Mizna: SURVIVING Summer 2017, Vol 18.1

Mizna

Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America

Volume 18.1 • 2017 Surviving

St. Paul, Minnesota

Publisher Mizna, Inc. Executive and Artistic Director Lana Salah Barkawi Program Director Moheb Soliman Guest Editor Moustafa Bayoumi Editor Lisa Adwan Curator of Visual Art Heba Y. Amin Production Manager Sonia Ali Editorial Assistant Sarah Najla Dillard Interns Lamia Abukhadra Fatma Ahmed Maria Bell Selection Committee Sonia Ali Lana Salah Barkawi Sarah Najla Dillard Moheb Soliman

Mizna is a nonprofit arts organization that promotes contemporary expressions of Arab American culture. In addition to publishing this literary journal, Mizna produces the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival and offers classes, readings, performances, art exhibitions, and community events showcasing local, national, and international Arab and Arab American artists.

Mizna is an Arabic word describing a desert cloud that holds the promise of rain and respite.

Mizna is published by Mizna, Inc., 2446 University Ave. W., Suite 115, St. Paul, MN 55114. Copyright 2017 Mizna, Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this journal may be reproduced without the consent of Mizna. To carry Mizna in your place of business, call (612) 788-6920 or e-mail us at mizna@mizna.org. For more information, visit mizna.org.

This publication is made possible by the support of individual subscribers, generous donors, and by the city of St. Paul’s Cultural STAR Program.

Board Members Abir Abukhadra Charlotte Karem Albrecht Ziad Amra Nahid Khan Dipankar Mukherjee Rabi‘h Nahas P. Niny Salem Jna Shelomith

-ii-

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Transliteration and Non-English Text....................................................v Moustafa Bayoumi

Foreword: “Survival of the Physics”............vii

Jess Rizkallah

“aphorisms for lonely arabs”........................1

Niebal Atiyeh

“Undressing”.................................................2

Maya Beck

“Extended Family”........................................6

Bernard Ferguson

“alternate universe in which no human body can be illegal”................................... 8

Marion Gómez

“Upon Introduction”.....................................9

Ramla Bile

“Somali Minnesotans: Survivors of CVE”....10

Sagirah Shahid

“Yes,”............................................................13 “To the Unborn Generation,”.......................14

Amjad Hajyassin

“How Much Does a Pig’s Head Cost?”.........15

Tariq Luthun

“Upon Leaving the Diamond to Catch 14 Stitches in My Left Brow”.........................20

Visual Art The Travel Ban

Paul Kaidy Barrows

Introduction: “13769”..................................21 Ifrah Mansour...............................................22 Adelita Husni-Bey........................................24 Anahita Razmi..............................................26 Khaled Barakeh............................................28 Salwa Aleryani..............................................30 Walid Siti......................................................32 Fadlabi..........................................................34 “The Ache, the Leap”.................................... 36

Cover art by Fadlabi. “The Prediction Machine,” 2013, described on p. 34. Photograph courtesy of Haupt & Binder.

-iii-

Noor Hashem

“All I Need to Know about Protest I Learned from Syrians”...............................38

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors Hayan Charara “Self-Portrait in Retrospect”.........................44 “Self-Portrait with Cassette Player”..............45 “Unresolved Haikus”.....................................46 Hala Alyan

“Chaos Theory”..............................................49 “Halfway to July”...........................................50

Glenn Shaheen

“The Color Bearers of the Spring Brigade”...51 “Tempo”.........................................................53 “The Tender Land”........................................54

Contributors...........................................................................................56 Donors.................................................................................................... 58 Submission Guidelines........................................................................... 59 Subscriptions..........................................................................................60

-iv-

TRANSLITERATION AND NON-ENGLISH TEXT Transliteration The writings published in this journal often include transliterated Arabic words, and, for the most part, the transliterations are left as the author’s own. There are many dialects of Arabic and perhaps an even greater number of customs for transliteration, with no universally accepted standard. Because of this, and inspired by the treatment of Arabic terms in Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings

by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists, edited by Joe Kadi, this journal will seek to reflect the diversity of dialects that ring true for our individual authors rather than imposing one standard.

Italicization of Non-English Words Non-English words printed in this journal are not italicized. This decision is based mainly on the question of audience. Many writers and readers within our community are familiar with Arabic, and to set Arabic words in italics would be to announce their foreignness or otherness in a way that does not reflect this familiarity. Readers unfamiliar with Arabic or other languages that appear in the journal are also a welcome part of our audience. If the meaning of an unfamiliar word is not immediately apparent from its context, the invested reader can seek to learn it from other sources, or perhaps be comfortable with the discomfort of not knowing.

-v-

-vi-

Foreword Survival of the Physics When I was growing up in Canada, the civil war in Lebanon was raging. I was a teenager then, which meant I was focused on other things, like my hair and being one of the only brown kids in my high school, but still I remember the gruesome images of the war filling the nightly newscasts on television along with the grave concern my Lebanese Canadian friends and their parents had for their families back home. There weren’t a lot of Lebanese in Kingston, where I was, but London, Ontario, had many, and I knew the London kids well because we all attended a Muslim camp during the summer and would gather over various weekends during the school year to hang out.

There came a point during the war when there was enough of a lull in the fighting that several of my friends were dispatched by their parents to Lebanon for most of one summer. As is the case today, our parents thought it important to send us to the region when opportunity struck and finances allowed as a way to keep us connected to our families and our traditions. I had likewise traveled to Egypt several times, and there should have been nothing remarkable about my friends going to Lebanon, except of course that there was an unforgiving war going on.

The next time I saw my friends was a few weeks after that summer, when we all gathered for a weekend in London. I remember how we drove several times from one friend’s house to another, sometimes in multiple cars, but whenever we got to a stop light, my friends would suddenly pretend that we had come to a roadblock instead. This was clearly a pantomime that they had played out many times. They made as if tires were burning in the middle of the street and occasionally we all had to pile out of the car. A few times, one friend pretended to check our documents, sometimes throwing one of us into a different car or pretending to arrest one of us before taking that person away. They thought it was hilarious. I thought it was strange.

I was slow to realize, but soon I understood that my friends must have lived through a tremendously stressful time in warravaged Lebanon. Of course, these teenagers had the luxury of leaving Lebanon easily and coming back to Canada, and at this time, many new arrivals, refugees from the war, also arrived in Canada. I met many of them, too. The war refugees often had the same look in their eyes as my friends had shortly after that summer, a look that was somewhere between manic and catatonic, though with the new arrivals, the look fell deeper and darker into their eyes.

-vii-

My friends had bought keffiyehs while in Lebanon and one of them told me a story concerning the keffiyehs in Canada. Another friend of ours worked at his parents’ convenience store. While he was on the late shift one night, the rest of the guys decided to surprise him. They put the keffiyehs on their heads and grabbed those neon pump-action water cannons that were all the rage. They ran into the store, keffiyeh-clad and water gun–toting, pretending to take over the establishment and yelling Arabic expressions at the top of their lungs. My friend behind the counter started laughing uproariously, and then all the kids started laughing the way teenage boys laugh at pranks. It was really funny. Then they heard the words.

“Don’t move,” a police officer commanded. He had his gun drawn and was standing in the doorway of the shop. Around the outside of the store were dozens of other officers, all with weapons drawn, ready to believe that this was an international incident of terrorism targeting a local convenience store. The officer in the doorway looked scared out of his wits and his weapon-grasping hands were visibly trembling, while my friends became frightened for their lives. The police eventually took the boys to the station and called their parents, and then everyone learned why the police were there in the first place. A bystander had seen boys in keffiyehs toting guns. Conclusions were reached. *** When conclusions are reached, guns are often drawn. Let’s pause for a moment and take a look at this sentence. Grammatically speaking, the sentence is made of up two passive voice constructions, which means the person reaching the conclusion and the people drawing the guns are hidden, shielded from responsibility. In the world of grammar, the passive voice means that the object of a sentence becomes its subject. In the world of real life, this means that a group of people will first be objectified and then be held responsible for the very racism oppressing them. The passive voice is something never to be taken lightly. While it’s true that the passive voice may assist a sentence grammatically, it’s also true that in the real world, the result is too often a death sentence.

Conclusions are reached every day in the United States. Guns are drawn. Shots are fired. My friends are still around, unlike Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Janet Wilson, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Yvette Smith, Philando Castile, and so many others. Real change has yet to come, but, at least since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, national attention has been increasingly focused on the malignant amount of state violence that African Americans face daily. Their consciences pricked, many Arab Americans have been active participants in the Black Lives Matter movement. And activists from across the spectrum are also connecting various move-

-viii-

ments such as Black Lives Matter to other liberation struggles across the globe in profound ways.

The results of this cross-pollination are appearing in important and sometimes unexpected places. An August 2014 story in Ebony titled “The Ferguson/Palestine Connection” details how: Over 9,000 American officials have trained with Israeli police and military units on responding to civilian protests and terrorism. These operations reflect [a] failure to distinguish between the apparent duty of police to protect civilians and military responses to war. This fusion has had life-costing implications for Americans, specifically black, Muslim, and Arab people.

Increasingly, this generation is understanding how oppression at home and oppression abroad are not only two sides of the same coin but are also mutually reinforcing and jointly justifying forces.

As many good people of conscience and action have noted, the struggle for indigenous rights in the United States cannot be separated from the Palestinian struggle for their rights. We now know that the Bureau of Prisons helped establish the CIA’s clandestine torture program, linking the industrialization of incarceration in the United States to US imperialism abroad. The rush to declare certain people “illegal,” as we are living through in today’s United States, not only forgets the colonial history of this country but also feels like it could be the prelude to a massacre to come. *** The people making these connections across the world are not only found in the United States, of course. There is an energy today among the global oppressed that traverses geography to discover the common cause of freedom. If this energy could speak, it would probably say something about how we will no longer be bribed and cajoled into accepting half measures and partial solutions to the problems historically created by colonialism, sexism, warfare, greed, and corruption. There is a world of possibility in such a principled position and in the potential of a global assemblage of liberation movements.

But it’s also a truism that every movement produces its opposite. In the United States, an anti-liberation movement clearly exists.

In fact, it is currently found under the name of one Donald Trump.

What is Trump if not a reactionary, anxious, arrogant, artificially colored, barely literate, and violently sexist manifestation of the old order? Trump is nothing much more than this old order gasping and flailing at the serious fact that their ability to control the world is waning. To understand that is easy. The difficult part is to comprehend that Trump is also the president of the United States.

-ix-

And in this age of Trump, Arab Americans are living through some of the most trying years we’ve yet encountered in this country, but as a nation, we have never really been far away from what Trump represents. What may be better this time around is our collective ability to discover our common opposition to Trumpism, but we should never forget that what we call Trumpism is a noxious ideology that existed in this country long before Donald Trump appeared.

