dear salman rushdie and elizabeth bishop,

what a breadth of work is included here! the narratives are tricky, heavy, humorous. so many voices speaking from their corners of existence—an “osteo-warped” young man in a wheelchair (“Trying to Grow”), a calculating woman who marries and drives her family into the economic class above herself (“Shakti”), a male indian doctor’s terrifying visit to Nashawy, Egypt, where he is derided for not performing clitorectomies in his homeland (“Nashawy”). there is a thrilling global shape to this anthology despite its seeming confinement to “indian” writers and you manage to make this text varied, multifaceted, and beautifully sequenced. i read and reread “In the Mountains” because of its courageous representation of a woman unsocialized to her upper-crust family’s consumptive, social ways. the mother idolizes the daughter who defies all that is recognizable about being an indian woman, an unexpected and real turn to the narrative. the queer male desire visited in “Trying to Grow” is a risky intervention into two marginalized spaces—the queer and differently abled worlds. many of these stories inhabit multiple rooms of class, gender, migrancy. the thread unifying the works presented here is the tenacity of the characters and the grounded storytelling employed by the authors. sara suleri’s “Meatless Days” shows up here as well, proving the most-anthologized ‘south asian’ short story i’ve seen, as i’ve read it already in Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora. didn’t you read that anthology? maybe you wanted to bring it to a wider audience — a men’s audience. provocative, expansive, confident. a successful collection.

thank you,
Tahminah Zaman

© 2010 tahminah zaman

my dear shani mootoo,

these stories are weird. “Out on Main Street” is the jewel of this collection, reflecting the complexity of the indians in the caribbean in a funny, smart, thorough manner. the queer factor is brilliant; the queer women’s culture that permeates the space of the indian sweetshop over the course of the text fully centers the women’s presence in a normative space peopled with first-generation married indian couples. the sweetshop is an illustration of crossing between multiple realms; gay and straight, first-generation indian immigrants to the west indies and the ones born and grown up there, female and male, normative and oppositional to the norm. the story is well paced, the timing measured to deliver the jokes throughout. there is much to learn and analyze here.

i asked myself why you exaggerated the characters, sketching them in black and white in some of the stories, especially “A Bright New Year’s Eve’s Night,” in which the man and woman characters are caricatures of a patriarchal, heteronormative world. at first they seemed less believable to me as a result of their over-the-top characterization and i saw too starkly the unforgiving lesbian lens that positions Tanya and Bobby in a diametric opposition of power—Tanya’s only agency is to kill Bobby to stop his physical and psychological abuse. after a few days of reflection, i remembered your background — west indian. these points are exaggerated in order to make the scene, the moral, the outcome of the story unmistakable. this, along with “Lemon Scent,” is a cautionary tale.

“Sushila’s Bhakti” isn’t deep enough. the painter loses her edge as a result of internalizing the orientalist criticism of her work. she loses herself and needs the labels of indian food coloring and basmati rice to make her feel authentic and free again? the narration is choppy, unintegrated, forced. the logic of this story depends too much on Sushila’s unquestioned sense of exile.

while your work could be described as somehow less conciliatory than jhumpa lahiri’s, for example, because you write through that lesbian-feminist lens, it still operates as a series of distortions in these writings. but the voice is there, and while i think you’re better suited to novels—Cereus Blooms at Night is among my favorite south asian diasporic novels—the short stories need more layers.

thank you,
Tahminah Zaman

© 2010 tahminah zaman

dear reetika vazirani,

what works in these poems is the tangibility of your details, the theme of dichotomy of visibility and invisibility, showing the remnants of coloniality and life and consciousness within it, the presence of the body, and the ways you use language and place to dislocate the tongue.

the details are disorienting in their precision; the flowers come alive, embodying a woman’s separation from her homeland, dramatizing the work of mothering children along with the neighbor woman, the “wandering Jew she’d / rooted on her windowsill” (“Gardening: Hollywood Lane”, page 53). there is some pain in these objects, there is a resistance in the telling, a sense of weight and risk involved. the stories within the poetry is more believable for that heft.

the language is a sword with two edges, at once making objects and sentiments visible or shrouding them in subtlety. it is what isn’t said directly that makes the reader work to assemble the poems’ pieces — a woman in exile is written through her actions, rooting a “wandering Jew” where she can keep it close. the feeling of exile is relayed by the crowdedness of objects and by the woman’s busynesss.

