SPACE : COLONY
SPACE : COLONY CONTENTS
006 Introduction
Words by Renzo Baas
008 Give it a Name
Words and Images by Reyazul Haque
016 Adelphoi
Words by Lyn Hagan
017 First Ten Years on Zebulun: A Space Colonist’s Lament
Words by M. Lee Alexander
018 There Is No Here There, Either
Words By Edward D. Wood, Jr.
018 The Thinkers
Words By Edward D. Wood, Jr.
019 Poem 9 From Outer Space
Words by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
020 Examination
Images by Hanspeter Ammann
024 Ozymandias At Beta Lyrae
Words By Wade Tarzia
026 Secret Trains of Desolate Hearts
Words by Abul Kalam Azad
028 This Might Be The Last Time
Words by Abul Kalam Azad
029 There’s a Storm Brewing
Words by Abul Kalam Azad
030
Images by Alexander Limarev
038 Blue Dot
Words by Edward Alport
038 Remains
Words by Edward Alport
039 Diaspora
Words by Edward Alport
040 Contested Statues: A Review Of ‘Man Of War: Leave My House’ At The Goethe-institut, Windhoek
Words By Bayron Van Wyk
Images By Nicola Brandt
046 The Badlands
Words and Images by Charu Soni
056 Upgraded
Words by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
060 Girl and Her Dreams
Words and Images by Irina Tall (Novikova)
072 Bőrdzseki (Kopasznak)
Original in Hungarian by Károly Lencsés
English Translation by Ágnes Megyeri
074 …de Előbb
Original in Hungarian by Károly Lencsés
English Translation by Ágnes Megyeri
074 Dráma a Padláson
Original in Hungarian by Károly Lencsés
English Translation by Ágnes Megyeri
076 Images by Aditya Pande
092 A House in the Colony
Words by Ae Reifff
102 Sufi : Hyperspace // 14 Paintings By Sufi Artist Ronni Ahmmed
120 Talking About Moonfalls And Sundogs
By Ritaban Ghosh (with Rajeshwari)
156 Friends
Graphics By Abir Chattopadhyay
168 What Animals Sit Outside Your Walls?
Words and Design by Lyn Hagan
198 Grab
Graphics by Madhushree
ISSN 1746-8086
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INTRODUCTION
Words by Renzo BaasWhen we think of space, we put emphasis on spatial theory, on outer space, on everything ‘out there’. We conjure up thoughts of territories, of terraforming, on absence, emptiness, and excess. When we think of space, we imagine ourselves inhabiting it. When we think of the colony we shudder. We remember. We try to forget. The colony lurks, it becomes part of the spaces that proceed it. It hides and is hidden but somehow remains visible. We relegate it to the past, to history, to memory. We confront it, and we deconstruct it. When we think of space and colony, we recall them being intertwined, recall their pastness, and their perpetual projection into the future. They are futuristic and historic.
The ‘texts’ in this issue offer glimpses into what can be considered either space (transcendental, philosophical, futuristic) or the colony (its afterlife, its confrontation, its disenchantment) and how ideas around spatiality and coloniality can be made productive. The paintings by Ronni Ahmmed, for example, depict fantastical images that border on the speculative, while Bayron van Wyk’s review of the exhibition “Man of War: Leave My House” details how decolonial public space can be made productive.
In the short story “What Animals Sit outside Your Walls” by Lyn Hagan we are confronted with the question: what remains after us? How will non-human species inhabit a world we have destroyed? “What new spaces can emerge” – a question also provocatively asked by Reyazul Haque in the form of a riddle and accompanied by haunting images. Hanspeter Ammann’s photographs revel in the interplay of tenderness and violence, of intimacy and absence, desires and emptiness. Madhusree’s “Grab” echoes this, but further emphasising that some spaces remain unsafe and continue to be colonized.
The images by Alexander Limarev imagine what a space : colony might look like, although without the presence of human agents. It feels like a haunted space in outer space, of maybe the remnants of the exploration left behind by the colonising space travelers from Edward Alport’s poem “Blue Dot”. Space as practice, so to speak. This is echoed in “The Badlands” by Charu Soni, detailing new (urban) developments and their relationship to history, the local population,
culture, and the environment, amongst others. In contrast, Aditya Pande shows how space has a deep temporal dimension, how it separates places and spaces from each other, how it dictates/d the relationship between metropole and periphery.
What all of the texts in this issue have in common, though, is the encounter – either through direct contact (Abir Chattopadhyay’s “Friends” or Jayaprakash Satyamurthy’s “Upgraded”), its specter (Lee Alexander’s “First Ten Years on Zebulun” and in the poems by Abdul Kalam Azad) or the imagined (“A House in the Colony” by AE Reiff). It is also about the encounter with the audience, the reader, the viewer. The multiple forms of media to represent these encounters and emphasise the fact that space (and by extension: colony) is a multifaceted, complex, and diverse articulation of our position in this world – and the worlds beyond, beautifully imagined in Irina Tall (Novikova’s) otherworldly images.