In our opposition to Trumpism and all it represents, Arab Americans are constituent members of this global liberation collective. There was a time when Arab Americans sought other avenues of politics. One approach was to reassure other Americans that they shouldn’t fear Arabs. Gibran Kahlil Gibran, for example, believed in a somewhat Orientalist notion that Arabs could enrich Western culture with mystical Eastern spirituality. He was hardly alone in this belief. And many Arab Americans after Gibran’s generation often believed in making comprises with the mainstream, all in the name of fitting in. Mohammed became Moe or sometimes even Mike.

Today it’s different. We are no longer debating what we should change about ourselves to be included in this country. (Because, seriously, who needs that old-time bullshit?) Instead, we’re demanding that the country change to include us, which can likewise bring about change beyond the borders of the nation. And we can feel this proud, assertive identity in the pages of this issue of Mizna. “Swallow your blood and bare your teeth, they are seeds,” Jess Rizkallah instructs in “aphorisms for lonely arabs” (p. 1). This is sound advice.

Here’s some more advice. For years, we’ve actually misunderstood what being Arab American is all about. Being Arab American is not about identity or politics, and it’s certainly not identity politics. It’s about physics. Arab Americans are endless combinations of matter and energy. We are the profound study of movement through space and time. We are the result of the sometimes-forced propulsion of particles and objects—also known as people—from one land to another. And when we crash and collide headlong into each other, something new is born. And yet, our past is mysteriously retained.

Ask Paul Kaidy Barrows. He writes about discovering that inside him sits a soul older than himself, one that is “shaped like a tear” and that “glows like an opal but is soft like smoke” (p. 36). Being Arab American is both physics and metaphysics, flesh and spirit. If you think it’s simple and straightforward, read these pages and learn.

What you’ll realize is that today’s artists and writers of Arab America are carefully attuned to the sympathetic hum of the world, that low frequency of understanding that all hounded, subjugated, exploited, tyrannized, and harassed people are hearing today. The oppressed are uniting, and their thrum resonates through this issue.

You sense it when reading Bernard Ferguson’s “alternate universe in which no human body can be illegal,” for example. Here, Fergu-

-x-

son describes an alternative, Whitmanesque place where “we lay on a quilt made by someone’s grandmother and bring enough of a meal for ourselves and whoever is lucky to sit next to us and we watch our favorite films in which everyone we love is still alive and the light flickering across the sky becomes our new god and every blade of grass is green and citizen” (p. 8). You hear it in Marion Gómez’s rumbling rumination on the thoughts sparked by her last name (p. 9).

You perceive the thrum turn into celebration in Noor Hashem’s essay on traversing distance and finding inspiration in protest (p. 38), and you hear it throb like a heart urgently pumping blood in Sagirah Shahid’s “Yes,”: “My complexion is a swear word. / I’m sure you’ve noticed. If you’re Black / and Muslim you don’t get a break” (p. 13).

That’s the thing about Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, African Americans, and all of us who make up the maligned masses in the entropic age of Donald Trump. We may be vilified and denigrated, and we may be pushed around like wobbly shopping carts in an empty parking lot, but the cheap politics of people like Trump will burn out long before we become ashamed of who we are and how we connect to each other. Arab Americans, after all, are a microcosm of the cacophony that is this country. We are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, agnostic, gay, straight, cis, trans, citizen, non-citizen, indigenous, male, female, brown, black, white, refugee, immigrant, resident, alien, Arab, Latinx, African, Asian, European, young, old, English-speaking, Arabic-speaking, and everything in between all of those categories.

And we are more, just like all of us are more. We may be among the people for whom conclusions are drawn, but what we share is the knowledge, born out of experience, that beyond ourselves, each of us is an “other” to someone in power. Out of this truth must come not only our ability to withstand this age but also our ability to triumph over it. Why? Because we cannot—and will not—be objects in anyone’s sentence any longer. With all of our sisters and brothers, we will speak in the active voice and sing our collective music in all the minor keys. Such is the song of our planet. And such is the physics of our survival.

Moustafa Bayoumi, Guest Editor

Moustafa Bayoumi, a two-time winner of the Arab American Book Award for Nonfiction, is the author of How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin), and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror (NYU Press). A professor of English at Brooklyn College (CUNY), Bayoumi has also written for a wide variety of publications and is a columnist for the Guardian.

-xi-

Jess Rizkallah aphorisms for lonely arabs they will call you forked tongue.

let them.

swallow your blood and bare your teeth, they are seeds. what is a field of weeds to an entire ecosystem? you are made of rings, ancient you have always been here it’s true, the forests often go up in smoke the cedars are dying off and drones live in the sky— a splinter in the paw of a lion buys us time. there must be a bush, burning patiently to lead us home M

-1-

Niebal Atiyeh Undressing I heave my body over the last of the suitcases and pull the zipper shut.

I curl my fingers around the edges and cling for a moment. I bury my nails into the grooves and press my nose to the fabric searching for that scent. It’s been six years since I dragged this suitcase out of Syria, but I need to believe I can smell that place still. That there’s some trace in the pulled fabric where the handle tore off when she was ripped away from her place, wrested from where she belongs.

Instead, I smell his cologne wafting into our bedroom. I unbury my nose from the front pocket of the suitcase and turn my head, watching his feet as they pass across the room. He’s almost swaying, almost bouncing, almost stomping, as if he’s falling out of a dabke line. He takes my shoulders and rocks me back onto my heels. He presses lightly on my arms thinking it’ll be easier to get me up than it is. He readjusts and tugs at me, yanks me up to his face, clearing the hair out of my eyes like clearing cobwebs hiding in a neglected corner. Only slightly admonishing himself for letting so much build up unnoticed. Only slightly embarrassed for not thinking to sweep up earlier. His eyes ask, “Are you ready?”

I’m not ready. I want out, but I hate the getting there. I have to be the one to do it. He grew up in Dearborn. He doesn’t know how to blend in. He doesn’t know how to undress his Arabness. I sit him at the edge of the bed, step back, and look him over. I squint my eyes to blur his frame. Trying to smear out the reality of him and make him putty. I press my fingers deep into my own forearm, rubbing the skin just below my elbow, making a tiny circle, a little wave pool of wet white. I dip my fingers in and wipe up the pigments to mask him. I smudge my fingers onto his cheekbones and across his brow, down the steep slope of his nose. Coloring his complexion, shooing away the shadows, wiping away the wrinkles. I stroke his beard as a thank you for covering up half his face for me, saving me some paint.

I pick up a pair of tweezers from the dresser and try to make a quiet approach. He has exactly seven hairs poking out in stubborn protest on the root of his nose. They see me coming and dive in deeper, digging their heels in. I catch a glimpse of an end wriggling just under the surface and yank him out quickly. He scrambles across the tweezers onto my finger. He gestures wildly toward his spot, making sure I memorize where he came from. He makes me promise to put him back when it’s safe to return. “Inshallah,” I say. Tentatively satisfied, he gives a whistle and the others follow suit. They wiggle up my arm, scurry onto my shoulder, and crawl up to hide in a small knot at the nape of my neck.

-2-

Finished with his face, I wipe the tweezers off on my skirt and have him stick his tongue out for me. I pinch the end and unravel it all the way down his chest to his waistline. I use the palm of my hand to gently scrape across the surface a few times. A layer of caked pomegranate molasses peels off, uncovering a bed of taste buds. I pick them out one by one. Little petals of cardamom, sumac, and paprika fastened in mint and parsley stems. Once I have the flowers plucked and laid gently in tissue paper, I rub my palm again across the length of his tongue, uncovering a layer of mud-like tahini ornamented with garlicky weeds. Their roots among the blood vessels, imperceptibly entwined. I make a small prick with the tweezer’s tip to dig up a root, twirling it around, turning my finger into a delicate spool. Once I have them all, I lay them down beside the flavors in the tissue, fold it gently, and tuck it into my bra for safekeeping and later reimplantation.

I tug at the end of his tongue and it snaps back into place. I nudge him back against the pillows propped up against our headboard. I sit cross-legged beside him and bend over, to let my mouth hover just above his ear. I unbutton the corner of my mouth and peel the lips from the edges. I roll them between my palms hard and quick until they’ve formed a long, red silk string. I lower it down into his ear so my lips can fish out all the Arabic they’ve ever spoken to him. All the sounds that have escaped between us, swimming melodically inside his head.

Habbeytak bessayf.

Enta omri.

Josay.

When I’m done I set to work taming his hair. I snap off the curled branches to rearrange them into straight, even rows. I squeeze the black out of each strand like pressing oil from a vat of olives. I squeeze deliberately, being careful to press just enough, not wanting to sour him into a blonde Ken doll with a crispy, plastic, empty head.

I collect the oil into an empty perfume bottle, promising it too that I’ll put it back.

I’ll put you all back. I promise. I know each piece of you better now that I’ve taken you apart over and over and over again. I thought you were my oasis, my mirage, a reprieve from the heat of this world.

I know better now. You’re the ocean of shifting sand that never stops tiding against me. You’re endless waves of burning seeds that scorch and soften my cut edges. You’ve weathered me into a beautiful, bottomless terracotta jarra. *** “Please enter here.” Their voices carry over the heads in line, weaving up and around us, burrowing into our ears like worms. “If you have a laptop put it in a separate bin. Take out your cellphones. Bracelets.

Metal. If you have a pacemaker, remove it. Prepare for an intimate

-3-

pat-down. If you have any pride, empty it into a 3.4-ounce container, place it in a one-quart sized clear plastic zipped baggie.”

I come unhinged, unzipping from gravity, I start floating toward the nearest exit. He takes off his shoes and pulls out the laces, knotting them around my ankle, tying me to him. He shuffles forward in his socks, one hand dragging his carry-on behind him, the other hanging on to his shoes and me. As the line inches forward, an agent advertises the TSA PreCheck and Global Entry. She touts the main selling points. Shorter wait time and you get to keep your clothes on.

It’s a cheap way to purchase some dignity. My eyes squirm in their sockets questioning down toward him. He only looks up at his ballooning wife and raises his eyebrows in response. Saying, not asking, because he already knows the answer, “You think PreCheck would spare you this.”

Deflated, I sink back to the ground. He untethers me and starts undressing for TSA. As I wait for my turn, the anxiety bubbles up in my throat threatening to spill out of my mouth like burning oil.

I force it down into the pit of my stomach and try instead to watch his dance. His performance—as much for my benefit as theirs.

Smile 1, 2, 3, 4

Remove belt 5, 6, 7, 8

Charming twinkle of sea-green eyes 1, 2

Drop change 3, 4

Dip and turn 1, 2, 3, 4 The metal detector applauds and offers an uproarious beeping noise.

He laughs, “I forgot to remove my medical badge. I’m sorry.” He digs it out of his pocket and shows it to the agent as proof of the source of the beeping, and further proof that he’s one of the good ones. He waltzes back and drops it into my gray bucket with a wink. Another blink and he’s through. Safe on the other side. Chatting with the TSA agent about her ailing mother. I know my dance will be decidedly different from his. The waltz of the 4 S’s.* It’s the same every time.

