a friend

whether we leave
or we stay
if we're here or away
when joy brings you madness
and sorrow brings you sanity
when the day's moments are no longer shared
and the night's pain no longer felt
and we've forgotten one another
remember this
i've carved in me a place
for your life
a home
for my friend

be mindful

be mindful of the images shared on social media. be mindful of whose hearts might sink deeper into their chests because of the things we post. be mindful of the information we are sharing and whether or not it is true. be mindful of the fact that some videos or images may be better left unshared out of respect, love, and dignity for the people involved. out of respect for communities we may not be a part of. be mindful that we are not perpetuating pain. perpetuating stereotypes. perpetuating falsehood. find ways to convey information that don't contribute to dehumanization. be mindful of our humanity.

body

Your mind has rights over you, nourish it.
Your body has rights over you, be gentle with it.
Your heart has rights over you, protect it.

Your soul has rights over you - it's inclination is towards Good. Give it Purpose.

#bismillah

When you go back 

Don't count the fingers you

Lost getting here 

Or the limbs your neighbours lost 

Don't let the memories you caged 

Come out to play don't 

Unfold the crumpled pages

of your passport  don't

Poke your stomach and sigh

Wistfully where it crosses the 

Borders your aunties set for desirability 

Don't carry any lovers in your chest 

Don't 

Don't go back, you can't go back 

Not all of you anyway

-We miss time (not places)/ we miss people (not places)

Sometimes we patch up our wounds
and so the only place we can bleed
Is from our mouths with our words
But what we forget is that with the blood
Comes fragments of the razors we were cut with

-Toxic

Dear Muslim Women

Dear Muslim women:

can we love & accept each other without tearing each other apart? Is it possible to appreciate women for being hijabi fashionistas, or wearing hella thick eyeliner without judging the content of their character? Without questioning their devotion to modesty or God? When we make these underhanded remarks under the guise of reminders I wonder how much benefit comes from it. Sometimes "reminders" can be more harmful. I have always found that reminders that are rooted in shaming people have never been productive. There are millions of muslim women on this planet and to expect that they they will all interpret and act upon things in the same manner as you is a disservice to this faith. Understanding religion differently than someone else does not make you wrong, it does not weaken your faith, it does not take away your commitment to this community or God. So can we allow for women to express themselves while we hold them gently and cheer for them along the way? Is this possible?

To my beloved Muslims

Hi Muslims,

Make sure you're properly hydrated and eating well. Try to make time to pray regularly. And make Dua for everyone. If you, by Gods grace, wake up tomorrow say alhamdulilah. If you're feeling a little scared walking outside recite ayat ul Kursi iA its a source of protection. The weather is supposed to be a little chilly in the next few days so dress warmly. If you can, call/msg/text those who you have wronged or have wronged you and try to mend relations - it will make you feel better. Take a few minutes tomorrow and completely unplug from social media and just sit by yourself, you might gain some new perspective.

Our prophet pbuh said that our community is like one body and if one part of the body is in pain, then the whole body is affected. So what I'm saying is that I care about your well being because it is intrinsically linked to my own. Please take care of yourself and each other.

Ok goodnight. Salaams

If I could tell you all the words I really want to say. 
    
       Spell out all the feelings and emotions, rising, brimming, spilling.

If I could tell you all the words I really want to say instead of the vile poisonous jibberish that topples out,


                                                          If I could 'remove message' every meanly modulated word that came out of my mouth like I can on Skype, 

    If there were a drop-down language option to transliterate emotion to word.  From mind to pen. 

Put pen to paper.

If I could know that you really heard me the same way you R'd a bbm message, 

If I could courier you my thoughts running free and wild in my mind, have you sign off when you receive it.  

Three  Ten business days later.

If I could source code all the anger.

Show you the bits that matter.

I would.     Without question. 

Without pause.

Without wax.

do not call on my strength.

do not reflect the steely hardness in my eyes.

do not reward the roughness of my hold as we chafe against each other.

do not drink in the firmness of my inflection.

do not lap up the bitter taste of my words.

do not sing praise to my withering stare.

do not applaud my clenched fists.

instead,

instead.

appeal to my softness,

draw out the saltine tears that refuse to well up,

run your hands along my skin; go on, 

discover the dimples of my flesh,

hear the tremble in my modulation,

taste the vulnerability on my lips,

open my palms and sand down the calluses,

to be hard is effortless.

it takes everything, 

everything.

to remain soft,

let me be soft.

