a remembering people

authenticity

in this place, is different. from anywhere i've ever been.

here, our identities are fierce, and fluid, and we fear them and we need them and we wish they would stay the same for just one minute.

and they fear, they always fear, that they are imported. because their borders, their fast food restaurants, their place in the world, their tv, their music, their history is imported. so it's no wonder that here we are so fiercely, defensively islamic, and it's no wonder that we are so rigid, that the social structures we live in are so defined, so static. we are trying to draw our own lines, separate from and antithetical to the ones that have been drawn for us. how else can we carve out an identity from a past we didn't control?

so the question is authenticity. and the culture of brotherhood-- not sisterhood-- and of men, and walls, and honor, is a rebellion. it's no wonder that sexuality, and feminism, and all the suitcases that feminism threatens to unpack as soon as it gets comfortable, are so feared, and so rejected. feminism is seen as western. and it is so intertwined with imperialism, with control, with imposed values, that we cannot, we CANNOT accept it. it's too soon, and too close, and too much at once. it has been said for centuries in western circles, and from western mouths, that this culture oppresses women-- it's not as if the seven white men who owned the bank in mary poppins (my most trusted villains) really cared how women were treated here, or in their country, or anywhere. it was just another dehumanizing tool  used to justify their so-called "civilization" of this place, and of this people. and they tried, with their money and their guns and their letters, to destroy it, and its religion and its values and its culture. so the question of women has become a question of culture--

it is our culture to build these walls. it is our culture to enforce these rules. it is our culture, and we will not abandon it.

and culture, and tradition, are unquestioned deities-- we are what we are because of what we have been. and what we have been is not mcdonald's, and it is not suits and ties, and it is not individualism, and it is not bikinis, and it is not, it is not what you are, or what you wanted us to be.

we are not what you wanted us to be, they say. first and foremost, we are ourselves.

and there are things unforgivable to me, deemed acceptable sacrifices in this desperate attempt to recreate a self we don't know how to express. there are honor killings, and forced marriages, and ownership, and the total objectification, alienation of the female. and i can't say i condone them, and i can't say i don't blame them, but it really, really, really is no wonder.

this people is a mirror to me, of trauma and self-reconstruction and life afterwards. after, after, after words. there are no longer any words. this is a people without a bubble, without an excuse. there is no such thing as suburbia, as distance. everywhere i have ever lived before, there was a bubble: of rich, middle-class suburban families, people who if they wanted to could deny that anything but their comfortable lives ever existed or will. but here, in a land of a million refugees and violence far too close to forget, there is no bubble to burst. even the very wealthy can only pretend to be unaffected-- their history is their country, is their religion, is their past entwined with ours.

and maybe that is why i love this place, and maybe it is why i love this people. we are confused, and short-sighted, and wrong on so many counts, but we are making what we can with what we have been. it gives me hope that there is a making at all, even if it objectifies me and my people. there are some things that can't come from outsiders, some things that can't be taught. first and foremost, we are ourselves.

i think maybe i find strange things hopeful. but like this place, i am what i am because of what i have been, and because of what i am distinctly not anymore.

we are a remembering people, full of screeching and fire and finding our way.