1. Metal detector.

2. Body scanner.

3. Pat-down.

4. Luggage search.

I feed my backpack into the X-ray machine. As the dark mouth swallows it up, I catch a glimpse of the large pin holes dotting the straps.

Evidence of their former occupants, my protest pins. Black Lives Matter. My Body My Choice. Feel the Bern. They’re stowed away in my checked bag, momentarily spared the brutality of judgment from security officers and overbearing 3mmus alike.

A hand snaps me out of my gaze and waves at me to step into the metal detector. I don’t beep, no medical badge pinned to a strategically placed metallic clip for me. She directs me to the body scanner.

-4-

“Legs apart; arms up.” I find myself wishing it was a time machine.

A TSA time machine to transport us all back to pre-9/11 when you could still butcher a lamb in the garage and blast Arabic music down the block without fear of death threats taped to your door. When you could still decorate the house for Eid. When you could watch the news. When you could still wear a hijab and they’d only look at you like a weirdo. Which is decidedly better than being looked at like you’re going to detonate at any moment.

“Step through ma’am.” I can see it on her face before she has to say anything, here it comes. She runs through a series of questions, asking my permission, making me complicit in my own profiling. “Do you understand ma’am?” Yes. I do. I try to stiffen myself into a stone, so I don’t have to feel her hands incriminating me simply for being.

I want to be that granite mortar and pestle from IKEA that I brought home to my parents for pounding garlic. To hide as something foreign to myself, shiny, Swedish, and untraceable. But all I know how to be is that old wooden mortar. Cracked through to the core and so steeped in stenchy memories that no amount of scrubbing will ever wash them out of me.

I’m ushered over to where they have my backpack quarantined on a table. In a passive-aggressive attempt at some payback, I’ve stuffed my bag with nothing but underwear and feminine products.

Prepare yourself for a more intimate search and seizure. She rifles through my things as I scan her face for any signs of shame or sympathy. On her forehead scribbled in fine print I can make out the words “No offense to your undergarments. I’m just following orders.” She restuffs my bag and without looking at me says those three little words I’ve been dying to hear: “Free. To. Go.”

I’m on the other side. I take a seat and shake any clinging drops of doubt off myself. I put my shoes back on and stand up. Like Dorothy, I click my heels together to instantly transport myself back home. Back into myself. Into the world of the permitted to be here.

Permitted to exist as is. Permitted to travel. The relief radiates off of me as I walk as quickly as I can without running to catch up with him. He’s calm and collected, checking his boarding pass for a gate number. He fishes out the U of M hat from his bag. With his gym shorts and T-shirt, he’s a proper American Tourist. Finally he senses me and turns to pull me in tight. Kisses me on the forehead and says “Good job, baby. Now come on. Let’s get something to eat before the flight. There’s a Mezza Mediterranean Grill next to our gate.” M

*Secondary Security Screening Selection, the Transportation Security Administration’s program of keeping a secret list of passengers who must endure a more intensive screening process.

-5-

Maya Beck Extended Family 0. they don’t speak to each other but my older brother and sister are both helpers 1. let them think i am only black, i say i’ve never met a white maya but i know a japanese maaya i hide behind vedic illusions & mesoamerica; whatever gets me employed 2. i am a hijabi fangirl & her last name is his first name do you think she’d let me shake her hand? we’re practically related alternatively, he is a performer on a poster i spot on a coworker’s wall banned from returning i will listen to his music now 3. in the most produced play in america, he hates himself and therefore said that he felt a bit of pride alternatively, i call him prince a machiavellian rogue his jewish girlfriend’s grandma thought it marked him as israeli 4. strangers give him an extra s to make him a war criminal alternatively, he is a lion i call kitty

-6-

5. i see her hand on necks, on walls it watches me, it calms me in her absence i’m jealous of how christians love her our lady, they say ∞. my father’s name is the greatest, the world’s favorite —mine too— God’s too i’ll gladly be everyone’s daughter M

-7-

Bernard Ferguson alternate universe in which no human body can be illegal

after Olivia Gatwood

here, we do not pledge allegiance to the thick borders on a map. we do not pledge allegiance to the machine made of our labor but incapable of our love. instead, we dedicate our loyalty to whatever new stories are thrown onto the table when we see our people. here, before a game where players strip out of their civilities in the name of competition, we all gather in a circle and share a joy from our past and then pull the same tired song from our throats, the one about the lover that dissolved before the winter sank in. here, we lie on a quilt made by someone’s grandmother and bring enough of a meal for ourselves and whoever is lucky to sit next to us and we watch our favorite films in which everyone we love is still alive and the light flickering across the sky becomes our new god and every blade of grass is green and citizen. here, we point at a flock of giddy children on the playground and call it a country. we all sign the same birthday card, slip a five into the envelope and call it a constitution. here, there is no passport or treaty required for entry. you only need someone to vouch for you. and when i say vouch for you, i mean: they’ve heard the long winding tale of your failures and still throw their arm around your shoulder when they see you at the bar. when i say vouch for you, i mean: they are torn awake by your cries in the dead of night, and unable to sleep for a second longer, they summon a line of bloodthirsty mothers at your back. M

-8-

Marion Gรณmez Upon Introduction My last name makes you think of a roster, its curling ribbon, filled with the names of those awaiting deportation, detainees denied due process, a privilege reserved for citizenship.

Before you knew my last name, I was no different from your daughter, who grew up loving horses and the Fourth of July. M

-9-

Ramla Bile Somali Minnesotans: Survivors of CVE Can you imagine the Department of Justice delivering social service programs to low-wealth communities of color? Neither could the majority of Somalis in Minnesota when the DOJ proposed the Countering Violent Extremism program in 2011—leaving many questioning what business a prosecuting body has in terms of implementing employment resources or after-school programs. Clearly, the program’s focus was far more nefarious and dangerous than its stated intentions.

President Obama launched the CVE program in three pilot cities: Boston, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis. CVE programs embed law enforcement and counterterrorism narratives (and likely practices) into social services, public education, and mental health services. Of the three cities, the Minneapolis program gained footing by luring a poor, immigrant community with promises of resources.

Facing longstanding community disinvestment and deep disparities across many indicators of well-being (including education, income, home ownership, and more), a handful of Somali-Minnesotan nonprofit leaders banded with Minnesota’s US Attorney Andrew Luger to implement the program in hopes of getting a slice of the allotted resources. Conversely, youth organizers, more than fifty leaders of mosques and community groups, and the majority of Somali community members organized to counter the program.

For those against CVE, the promise of resources wasn’t worth the potential for surveillance, community targeting, or worse—accepting the program’s flawed and racist theories around radicalization.

No single cultural group or a faith institution has a monopoly on terrorism. In fact, the FBI reports that 94 percent of domestic terrorism is by non-Muslims, the majority being white supremacist groups. In the absence of qualifying data that fuels program need, the CVE program relies exclusively on racist and Islamophobic assumptions that Muslims and black people have a propensity for committing violence. Moreover, there is no evidence-based, predictability theory or pathway to radicalization. A recent study published by the FBI states, “it can be difficult, if not impossible, to predict for any given individual what factor or combination of factors will prompt that individual’s radicalization or mobilization to violence.”

As black people, immigrants, and Muslims, Somalis experience injustice in deep and layered ways. Given the violent history

-10-

and current experience with law enforcement, black Americans’ concern around the DOJ’s intentions wasn’t unfounded. The FBI (also a DOJ program) has a track record of gathering intelligence under the guise of “community engagement.” According to the Brennan Center for Justice, efforts to address “community concerns about access to social services” in the Twin Cities in 2009 quickly turned into “making a list of ‘radicalized youth’ and keeping it on a police database shared with the FBI.” How CVE Altered the Social Landscape for Somalis in Minnesota On May 23, 2017, the White House announced it would cut funding for the Department of Justice’s Countering Violent Extremism programs. It’s generally accepted that the Trump team’s proposed budget will be largely dismissed by lawmakers, and it seems especially unlikely that the CVE program will actually be disbanded. In either case, we remain cautious as this administration has called out Somalis in Minnesota specifically, and has put a target on the broader Muslim community in the US.

Programs like CVE have the potential to profoundly impact communities long after their existence. In Minnesota, organizations that received money from or partnered with the DOJ and its affiliate organization became social pariahs in the community—making it difficult for them to deliver needed programs. Branded DOJ informants, many of the programs struggle to regain community trust.

And beyond individual organizations, the program adversely shaped the Twin Cities funding community, which began investing in issues through a “threat lens.” Funders suddenly focused on de-radicalization versus investing in the potential of the Somali community or addressing social and economic needs. Minneapolis Public Schools, which is the largest district serving Somali students in Minnesota, also got caught up in the surveillance mess. After a Minneapolis Public Schools’ official gloated on C-SPAN about the district’s effort to have youth monitor each other to spot “disaffection” and “radicalization” during lunchtime and after-school programs, parents lost faith in the public school system.

The negative buzz around the CVE program resulted in Somali youth being labeled as “violent” and criminalized harshly. The most egregious example of this is the 2016 trial of six young East African men who received harsh prison sentences for what amounted to thought crimes. Another causality of the CVE program is it deeply impacted the psyche of young Somalis who felt their freedom to practice religion and express their political sentiments was curtailed. Because the CVE program identified things like frequenting a

-11-

mosque, growing a beard, and wearing hijab as indicators of radicalization, young people felt their ability to practice Islam was limited.

Further, the program stifled civic and political engagement by undermining dissent.

From program inception to present day, the Somali Minnesotan community has been isolated and alienated in its efforts to challenge the racist origins of the CVE program. Despite the potential of catastrophic consequences, the legal, nonprofit and public organizations, philanthropic, and corporate circles in the Twin Cities quietly embraced the CVE program without critical thought. And worse, talk about “terrorism” and “radicalization” scared off even natural allies like progressives, Arab Americans, and racial justice advocates. As we close the book on this discriminatory program, we must recognize that, whether or not the program actually ends, the sentiment that allowed it to thrive persists. We must be vigilant in ensuring that no CVE-spinoff materializes without collective community resistance. M

-12-

Sagirah Shahid Yes, My complexion is a swear word.

I’m sure you’ve noticed. If you’re Black and Muslim you don’t get a break. I am choking on all the neighborhoods this country has left me with, they remind me of the ways I have managed to stay alive. Today, I watch them watch as they murder us.

Surveillance is an expectation at this point even the masjids have— walaalo your homeroom looks like bait. Entrapment means I try hard not to look too suspicious during every one of these “random” baggage checks. To Mr. New Muslim, “randomly” following me on Twitter: Don’t ask me fucked up shit like that.

But to answer your question, I love America.

IloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIlo veAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIlove AmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveAmericaIloveA mericaIloveAmericaloveAmericaloveAmericaloveAmericaloveAmeri caloveAmericaloveAmericalove— I have no place else to go back to. My honey-colored skin is the most American thing around.

