Culture MAHS
SPRING 2015
Dear reader, Everyone who’s ever written anything that wasn’t a school assignment agrees that writing is the way by which we make sense of the world. We write about love when we’re in love to try and understand the sparks behind falling in love; we write about thinking when we try to understand the reasons behind the thoughts we think; we write about what we see to express in words the emotional significance of what we have seen. Literary magazines are collections of several different facets of what the world is. There is no one definition to the world; instead, there is an infinity’s worth of ideas that still can’t capture everything. The literary magazine, then, becomes a collection of grasping at ideas that are brilliant, beautiful, and ultimately futile. In short, our words become the breadcrumbs we leave for the casual observer attempting to understand the simultaneous gravity and ephemerality of what we’ve figured out about the world thus far. Enclosed are those breadcrumbs.
Trysten Evans' 15
David Guirgis '16 and Hajra Jamal'15 Editors-in-Chief
I shall rise again; I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. Vincent Van Gogh
Cathy Wang '17
POTAWATOMI GRACE DE GRUCCIO '17 The woman who speaks to me is one of roots Born of sassaphrass and molded by red clay She weaves feathers into her hair And spreads her wings “I was a bird once,” she says “In some other life.” The woman thrusts her shriveled hands to the naked sky, her bangles rattling as she Blows kisses to the stars “Those are pieces,” she tells me “of my heart.” The woman sways and I can't tell if she is dying or if she is more alive than I could ever hope to be She has become sandstone A sediment in faith; not moving She has found her foundation She is Neshnabek
But then who am I? I am no Potawatomi I am no Neshnabek I could reach under the stars, blowing kisses for days but that will never make them any more connected The mountains could be screaming But I will never hear Because all my eardrums pick up from the static on the television are the rolling beats of the American dream And that is all I ever will hear Unless I catch the falling feathers and weave them into my own hair Unless I break my heart into as many pieces as there are people on this mad planet and cast the plastic red white and blue shards into the ozone Unless I unearth my roots and build My own foundation Only then can I say I am Potawatomi. I am Neshnabek.
Every day since then I have wondered About the woman with her heart in the sky and her hands in the earth And about how she has found a level ground to stand on About how she can stand before the vulnerable heavens and declare “I am the Keeper of the Sacred Fire. I am Potawatomi.” Tenzin Lhamo '18
THIS IS A MAN'S WORLD ANKITA PATEL'15 For some reason, the first question we all clamor to ask mothers-to-be is, “Boy or girl?” We’re all so eager to brand a fetus with a gender before it even leaves its mother’s womb. But what else can honestly be expected from today’s society? We live in a world where our genitalia dictate our future and our level of testosterone grants us our civil and social liberties. So much emphasis is placed on distinguishing the two extremes of the gender continuum. One extreme appears to guarantee supremacy over the other end of the spectrum while the other sentences you to a life of inferiority. It has come to a point where even women, socially oppressed since the beginnings of civilization, have come to terms with their own maltreatment and no longer believe that change is necessary or even possible. In a hostage situation, this mindset would be referred to as Stockholm syndrome - a phenomenon in which hostages eventually begin to defend their captors and empathize with them. Do you see the problem? The fact that even women are brainwashed into thinking that their purpose is solely domestic goes to show that patriarchy is hazardous, infectious, and needs to be stopped. The gender hierarchy has prevailed for too long without reasonable justification. Why should women be deprived of equality because of a single chromosomal difference?
Do we not contribute to society? Do we not further advance humanity? Gender should never be an albatross around one’s neck. The longer we continue to keep our women in the shadow of our men, the further back we step in progressing human society. We tend to forget that progression implies much more than developing conveniences to our already convenient lives. What good is boasting of what the future has in store in terms of unnecessary technological advancements when we, as human beings, cannot seem to resolve the looming problem that is misogyny? What good are your petty devices to the women being raped on a daily basis and the women that are being denied their basic rights because of their gender? What about a future where people no longer live in fear of their neighbors, a future where equality may actually be a viable concept? But there has been little to no progression on that front. At the rate at which things are going, humanity is soon to be a forgotten concept; there will never be a more pitiful day then the day when technology had transcended humanity.