-I cry when I'm angry

How often we forget
That all the evil he has
Created is within us
When we ask him
To protect us from
All the evil he has created

Isn't it strange that
People can leave and
Live inside us simultaneously

I'm good at
Detailed empty
Conversations
That make me
Feel empty
In detail

-At least they are comfortable

So tell me
Do you drink
Because you're empty
Or are you empty
Because you drink

-numb alcoholic

Don't be alarmed when

Introverted polite 

Strangers 

Acquaintances 

Tell you their deepest secrets 

Don't hate them

Maybe they held onto darkness 

Alone

For six years 

Lend them your heart 

Lend them your heart 

Lend them your heart 

Lend them your full heart 

For they might not remember tenderness 

-Lonely

They were empty
So first they ate us
(and we let them)
Then they decided
They were still hungry
So they ate themselves too
And now there's nothing left
Just the words they use
To fill the emptiness
"Mountains of liberation"

[and we believe them]

-Power

To Imagine an Undefined Liberation.

There were two white women. One questioning my Bangladeshi friend about why she wears the hijab, wondering if Kolkatta and Bangladesh are two separate countries. Told her to use the Google machine. Upon one of my classmate's insistence, another hijabi, I explained the Partition of '47, the War of '71. Tired, I thought, if I did not make the deliberate decision to educate myself on my country’s history, I would be spouting out the accounts that my family has put together over the years – an invaluable inheritance, but a limited one all the same. Although I am looked to as a reference for Indian history, no one, no education system, equips me with the knowledge I need to educate myself and others. This is how the system inflicts violence on third world and colored bodies. We are brought in, in times of fascination, as points of reference and just as quickly, we are ignored, shoved back into the shadows. We are left trapped in a maze, like mice, looking at only what is in front of us and nothing more. Lost. Education allows us to rise above the tricky alleyways and illusionary dead ends—it gives us the words we need to articulate and understand how history has betrayed us and how we continue to betray history. Though I am still working to escape the confines of this trap, to know that white prodding is also a form of injustice and a tentacle of the overarching system for the Otherized student means my hands have discovered and are slowly unraveling one dimension of this artificial maze.

The other white woman’s laptop brandished a laptop sticker, “Well behaved women rarely make history,” but in reality, it is only ever well-behaved cunning white women who make history, because history is written by them and their white associates. Everyone else is treated as accessories, as condiments, to be put in or to be left out when stirring the white history soup. When and if we are included, we melt into whiteness, like salt in water, we become invisible, disappear, look just like them. You can taste us, but only to the degree that the white scholar wants to taste us. Anything beyond that, we are trashed, dumped out, offered to the vultures. The same ones circling over our hearts and minds. Watching our actions and our words. Any swift movements. Waiting to pick apart anything worth eating, so that we are forced to keep secret anything we believe is worth knowing. We cannot brandish it or speak on it, with the fear that if we are found out, our vulture friends and colleagues will surely consume us. Without warning.

I am struggling to understand the idea of a safe space, when even when we rip out our hearts and offer them to our kinfolk, we still risk the possibility of being trampled over for the sake of white validation. This trauma and this vulnerability indicate that we must look beyond skin politics. Though whiteness is stripping us and though our home is with our racial community, oftentimes, we find these lines violate one another – and we find that even in the arms of our Brown sisters and brothers, there are traps and cages set up to clamp down on our skin. To leave us exposed. It leaves me wondering, where can I go? To be understood and to be the authentic me. To move beyond my skin, but to also be liberated by it. Where I can find a mazeless land, untroubled by vultures.

Sometimes we forget that
Raising wolves to be gentle
Makes them gentle wolves
Its raising wolves to be accountable
That makes them men

-Your softness is not enough

He thinks he’s wooed me. He thinks he is a gentleman. Dashing,charming, courting. The flowers. The impromptu tickets to no where and everywhere. He thought his days of effort and work had plateaued when she helped unzip his pants, car windows fogging up, breath speeding up.

He pulls out of a kiss, whispers, "I love you." There’s pride in his voice-not the kind of pride that carries arrogance-but the kind of pride the little five year old neighbour holds in his voice after his first bike ride without falling. I smile, eyes crinkled, laugh lines deepening. There is a desperate yearning to hear the words like my lungs are finally filling with oxygen. Quite literally-it isn’t a great feeling-it burns through you like a good scotch and oh, oh, ohhh, it is so painfully good. What is it about a complete stranger’s love that we crave so much? How do we grow up being loved unconditionally and yet are willing to throw away everything and everyone we love for a nobody-for somebody else’s somebody?