It’s like wearing a trivia question on your face: What is the product of slave rape, Alex?

What I mean to say is, I knew what you were thinking (insert: [a Muslim couldn’t possibly belong here]) and rather than satisfy your othering inquiries, I thought I’d casually remind you who built the backbone, this country’s economy still a glaring severed reality for my people, like a limb.

In case you haven’t noticed, you apparently can’t keep your hands off of us. That’s why Kaepernick kneels. That’s why we keep forcing you to look, every time you claim phantom patriotism.

-13-

To the Unborn Generation, This is the world we were left with.

We did not have much of a choice when we got it. We tried things to make it better. I mean, I tried things and the things struck me back, pinned my body to a brick wall and waited for me to cry or piss my pants, whichever came first. Please know I only watched the video once.

A video is a record of time.

A video is a record of a body’s movements.

A video is a record of a body’s sounds.

This record will outlive the body.

It cannot tell you what the body felt like or if it had a scent, you will never be able to change the outcome.

Please know, I only watched the video because I could not touch the body, because no one could touch the body, because the body was not always a body, but a person with so much fear in his eyes. But a person with so much fear in her eyes sees her own body churned into a point of contention.

This is the world we were left with and if this is the surviving record of our times please know, there were poets here burying the dead, carrying whole spirits back to the earth.

You could see the dirt grains

trapped beneath each fingernail. M

-14-

Amjad Hajyassin How Much Does a Pig’s Head Cost?

“How much does a pig’s head cost?” Amany asked.

“Cost?” Mohammed responded.

“A pig’s head. What’s the going rate?”

“I never thought about it.” They were driving to the mosque. It was Friday, Jummah prayer. Two days earlier, a pig’s head was left on the doorstep of their mosque. In the dead pig’s mouth, a note: “Go home. America for white’s only.”

The police were called. News vans were parked and witness statements were taken. There was camera footage. A man, wearing a hood and a mask, placed the pig’s head on the doorstep, stood back, then nodded to himself. It caused quite a stir. People tweeting pictures of the pig’s head, long-winded Facebook statuses on the state of Islamophobia in the United States. They were shared a couple thousand times. Liked even more.

“I just don’t get it.” Amany said.

“Get what?”

“Why would they put a pig’s head on the doorstep?” She was speaking into the mirror and fixing her hijab. “Don’t they know we can just move it?”

“I guess it’s the principle of the act. To make us feel uncomfortable. I feel bad for the guy who had to clean it up.”

They drove in silence. Amany stared out of the window, biting at her fingernail—a nervous habit. Mohammed was humming a Katy Perry song.

He pulled into the mosque’s parking lot. People were lined up on the sidewalk in front of the mosque, holding babies and signs.

Chubby white woman in jeans: “We’re with you!” Little girl with ponytails: “America for ALL Americans!” Elderly man in wheelchair: “Spread Love, not Hate.”

There was a pastor in a black frock and a kippah-donned rabbi in tzitzit standing around, shaking hands and speaking with the protesters.

“Which officials are here, do you think?” Amany asked.

“Mayor, definitely. Muslim vote. Police chief, probably.”

“I bet you the mayor’s going to stay and take pictures.”

“I’ll take that bet. He’ll rush out as soon as he gives his speech.”

Mohammed drove to the end of the full parking lot and parked the car in a way that blocked other cars from leaving. He didn’t have

-15-

a choice. They exited the car and walked toward the main door. The crowd was moving toward the front of the mosque doors and was cheering worshippers as they entered. A little boy with messy blonde hair, walked up to Amany and handed her a rose. Amany reached out reluctantly and took it, thanking the boy. People were taking pictures. She blushed and gave a wave.

“I hate this,” she whispered to Mohammed. They split up, Amany taking the side door for the women’s section, which was on the second floor. Mohammed walked through the main door, shaking hands with elders who were standing around. They were talking to some of the protesters.

There was a man—a reporter—inside the prayer room. He was wearing a very nice three piece gray suit that looked tailored to his exact measurements. His shoes were off and he had on mismatched socks; one was green, the other white. His cameraman had his shoes off as well, though he had matching socks. Marijuana leaves.

Mohammed laughed. They were talking to each other. Mohammed walked to the front of the prayer room. It was still early, but the long rectangular room was already crowded. Half of the men weren’t worshippers. The mayor was there. His assistants, security. Some other officials. The police chief was standing around uncomfortably in his uniform.

Adam, a friend of Mohammed’s with a scar under his left eye, sat down next to Mohammed. “Assalammu alaykum, bro. What’s going on?” Adam asked.

“Pig’s head.”

“What about it?”

“How much do you think a pig’s head costs?” Mohammed asked.

Adam chuckled.

Mohammed had known Adam since they were kids. They were each other’s first friends. Their mothers were pregnant at the same time, and, coming from the same village back home, they formed an instant bond. As a young man, Adam was more religious than Mohammed and was a sort of religious sponsor for Mohammed, reminding him to come to Jummah prayers.

The imam stood at the podium. A young man, probably Mohammed’s age, he had a long dark beard with orange henna tints.

He had calm eyes and a disarming smile. Thanking everyone in attendance, he assured the impatient elders in the room that things would move smoothly and prayer would start on time. There was a giggle echoing in the room. He introduced the mayor, who strode up while his assistant clapped and then stopped when he realized no one else was clapping. He put his hands behind his back.

“Ay salamu A lay kam,” the mayor said—Mohammed and Adam stifled their laughs.

-16-

“This act of vandalism has no place in our town,” the mayor said to his new voting bracket. “It has no place in America. Islam is as much part of American history as Christianity”—he pointed at the pastor—“and Judaism.” He nodded to the rabbi. Both of them were in the back, waiting their turn.

“The Muslim community here is filled with tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. Good people. They are our doctors, teachers, lawyers.

They run family-friendly business. They are part of our community.

We stand beside them.” He thanked those in attendance. Shook hands with some of the worshippers-turned-voters at the front. Taking pictures with smiling bearded men.

The imam introduced the pastor, who talked about loving thy neighbor. The rabbi was next. He spoke on the commonalities between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. He railed against racism and spoke of the need for our communities to bridge whatever divide there was between us. Finally, the imam stood at the podium again, thanking the speakers for coming and for their support. Mohammed scanned the room and noted that the mayor had left.

The imam began his khutbah, spoke on the need for Muslims to reach out to their non-Muslim neighbors. He cautioned against violence in all forms. “We need to show the people of this beautiful country that we’re here peacefully. We are Americans,” he ended, before getting into a trance-like state, making dua for the all peoples that were suffering across the world.

The congregation of men stood up almost in unison. People lined up, shoulder to shoulder. Some men moved forward to fill in gaps, though there weren’t many. Mohammed realized he had never seen the mosque this full outside Ramadan. It was nice to see the room filled with men from all over—immigrants, first and second generation, converts, reverts—praying together in light of this very real and dangerous threat.

After prayer, Adam and Mohammed stood up and walked outside.

There were still people outside waving American flags and shaking hands with supporters. A woman with a microphone came up to Mohammed, her cameraman following behind her.

“How do you feel about this act of vandalism?” She asked Mohammed.

“It’s—”

“Do you feel unsafe here in America?”

“I don’t know about all that. I’ve been here my entire life.”

“Okay, thank you.” She saw a woman wearing hijab out of the corner of her eye and ran to her, hoping for better answers.

“She didn’t ask for your name,” Adam said. He lit a cigarette and offered one to Mohammed, who took it, brought it to his lips, and lit it with a match.

-17-

“True, she’ll just assume it’s Mohammed.”

They both stood by Mohammed’s car, waiting for Amany. They were talking about what the mayor said. “Guy’s kind of a dick.”

“The mayor?” Mohammed asked.

“Yeah. Police chief too. Didn’t they have informants at this mosque?”

“Yeah, that weird dude with the shifty eyes. He invited me to his apartment once to ‘discuss politics.’”

“Fucking entrapment.”

“Yeah, I was here when the guy was arrested. I think the imam called the cops on him and the FBI came. It was a whole thing, man.”

Mohammed crushed the cigarette with his heel. “It was a big deal.

Police chief had to come and apologize.”

Adam shook his head. “Now they come crawling, talking about ‘we stand beside the moozlims.’”

“Better beside, than behind, I guess.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Someone walked up to Mohammed and Adam. A burly guy, with tattoos down his arms. “Salam, brothers.”

“Salam,” the two said in unison. “$10.50.”

“I’m sorry?” Mohammed said.

“For a pig’s head. It’s $10.50,” the guy said. He pulled out his own pack of cigarettes. “I used to be a butcher at this Italian shop, before I converted.”

“Oh,” Adam said.

“Yeah, I was behind you guys. Heard you talking about the price of a pig’s head.”

“Sold a lot of them?”

“Not really. Usually someone buys it as a prop or a centerpiece.”

“Or throwing them in front of mosque doors.”

“Yeah, or that.”

The man walked away. Amany finally came out and headed over to Mohammed. “That was torture. Some lady was inside asking for people’s thoughts. I pretended I didn’t speak English,” Amany said.

“Hey, Adam.”

“Wow, masha’Allah, so beautiful. So much noor,” Adam said, with a fake immigrant accent.

“Shut up. You sound like my mother.”

“And how’s your mother?”

“She’s doing well. Wondering when you’re going to get married.”

“Tell her I said as soon as possible.” Adam shook Mohammed’s hand and turned to leave. “Gotta go to work. See you guys later.”

-18-

“Can we go?” Amany asked Mohammed.

“You owe me lunch,” he said.

“Excuse you!”

“What? We made a bet. Mayor left after his speech.”

“Dammit.”

Mohammed and Amany got into the car and drove out of the parking lot, which was a madhouse. Cars and people filled the empty spaces.

Cameramen from different news agencies filmed people holding signs and waving. The protesters were eager to be on TV, holding up their signs with pride. They wanted the world—or at least their town—to see how liberal and tolerant they were. Amany just stared out of the window, biting her nails.

“Not for nothing, at least they’re here for us,” Mohammed said.

“Yeah, I guess. It’s nice of them—” She stopped herself.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she began, “It just feels disingenuous, you know?

Yeah, they come out here when things happen to the mosque. And the board loves it. The attention. The news coming out, the mayor.

But there’s something fake about it.”

“I don’t think some lady holding up a sign is fake.”

“No, you’re right. But the whole thing. The mosque’s board members shaking hands with the police, the same police who monitor us. Schmooze with the mayor.” She laughed. “The mayor, who campaigned for the governor, the prick. He was the one that was all jihadist this, Islamists this.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“I just think Muslims have the tendency to cater to these institutions that really don’t care about us. It’s pathetic.”

“It’s a lose-lose, really. We complain about it being this way, but if they didn’t come and talk to us, we’d say they hate us.”

“It just bothers me, that’s all.”

Mohammed drove. Amany continued biting on her nails. “What do you wanna eat?” Mohammed finally asked.

“I don’t care.”

“So burgers it is.” Mohammed said.

