of course, a lack of readiness. the last time around i was coerced into silence, into behaving within the chalk outlines of unforgiving rules. obedient. then, i returned toward the sign of sagittarius, overturning all i obeyed before. turning principles on their heads, watching the reversals of gravity and matter, documenting the movement from tradition to freedom. it is natural, to some extent, to fear that which we do not understand; easier to dismiss the unknown than to admit fear; simpler to explode in frustration than submit to humanness.

so many cycles of birth and death, rebirth, i’ve forgotten the knowledge i carry from before. the remembering is jarring, i find holes torn in my being from another time, another body i don’t recall. was my skin the same wheat brown, did my eagle’s eyes stare red into sun then? did my nails grow square into claws i was not allowed to use for self-defense, as i do now? hundreds of years spent learning a single lesson: the journey of self-discovery blooms from within. a thousand opened doors but he doesn’t enter. temple of desire, close your gates now.

within the stillness, between lessons, i sit alone. lost and gained, the principles and rules change. moving into the future, there is always a mark on that which is left behind. hurdles transcended, fading with each forward step. what kind of lover does a priestess, a sorceress, a magician take? the next destination, here. an instant suspended midair. no longer waiting but knowing.

© 2010 tahminah zaman

my key lets me into a huge manor, the heavy oak door swinging inward to welcome me. on my right is a raised living room, walled, with arches cut into it. one of the arches has a cloth hanging, a transparent cloth. once i open the door, i feel someone inside the house. i tense, expecting to see an intruder. rather than removing my boots i wear them into the foyer, dirtying the polished wood floor beneath my feet.

through the first archway, where the cloth hangs, i see the moving silhouette of a woman. her back is to me, dark hair flowing against her long tunic. she is walking away from me. i take a few more steps and look through another archway, open and unclothed. i see a brown woman picking up a prayer mat, a jah namaaz, rolled up after use. it is my mother, my muslim mother who has been dead for almost three years.

she is wearing her glasses, her tunic is a deep gray-blue that reaches the floor. in a moment she is before me and i embrace her, kissing her cheek and descending to my knees. her feet sit in platform sandals, the kind she wore when she was alive because she said she couldn’t walk without a little bit of heel anymore. i kiss each of her toes, starting with her right foot. i don’t know why i start with her second toe.

do i rise and embrace her again after that? i don’t know. the dream stretches on and on, one of my sisters enters the dream, the one i grew up with. the one i was a baby with. there are others around, other women. during one moment in the dream, the three of us are together and i can’t stop crying. my mother, after all this time, is still telling me not to cry, not realizing that the coming together of this world and the next is overwhelming for the living.

i was sleeping next to my lover when my mother visited me in this dream. i had been praying for a visit from her, i had been praying for a beautiful dream to interrupt the obscure, twisted ones that seemed to be filling my mind every night and morning. i had blamed my mother in life and after her death, i had promised when i washed her body before her burial to forgive her, let everything go, and yet some resentment remained. it pushed her spirit away. she stopped her visits during my waking hours because the ghostliness of them scared me. it was like living in a ouija board, like i did when i was younger. fascinated by the power of calling spirits to me. but i prayed for her return, i asked for a peaceful reunion, and i was granted my desire.

i recall the tan cowboy boots against the pavement, the happiness in my step as i heard my lover’s voice on the phone. i turn the key into an unknown mansion, and the dream begins again.

© 2009 t zaman

you, my love, are trapped in mumbai today, thousands of miles away from the fake turkey meat and pear cranberry sauce in my mouth. you are there for a wedding whose four-day-long grandeur has been shaved down to just a small ceremony and reception at the end of this long weekend. thanksgiving day for you meant seeing the streets, schools, and city buildings shut themselves away beneath a blanket of shock. and, after all, weren’t you supposed to go to that fancy hotel that night, the night they started taking hostages and killing people for being born in the wrong countries? your family was to go there to celebrate someone’s birthday. something got in your way, and you didn’t go.