In the ever dark and twisted place that is my mind one would presume I’d be more skeptical in my response; at the very least in the way I respond. But I reply with the eagerness of a puppy-the inner me flinches. The overpowering need to be touched from inside is too strong-that void that’s chronically starving to be filled; that is why I say, "I love you too" with conviction.

I know with utmost certainty that he does not love me. Absolutely. Does. Not. I’m a force to be reckoned with. I say that with no pride. Rather it is with shame and disgust-the appropriate word here would be overwhelming. I am positively, unceremoniously overwhelming. Take it how you may.

It has always been a choice of being in or out. There is no dipping your toes at the edge of the water to see if you’ll adjust to my temperature. You dive into the unknown, whether that’s the coldest chambers of my heart or the hottest flames of my amygdala (the region of the brain responsible for love, angsts and other fucks).

How do I tell him he only likes me? Without sounding condescending? Pretentious, haughty. I am after all undoubtedly condescending, pretentious and haughty on the best of days. He likes sex with me. He likes the idea of me. He is flirting with the idea of loving the idea of me. But me? No no no, he does not love me. Most people like or even love the idea of me. But the reality is so much uglier. Not the ugly-beautiful kind of ugly. The kind of ugly that makes you feel guilty. The kind you can’t make eye contact with. And no one likes to feel guilty like they’re tip-toeing on egg shells in the crevices and cracks of life where they want to feel most comfortable.

What he wants is sex. And love. But without the love. But my love, it’s conjoined twin is intensity. It hits you hard; so painful you may even like it if you like to get spanked. Joke. My humour is warped-part of that dark and twistiness.

I am all consuming. Fire. And I want a love that is all consuming. Anything short of that is a friend with benefits. Not even a good friend with benefits; it’s the kind of benefits where you’re actually getting more ripped off being in the union-your dues get you nothing.

Why has emotional intimacy become the hardest hurdle to surpass? I feel like a common whore pushed to the streets after you fucked me. See. Intense. Over whelming. I know. But tell me, what is the difference between me and the whore if you are able to show me shamelessly and effortlessly every inch of your carcass, able to exchange unknown bodily fluid with me without question but spit me out when I want to exchange feelings? Oh right, the whore gets paid. Dark and twisty. Dark and twisty. Dark and twisty.

I am admittedly arrogant. Vain. My demeanour is arrogant even when my intentions are not. And with that, let me tell you I am perspicacious. I hate it. It is a curse and a double-edged sword. How do you see the bigger picture and then sit around waiting for everyone else to catch up? (She said so humbly).


-while we're on the subject can we change the subject now

8 Reasons Drake is a more palatable candidate than all the existing candidates:

1. He’s a person of colour

2. Related to 1 above, he wears his beard in solidarity with the plight of Muslims. In fact rumour has it that is name is actually Drake Mohammed Drizzy but he keeps his half Muslim identity under wraps to win the election.

3. He has shown considerable on the ground work for lower and lower-middle class Muslims in important political initiatives like subsidizing Habibiz Sheesha Lounge, proving that he does not believe that Muslim Middle Eastern practices are barbaric and is open to supporting the larger multiculti agenda

4. He is aware of the plight of people with disabilities given that he was shot in Degrassi and has been stuck in a wheelchair until the drop of his first album

5. Related to this, Drake does not show stigma to people with mental health issues and has stated publicly that he was “running through the six with his woes” and “you know how that [stuff] goes”, illustrating that he is not only able to work with the rest of us in federal policies that will mediate the degenerative mental health effects of capitalism, but that he has experienced them

6. He performed in Ryerson as a show of solidarity with students because he started from the bottom now he’s here [and he knows that #osap #struggle]

7. He bases his stances and initiatives that relate to women, specifically women of colour on recommendations that his partner, Serena Williams has made. Serena Williams does not acknowledge shrieking white fans but she does acknowledge fans of colour based on years of racial antagonism on the field

8. I’m just saying he can do better

How is the manspread 

Any different from any act of violence 

If it makes you stay still

And hold your breath 

Until the end of the ordeal

-Harmless Masculinity