“Uff.” M

-19-

Tariq Luthun Upon Leaving the Diamond to Catch 14 Stitches in My Left Brow We will never be more brothers than we were in the heat of that summer, the one in the park when the bat newly painted in my blood, lit my father to yell at all the kids playing baseball who know, now, the sound of men —darker—from a different world: hurt, ready, and loud. Our fathers—and the off-white noise they let loose—didn’t help, but might have made matters worse. I wake up in the back of an all-white room I do not recognize, its luminescence bouncing off the walls. I come to know this room—place I had never been—while you continue running circles around the neighbors, lest their tongues bend toward our families’ names; lest they—for the first time—see us bleed and think: prey. M

-20-

VISUAL ART: The Travel Ban 13769 In early 2017, the White House issued executive order 13769 titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.” In the name of national security, this controversial order aimed to block citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States. In this issue, Mizna’s focus on “surviving” presents artists who, in addition to hailing from the seven countries on the list, put forth nuanced perspectives that problematize narrow identity classifications perpetuated by the media. Through “excisions,” “contradictions,” “reappropriation,” and “reenactment,” they complicate the singular narrative with their own histories. Order 13769 diminishes a region into a cultural monolith, but by virtue of the inherent synchronous diversity of the countries on the list, the works featured here are as distinctive as the artists who created them. They provide a window into the rich aesthetic practices that cannot be pigeonholed to prescribed notions of place. During a particularly unsettling moment of intolerance, new political imaginaries are necessary to break the language of prejudice—dismantling discrimination can only come from countering the narratives of fear and paranoia that nurture structures of hierarchy in the first place. Indeed, inclusivity and diversity are not merely desired qualities, but are also essential for survival against isolationist policies like 13769.

Heba Y. Amin Curator of Visual Art

-21-

Ifrah Mansour

Ifrah Mansour is a Minnesota-based Somali multimedia artist, performer, and teacher. She uses art to bridge cultures and generations.

She was named among the “Ten Somali Artists & Entertainers to Watch in 2015” by OkayAfrica. Recent art and performance works include Somalia’s Balloon, Lablaab the Spill, Drones and Fargans, Isug, Corn for Ayayo, and the film A Stray.

In How to Have Fun in a Civil War, I revisit my childhood memories during the Somali Civil War to confront violent history with humor and provide a voice for the stories of children. How to Have Fun in a Civil War is a one-act multimedia play that explores war from an idyllic viewpoint of a 7-year-old Somali girl. The play layers multiple narratives taken from community interviews to tell a story about resilience while compelling the audience to engage in a healing process that is still raw for survivors.

—Ifrah Mansour

-22-

Image from the play How to Have Fun in a Civil War, 2015. Photograph by David Joles for the Star Tribune; reprinted here with permission.

-23-

Adelita Husni-Bey

Adelita Husni-Bey is a Libyan Italian artist who stages workshops and produces publications, radio broadcasts, archives, and exhibitions focused on using collectivist and noncompetitive pedagogical models within the framework of urban studies. In her ten years practicing as both an artist and a pedagogue, Adelita has worked with activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, spoken-word poets, students, and teachers on unpacking the complexity of collectivity. To make good what can never be made good: what we owe each other.

The film Postcards from the Desert Island was born out of the interest for the transformative potential of radical education in today’s societies. The children in the film are students from a school in Paris with an experimental curriculum based on noncompetitiveness.

Borrowing scenarios from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the children were asked to build a desert island in their school, undirected. Over three weeks, through the practice of anarchocollectivism, the children came to terms with notions of power, selfmanagement, institutions, punishment, immigration, public space, and civic disobedience. —Adelita Husni-Bey

Facing page: Film stills from Postcards from the Desert Island, 2011.

Digital video, 22.38 min. Images courtesy of Galleria Laveronica.

-24-

-25-

Anahita Razmi

Appropriation, translation, reenactment: the works of Anahita Razmi, a Berlin-based artist with an Iranian background, revolve around cultural transfers and translocations. What role does “the East” play in mass media, consumer culture, and pop culture? How do identities and bodies transform from one place to the other?

Razmi’s work is reconsidering visual memory, stereotypes, political conditions between Orient and Occident. Iran, with its current political and social conditions and relations, remains an open, ambivalent point of reference.

The video is showing a reenactment of an iconic scene from the movie American Beauty, exchanging the rose petals of the original scene with Iranian rial banknotes. At the time of production of the work, the lowest banknote, 500 IRR, was worth less than three euro cents, and inflation is recorded at 40% per year. Iranian Beauty refers to this named current economic crisis, which is to be seen in relation to Western economic sanctions. The moment of seduction of the quoted scene fails, the work is questioning value/devaluation and is relating Western visual memory to Eastern realities.

—Anahita Razmi

-26-

“Iranian Beauty,� 2013. 8.05 min. Image courtesy of the artist and Carbon12 Gallery.

-27-

Khaled Barakeh

Born in 1976 in a suburb of Damascus and currrently based in Berlin, Khaled Barakeh graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in Syria in 2005 and completed his MFA at Funen Art Academy in Odense, Denmark, in 2010. He has exhibited at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; SALT Galata in Istanbul; Shanghai Biennale; Kunsthallen Brandts, Odense; Frankfurter Kunstverein; and Artspace in New Zealand. In 2013, Barakeh finished his Meisterschueler at the Städelschule Art Academy in Frankfurt.

There are ideas about productive acts of erasure, but perhaps the proper word for the processes of removal in the project might be excision. These excisions, productive, violent, delicate—even surgical—both leave behind and take away. They are continua. Between paradoxes of concealment, memory, secrecy, reconciliation, and in/ visibility, they open up a host of concerns, issues, and inquiries that may otherwise go unspoken, forgotten, or simply never known.

—Khaled Barakeh

Facing page: From “The Untitled Images,” 2014. Series of five digital C-Type prints, 21 cm x 30 cm. Images courtesy of the artist.

-28-

-29-

Salwa Aleryani

Salwa Aleryani is a Yemini artist based in Berlin and elsewhere. Her work looks into sites, structures, and their infrastructures, and lately into notions of hope and promise in public and political setups. Her work has been shown in a number of exhibitions, including SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, Athr Gallery in Jeddah, and Biennale Jogja XII in Yogyakarta. In 2016 she was an artist in residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, where she also held a solo exhibition.

Could something fragile today stand for something solid in the future? If flimsy cornerstones and pinned paper plaques can lay claim to massive structures, bridges, and roads, then could one say this is a moment where power and weakness (a contradiction?) is celebrated? There’s something to be appreciated about that, like standing on one leg.

—Salwa Aleryani

Facing page Top: “Before They Harden,” 2016. Casting sand, pewter, and silver nail, 20 cm x 22 cm and 23 cm x 22 cm.

Bottom: “Pattern of a Drifting List,” 2016, Carved column, transferred photograph on plaster and magnets.

Photographs by Eric Tschernow.

-30-

-31-

Walid Siti

Walid Siti was born in 1954, in Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan. He studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, continued his arts education in Slovenia, and settled in the United Kingdom, where he lives and works. The narrative of Siti’s experience, of a life lived far from but still deeply emotionally connected to the place of his birth, is one shared with many exiles. Siti takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of his native land, which is crisscrossed with militarized borders and waves of migration.

My work draws on formal elements of architecture and the landscape of lost memories tinted with current upheaval. By decomposing these forms, I construct a realm that conveys a shift from their former position within a historical cultural tradition to a complex contemporary form, with the ensuing transformation from order to disorder and vice versa. Through the use of contrasting materials, including thread, nails, barbed wire, straw, plastic, or plaster, I highlight the nature of this violent process.

—Walid Siti

Facing Page Top: “Phantom Land,” 2017. Hard board, foam board, plaster of Paris, grout, and acrylic paint, 5 cm x 700 cm x 900 cm. And “False Flags,” 2017. Anti bird netting, wood, plaster, plastic figurines, and acrylic. 300 cm x 650 cm x 120 cm Sharjah Biennial 13, 2017. Both commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation.

Bottom: “The Black Tower,” 2016. Plastic figurines, paper, acrylic, plaster, twigs, 35 cm x 50 cm x 35 cm.

Images courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.

-32-

-33-

Fadlabi

Fadlabi was born in 1975 in Omdurman, Sudan, and lives and works in Oslo. He was educated at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Al-Neelain University in Khartoum, and Sudan University. He works with painting, text, and performance, and in 2008 he founded One Night Only Gallery, an artist-run platform in Oslo that exhibits a new artist every Monday—possibly Norway’s most busy gallery. Between 2010 and 2014 he worked with artist Lars Cuzner on European Attraction Limited, a contemporary rendition of a human zoo named the Congo Village that was part of the 1914 World Fair in Oslo. They reenacted the village and opened it to the public in May 2014.

“The Congo Village” is a reenactment of a human zoo that existed in the heart of Oslo in 1914. Part of a project called European Attraction Limited, it was presented as a part of Oslo’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the signing of their constitution. In 2014, Lars Cuzner and I rebuilt the Congo village in the same spot as the original to trace the evolution of racism in Norway and to confront the Norwegian self image of goodness.

Cover Image “The Prediction Machine,” created in 2013, references Ethiopian church paintings and African barber shop paintings to ask questions about Western norms in art, the meaning of Europe today, and the persistent division between what’s designated the West and the non-West.

—Fadlabi

-34-

“The Congo Village” 2014, by Fadlabi and Lars Cuzner. Part of a project called European Attraction Limited.

-35-

Paul Kaidy Barrows The Ache, the Leap How does the soul survive? The soul is cunning. An opportunist. The soul is shaped like a tear. The soul glows like an opal but is soft like smoke.

My grandfather came to this country from Lebanon in August of 1901. After sweating through the lines and questions of Ellis Island, he edged his way into Little Syria, a neighborhood once at the bottom of Manhattan but now long gone.

After weeks crossing the Mediterranean, Europe, and the Atlantic, he was both eager and full of trepidation about what he had gotten himself into. Imagine my grandfather as a 16-year-old boy, disappearing into Little Syria’s clouds of narghila smoke, the clacking of dominoes, the foam of sweet dark coffee, the slap of worn pinochle cards onto café tables in the front of shops, music, and, surprisingly, the language of home rolling up and down these alien streets.

These were all a comfort but they were not home. Home is the land, the earth itself, where you place your feet every day. Nothing else is the same. He never stood upon that land again, but his passion for it never left him.

From New York, my grandfather journeyed to San Francisco.

Not long after he settled there, all he owned was destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. On that April morning, the land turned against him. He lived as a refugee in a tent in Washington Square. Soon he left this place too and returned to the east.

My grandfather worked and saved for years and then bought a farm in New England. Sixty acres of peach trees and grape vineyards.

With his hand plow, he churned up this earth. Here was land that was his, resembling his home in the mountains of Lebanon. It was not that home, but the soul is quite patient, lying in wait, doing its best.