GIVE IT A NAME
A riddle with six images and a slogan on a sticker
Words and Images by Reyazul Haque
The silence water drips down on the words tongue listens to the tears flamed apart as evening flowers over bodies dreaming the life that they could have bodies frozen in fear that they could never win bodies seeped in with hatred who could have loved and be loved but no wind suffocates
What kills on street
Is adored by millions
Give it a name
Hint it is a space it is a colony
01: Johannisthal, Berlin.
January, 2023 02: Treptower Park, Berlin. January, 2023
03: Johannisthal, Berlin. January, 2023
04: Shamli Camp for the Muslim families displaced by fascist violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. January, 2014
05: Shamli Camp for the Muslim families displaced by fascist violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. January, 2014
06: Shamli Camp for the Muslim families displaced by fascist violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. January, 2014
07: Neukölln, Berlin. January, 2023
adelphoi
Words by Lyn HaganSpiritual siblings in the family of God (or G_d)
Some went, some stayed Exodus, Martian desert, chosen ones
Rapture of the Nerds
OK but don’t deny Adonai
Oh look
Their memorial is perished with them
Cracks in the temple on the moon
It is not given to man to create
A grave of perished astronauts
Stuck in prayer poses
Ashes to ashes
Blown around by that Tesla taxi on a loop
Creating a storm but picking up no passengers nearby
Lifeboat analogy
Open mouth
Swallow whole
Begin again
It is given to God
(not God or Godlings)
To create
Not Man or M_n, Speak not that name
Blown around in nuclear dust sigh
Like a petal on the wind
Breath with me
It’s all going to be OK
Because no matter how distant
We are of the same womb
FIRST TEN YEARS ON ZEBULUN A SPACE COLONIST’S LAMENT
Words by M. Lee AlexanderWhen the two suns set and the moon spins round and black waves peak on the ocean sound and the stars glow gold through our crystal dome-that’s when I rejoice in our new home!
But when in dreams I still can see the gleam of the wild blue surging sea and the rivers cool and the forest green and cities like giants invading the plain and rain clouds gathering in the night over meadows broad and mountains bright to drench the land that gave us birth— that’s then I miss sweet planet Earth!
there is no here there, either for
Words by Edward D. Wood, Jr.you’re the only thing i do worry about forget the saucers they’re up there but there’s something there out there in the cemetery that’s too near for comfort there
the saucers are up there the cemetery trouble is out there & i’m locked up here not there
the thinkers
Words by Edward D. Wood, Jr.as long as earth people think... we have problems
those we are using cannot think they are dead dead as doorknobs but brought back to simulated life by electrode guns
it is such an interesting thing when you realize the earth people who think are frightened of those who cannot
and those who cannot think think they can well think again
gertrude steinpoem 9 from outer space for Alain
Words by Edward D. Wood, Jr.the colonel salutes the general looks the colonel looks the general looks a moment longer
the colonel looks to the general quizzically the general looks up angered the general takes out a cigarette the general takes out a match the colonel looks to him the general looks back
the colonel sits down the general looks away the colonel blows his nose violently
the general looks angry the colonel turns to face the general the general throws up his hands err...err...yes, sir yes, sir, yes sir, yes—yes—yes!
From Selected Poems of Edward D. Wood, Jr.
(Unexpurgated Edition)
Series: Absurdist Texts and Documents no. 26
(c) Black Scat Books
https://blackscatbooks.com/
EXAMIN ATION
Images by Hanspeter Ammann
Inspired by a series of Stanley Kubrick’s photographs taken in 1948 with boxer Rocky Graziano, in contemporary Lisbon we re-created the situation at that time with two African men. Examination explores the ambivalent emotional alphabet that is displayed when curiosity and force are used to provoke a change in physical expression.
OZYMANDIAS AT BETA LYRAE
Words by Wade Tarzia“’Round Beta Lyrae floats an armored sphere,” the far-eyed space-farer said, “so large the sensors paint the image-swell and on the screen stares out a giant’s head. And planet-huge it is: we measured it with radar bounces off the chin. True enough: its contours are distinctly like a face, so big a leaping god might bruise a shin!
The warlord’s fortress dents the fairest sky of the world it anchors on. Parents threaten children with its gaze, and patriotic folk salute its dawn.
This space-bound battle station fills the eye as the customs dock extends and clamps resounding on our hull-steel bones, while on a thousand frequencies the challenge sounds: ‘Heave to, power down, and on my grace depend.’
Who would dream of spitting back a curse? Not the simple folk like me. Unload, refuel, and take on all our freight, then beg from them a fast trajectory.
At the point dictated by that face let your engines warp space-time. It’s no good time, that tyranny to taste: another day, another clime, a light-year underneath your tail, and bad tastes fade with dopplered weeks. You know, interstellar deserts offer cures, and simple natural laws avenge the meek. The inverse-square makes radio-toys: listen hard!—in deep space the tyrant squeaks beneath the galaxy’s cosmic noise.”