“Nikos of Caravy Street” (page 89) is a one-on-one conversation between a speaker and Nikos. the intimacy expressed in this dialogue is awesome; there is a heightened sense of something being at stake. the speaker’s voice is naked, while the exact story is shrouded by the speaker’s tone of exasperation and authority. the body speaks an indirect language, the tongue of object and action and location.

funny, bright, unexpected juxtapositions in this book. Maria Callas and the goddess Radha inhabit “Emigration” (102) and leaving feels lighter than exile. you play with sound and silliness: “I meant to call but lost myself at the mall” (103). what are you doing here? these writings are an intervention into thinking, into quick judgments. there are multiple facets to the stories, each story a facet of the telling.

thank you,
tahminah zaman

© 2010 tahminah zaman

my dear sara suleri,

before i forget — i have begun to pick out shifts in your memories that show me what you have done. that is, given us your family. your love for each member is singular, yet strings together all the rememberings permitted the body. you inhabit your work as a steak or cornish game hen inhabits a plate. carnally. there are hundreds of metaphors here, wordy substitutions of one body of meaning for another. your project may have been simply to remember. triangular dialogue (you, second person in your story, then you again) gives me traces of the poeticism and banter by which your narrator measured the aliveness of the other speaker, the listener, the other. the lingering flames of the lost elder sister and mother are telling their own stories through the narrator, who shares the stage with the other characters. these personal stories reflect a sense of the narrator’s extremity of emotionalism in her relationships with her ‘intimates’ and with herself. the remembrance, ridden with the anxiety of needing to capture one sentiment in succession with many more, brings the flesh, the gestures, and the words of the dead into being. the fierce closeness between the narrator and your family members recalls the inevitability of loss, of death, of time’s racing and crawling by, of death. how to beautify the truth of death? you recall with laughter, by evoking those imprints of emotion that still sting — sweetly, perhaps, or not at all — that once stung. so it is joy and courage and the ability to autotransform that justify the telling of the dead’s stories, justify the inclusion of their voices; the women whose voices must have rung in your head since your conception. and it is your sense of humor, after all, that redeems the roller coaster of your grief — that process into the purification of love.

as memoir, you turned personal into universal. somehow the huge, tightly wound nerve that dictator’s the narrator’s train of sensory discourse radiated away outward, toward the reader. ifat’s face, a portrait refigured and revisited within the narrative, is positioned and presented as an eternal image in the psyche of the narrator, a reminder of loss, a testament to the reality of ifat’s (short) life.

another thing you gave was pakistan. karachi, lahore, sialkot. the overlap with India. Pakistan in both name and flesh, its politics raining down on your family, the war-torn brother-in-law ifat brought back before she died.

and the content and craft: there were long paragraphs incorporating dialogue, crowded and overflowing with metaphors streaming as consciousness does. the metaphors and analogies substitute objects for one another, underscoring their tangibility; that of people and emotions, too. each thought is translated into a self-contained paragraph, a vignette revealing the life and death of characters. remembrance is an effective theme, taking effect through a sense of carnality. you struggle to reconcile life and death. the personal logic you draw from that difficulty makes the emotion completely transparent, universal.

thank you,
T. Zaman

© 2010 tahminah zaman

For the first time this year Bengaluru and Delhi are joining Kolkata in marching to celebrate Pride in India. This is a chance for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, hijra, kothi, hijra, transsexual, transgender, doubledecker and intersex communities to celebrate being part of this country and also to protest how the government of this country continues to treat us as criminals. In doing so we will be connecting with the origins of Pride Marches. Around the world these take place towards the end of June and they are treated as colourful occasions for the LGBT community to celebrate.

DATE : Sunday, June 29th, 2008

TIME: 2 pm to 5 pm

VENUE: National College Basavangudi to Town Hall

———–

Background:

Pride as an event has a serious origin. It dates back to the early morning of 29th June 1969 when police in New York city raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. They started questioning and humiliating the people in the bar, and even arrested some of them.This sort of harassment had been going on for years, but for the first time that night the people in the bar fought back. Lead by the drag queens (men dressed in women’s clothes) the people at Stonewall refused to get bullied in silence. The police responded by beating people savagely, but the crowd refused to go away. More people from the LGBT community came to their support and it became a riot that lasted five days. For the first time the police learned that LGBT people could stand up for their rights.

The Stonewall riot became a symbol of LGBT standing up for their basic human rights. The next year, in June 1970, a march was held in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles to commemorate what happened that night. Over the years, as LGBT people won recognition of their basic human rights the Pride marches became more about celebration. In many countries today Pride is a way of showing how LGBT people live openly and happily in society.

In India today we are closer to where Pride was when it started in 1970. LGBT people face a lot of harassment from the police. Lesbians are subject to violence and even forced to commit suicide by their families. Gay men are blackmailed by organised rackets that involve members of the police. Bisexuals are denied the chance to express same sex love and forced into opposite sex marriages. Transgenders are routinely arrested and raped by the police. Same sex couples who have lived together for years cannot buy a house together, have a joint bank account or will their property to each other without being challenged by their families.