As life’s challenges unfolded, my grandfather sold the farm bit by bit. But he kept enough land so that he could always harvest eggplants in late summer and clip bunches of grapes that hung low from vines twisting up the porch posts. He rolled meat and rice into the leaves. A mulberry tree gave up its fruit each year, which ripened so rapidly he could not catch them all. They tumbled out of his hands, making purple splats on the ground. He pounded kibbee in a huge marble mortar.

My grandfather died six months before I was born. His American wife and American daughters had never shared his passion for his homeland, his language, the music, or the smells. They did not understand his ache for the soil of his distant mountains, the cool stone of the houses, air so clear you could see all the way to the Mediterranean in the morning.

-36-

Why do I, who never met my grandfather, feel his passion deep inside me? I feel it as part of my body. If I conjure his home in my mind, I feel tears shoving behind my eyes. Over all these years I have never been able explain this.

Recently my mother, now elderly and prone to telling more stories, related something to me. I should have known it already if I had done the math, but she was pregnant with me at my grandfather’s funeral. It was a bitter New England winter day. Elderly cousins of my grandfather’s had trudged through knee-deep snow in a storm to get from the train station to the funeral home.

What I now know is that I was there too, just formed, tiny, with a beating heart, waiting. There.

Was I a fertile bed that cold winter day, open? Did a leap happen when my mother was not looking? The soul, lying in wait, will see an opportunity and seize it. How else can I explain a soul inside me older than my own, that understands a language I cannot speak, that recognizes music I have never heard, and yearns for ground I have never stood on?

A dozen years ago I met a man who came from Lebanon. I looked down through his eyes all the way to his feet. When I was a child I believed the soul lived in the feet. I had mistaken sole for soul. The image born of this mistake was so indelible that even today, on the days when I believe in souls, an instinct tells me that this is where the soul resides. I do not believe I am mistaken in this, because the feet touch the earth, and the earth is what the soul craves attachment to.

When I looked into this man’s eyes, I recognized the deep and long distances as if I had seen them before. It was very sudden. I gasped. Some say the soul escapes in a breath.

This man moved away and I did not see him again for many years. In fact, I thought I would never see him again. But a few weeks ago, surprisingly, he was in town. We got together over coffee. I looked down through his eyes and again I saw the same deep and long distances.

How is it that you can look into another person’s eyes and see a place you have dwelled in forever, but have never been to? And how is it that sometimes it feels like your heart is being pulled right out through your chest to emerge dripping and red? And how is it that, in spite of everything, the soul finally finds its way home? M

-37-

Noor Hashem All I Need to Know about Protest I Learned from Syrians

A Love Letter

We stood at the entrance to the Boston Common, heads and necks wrapped in fuchsia scarves. We were Muslim women and non-Muslim allies, we were professors, engineers, social workers, mothers, grandmothers, doulas, non-profit employees, career activists, artists, teachers, pharmacists, and therapists.

We expected to stand out, but instead merged into crowds of men and women with heads covered in pink pussy hats for the Women’s March. Our group met in Downtown Crossing, then marched down Temple Place behind a banner that read “Muslims: Peace Justice Equality,” featuring a quote from Qur’anic verse 4:135, which says “O you who believe! Stand firm in justice, bearing witness for God, even if it be against yourselves or parents or relatives.” Our sons and daughters marched with us, some old enough to chant along, others in carriers and strollers. As we passed the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, one of our organizers, Waheeda, reminded us we had safe haven there: for prayer, for respite, for discussion, for nursing, for tending to small children.

As we walked down the Freedom Trail and deeper into the heart of the park, a rush of sound embraced us. People standing to our left and right erupted into cheers, clapping and whistling. An older woman with white hair cried, covering her face with her hands until one of us embraced her. We were caught off-guard, our hearts warmed. For some of us, that would become the defining moment of the protest.

During the rally, the sound of the speeches, even as they were amplified, were distant in the crowd of over 100,000 people. We would strain to pay attention, but when restlessness overcame us, spontaneous chants would start up, gain momentum, then fade. Behind us, on the walkway, new groups would arrive, holding their own banners, and we all cheered them on, joining in the chants they brought with them. Signs read “Vaginas brought you into the world. Vaginas will vote you out,” “The future is nasty,” and “Keep your tiny [hand emoticon]s off my rights.” In the distance, people sat at the base of the pillar of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

The sound of the chants, the snarky signs, and the sight of a rising monument surrounded by protesters reminded me of the million-person rally in Hama’s Al-Assi Square, early in the Syrian revolution. Photos and videos showed a clock tower covered in banners saying, in Arabic, “We will not forget our martyrs and detainees,”

-38-

and in English, addressing Bashar al-Assad, “Go out from Syria.”

Hundreds of thousands of people stood, chanting for the downfall of the president—“Al shaab yureed isqat al nitham”—and singing revolutionary songs, the energy electrifying even over grainy video.

In the middle of the crowd, three lines of people waved flags of red, white, and black, creating the illusion from above of the Syrian flag, while a long banner flag made its way around the crowd, encircling the protest. *** I come from a family of dissidents. Most of my extended family left Syria in the ‘80s, during the regime of Hafez al-Assad. During family reunions in exile every summer, the subject of opposition always came up at least once, often in empathy for and slight competition with some other instance of despotism around the world. I was raised on a healthy diet of lean skepticism, caloric bravado, and the staple dark humor. This helped wash down stories of economic corruption, professional and hierarchical bribery, arbitrary detentions, disappearances and barbaric torture practices meted out in notorious prisons. Men—husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, grandfathers—went in and came out heroes, or else remained lost. Torture became a perverted rite of passage. Women were heroines in the creativity with which they hid men in the secret places of the home, the unyielding confidence with which they met the regime thugs coming for their families, and the religious devotion with which they patiently endured as they waited for their loved ones to be returned to them.

In Syria, as in the United States, the relationship between religion, power, and protest is characterized by obfuscation. For Syria’s socialist-coup-turned-dictatorship, the secular was a crutch of legitimacy in front of the world order, even while the Alawite regime turned to its people and bared a set of false teeth made of Sunni Islamic piety whitened by crooked imams to create the illusion of legitimacy inside the largely Sunni country. The regime was co-opting the stirrings from two branches of resistance: one born of the radical left, and one steeped in the religious tradition of Islam, which resonates deeply with a majority of Syrians, just as MLK’s church movement did in the United States.

For that reason, growing up in the United States, I equated religious commitment not to blind conformity but, on the contrary, to brave, unapologetic resistance. This was my American jihad, a personal struggle to demand justice, to represent diversity, and to bridge worlds. With every political event I had to answer for—the Oklahoma City bombing before McVeigh was arrested, 9/11, the second Iraq War, the cartoon controversies, the Boston bombing, the 2015 Paris attacks, and the specters of events that happened before my own personal memory, like the Iran-Iraq War and the Satanic Verses controversy—I tired, but never wavered. Combating igno-

-39-

rance and embodying a moderate, lived Islam was my birthright.

And largely, I felt alone in the task. Uniquely positioned, singularly committed, and utterly dispossessed.

Then I walked down that path in the Women’s March, and I was no longer any of these things.

Before the revolution, I had never felt particular pride in being Syrian. My relationship to my Syrian heritage was a labor of tough love.

Then the revolutions in the Arab world began in Tunisia and then in Egypt and Yemen and Libya. Arabs were uprising and rising. Protesters across countries referenced the same poetry, like Al-Shabbi’s “The Will to Life” and “To the Tyrants of the World.” There was a place for religion: protesters invoked God in their demands for human rights, Christians formed human chains around Muslims praying in Tahrir Square. When various authoritarian regimes tried to discredit the revolutions as sectarian, followed by international politicians, reporters and analysts, people on the ground rejected the easy dismissal of their principles. In Egypt, graffiti street art routinely paired the cross with the crescent, and one mural depicted Egyptians as different fingers of one hand playing a piano. In Syria, the Italian Jesuit priest Father Paolo was counted among the most beloved revolutionaries.

Throughout these six years since March 2011, Syrians have taught me about capacious dignity and obstinate resolve, demanding my pride and respect. Despite being pulled from the rubble of a multi-story buildings after being hit by regime barrel bombs, despite “double taps” where planes circle back to kill those left alive, despite “kneel or starve” campaigns, mass detention and torture and systematic rape, despite the spread of easily preventable diseases like polio, despite displacement inside the country and outside it by the millions, despite the destruction of the ecosystem, of sacred and historical sites in the world’s oldest city, Syrians continue to resist, to create, and to survive.

The famous ingenuity and industriousness of Syrians proves true. Syrians build bakeries, teach children in basement schools, report as citizen journalists, save lives in makeshift field hospitals and mobile clinics, run radio stations, risk their own lives for others as first responders (called the White Helmets), and form community governance known as local councils that see to the building of infrastructure and running of the liberated areas. Syrians make solar energy out of a satellite dish and mirrors, cultivate gardens and nurseries, curate libraries from abandoned books, cobble together portable dialysis machines from old medical equipment and car parts, and run bicycle-generated electricity. They are pressured into ceasefires, so they dance, sing, and chant in peaceful protest. Then the ceasefires end, and they get back to work. As refugees in new countries, they help teach Arabic to non-native speakers over Skype, build or revitalize economies like the one inside the Zaatari refugee camp,

-40-

come to the aid of local victims of flood damage, and volunteer at the UNHCR to help people with disabilities. Despite everything, they hold steadfast to their resolve.

In college, I protested education cuts under the Bush administration, marched against the Iraq War and in support of Palestinian human rights. But I stood silent, holding my body, stance rigid and leaning away, privileging irony and critical distance as I had been taught to do in my sociology and English major classes. I did not know how to protest. I understood how to think, but had no sense for how to feel.

The Syrian Revolution changed that. My weeks filled with protests and fundraisers. I stood with other Syrian Americans on busy intersections, waving the green, white, and black revolutionary flag recovered from Syria’s era of independence. We recited the poetic revolutionary chants which we had studied from muddy live recordings, delighted by clever turns of phrase: couplets and tercets that rhymed descriptions of rebels standing in line upon line, calling for Assad’s downfall, lines that used Assad’s own words to gleefully assert how and when he would be overthrown, or declarations that Syrians needed no UN veto to kick him out of the country. We would try out generic English protest chants—hey hey, ho ho, Bashar al-Assad has got to go—but they never lasted as long on our tongues.

By comparison, those protests in exile were sad imitations of the ones in Syria. But when the Women’s March began, I recognized the feeling. A Bosnian friend and fellow marcher, Edina, observed, “The last time I saw you, you were pregnant and we were protesting in Copley Square for Syria. Now, here you are with your baby girl, and we are protesting for women’s rights.”

I had never felt particular pride in being American. I am very middle-class American—in the privilege I enjoy in relation to the world, in the indignant certainty of my entitlement to my rights and identity. I nurture a very sober view of my America steeped in intellectual critique. I feel affinity with the American people, but I have rarely felt recognition, or a sense of community.