SECRET TRAINS OF DESOLATE HEARTS
Words by Abul Kalam AzadA grey tarpaulin spreads as a moist city squirms under the torturous beauty of rain-soaked alleys
A secret train with single compartment wets its wheels across familiar paths
The same people board it, from fortnight to fortnight
An elderly man with a red walking stick and a spider-like heart, slender webs of sorrow holding on to the winged memories of his dead darlings
Lovers on diagonal ends, their wrists chained to distant roofs, who send words in lieu of mouths to gently shut the eyes of restless follicles inside slashed armpits
Lovers stitched to the same seat, the umbilical throne of similar wombs, their lips so close in chromosomal dreams that any sigh which precedes a kiss would snap the slumber of shame : a tender defiant shame
A woman walking from corner to corner playing a blue accordion across her breasts, those stolen promises of endless Eros she carries in the curls of her greying pubis
A young poet in a broad brimmed hat, for whom loneliness is the longest line on his palms, frozen with the fright of a future without the warmth of a fellow being
“My words are kisses that cloud lipless seconds
My poems are stars that surround half-burnt moons”
The same people..
People, the scent of rum beneath their softened teeth, who stuff the silent wings of departed ones with the porous feathers of dissonant lights
People with unsheltered hearts writhing in the shade of eclipsed bonds
..the same people
But, tonight, the train stops at a strange station
A drunk couple, sweat circling the insides of their dark lips on the brink of a long blurry kiss, storm inside with unsteady steps
Unsolicited visitors who halt the numbing echoes of collective mourning
The bayonets of broken hearts curl back into velvet sheaths’,
the trumpets under tired pupils mute out the rhythmic tears
Everyone lowers their heads, as if from a well rehearsed habit,
as if waiting
for the guillotine of exposed longings
The couple rips the noose away from the womb of their foetal smooch
The salival sounds spread their tongues, and the bent ears of desolate neighbors run their fingers over those unshaved syllables that escape every language
For some, it’s a missive from the dead past : sand from a cracked hourglass
the grief that was, before, a void on the bedside when they jolt out of nightmares now, briefly, has a shape, and a visceral verse at its every curve
For some, it smelt of quiet delight with an aftertaste of crippling fear
the love, seamlessly dancing through the grooves of fertile desires,
shedding, without a care, the kind garments of their veiled hearts, would, perhaps, someday, sit alone, caressing its own shadow, in the ruins of fibres it doesn’t know how to stitch
“Please let this not end in shards of broken hearts deep inside the closing lids of sleepless nights” , they pray to someone who forgot his ears in the purgatory of stale passions And for others, it took the carnal wings of a bitter envy
“Why should djinns of despair be so warm in the smokeless fire swallowing my being?
Why should fruits of regret ripen on bruised branches?”
As everyone lay possessed under the hex of those lusting hearts,
the train halts, again, at an unknown stop
The couple seize tugging at the agile muscles of their greasy tongues haul their aroused toes through the opened doors
The lowered heads rise slowly as the whispers of those parting heels are snatched by the pouring night
and, their dizzy eyes see, for the first time, the words that rain drops gathered on the slates of glass windows
“How did you lose so much?”
THIS MIGHT BE THE LAST TIME
Words by Abul Kalam AzadCorpses and corpses masked and undressed
Scabs covering body-sized wounds Dogs feeding on swollen hearts
A tongue doused in petrol A language of formless exile
Somewhere through the river echoes of a phone call
Missed, the first time
The second time a weak voice on the other end
stretched across time zones
‘this might be the last time You will be seeing me’
A rabid moon shits a snake with eyes plucked and fangs ripped
A burning forest gulps down a diseased lung on life support
A freezing dog cuddles wet an emptied tank of human breath
Snot-covered shores lament eating into the red ocean
Turtles rip out their shells stitch wings made of sand And crash like meteors into closing caskets
How does oxygen taste?
What does a heart attack cost ?
Ketamine laced nights choke on arid syllables
Grief drills through every dream Memories scratch every crevice
Pus covered cocks weep in street corners stabbing every nerve with stray syringes
Bodies fold themselves up into tissues for a nation’s anus
Reams and reams Tears and obits
THERE’S A STORM BREWING
Words by Abul Kalam AzadSpirits of boiled lobsters crawl on rusty posters of burning forests
Sinking her face into the dark interiors, of his darker heart, she screams from the window ledge
“Will you pose for me?”
“As whom?”
“You will be a writer whose mind is withering from the whispers of fading fantasies
whose heart is weeping at the dreams built around dumpster fires
And I shall paint on your hairy flesh as you peel this poem over my pubis”
“Which poem?”
( apocalypse )
Soaking his anger in expired soy milk twisting his bones in boiled regrets
stabbing his heart with infected nails plucking his eyes out with stolen change
hanging his hopes with plastic ropes
squeezing his tongue with purple confessions
he shrieks and shrieks he shrieks and shrieks
as the statue of Sisyphus masturbates on melting ice caps
Palms pressed to metro doors as if fighting, with all the life left in her, the future pushing from behind she chokes a little from within
“I can’t..”