DAY/NIGHT HAJRA JAMAL '15 On days when I juggle chores, I remember what my mother once told me: "being a woman is thankless job." I am still wondering when I will get paid. This ever-quivering voice, these dry spider webs of skin on the backs of my hands will never beg for less than what they deserve. This brazen gaze, these sovereign hollows underneath my eyes will always demand nothing more than equality. This message to little girls, these feminist knots in my back will forever be unappreciated charity On nights when I choose to juggle derivatives and poetry — instead of juggling chores, I remember what my father once told me: "What you are doing is not for me. Now wash the dishes." I am still wondering what I am doing for me. This ever- racing mind, these parched pupils darting across lines of ink will decode textbooks and parental hints? This tired body, these graveyards of dreams underneath my tongue will someday serve sick patients and chai? This heart beating for conflicting passions, these feet teetering between too many obligations will somehow be all kinds of woman and me?
Angel Peleaz'15
TO MY COLLEGE BOYFRIEND I used to think being early meant being prepared. When I made the early decision to commit to you, I wasn't prepared for how quickly your large hands would leave my strangled wrist, how slowly the red craters would fade. I've never seen anyone sweep the dust of me back and forth so easily; your haunting snow angels are still here. I should've known that the aftermath pink ghosts left behind by your fingers wouldn't be the same hue as my blushing cheeks on the day we first met. You had a reputation for being difficult, picky, unbelievably attractive and intelligent beyond compare, but snobbish none the less. I always knew you were out of my league, but I had never met anyone as versatile as you. I thought we wanted the same things, so forgive me for assuming we connected on that cold November night over hot chocolate. Forgive me for feeling sparks fly every time you sent me an email, even if it was just a mass forward. Forgive me for stalking your online profiles. Forgive me for pouring every ounce of myself into text boxes and character limits. Forgive me for sending you my poems. Forgive me for obsessing over whose profiles you could be looking at while I waited for your reply. Forgive me for crying when you rejected me. Forgive me, for forming craters like the moon because it isn't strong enough to pull the earth towards it. I'm trying to be content with a few tides of pity.
Every class I've taken , all my goals, my hobbies, everything, everything I have become or tried to become was a way for my love to reach you. It's not just about being pretty anymore, you see. We, people meant to please the privileged, must be shy, but interesting, smart but not over powering. I have been taught that happiness requires doing well in high school, getting into a good college and then medical school and raising three children, of which at least one is hopefully a boy. I need to be all kinds of perfect. I have been taught that the only way I could ever love myself was to give myself away wholly. So I scooped up all my pretty parts into dainty glass bowls, sprinkled with sugar coated lies. Curls of naĂŻvetĂŠ complete the bittersweet garnish. With not enough left for seconds, I melted my remains into your convoluted messed up perfect mold of standards and expectations that I will never be able to fill. And here I am, a hollowed out carcass of who I was and who I'm supposed to be, trying to figure out what to do with these chewed out bones. Here I am, handing out my leftovers to anyone who will find me beautiful and love me from the inside out. Anyone who will fill me up with all that I am not. Here I am, waiting for my Prince Charming in this confined tower of a high school, waiting for him to come along and say "I accept you." I wonder how long he will take to stop loving me. I wonder how long I will take to start loving me. All of me Just me. .