The protests of this new year have changed all that. I saw vulnerable communities—Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, LGBTQ—rise up like Syrians. I saw these groups working as eed wahday, one hand. The Occupy Movement organizers were inspired by the Arab Spring protesters. From the heart of Kafranbel, Syrians held a banner reading, “We Stand in Solidarity with the Oppressed Who Cannot Breathe, #BlakLivesMatter,” and from Standing Rock, water protectors with the #NoDAPL movement made a short video in support of besieged Aleppo. I have seen a growing movement within the American Muslim community of public engagement, led by women like Dalia Mogahed and Linda Sarsour. Linda Sarsour, who helped organize the Women’s March in DC that catalyzed the sister march in Boston that I attended. Of course there have been piercing and

-41-

well-founded critiques of these various protests. But what Syrians most taught me about protest is that the symbolic is sometimes necessary. Protest is about mobilizing effort, recharging energy, and connecting people who will later work together to become effective.

Again and again, Syrians make their voices heard, against all odds, because they know at the very least they must register their dissent to the world. *** A week after the Women’s March, in front of the Kahlil Gibran memorial in Copley Square, near the site of the Boston Marathon bombing, I stood under the stately portico of the Trinity Church looking out at some 25,000 people screaming, chanting, and whistling, radiating indomitable intensity. Their signs read: “Make America Safe Again: Ban Trump,” “A person, A woman, A refugee, A Muslim, An American!,” “We Are All Muslim,” “Will trade racists for refugees,” “Come on Boston, we’ve dumped tea in the harbor for less,” and “First they came for the Muslims . . . and we said fuck this bullshit.” People chanted: “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here!” and “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.” Rabbis, ministers, and state officials all spoke against religious discrimination and intolerance towards immigrants and refugees. In the crowd, I saw scattered pink pussy hats and fuchsia scarves. After the official rally ended, the crowd would stay dancing, chanting, and protesting in the bitter Boston winter freeze for an hour before they marched to the state house.

Earlier that week, I stood in the kitchen with my husband John, the executive director of the Massachusetts branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations. We were discussing the rumored executive order that had, for weeks, been delayed. Our conversation turned to the Women’s March. John, who ends all his articles and interviews with action items, said he had a deep ambivalence toward the potential for energy loss through rallies. He wanted to mobilize that momentum into tangible work. I told him this seemed like a different moment for the life of protests. The women I had marched with were continuing their efforts at systematic resistance. The organizers of the flagship DC Women’s March were tweeting and posting about targeted political campaigns. People were calling senators, attending town halls, and voicing their opposition of the administration’s cabinet pick confirmations and well-funded hate groups.

When the Muslim ban was finally announced, John was prepared with media statements and rally planning. “It would be amazing if we got 1,000 people,” he said, inviting people to the Facebook event page, while I shared it on my wall.

The ban was announced early Friday evening. By late Friday night, the number of those coming was nearly 800, with over a thousand interested. On Saturday, the numbers jumped exponentially: 4,500, 6,000, 8,000. By that night, over 12,000 said they were

-42-

coming, and 23,000 were interested. The next day, an estimated 25,000 would attend.

Mama was visiting that weekend to see her granddaughter.

As we wove our way through the crowd to the church, her face was radiant. “Back in Syria,” Mama said, “after independence from the French, your grandfather, your great-aunt, they were always at the protests just like these.” It was a time of turmoil in Syria, with coup falling to coup, but it was also a time of great possibility and aspiration. By the time my mother was old enough to pick up a picket sign, the Ba‘athists had made protesting an impossibility.

“Look,” mama said, pointing to our right as we faced out into Copley Square from the church steps. In the portico a few arches away from us, also facing the crowd, stood a man, reddish beard trimmed neat, looking bespoke in black fedora, dark glasses, dark coat, cufflinks, and fitted black gloves. He held up a sign of computer printouts pasted to cardboard, the Arabic font simple but elegant. “‫ ”الشعب يريد اسقاط النظام‬it read—the people want the fall of the regime. As I took his photo, he turned to me to grin. M

-43-

Hayan Charara Self-Portrait in Retrospect Young, I thought with time things like anger and shame would, on their own, go away.

God, I was so beautiful then.

The latest issue of the North American Review features a section on Arab American Poetry curated by Mizna’s Lana Barkawi and Moheb Soliman.

The poets featured are Hala Alyan, Glenn Shaheen, and Hayan Charara, three Arab American writers who also have new work in this Surviving issue. Find out more and read the introduction written for NAR by Barkawi and Soliman at mizna.org.

-44-

Self-Portrait with Cassette Player Before going into the bar I used to sit in my car listening to Bach for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty minutes, sometimes more, sometimes Beethoven or Mendelssohn, Chopin or Schubert.

So long as the sound was not another person talking about something I didn’t care about, I didn’t care whose music it was.

I could wait in the lot a long time.

Far be it for me to tell others half of anything they ever said was meaningless before they ever said it.

Besides, so much happening was impossible: people who looked like me murdering people who looked like me.

All the same, for thousands of years it had happened thousands of times, which is why some nights I left the bar drunk and some I never left the car at all.

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors -45-

Unresolved Haikus Unresolved When he is with her, some nights, he feels like a fish in a frying pan.

Then there are the times when he’d rather burn to death than be without her.

Beautiful Morning The lizard sunning outside the house, the cat wants to kill so badly.

Being a Mother and Father Sometimes love is not throwing a wailing infant through a windowpane.

Getting By Wedged behind the door, a shovel to keep thieves out— twice still they broke through.

How It Fell Apart Little by little and then all of a sudden, the marriage collapsed.

-46-

Old Couple Whoever wakes first checks to see if the other made it through the night.

Summertime Where the children play, fire ant mounds like land mines wait for their footsteps.

Seeing our Mother Years after She Died Hallucination, I say. You, Ghost. Either way, she’s not coming back.

Condolence then Apology On the stillborn child, and for feeling glad that you, not me, suffered this.

Truth Changes with Perspective and Perspective Changes with Time He beats the shit out of his kids, for their own good— his wife and dog, too.

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors -47-

High School Angst, High School Tryst Turns out it mattered not at all that you could not dance to save your life.

The River In Winter Cold, clear, no hint yet of the summer tourists or their empty beer cans.

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger Was one of the things people said to him, and her, to comfort, to ease.

Her death went slowly.

He, the picture of good health, joined her by the spring. M

-48-

Hala Alyan Chaos Theory The coming is a machete in your mouth.

The sex took us to downtown Baltimore.

The television brings us the floods in their tin.

The refugees ate water; the president apologized.

The green-eyed woman asked me to define jihad.

The window let rain in. The man dreamt of Oaxaca.

The grief billowed and the morning slit through.

The tunnel cosseted men. The land became a feather and the feather found your mother’s black hair.

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors -49-

Halfway to July They call it heaven’s intersection: the dry grass murmuring of the coming storm, a Budweiser can flattened beneath someone’s boot, the train’s lonely call for itself.

All the exit routes: someone else’s Jeep, the bottle of pills, your daddy’s DNA. I kept the bullet for the wrong reasons; I wanted people to ask. An anorexic’s desire to be invisible and magnified at the same time.

My mother made me like a poplar. From her I took Kuwait, Dallas, the rosary bead of Tripoli’s bridges. The entire town of Norman trembling at the first smoke-dark clouds, grateful for the rain. Through the windows of finer houses I saw lives trudging like bison toward the thaw.

I didn’t want to hear about a better city. Limestone cliffs off the Ailladie coast, black and tall like earnest pilgrims. A volcano in a prehistoric village spilling like a man in sex.

Better to split the amen from the prayer. The film of grease from your favorite coin.

There are things I could tell you and so I did. The meadowlarks departed every dusk, catching grub with their beaks, whittling into the black bark of elms the code to nothing, halfway to July with their thrilled song.

Have you heard the one about never going home again?

The morning always rises on that awful house and the birds cry and you call me girl and I let you. M

-50-

Glenn Shaheen The Color Bearers of the Spring Brigade In elementary school there was a proto-ROTC military group for grades three through five called the Spring Brigade. Kids would join, pay some money for a fake military dress uniform, and learn to march in parades and go camping. I hated the outdoors but my best friend, Isaac, joined, and so I figured I had to join too. I wasn’t exactly part of the cool crowd in rural Maine. I had big, thick glasses and loved science fiction. In everyday school situations, I’d wear Spider-Man sweatshirts and sweatpants that matched. In a town of almost all white families, I was one of the darkest kids, Arab, though at the time I didn’t know what to call myself. A couple kids called me the n-word at recess on a regular basis and pushed me around.

I thought the word just meant “booger,” but I still didn’t like it. I joined the Spring Brigade, and Isaac and everyone got to carry cool wooden rifles during the parade. They ran out just before they got to me, although I was not last alphabetically, and they said I could have the most important job of all, being the color bearer. I’d get to carry the flag of the United States of America, and march at the front of the pack, and while it did sound like it bore some responsibility, I would have rather run around the church basement with a wooden rifle like everybody else. On our first practice run in the church parking lot, I was told to rest the flag against my right shoulder while marching.

It was much heavier than I thought, and as soon as we were called to attention, I fumbled and dropped the flag on the ground. It slowly teetered forward like a drawbridge being lowered. Our leader, who asked that we call him Corporal Buddy, ran over yelling at us not to touch it. It was disappointing, he said, looking at me, that the flag was not held above the ground honorably, and now it had to be respectfully disposed of, by fire. He separated the flag from its pole and bunched into the middle of the parking lot. He lit it after a few tries with his Zippo lighter. Everybody in the Spring Brigade stared at the burning fabric with awe, and I felt power. I felt I didn’t need a wooden rifle, that I brought the flag to flames and everyone was respecting me because of this moment. I had to practice with an empty pole for a while until Corporal Buddy could get approval from the Spring Brigade home office to buy a new flag with our rainy-day cash. The new flag came just in time for the high school homecoming parade. I was good at marching, at the proper stance for holding a flag, but I wanted to get that respect of a kid who could compel an adult to start a fire

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors -51-

at a moment’s notice. At the end of the parade, during which middle school kids threw poppers at our feet, I purposely fumbled a shoulder switch and let the flag fall to the ground. It hit bottom of the pole first, and Corporal Buddy yelled for me to catch it, but I overacted in my wild swing and missed. The jig was up. The corporal screamed at me in front of everybody for disrespecting our country, our country’s flag, and everybody who had ever died for all our freedoms and to stopped us from speaking Chinese. I cried because I couldn’t handle an adult screaming at me like that. Isaac asked if we would burn the flag, and Corporal Buddy said yes, but that I wouldn’t be allowed to attend. Later that week we had a meeting with the corporal and my mother. Corporal Buddy told my mother I wasn’t Spring Brigade material, and my time would probably be better spent elsewhere, maybe with other immigrant children. My mother said I wasn’t an immigrant and asked if I could just be allowed to carry the state flag, because nobody really cared about Maine, and I could drop the flag all day without repercussions. Corporal Buddy said no, it was over, and that we could also not get our deposit for the year back. I was sad because my mother was disappointed, but the flag is just a flag.