Her voice lost in a limbo of sleepless strangers
Images by Alexander Limarev
1. Lunar Colony (vers. 1) edited by Alexander Limarev | a.i. (n.c.), asemic digital compilation | Siberia |2022
2. Lunar Colony (vers. 2) edited by Alexander Limarev | a.i. (n.c.), asemic digital compilation | Siberia |2022
3. Lunar Colony (vers. 3) edited by Alexander Limarev | a.i. (n.c.), asemic digital compilation | Siberia |2022
4. Martian Colony (vers. 1) edited by Alexander Limarev | a.i. (n.c.), asemic digital compilation | Siberia |2022
5. Martian Colony (vers. 2) edited by Alexander Limarev | a.i. (n.c.), asemic digital compilation | Siberia |2022
6. Martian Colony (vers. 3) edited by Alexander Limarev | a.i. (n.c.), asemic digital compilation | Siberia |2022
BLUE DOT
Words by Edward AlportThe first we saw was this blue dot. Faint, it was and almost lost against the star field. Some exclaimed It looks like home, but home was not Blue when we left it, and some would claim it never was at all.
So as this blue dot crept up on us, we saw it was really green Even red, in places, that looked too hot to touch. Some blue there was, and white, and many colours in between. The whole lot spinning like a child’s ball.
I don’t say it was perfect. It was good enough., And we’d forgotten what perfection looked like. We made it into home, though things were tough For a while after we first made landfall.
Now, looking around, I can’t tell which is worst. We’re leaving this one as grimy as the first.
REMAINS
Words by Edward AlportLook around. These are all that remain of one species, and their hope. These broken mills spin. This barely functional machine was not enough to sustain activity, They once felt this thin wind. They once knew this empty gravity. They found. And then they came. They conquered, but they could not cope.
DIASPORA
Words by Edward AlportWe started small, without ambition. Would they welcome us? we said. Would they welcome us as we would welcome them? And if they did
What could we do about it?
And who were They?
We started small, just one small step. One giant leap that asked So many questions. Though some were never voiced: How easy was it to die out there?
What could we do about it?
And Who were They?
We started small with probes and tentacles. We pushed our noösphere beyond The limits of what our bodies could inhale And waited, to see What they would do about it. And who Were they.
These days, clever folk try to make Maps of just how far our tentacles have spread. We waited ‘till our deeds chimed echoes from star to star. And heard Silence.
No clues to what they would do about it, Or who They were.
A REVIEW OF ‘MAN OF WAR: LEAVE MY HOUSE’ AT THE GOETHE-INSTITUT, WINDHOEK
Words by Bayron van Wyk Images by Nicola BrandtOn the evening of 10 March 2023, the Man of War: Leave My House exhibition was held at the Goethe-Institut, Windhoek.
The exhibition consisted of a video work, a research wall, and a series of photographs loosely arranged into three chapters: ‘When The Land Speaks’ – a series of earlier works by the artist Nicola Brandt capturing the changing memoryscape of Namibia; ‘Practices Of Self,’ a performance intervention by the artists Gift Uzera, Nicola Brandt, and Muningandu Hoveka on the day a German colonial monument was removed in the CBD; and lastly, a series of photographs from Drag Night and the recent intersectional activist marches in the city.
Windhoek’s popular drag performances at Café Prestige have become a main attraction of the city’s buzzing queer scene. In one of the photos a crowd of protestors can be seen marching up to the Christuskirche, a church constructed during the German colonial period. One of the protestors holds a Rainbow flag high up in the sky. On the adjacent wall facing the video is a research panel consisting of recent images and news clippings regarding the debate around problematic monuments in the country.
At the opening, a group of some fifty guests were invited into the Goethe’s auditorium to view a video with the same title as the exhibition, followed by a performance reading by Gift Uzera and a fire-side discussion with the artists, audience, and guest speaker – the activist and curator – Hildegard Titus.
The performances as embodying acts of resistance
In one of the opening scenes of the approximately eight-minute video, Gift Uzera and Muningand Hoveka stride towards the colonial statue of the German general Curt von François (1852-1931). Hoveka is dressed in a shimmering green Herero dress, while Gift is in a blue undergarment. (Several undergarments are traditionally worn under the Herero dress to give volume to the attire.)
Playing in the background of the video is a song composed by the sound and performance artist Hoveka. The haunting central chord in Omurumendu wovita nga pite mo jandje is a plea for ‘the man of war’ to depart – ‘the man of war needs to leave my house’. The lyrics are clearly directed towards the figure of von François is widely known for his brutal legacy during German colonial occupation. The central chord also speaks to something more contemporary: to the presence of toxic and violent patriarchy in contemporary Namibia. The country has an astonishingly high rate of gender-based violence, rape and femicide.
In a subsequent scene, Uzera and Hoveka climb on top of the statue and engage in embodied movements inspired by the customary Herero rituals known as Outjina – traditionally performed by women, and Omuhiva, performed by men. These hand
CONTESTED STATUES
movements, as Hoveka explained, are part of a dance ritual by the Herero that are traditionally performed in cow pans or kraals and are also popularly performed at weddings. Hoveka described this gesture as also making herself larger and more defiant.
