks in my trunk. Mother tongue barely spoken, I have to teach it to my friends in order to use it more than once a month.

After I was born, my grandmother (a writer) published a piece in a newspaper about the birth of her first grandchild. I tried to get a hold of the article, haven’t been able to – searching for anything that ties me to my bloodline. There’s my family history, not passively absorbed, but actively searched for. I don’t know how to make kisra, I don’t own a mufraka, and I hate that I feel less-than because of things so small. I don’t know the names of all my great-aunts and uncles, I don’t know what the tattoos on their arms signify, and I don’t know all of their (my) traditions.

I now have to construct my own community, with its rituals and traditions. Create a new cultural identity without the past to give it some heft. Years ago, I vowed that I wouldn’t fragment my future family the way my present one has been. I don’t know any other way to be – but I recognise that my parents sacrificed the cohesion of their unit so I wouldn’t have to break up mine. It’s a tough world out there, tough enough with the support togetherness provides. Brutal without it.

***

Addendum: I had written this post over a few days and was getting ready to post it. Last night, a close friend, E., let me know that her grandmother, a woman who I had known and who was dear to me, had passed away. I met E.’s grandmother around the time my own passed away, 10 years ago. E. and I are pretty tight, and I called her grandmother Grandma. Fragmented as well, my friend lives away from her own family. And last night, she had no one with her to hug her. When she said that to me, it broke my heart. We’re loneliest in times of need, and nothing reminds us of that more than the death of a loved one. I wish I could hug my friend, as much for my sake as hers.

My 30th birthday’s coming up in seven months and a bit. I don’t know if this is a universal thing, but since I’ve turned 29, I’ve been in a major transitive state. Things have been clicking into place, and catharsis has been an almost weekly occurrence. It’s been really draining, as anyone who’s spoken to me at the wrong time over the last few months knows. Apologies to anyone who has tried to engage me in a conversation where I couldn’t even form full sentences.

For my birthday, I’m making myself a book. An emotional summary of how I feel about what’s important to me. It’s taking shape – part personal narrative, part monologue, sprinkled with poetry and visual and lyrical imagery. Testing my creativity. Been toying with the idea of making myself a mixtape too, once the writing’s completed. I wish I had had the foresight to do this at the end of each decade. Commemorating the turning points: 19 going to 20 was movement from London to Saskatchewan, post-university and post- some of the most traumatic years of my life. 10 was Khartoum to Muscat, and leaving behind my grandmother and learning responsibility for other lives in a one-week crash course.

This is probably the largest writing project I’ve ever done, and definitely the most personal. So far, my sections explore what music, scent, home, community, love, birth/death, language, womanhood, and colour (not as in race) mean to me and what roles they’ve played in my life. There’s an ode to the people who’ve helped shape me. Energy is everything, and I’ve been looking at my sources – they’re mainly the relationships I have had.

My guiding principle for the last few years has been “there’s complicity in inaction”. That was just an aphorism for a while, now it’s what I consider before I act, asking myself: How am I complicit in this situation? Heady question, and I hardly ever like the answer. Shows me the ugliest, laziest, most spiteful parts of myself. The best thing that’s come out of that though, has been learning how to forgive myself, and progress toward goodness. I truly wish I were only that noble.

The problem with this writing is that it’s been taking me away from two other major writing projects: my novel and a collection of poetry (more on both later). I can’t figure out which of these three is the most important.

In 1957, Charles Mingus released his album, The Clown. The title track is over 12 minutes long, and includes an improvised spoken word narrative by Jean Shepherd. I must have listened to this one track dozens of times in less than a week. Just listening to it on repeat.

I get caught up in particular stories, musical pieces, visual art and/or places during particular times. I’ve learned to try and figure out what it means to me. With “The Clown” and where it’s led me, it’s been glaringly obvious.

I’ve had the luxury of time recently, and I’ve been writing a lot. Going through my previous writing as well, sorting through hundreds of pieces and analysing them. Examining myself as a writer, identifying my strengths and weaknesses and trying to determine where my journey is supposed to lead me next.

I’ve come to understand that my fascination with “The Clown” is because of several things: Shepherd’s every-day voice and clear enunciation make him an easy-to-listen-to storyteller, and an incredibly skillful one to be able to improvise on the recording; the way the music sets the scenes, replaces thousands of words, and manipulates emotion in classic Mingus style; but most of all, it’s the story.

Obviously, different stories appeal to people at different points in their lives. Different themes, narratives, characters, and writing tones will captivate during certain moments in time. In “The Clown”, the protagonist is a clown who is genuinely happy (“he had all these greens and all these yellows and all these oranges bubbling up inside of him”), but only achieves career success when he compromises his artform. In the end, the clown dies in a tragic accident on-stage, miserable and unhappy. And as he’s dying, he finally figures it out. While it’s not explicit in the piece, it’s implied that what the clown now knows, is that his audience wasn’t really interested in what he had to present, but that they wanted to be entertained at his expense. He literally had to kill himself on stage to give his audience what they wanted.

ODB, anyone? (RIP).

Looking more into the clown, Shepherd’s work and investigating the idea of artist as sacrificial lamb led me to Antonin Artaud’s “Van Gogh, le suicidé de la société”, a study of the painter’s work which explores madness/genius and audience, that begins with the lines:

“One can speak of the good mental health of Van Gogh who, in his whole adult life, cooked only one of his hands and did nothing else except once to cut off his left ear”

Having been drawn into themes of madness, artistic expression and the romanticism of artist as martyr, I’ve been looking at my own experiences in terms of my work. A couple of years ago, I had stopped writing because I was tired of being told that what I was writing wasn’t what people wanted to hear from me. On the flipside, the support and encouragement I received for my writing was when I explored themes of identity, Othering, Orientalism, “home”, hip hop, and political resistance. While those are a part of what I choose to write about, they are definitely not the whole. I have also written about visual art and culture, privacy, philosophical explorations, environmental issues, space (in a stars and planets sense), cryogenics, and post-nature.

Reading between the lines, I had felt that being a young black Muslim woman excluded me from writing about science, philosophy, nature, and French literature. Bugger that.

It makes sense that “The Clown” and “Van Gogh” appeal to me now, as I gear up to present myself once again as a writer. Shedding restrictions and expectations placed upon me (and I do take responsibility for other people’s expectations hindering me), I’m studying the pieces and my relationship to them, and learning the lessons they offer.

I’m tired of being a Possibility Girl, and so I begin. I’m looking forward to being more public with my writing, and I’m slowly working through the fear that’s been holding me back.