Yes, I wanted it burned, I wanted that power, but I was nine years old, and who even as an adult can say they’ve never been seduced by the power of fire? And Buddy was wrong anyway—there’s no law that says you’ve got to burn a flag if it touches the ground. Isaac and I stayed friends, and he hated camping, ended up getting eaten up by leeches. In high school, the ringleader of the kids who called me the n-word wound up hanging himself in the woods, and I felt sorry for him. Corporal Buddy got accused of falsifying his own military service, but then he drowned saving a family on a sinking boat in the Bay of Fundy. I’ll never regret making those flags get burned, but I know I still let him down. I let them all down, somehow, and the disappointment stuck webbed in a corner of their skulls until they died.

-52-

The Tender Land

after Aaron Copland

It is a grief to sew to attach a song from which all dances begin is the daughter an American opened to a sky that alters with subtle

lighting shifts in angles only the backdrop fake and multi-hued the men know to fix the harvest they volunteer from the street they sing of friendship and thanksgiving

so what that the people give to one another so what that lyrics say

they should trust a given note but who pushes the low horns to be so out of tune the train outside the orchestra hall bursting through the narrative with its whistle to be set on a list politicians taking note of one thought or other

the singer’s slight shift in posture represents a mode of thought unwelcome

to prevailing winds the child with her doll the child is alone

and does not sing but speaks

against the tones of the orchestra Copland and his lovers restricted by the House could not leave America could not premiere what we would now call American music

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors -53-

Tempo Drums abust under low ceiling beams the cymbals and kick pedal held together by tape drums designed to resemble sounds of battle to confuse enemies and me I’m trying to learn I confuse and get confused daddy longlegs in the hi-hat a cobweb in my mouth I don’t imagine murder on the battlefield I flail sticks flying amid the corpses of rodents can somebody hear me erupting from the cellar dust I have only one enemy only one person I know hates me I hate back is this true success in our modern era my friends occur to me between the beats and I hope I occur to them as well I hope this is true also for my enemy M

Mizna + North American Review Featured Authors -54-

-55-

CONTRIBUTORS

Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in Guernica and other literary journals. She is the author of three collections of poetry; the most recent, Hijra, was selected as a winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series.

Her debut novel, Salt Houses, was recently published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Niebal Atiyeh is a Syrian American. She has dual Masters degrees in Middle Eastern Studies and Educational Administration.

She taught high school math in Detroit for three years and currently teaches algebra in Okemos, Michigan.

Paul Kaidy Barrows, a native of New England, is a research librarian living and working in San Francisco. His creative work has appeared in Mizna, The Massachusetts Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. He received an MFA from San Francisco State University and an MLIS from San Jose State University.

Maya Beck is a lapsed Muslim, recovering otaku, socially awkward blipster, and genre-confused writer. She is also a 2014 Givens Foundation alum, 2017 VONA Regional Workshop participant, and Paper Darts staff member whose work has been published or is forthcoming in the Redlands Review, Errata, Revolver, PANK, Twin Cities Daily Planet, NewHive, and Pollen. She currently works for an arts nonprofit in Minneapolis.

Ramla Bile is a Minneapolis-based writer, and a self-identified Black Muslim Baldwinist. She operates the communications and strategic development firm, Qalam Consulting, which helps local nonprofits, foundations, and small businesses amplify their impact.

Hayan Charara is the author of three poetry books, most recently Something Sinister, and a children’s book, The Three Lucys. He edited Inclined to Speak, an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. Born in Detroit, he lived in New York city for many years before moving to Texas. He teaches at the University of Houston.

Bernard Ferguson is a Bahamian immigrant living in Minnesota. In his free time, he volunteers at poetry slams and readings around the Twin Cities, and has been devoting his writing to optimism in the face of 2017. His work has been featured and is upcoming in Button Poetry and Glass Poetry Press.

Marion Gómez is a poet and teaching artist based in Minneapolis. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and Jerome Foundation. Her poem “Father Bought Mangos” was selected for the Saint Paul Almanac’s Impressions Project.

-56-

Amjad Hajyassin is a writer from Palestine based in New York. After graduating from City College of New York, he published a collection of poems titled Things I Should Have Said, which is available on Amazon. He is currently attending Kingston University’s Creative Writing Master’s program.

Noor Hashem holds an MFA in fiction and a PhD in English literature from Cornell University. She held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University and taught refugees in Turkey. She works and writes on Muslim fiction, critical theory, and cultural studies. Her fiction has been published in New Letters.

Tariq Luthun is a Palestinian American poet and strategist from Detroit. Currently an MFA candidate for poetry at the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Luthun also holds positions as the Social Director of Organic Weapon Arts Press and co-founder of the PoC-dedicated literary arts series FRUIT.

Jess Rizkallah is a Lebanese American writer and illustrator living between Boston and New York. Alumna of Lesley University, MFA candidate at NYU, and founding editor at Maps For Teeth magazine/pizza pi press. Her work has appeared in Word Riot, Nailed Magazine, Button Poetry, HEArt Online, and on her mother’s fridge.

Her collection the magic my body becomes won the 2016 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press. jessrizkallah.com

Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collections Predatory (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Energy Corridor (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), and the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions, 2013). His full-length collection of flash fiction, Carnivalia, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press in 2018.

Sagirah Shahid is a recipient of a Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series Award in poetry, a 2016–2017 recipient of a Minnesota Center for Book Arts Mentorship, and a 2017 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. Sagirah’s writing can be found in Mizna, Alyss, Qu, Blue Minaret, Paper Darts, and The Fem literary magazines.

-57-

DONORS As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, Mizna depends largely on donor contributions for our operating costs. If you enjoy this publication and would like to support Mizna, please consider making a tax-deductible donation at mizna.org.

Mizna Donor ($5–$49)

Bruce Braun Amber Pone Hala & Stephen Buck Anton Rang Suad Cano Tara Reed Rola Alkatout Ouahib Chalbi Frank Rhame Amal & Salih Altoma Brian Cronwall Mike Rollin Jessica Belt & Samer Lina & Ahmad Dajani James Rustad Saem ElDahr Stephanie & Alex Janet Schmitt Zoe Bird DeArmond Mary Shehadeh Susan Campion Fritz & Nellie Dorigo Brett & Katherine Smith John Collier Liz Doyle & Greg Deborah Steinbar Liz Conway Nammacher Florence Taitel Ouida Crozier Candace Falk & Eve Julia Bulbulian Wells Maria DeLaundreau Borenstein University of Minnesota Joanna R Demkiewicz Salah Fattah French & Italian Rachel Dennis Kurt Froehlich & Jen Department Robert Dillard March Urban Sub New Media Karim & Lorie Haddad Majda Talal Gama Jennifer Kennedy-Logan Adriana Garcia Brenda Louise Frieda Gardner Mizna Patron Benjamin Moren Gary Gardner & Helen ($250–$999) Sahar Mustafah Kivnick Sarah Peters Iman Ghazalla & Ragui Abir & Hashem Laura P. Rice & Karim Assaad Abukhadra Hamdy Dave Gomshay Charlotte Karem Jess Riemer Anne Haddad & Kelly Albrecht & Katie Steven Rosenberg Connole Murphy Ellen Roth Kathryn Haddad Nahid Khan & Dawud Sylvia Schwarz Nicole & Mazen Halabi Mulla Kevin Stock & Geralyn William Halabi Angela & Jamie Abinader Molly Hill Schwesnedl Theresa Swaney Gloria Holmes Clay Steinman & Inge De Michelle Thomas Doug Huisken Becker Jason Voskuil Christin Ivey Maclaester College Hythem Zayed Abdeen Jabara University of Minnesota Miriam & Refat Zayed Leah Jaslow African Studies Zawaya Leyla & Amin Kassem Initiative Ethan Laubach & Jna Asian Languages & Shelomith Literatures Mizna Associate Lisa Leonard US Bank Foundation ($50–$249) Nabil Matar Wells Fargo Middle East Kathy McKay Team Member Network Catharine Abbott Barbara E. Merrill & Patti Eve Lotter Abou Chacra Hague Lamia Abukhadra Janine Mogannam Mizna Benefactor Yusuf & Fadia Abul-Hajj Dipankar Mukherjee & ($1000+) Lisa Adwan Meena Natarajan Katherine Aksadi Elana Nachman Nedal Abul-Hajj Bilal Alkatout Aaron Nesser Yehia & Nawal Barkawi Nabil Amra Bruce & Barbara Maymouna Farhat & Shai Ashkenazi Nordstrom-Loeb Athir Shayota Mohammed Bamyeh Paola Nunez Obetz Bigelow Foundation -58-

Bush Foundation Center for Arab American Philanthropy Cultural STAR Program Knight Foundation Left Tilt Fund Mardag Foundation McKnight Foundation Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Minnesota State Arts Board Nash Foundation National Network for Arab American Communities St. Paul Foundation University of Minnesota Immigration History Research Center Mizna Partners Ancestry Books Film Society of Minneapolis, St. Paul Iraqi American Reconciliation Project The Loft Literary Center Magers & Quinn Moon Palace Books NorthernLights.mn Pangea World Theater Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc. Soap Factory Studio Z Walker Art Center Wisdom Ways Center for Spirituality

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Deadline for Winter 2017: July 24 Mizna continuously seeks original writing for upcoming publications. Contributors do not have to be of Arab descent provided their work is of relevance to the Arab American community. Submissions are accepted throughout the year on an ongoing basis. If you would like your work to be considered for our winter issue, please submit

by July 24, 2017.

Send your submission and a short biography (maximum 50 words) via e-mail as an attachment to mizna@mizna.org, and include the word “submission” in the subject line. The attachment(s) must be editable and in standard word-processing program files.

PDF’s may accompany submitted pieces but must not be sent alone.

Please include your name, mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number in your message.

Prose should be double-spaced and limited to 2500 words.

Please limit poetry submissions to four poems per submission.

Verses exceeding our page width will be treated with a runover indent. Proofs can be made available for author approval before publication.

Simultaneous submissions are allowable, but we ask that you contact us as soon as your work has been accepted elsewhere.

Writers whose work is published in Mizna will receive complimentary copies of the issue in which their work appears, a one-year subscription to the journal, and a modest honorarium.

Due to the volume of submissions received, those not conforming to the above guidelines, as well as material previously published in any other English-language forum, will not be considered.

-59-

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Annual Subscriptions United States/Canada: $20/year or $35/two years International: $35/year or $65/two years Institutional: $60/year or $100/two years Individual Issues United States/Canada: International:

$10 (add $1.50 each for postage) $10 (add $5.00 each for postage)

For a complete list of back issues and to subscribe, please visit mizna.org.

Or, send check or money order to: Mizna 2446 University Ave. W. Suite 115 St. Paul, MN 55114

-60-