With their performances, Hoveka and Uzera are resisting bounded views of culture and gender, often linked to colonial and patriarchal practices. Hoveka wears a Herero dress to showcase her cultural heritage; however, she does not style it strictly according to traditional customs i.e., she does not wear jewellery or other embellishments in the manner that it is ‘normally’ worn by Herero women. This style therefore differs from the more traditional and acceptable way of wearing the dress. Uzera, on the other hand, wears a skirt and then later a full undergarment of a Herero dress. These transgressive acts oppose expected cultural and gender norms, which have been heavily guarded. This could be seen in the manner in which some of the Herero men present on the day of the removal of the Von François statue responded to Hoveka’s performance.
In one of the vignettes of the performance, Hoveka raises herself onto a ladder to be at equal height with the statue. Two Herero men – one after the other – emerge from the crowd of onlookers and demand that she descends from it and even threatens to push her off if she does not come down immediately. Uzera describes the ordeal: “I was overwhelmed by the whole traumatic experience with this man interrupting Muni’s performance. It was that he was specifically targeting her and not me. I was also on the ladder.” According to Uzera, this attack was in gender-based. Even as a queer man – I remain a ‘man’ in their eyes, whereas Hoveka is a woman and that automatically makes her even more “vulnerable…to express his frustration with her, because he can easily get away with it. (…) especially as power is power. He would just resort to brute force.” Hoveka argues that this confrontation was motivated by the way in which she was wearing the Herero dress and perhaps the fact that she was now raised above the heads of crowds. “I was wearing something (culturally) identifiable: the Herero dress. Whereas Gift wore an undergarment, merging feminine and masculine qualities, something that contemporary Namibians do not easily recognize. So, they felt that they had the right to impose (on me) and tell me that I was not wearing the dress correctly.”
Reclaiming colonial spaces
Namibia experienced more than a century of European colonialism, first by the German Empire (1884-1915) and then by the South African colonial and apartheid regimes (1915-1990). During these colonial periods, monuments and statues were primarily erected in honour of white European men. Similarly, the postcolonial Namibian government has continued with a similar practice – erecting statues primarily by men to glorify men, particularly those who were involved in Namibia’s liberation struggle (1969-1989).
In their attempts to overcome these patriarchal and colonial forms of memorialization, the artists have centrally focused on queer and feminist embodied performances. Brandt, with her background in memory and performance studies and a strong commitment to supporting the activist cause, was key in mobilizing the performance initiative. And yet, as a Namibian of European descent it was not her place to be ‘in the work’ in the same manner. The collaboration was nonetheless an opportunity to show concrete forms of reconciliation and possibilities of working together to create new ‘queer’ presents and futures. Uzera, Hoveka and Brandt’s work therefore is clearly aimed at disrupting conventional (and colonial) forms of memorialization that have dominated the urbanscape of Windhoek, creating alternative and more inclusive forms of remembering.
‘
Decolonial acts of being’?
These works forms part of a broader initiative in the city to reclaim colonial spaces still existing in contemporary Windhoek’s landscape. A performance intervention of this kind goes beyond the symbolic and transforms the space in real time, even if only over the course of a few hours.
Through this exhibition, the artists are asking a broader question: how can we create more related and decolonial ways of being? In their quest to answer these questions, the artists look to recent decolonial and intersectional activism in Namibia. This is all part of a growing decolonial movement championed by queer activists and their allies that aims at challenging state-sanctioned homophobia. (In Namibia, there still exists a sodomy law – with its origins in South African apartheid colonialism – that criminalizes homosexual relations.)
The artists’ practice offers a vivid reminder of how women and queer persons have been excluded from the memoryscape. The collaborative performance intervention by Uzera, Hoveka, and Brandt has focused on decolonizing Windhoek’s memoryscapes. These are sites and spaces where European colonialists, the apartheid regime – and to a certain extent, the current government – have inscribed and perpetuated landscapes of segregation, racism, and sexism. The artists embodied performance work is central in resisting colonial forms of memorialization and gesture towards creating more inclusive lived environments across cultural backgrounds. In this sense, the artists have been particularly interested in inscribing their own shared – and entangled – narratives on place as feminists and queer allies, and yet are adamant to not replace one hegemonic narrative with another, but to keep the possibilities of place and memorialisation open and porous to the questions and issues of a changing zeitgeist.
THE BADLANDS
Words and Images by Charu Soni“Reason is born spastic in colony,” – Ranajit Guha, historian
IIn a city some-50 km from Delhi, a 15-year-old girl, Iqra, working as caretaker to an elderly lady, living at a high-rise apartment complex, was slapped, pulled by the hair and dragged through a corridor by two of her older brothers. The atmosphere was fraught.
The brothers were accompanied by thugs who had overpowered the security guards at the barricaded entry gate and subsequently, stormed the apartment. The intent was to extract the girl from the place. But since Iqra was owed her wage, they dropped the battered girl on the floor, and left.
The old lady’s daughter, Fatima, aged 40 plus, learnt of the incident on her visit to Greater Noida, a day later. Her concern was for her ailing mother. She also felt sorry for the teenager.
“Why did they do this to you?” she asked, as she rang up Iqra’s mother.
“Ameena? Why did Aftab and Aman barge into the flat yesterday? Punch Iqra? The poor girl can barely speak. My mother was terrified,” Fatima was fuming.
At the other end, Ameena was combative.