i watch the prayers written in arabic on the pages of my holy Qur’an, i imagine they are spelling your name, your family name, the gujurati syllables of your signature. the lucky name your parents gave you. i know you are there, in your bed, somewhere in mumbai away from the rooms where people are hiding and lying about their origins, trying to save their own lives. where lakes of blood and purses litter the lobbies of hotels and the hallways of hospitals, strewn with the bodies of people murdered by men who called themselves muslim. they knew about this yankee holiday, those men who chose to punish those they decided were responsible for what’s wrong in the world.

all this outside your door and yet i know you are safe, in bed, your hands searching for me, invoking me across a thousand national borders, across the ten hours of dragged time between us. feeling my body cover yours, breathing my flesh around you. i know you are listening, looking for an opening into peace, into hope, gripping yourself against all your memories of me, wanting me. your desire brings me into your room. you touch me, finding my face against yours, breasts pressing into you, my hands reaching for the parts of you that miss me most.

“on monday,” you say, “only ten more days.” until you are home. until the space between us dissolves into one long memory of separation, recalling the miles of telephone wire that bring your voice to me, these nights alone in a bed that’s grown too big without you. the single line that connects yesterday to today is a gash through which you will slip back to me. this leaving and returning a rhythm of loving, the illusion of separation to be disproven one more time.

© 2008 tahminah zaman

that

affects what a person considers himself to be while facing the

mirror”

–Shyam Divan, attorney, on Section 377

–

four hours after midnight

i wake for water, wine,

whatever is beside my bed.

–

i am alone.

–

a glass of shiraz.

–

books stacked

like vertebrae

on an altar clut

tered with pic

tures

of lost ones;

casualties in this

struggle for determination

of self

knowledge

of self

sustenance

of self

–

speechless photos

of sisters and mother

brother and father, all estranged or dead

and for this

difference

–

their children remember

the shades of this war–

quiet telephones

unsent letters

words thrown and sound

of empty background

in my reflection–

this mirror that inquires

every day

into the risk of speaking

my name

© 2008 tahminah zaman

i can taste my mother’s special bengali-style sharbath, sugared water full of sliced fruits, on my tongue. after a lifetime of being turned off by their roachlike exterior, i began eating dates, the prophet muhammad’s favorite way to break his ramzan fast, a few years ago. even the most expensive organic medjool dates don’t compare to the ones my mother brought home from hajj in makkah in 2004–their pits so soft i wondered how they had grown almonds in the center of the fruit.

my mother. all the flavors, scents, sounds, and gestures of ramzan that departed with her. her faith that slowly moved from blind to awake during the latter years of her life. the last moment i touched her body, preparing her for burial with my sister and cousin. the hundreds of people in a las vegas mosque who faced her coffin, lying eastward, on the day of her funeral. the visions don’t leave and i don’t want them to. two and a half of the longest years of my life, a life without my mother’s voice, her tender brown flesh, her nicotine-stained smile, and i wonder how i can possibly carry this burden of solitude. how i’ve lost my family in the course of this migration. how tired i am of struggling. how ready i am for changes.

a month or two ago, i had a dream visitation from my mother. only i was the one visiting her in the next world, reading a book beside her while she crocheted quietly. after awhile of sitting in silence, i gestured for her to come closer to me. “are you leaving now?” she asked me, and i said no, that i just wanted to hold her for awhile before going home to my other dreams.

i think part of me lives in the next world, sitting at her side as she rests after a short, hard life of 62 years. i’d like to think i keep her company there.

sweat from direct light
blankets nude shoulders
thighs hairy like porcupine
and exposed

every time i say i don’t need you;

we shouldn’t have
come here;

i lost too much in the course of this migration

i wake up again to
this nakedness

a single sacrament
against
nostalgia

© 2008 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.

a body

breasts that push thru my

sweater. even a hundred

chadors can’t hide their shape

//

they say the skin of a woman’s

ankles

can bring the gods to her feet

& i say,

perhaps that is where

they should be

© tahminah zaman 2008