DIFFERENT AMANDA KISHUN '17 Go down JFK Boulevard North, turn onto Griffith Street until Milton Avenue is perpendicular to the street, and then stop at the end of Milton where you’ll find 249 Griffith Street at your right. Open the chain-linked fence and walk up the crumbling concrete stairs, peer through the semi-circle window on the ancient charcoal door’s face, and check that you have the right address with the descending ebony numbers “249.” You are here. After pressing the black button, hear a bell chime throughout the house. While you wait, you notice the sun-bleached, maroon rim around the doors and windows on the house’s exterior. He greets you with a simple, “Hello,” and directs you inside. He’s dressed in a striped navy blue suit with a traditional black tie. He’s holding an alligator skin briefcase that was purchased just for show. Decide where you’ll go first: up the winding staircase to the largest apartment or down the steps into the cramped studio. You agree with your spouse that upstairs is the best way to go. Walk up the creaking coffee-colored stairway into the 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom flat, and observe. You gaze at the faded memories on the walls, pictures of first birthdays and housewarmings, but you don’t lose your focus. Examine the kitchen size and its cleanliness, the bleached stove top and the beige walls complement the green flowers plastered on the snow white tiles perfectly. The flowers
remind you of those on your Sunday dress when you were a child, but you move on to the master bedroom, leaving your daydream behind. Admire the oak nightstand and the sturdy headrest, because you’ve never seen anything so gorgeous. You decipher the picture in the bedhead: it’s a little girl leading her friend into a meadow, and, suddenly, you realize that this is the house you’ve been waiting for—this is what home should feel like. Your partner insists that you go downstairs before jumping to any conclusions, so you continue your tour. The carpet-coated steps lead to the basement might as well be a whole different house because the lower ground floor is nothing like the apartment you saw upstairs. Its only bedroom doesn’t have the threewindow view that the master bedroom had on the 2 nd floor; it has one window with a first-class view of the blue recycling bins outside, but you’re determined to find something beautiful about it to convince your spouse that this is the one. Walk into the bathroom and ponder about what can be done to save it. It has a single shower, a toilet and a tiny sink across from it. Maybe take out the walls in the bathroom to enlarge it just a bit? The kitchen is a small area in the back with a refrigerator and a spotless, but unpleasant, stovetop. You find it hard to believe that a small family of four has survived there for years. You try to think of ways to convince your husband that this house is the one, but you two had a plan. You had planned to buy a 1-family, not a 2-family house; you . Sean Li Wong '14
you planned to pay it off quickly, but $300,000 isn’t easily paid off; and then you realize that this is exactly the kind of house that you weren’t looking for. Trudge up the stairs and thank the realtor for everything they’ve done to make your visit worthwhile and no matter how much you want it, you know that it’ll never be the house you want it to be. This was someone else’s first house, but it couldn’t be yours. You weren’t able to see through its flaws to appreciate its true beauty, but that’s okay because someone else will, and they’ll be different. .
Tasmima Tazin'15
INSOMNIA KASHAF DOHA '15 Follies of today assault youRegrets of yesterday barricade youSorrows of tomorrow overwhelm youInsomnia. Joy feels like painPain feels like joyInsomnia. Let the jinn enter your dreams (and breathe)Let the angel enter your heart (and thrive)Let the devil enter your mind (and dance)Insomnia. You do not have insomnia, You are in love. .