“I have found a groom for Iqra. My sons will pick her up tomorrow morning. Please, give her the cash you owe,” she informed.
“What do you mean? She’s supposed to look after my mother, that was our deal,” Fatima asserted. The call was switched off by Ameena at the other end.
Fatima was taken aback. This was an unexpected development. She dialled her friends and decided on a plan of action.
Next day, before the sun rose, she took Iqra away from the condominium in a cab, to a Delhi-based shelter for abused women. She informed the NGO that Ameena intended to sell her. While she wanted Iqra to study, have her own life.
A week passed. The shelter invited Ameena and her sons to resolve the situation. The mother pleaded with the NGO to return the daughter to her. But, they did not.
Three months later, with the tacit consent of the NGO, Fatima fled with Iqra to another big city, where the teenager continues to do household chores and tend to her aged mother.
Fatima, a social activist, had worked at various organisations in the Capital and other metro cities, immersing herself in issues of gender justice, media matters and organising legal representation for abused women. She had been encouraging Iqra to study. Bought her English alphabet and colouring books.
Ameena had lost her husband in the dusty boondocks of Uttar Pradesh. The duo earned notoriety as dacoits. Abductions, extortion and murder was a way of life. She had evaded a police chase and escaped with her daughter and two sons to Greater Noida. She sought employment for Iqra at Fatima’s residence.
II
When Iqra first arrived in Greater Noida, she was mesmerised. The tree-lined avenues, the high-rise buildings, the teeming market squares, the shimmering lights of the malls, the manicured lawns of the apartment block, was a magical world. The city, to her, was an unknown. But it was a welcome escape from the cesspool of social hierarchies, class inequalities and normalised caste violence in the countryside. It offered anonymity, a wage, a cell phone, three meals a day.
She definitely did not expect to be sold by her mother or abducted by her employer. But India’s big city ‘suburbs’ are shape-shifting territories. Anything can happen anywhere. They are neither urban in spirit nor in practice. One such place is Greater Noida, squatting pompously at the fringes of the Capital.
III
It is a city that is not a city. One real estate developer came up with a name for it — “NO IDEA”. And this is the closest we have got to finding a clue to its being.
Designed on a North-to South axis, on a square grid with wide roads intersecting at right angles, it includes sectors – Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, Sigma, Omicron, Omega – aping Le Corbusier’s functionalist “machine for the living” approach. But unlike the city in the Punjab that Corbusier helped create, it has no city centre.
No social, cultural or political compass to help residents navigate the area. The District Magistrate’s office is located in Noida, 10 km from Delhi but 35 km from Greater Noida. It has three legislative
assembly segments: Noida, Dadri and Jewar, but none of them speak for the city. No architectural remnants of the past. No sensory or emotional engagement. No cultural spaces – theatre, art, music or a community/ public library or a public square.
But it has industrial estates, institutional parks, SEZs, malls with cinema multiplexes, hotels, residential enclaves, a central university, a district court, a sport stadium, an export mart, a Formula 1 racing track, a world class golf course and an up-coming international airport and not to omit, more than 300 villages – all of which is administered by a government-run real estate developer, called meaningfully, “Authority”. The Authority, headed by a CEO, is assisted in its work by a Police Commissionerate.
Historically, it is the second planned city after Chandigarh in North India. A prototype, a model city, whose architect remains unknown and its first town plan untraceable. Year on year it keeps growing in size (in 2011 it was 1282 sq km, in 2023 it’ s 1442 sq km), a hungry termite, shredding feudal estates, villages, grazing area, arable land, small qasbas, people histories, folklore, language.
Greater Noida is one of the three cities (the other two being Noida and Yamuna Expressway area) of a district known as Gautam Buddh Nagar. Its area is carved out of Bulandshahr and Ghaziabad which in 1857 was the Meerut district. Historically, describable. Linguistically, varied. Agriculturally, fertile. Ecologically, part of the Ganga-Yamuna doab. It still forms the inner skin of the place which erupts in acts of violence and occasionally, cultural expressions – in songs and festive pageantry in rural pockets.
The city sits at the north-western periphery of the Uttar Pradesh state’s border with Delhi, one could also argue that it represents a frontier in relation to the Capital. As a periphery, it posits itself as an “industrial integrated township” and a flagship “smart city” on the basis of its town planning and a high tax payer profile.
As a frontier it exercises political muscle in denying its citizens participation in democratic processes by depriving them of the municipal corporations (nagar palika) and panchayats (village level representative bodies). And when deemed necessary, as was witnessed during the Covid shutdown, holding flag marches by armed constabulary and barricading of the border between Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, to prevent free movement of people. Rigid. Strict. Paternalistic.
For Delhi, it is an outpost to accommodate the spill over from the overcrowded city. On paper, it’s the National Capital Region. Cities like Greater Noida, in bureaucratic parlance, are known as “magnet cities” aimed to draw population and polluting industries out of the Capital. In practice, apart from a fragment of population that is
tied to Delhi by places of work or familial ties, the connection with the grand old city is severed or simply, absent. For most, the capital serves only as a shopping or tourist destination.