All this is possible because Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code treats LGBT people as criminals. A case currently being heard in the Delhi High Court calls for this law, imposed on us by the British, to be amended so that it no longer applied to consenting adults. This very small change will not remove all problems for LGBT people, but it will be a vital step towards affirming that we are equal and accepted citizens of India.

On June 29th LGBT people in Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata will march in the hope that this change will come soon. Kolkata first did this in 1999, and has done so every year since 2003. Today in 2008, Pride is going national as a sign that the time for national change has come.

                                          are prayers

                                          i’ve got to write

                                          before the ink & blood

                                          run out

                                          i’ve got to say one more thing

                                          before i die

it’s the distance the narrator takes that’s jarring. that he only speaks from “I” a few times in actual dialogue throughout the book.

he is speaking death. the concrete in between whose cracks life slips through. now & then. not every day. only the burden of vice is worth living for. coffee. sex. the occasional victory. the temporary evasion of death that is every living day in Beirut.

a militantly–but beautifully–oppositional narrative, darwish subverts every possible symbol that might tempt the reader to comfort herself with a thought of peace, justice, or escape. but this world is beyond (or below) any harmonious imagining even a reader most skilled in denial could construct around the events taking place in this story. darwish’s portrait of terror is bloodcurdling in its simplicity of language & demonstration of the workings of a sensitive & rational mind on the verge of psychosis–indeed, weaving in & out of altered states amid the chaos of “war” (genocide as usual). darwish shows us how a poet tells a story: line by line, strung like pearls on a chain of words.

                                the poet speaks death.

                                breathes not oxygen     but metaphor

he moves in a persona of madness. he has virtually no personality besides a half-joke he makes about women using makeup like coffee to wake up in the morning. reminiscent of the dry absence of the narrator in Camus’  L’Etranger, darwish uses madness as a weapon as well as to drive his words, jigging in spirals in the ears of the reader. the end comes wildly back to the first page, & the repetitions recalled their earlier iterations so strongly i thought i was trippin.

imagination replaces life. the poet repeats the images, asks questions unanswerable. does a bomb have grandchildren? US.

the poet speaks death. marks with Yemeni blood-rain the meeting of imagination, history, & poetry. he “shift[s] from martyr to spectator” (121) for “protection.” to protect himself, or the reader? his meta-narrative is haunting. it is as if a dead man writes this.

it’s certainly a possibility.

“darkness is white, pitch-white” (176)

life pushes through the cracks of the inevitable. “i am in the middle region between life & death” (181). “here, i didn’t die,” the narrator repeats as he surveys the city, the decade he spent there. the last pages come back to the first: “are you alive?”

in the final pages, darwish finally inserts himself by name (“Brother Mahmoud…”). perhaps his privacy is the code to this work. his spectatorship is so painfully detached that it is as if the shoes of Memory for Forgetfulness are empty of feet. the sardonic, tragic, mad, dizzying poetry lies in darwish’s many tones: absurd, prophetic, unconcerned. subtle. his detachment is, well, maddening.

while the character is absent, the poet is definitely there.

break it down into steps & concrete tasks. recruit others to your cause. complete all tasks in or out of order. it only matters that they all get done.

put forth all your effort from the start. make known what you are looking for. be ready to have it handed to you.

be ready to receive love. be ready to WIN. it will feel effortless.

is reborn;                                        the eternal nature

                                                        of power & order             golden fleece

                     of the divine goat–that symbol

                                                        of leaping lust       spiral horns into ecstasy

the goddess medea’s brows

the archways unto heaven

                           the sky of a mother’s soles//

mother earth refuses

no human blood

                                          princess

                                          sorceress

                                          teacher

                                          mother

                                          healer

                                                         betrayed her people

                                                           to please her lover

                                                                               disoriented

                                                                                  orphaned

                                                                              began anew

                              in exile     meditated

                              waited & searched     the new earth

                   beneath   her   feet   for   meaning

                                               while making love

                                               kept her eyes   open

                                                exchanged wealth for ambition

                                                                        infinite & belonging

                                                                only to itself

the sacred, preserved

in its desecrated versions:

                                                           only reality remains

THE SIN WAS PITY

CONFUSED WITH LOVE:

                                                                    i wanted to wander

                                                                      to follow     to be guided

                                                                                              by lust     alone

                 i can no longer call

             on my ancient god; i am still who

             i was…bearing this

                                     burden

                           of knowledge

                                                           scorpion woman,

                                                           your poisons are hidden

                             cursed garments for eating royal flesh// are you not

                     magnificent;

                     immune to remorse,

                you wear purple & red, colors of flesh & victory                            

your words variant versions

                                           mimicking memory

                               reversed conversions:   light   to   dark

to the flames    of lust

                    broken by desire

                                                                loving you

                                                          is an early death

                                                               i walk to

                  O Mars,

           father of ecstasy

                    & war

                                                   raw honey of your skin

                                                                            my poison

                        rose dusk of lips

                     tongue teeth breath

                                i mark you with pomegranate rain;

                                                         claiming your flesh

                                                                  your chaos:

                                                                                     my own

a cigarette dangles from his shapely lips. the top lip marked by two sharp points. somehow the lips of my lovers are always like this. unlike my round ones.

his eyes always seem to be laughing. i ask him if he’s laughing at me. i can’t say what makes me suspicious. insecure. the quiet masculinity, the gentleness about him. those muscled caramel limbs.

he takes pictures. he likes women. men. he chooses to keep silent the names connected to the bodies he enjoys. sometimes there is a photo to remember.

his favorite place to find them is on public transportation. it’s easy in san francisco, where beautiful, well-dressed, bright people filled the seats & aisles of MUNI & BART each morning, afternoon, & night–lonely people he talked to easily before discreetly passing a card with only his first name & number on one side.

ahmed. coconut brown all year round. how did he manage to always glow that way? his features are tragic, broad & dramatic. they take after his mother.

his eyes are too dark to read. but he doesn’t know that when i meet him–usually it’s on the sidewalks flanking mission street–i see how his eyes get soft. looking at me. staring at the concrete when i say his name.

we spent the night together once. after we went out dancing at Little Baobab. covered in one another’s sweat. he twirled me in the middle of the tiny dancefloor, the swirl of women & men moving around us. i laughed all night as he swang me around, my hips burning figure eights into the crowd. & his eyes. they just stared at my lips as his hands held me up by the small of my back. i leaned hard into them.

once under his covers, he turned to me. he dragged his lashes across mine, exhaling softly.  i felt knocked out.

he asked for a kiss & i said no, only to wait until he fell asleep to wake him up with my mouth on his. those lips, those lips like rosebud salve all over my body. he’s not exactly a gentleman. he likes to use his hands. he never apologizes for that.

old island songs were playing the night we danced. he crept up behind me, his chest bumping my back slightly. he didn’t ask. he just did it.

it wasn’t strange, exactly.

he was only supposed to be here a month. then back to tehran. but san francisco became a haven in ways he found difficult to leave. that cinnamon sex appeal made him a hit in the mission. the hipsters wanted to fuck him. the mexican girls, the chinese FTMs, the elder leather-clad women who worked at the local dungeon all wanted a taste of his farsi flavors.

they gave him a chance to practice his english, flirting wildly in public places, ducking into nearby bathrooms or hourly motels for a quick ride. his throaty accent & flawless skin, luminously dark, rare, smooth as agate, drew them in droves.

men presented an intriguing challenge. ahmed preferred the shy ones, the undecided ones, the heartbroken ones. i think he could have been heartbroken himself. he loved sex but said he never “fucked with love.”

“that’s fine,” i quipped. “you’re not exactly marriage material.” which was obvious. even though i didn’t want it to be true. despite the compulsive wedding fantasies i had between the moments i got to observe him. be near him.

“i’m just sampling. you know, before winter comes. i want to taste all the blossoms i can, man.” his laugh again, chiming against the gray mission district sky. his motorcycle keys dangling from a belt loop, another cigarette hanging out of his mouth. the backdrop of christmas lights & the bay bridge etch that night into forever memory.

“here, i can’t take this with me.” ahmed hands me a small plastic container half-full of chronic emeralds. my favorite strain. he was leaving for tehran in less than 10 hours. i don’t know why he wanted to say good-bye. i hadn’t seen him in weeks, had thought he’d forgotten me or left the city already.

he said he had just been busy. what with all the preparations. the new show. &…he had wanted me to decide i missed him. before he was actually gone. only a few hours left until a long flight through hong kong & on to iran, where his mother was waiting for him. a week after his touchdown in tehran, he would be married. to a stranger.

“spend my last night with me,” he whispered. & there were his hands again, finding the places behind my ear & along my waist where i hid the signs of my desire.

what i remember next comes back to me as a dream, divided into frames like the still images on his sublet bedroom walls. his fingers inside my skirt, my body against a gutter wall, witness to my silent consent.

when i open my eyes, i am alone.

© 2008 tahminah zaman/N.A.M.A.A.Z