GUJAR KHAN Years ago, Gujar Khan wasn’t a town; it was a mandi. Merchants from large cities came to sell spices, crops, and textiles. My mother remembers when farmers from different villages came on camels to Gujar Khan, which was a network of small markets that formed a bustling hub for commerce. Gujar Khan still remains the epicenter of trade, but the greenery was torn down to accommodate Pakistan’s growing population. Since my mother’s childhood, mazes of buildings and factories have been built to replace valleys and rivers. Any vegetation present today is only a bucolic interruption on an urban landscape. I love and hate my mother’s hometown. I hate Gujar Khan’s industrial revolution that displaced hundreds of farmers who resorted to creating shanties. The shanties sit precariously on a steep hill that plunges into an industrial abyss. Many ignore the nomads, but as a child I would stare at the green, red, and yellow tents from a distance. The nomads feel no shame; in fact, they take pride in their shanty-communities. To them, their poverty is a small slice of the country’s social and political problems; so, in a country where social development is unprogressive, they make the best of their situation. Ignoring the shanties, many tend to venture into Gujar Khan’s industrial abyss. Walking through any given road, they find veiled women scurrying to mosques, dirty-faced children scavenging for valuables
in sewers, and hairy, sun-burnt men yelling at each other about politics and religion. I love Gujar Khan because it is a town full of unassuming people who live life day by day. Yes, Gujar Khan is neither as historically important as Lahore nor as clean as Islamabad, but it does not contain commercialism that the rest of the country cannot afford. I was born in Islamabad, but I feel a strong connection to Gujar Khan’s nonmaterialistic atmosphere. In Islamabad, a constant cacophony of advertisements bombards its people: buy this facial cream, wear these clothes, watch this movie starring heartthrob Sharukh Khan, and live in the city to be more modern. In Lahore, the disparity between the rich and poor is blunt. For example, in any shopping center’s parking lot, homeless women and children flock toward shoppers begging for money and food; many are shocked to see poverty in a city as reputable as Lahore, while others cling to their rupees and hurry to their cars. Lahore and Islamabad are cities full of distractions; they provide an illusion to foreigners, and even its inhabitants, that the rest of Pakistan has positive westernization and urban sprawl. Unlike large cities, Gujar Khan is comprised of people who are accustomed to struggling. Gujar Khan does not have large shopping centers, but it has markets full of people who are willing to make personal bonds that last a lifetime. If I go to Gujar Khan today and say, “I am Raja Ali Bahadur’s granddaughter,” I am positive that the merchants, food vendors, and butchers would treat me with the utmost
respect because of the friendships my grandfather made decades ago. Gujar Khan is the perfect snapshot of Pakistan—a nation where poverty is prevalent, but its denizens acknowledge Pakistan’s failures, take pride in those failures, and have the ability to laugh at them. I hate Gujar Khan’s polluted streets, but I love its symbolic representation of Pakistan as a whole. I love Gujar Khan’s tiny mosques, cramped roads that are only large enough for people and rickshaws, gypsies, fruit vendors, butchers, veiled women, dirty-faced children, and, hell, I even love the hairy, sun-burnt men.
Angel Peleaz'15
The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
Tenzin Lhamo'18
T.S Eliot
COMILLA, BANGLADESH TASMIMA TAZIN '15 Summer 1999 Crows. Fireflies. Stray dogs. Sunset glow. The canal water, now a pink hue, sparkles with every subtle blow of the breeze. The Adhan from the local Mosque sounds. The girl steps out onto her grandparents' balcony, as she does every evening. She loves hearing the Adhan. The Hafiz's call for prayer is a smooth, creamy confection for the ears. "Laa ilaaha illa-Lah‌" The prayer ends, but the girl still hears a voice, a voice calling for God. She looks down the dirt road from atop and sees something rolling in the distance engulfed in dust clouds. As the dust clears, she sees the dust storm is actually a man. He has no arms or legs and holds a pail in his mouth. He stops short in front of the girl, sets his pail down and pleads, "In the name of Allah, have mercy! Please spare me a couple grains of rice!" Without a second thought, the girl turns around to fetch a cup of basmati from the pantry. On her way down the balcony, she hears the sound of the house gate opening and her grandfather stepping into the kitchen. As soon as he spots her, he rushes in to give her a kiss on the forehead and hands her a pack of Potato Crackers. "My little girl! Your mother and father have won the lottery! You're going to America!" The little girl, now engrossed with prying open her pack of chips, doesn't understand what a lottery is or where
America is. At the moment, she doesn't care. The little girl is now a young woman when she steps out onto her grandparents' balcony. It has been twelve years since she stood on there, inhaling the scent of the palm trees, and feeling the warm, tropical air. She recalls her first day in the United States. From the airport to her new home, she took in the wondrous sights, the gravel paved roads, the soaring buildings and the polished houses they passed. She remembers how her parents went from working as respected officers to servile cashiers, how customers at their odd jobs made fun of their accents. She remembers how her parents would sob when they could not present her even the slightest gift for her birthdays. She remembers awaiting her brother every day after school, only to see him return beaten, glasses cracked, all because of the color of his skin and his lack of English. She remembers how she was viciously bullied herself for the same reasons. She remembers her father's hospitalization, and her mother's fight against breast cancer. She remembers grasping both their hands, looking into their weary and sunken eyes, the frightening pallor of their faces. All she could do was pray. But then she remembers the kind faces of friends, two of which tried their very best to shield her from the venomous taunts thrown at her every day. She remembers the crow's feet on each of her mentor's eyes that wrinkled up when they smiled at her. She remembers the humble neighborhood in downtown
Jersey City where, after the hurricane finally passed, all the people gathered to share a meal and exchange pieces of their lives in an unlit driveway. She realizes with a start how she remembers that place as her home now. The girl closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, listening to the evening Adhan again. Suddenly, she hears a familiar cry. "In the name of Allah, have mercy! Please spare me a couple grains of rice!" After twelve years, that same man with no arms or legs lies before her on the road below. His face is upturned towards the sky, his pail rests next to him, and this time she remembers to fill it. of my being. Sometimes I wish it would leave me.