Majority of migrants to Greater Noida originate from neighbouring towns of Uttar Pradesh – the middle classes (often traders or property and landowning classes), from Tier 2 cities like Meerut, Muradabad, Agra, Aligarh and so on. For this section of populace, the city has provided a semblance of order and affordable accommodation. It doesn’t matter that the access to recreational, educational, and health facilities is expensive, they regardless laud themselves for having achieved, a foothold, a stepping stone to the Capital.
In his book, The Idea of India, Sunil Khilnani outlines how India in the 1950s fell in love with the idea of the concrete. The steel plants, canals and dams became futuristic temples of the nation. Their straight lines and brutalist architecture came to frame and regulate the citizen. From the 1990s, this frame and regulation have reached their logical conclusion in the Greater Noida prototype, minus the dams and canals.
Strip the city of its grandiose pretensions, its apartment blocks and mini-townships with names like Jorbagh, Ansal Plaza, Golf Links, Connaught Place, JP Township, the Edens and the Vistas etc, and what you get is dystopian reality. Gated housing blocks that have no relationship with each other. Each separate and serviced by a private army of security guards and the unorganised and unrecognised mass of humanity – maids, delivery men, plumbers, electricians, cab drivers, gardeners, sweepers that emerge like busy bees from ramshackle village apiaries.
There is no mass public transport within the city. Private cars and motorcycles, autorickshaws and cabs are the only way to move around the place. Streets have no pavements. But there is metro. It does not connect the city with the Capital or provide mobility within it. Instead, it snakes from Greater Noida to Noida’s border with Ghaziabad, another industrial district. Hardly anyone uses it.
In the mid-19th century this was a land of fiefdoms, land usurpers, loan sharks, cattle thieves, clan rivalries and caste violence. The Badlands, Delhi residents feared to venture into. The situation remains largely unchanged, except for an architecture of a city imposed upon it. Expectedly, its modern day bahubalis and their henchmen have mutated into real estate brokers, building contractors, transport mafia, scrap dealers or clan/caste netas. The neighbourhood sectors are tense with their presence, especially at night, when one cannot predict where or when a gun will go off.
IV
Deprivation of Iqra’s rights by Ameena who sought to collect a bride
price and Fatima, who chained her to her household, is not unlike the Authority’s unilateral decision to deny residents representation and keep them tied to its writ. It requires draconian measures to maintain a grip. In 2023 itself, the city was under a month-long curfew in January, February, March and then again, in April.
This prototype of the city fits seamlessly with colonial India. In the old, it was the British crown (and its administration) that exercised unrestricted power: in the new, it’s the Authority, a real estate agency manned by the State’s bureaucracy. Democracy and the Constitution are its marigold flowers. A mere decoration.
UPGRADED
Words by Jayaprakash SatyamurthyThis sector wasn’t especially useful. No particularly important resources, no potential habitats whose virtues outweighed the distance, not particularly well placed strategically. But knowledge is so important in maintaining our edge as a civilization, as a bringer of civilization. So we studied our records, found some kind of tablet recovered from the vicinity and noted the existence of a possible Grade C sentient species. We studied the crude markings, entered some parameters into a scoop craft and retrieved a sample.
Very interesting. The creatures had a lot of promise - an easy Grade B with a few centuries of careful supervision. The rest of their world, and sector, not being attractive enough to establish an outpost, we ascertained dietary needs, extended the scope of the scoop, and grabbed them all. 1.2 billion. A small but viable seed population. Further testing confirmed they could be a very useful service breed. We modified their breathing apparatus and placed them on an ocean world while we designed upgrade protocols. Some, we harvested for the food manufactories to analyse in case upgrade turned out not to be feasible.
It is year 3011 of Coloured Time. I’m not really certain why we still call it that. It seems as arbitrary as the ancient BCE/CE system. Apparently there was a particular faith the world decided to work its calendars around, even though it wasn’t everyone’s belief system. Some few millions still follow a creed they claim was this religion, but it seems like a sort of fanfic written to reconcile gaps between the common aspects of Judaism and Islam. Or perhaps all faiths are somehow just retcons around problems in older theology.
The year 3011. Remembered now as the year of first contact. A stairway suddenly descended from the sky, above no place special - it had been an Alpine resort, and still was, and probably still would. In front of an old sanatorium, now a travellers lodge, three climbed down the stairs. I was among those sunning in the loggias, and I had a front row view of the beings. Two slightly taller, one a bit shorter. They looked a bit like us - but paler than anyone we’d ever seen. And stark naked. They reached the snow-covered ground. Neither shivering not wrapping their arms around themselves, they took in their surroundings, looked at all of us, in our perches, first impassively, then with a sense of confusion. Finally, they waved to us.
Despite appearances, I was gripped by a gut-level intuition that they were not what I thought of as human.
I hastened down - others had the same idea, but I waved my ID at these and took the lead. It was a precarious enough kind of authority, but in the confusion of the moment, it was enough. The ruffled ant’s nest of the lodge subsided into a semblance of its usual patterns, but momentarily bestilled, focused on the encounter that unfolded as I reached the entrance and made my way over to the three naked people-beings. They turned to me, movements just a hair off perfect synchronisation. The woman stepped forward. The men hung back,
##
one on either side of her. They were both of a uniform height and build, squarely muscular in a way that was considered a default millenia ago, going by what evidence archaeology could muster up. The woman too was squared off, but not exactly stocky. She was, like the men, light haired and light skinned. More than anyone I knew, or knew off. I held out my ID. As good an opening gambit as any.