Yesterday, I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself. Rumi
Trysten Evans' 15
IN OTHER WORDS DAVID GUIRGIS '16
Perfection is the ultimate aspiration. Humanity longs for something truly without flaw, and thus they work and rework every ideal in art and music and even ideas in the futile hope that one day the thinker will stumble upon the perfect idea (consider rewording), or the musician the perfect sequence of notes. It is all we long for, all we seek—and like most things we want, we can’t have it. Working towards perfection is equivalent to the punishment of Sisyphus. The water, lush and inviting and there only seconds before, will always dry up the moment you bring your lips toward the stream. The boulder will always roll back down, and humanity’s definitive goal escapes us yet again. In the quest for the mother of all ideas, the perfect sequence of thought, thinkers and philosophers and the most celebrated minds in the world will think and think and rethink and rephrase and eventually discover a deeper understanding of the ideas they have formulated. And this is where the truth of in other words resides. Say, for instance, you have a sentence that only touches upon the sheer vastness of an idea you cannot seem to phrase. You sit down and wrack your brain and write and rewrite that sentence and try your absolute best to figure out some other way to encroach the coastline of your idea because right now it feels like you’re flailing near the shore. You pace and ponder and maybe even pray, and one day—voila!—you stumble upon a new way of thinking about this idea. You’ve managed to feel beneath your feet a tiny bit of sand that has never seen water prior to the touch of your toes, and then you slip back into the sea.
Perfection is simply an ideal, a goal created for humans not to be able to accomplish. We take these other words, this new way of thinking about an idea we somehow know has a complete articulation but will never be able to fully discover, and we do everything we can to get as far as we can before the hourglass empties and our time runs out. This is in other words. This is why Plato’s ideas are still discussed seemingly thirty zillion years after formulation. This is why people still study philosophy. We humans want so desperately to figure out that one idea that will perfectly explain everything there is to know about life, but deep in our bones, soul, intellect, whatever you choose to call it, we know we couldn’t possibly. And so we settle for the deepest understanding we can. We settle for using words and other words to let ourselves fall deeper into the rabbit hole, because therein rests the mass of ideas waiting to be put in the most tangible form possible for them: language. We find words and words and more words to articulate what we possibly can, but we know it won’t be enough. In other words, we try.
Trysten Evans' 15
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Pablo Picasso Cathy Wang '17 Sean Li Wong '14
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN SHARING YOUR STORY? Poets, artists, graphic designers, writers: Submit your work to mahsculture@yahoo.com or place it in the folder outside Room 204. You could be featured in our next issue! To view the magazine online, visit: www.issuu.com/mahsculture Get updated with McNair's latest news at: www.mahsculture.tumblr.com
Š 2015 MAHS Culture All Rights Reserved Layout by Hajra Jamal '15 Cover art by Angel Pelaez'15