‘Inspector of...’ The woman paused. She and the men looked at me with identical frowns. ‘...typographic continuity? Is that really something?’
‘Probably not,’ I admitted, ‘but who are you naturists, and why do you look like that?’
They looked down at themselves with triplicate expressions of consternation. ‘Yes, quite. Well, we hadn’t considered our scoop would be incomplete.’
‘And we hadn’t considered that the parameters on your calling card were so selective. Tell us, are you all quite challenged or suboptimal in important ways?’ The men spoke in tandem. At this point, it was just another layer of unsettling on top of everything else unsettling and strange and off-kilter about them.
Then, I focused on what they had said. At first I was just confused. Then the words snapped into focus. Oh. The light skin, hair, eyes... the assumptions...
These were white people? They were real? They were back?
‘You’re white people? You’re real? You’re back?’
I would go into all our legends and fragmented histories of the time before (Before Coloured Time), but I do not have the discipline or interest to write several tens of thousands of words, which would themselves be mere summaries of an even larger, and often speculative literature. Before...there was a hierarchy and all of us operated in it, little fish eaten by bigger, all the way to the top. The narrow, elevated (Alpine, even) tiers of this social structure were almost exclusively peopled by a lost or redacted variant of humanity who possessed their own variants, and boundary categories that shaded into everyone else, but who collectively, if sometimes with a helping of internal squabbling, assumed leadership, even ownership over the rest of us. It was all so long ago, and our ancestors had expended so much effort in erasing clear records of that time.
Still, here they were, then. Three white people. Not very white, I noted as I scanned their salient anatomies. Frog belly pale to boiled tomato red. A kind of mix of colours that seemed short on some vital, healthful, pleasing tint, although I couldn’t quite figure out what.
The three were taken aback enough to glance at one another. After a pause during which I was certain they were mentally communing among themselves, the woman spoke again.
‘We...assumed too much, too quickly. And then, when time allowed, we thought we would visit this world in person...persons. And, as a precautionary measure, we decided to don the forms of the main Grade C species we scooped from here, so that we might more easily adjust to local conditions. We are not, ourselves, much involved with the descendant population, or with the imperial centre, so we referred to the tablet they - you? - had sent out so long ago for our... organic garb...?’
I wasn’t and am not slow enough that I didn’t begin to form conclusions at this point. There had remained some colonialism,
much oppression, and many hierarchies after whatever break it was that had happened 3100 years ago. Yet, a kind of collective sigh of relief was heaved, and we had looked at one another and started to work together to share out a pie that was suddenly no longer claimed almost completely by another. At least, that’s the outline of the story we’re now told. There is also a bit about less resources being expended on anticipatory carapacement, and the subsequent breakthroughs in chemical urbanism, cyclic energy, food synthesis, and garment cultivation. I mean to say, we now grow homes and clothes, type out meals, and send energy into metastable loops. The part we hadn’t been focused on was everything beyond the sky. Apparently, that aspect of it was coming to us now, since we had not thought to venture towards it.
The long and short of it was that there had been uncoloured, or froggy-tomato, or ‘white’ people at some point, and some solipsism of theirs had led to this...species?...scooping them all away, thinking they were the only people, whatever people are meant to be, on this world.
And here they were again. Not the -- white people? -- themselves but their captors or extractors, garbed as them in some alien gesture. What did it all mean, where were they from, what could they teach us?
I didn’t have the time to ask these or any other questions. The strange trio turned around, lifted their right hands from the elbows up, abruptly floated back onto the staircase and hurried away from us.
The boffins never do coordinate with anyone else. Do, Si, and Doe came back from an unannounced field trip with a confused, preposterous story. The most absurd part of it wasn’t even that they had found a collectivist world civilization, one that apparently combined common responsibility over resources with numerous small, interlocking self-governing units. That was of course ridiculous. They had travelled without proper research, misunderstood local conditions, and omitted to bring back specimens for study.
No, what convinced us they had dreamt it all up was when they claimed we had extrapolated wrongly from our initial data set. That we had merely scooped one variant of a much more diverse species, and possibly an especially problematic one, given that the remnant had raised themselves up to Grade B, even a qualified Grade A. This notion was patently absurd. If we were such a poor type, once brought here as slaves we would not have been able to rise through the ranks and install ourselves at the head of this imperium.
Forewarned is forearmed. There is something insidious taking place on that obscure world. For now, we will declare quarantine and impose covert surveillance. Over time, we might need to infiltrate, subvert or in an absolute extreme case, annihilate their civilization. If it can even be called a civilization...
##
GIRL AND HER DREAMS
Words and Images by Irina Tall (Novikova)Where are you? Why did we go there Echo, like a piercing bird, responded to her, began to drum on the vaults somewhere in the depths of the cave ...
The White Sirin was cast out on a boat, a ghost in gray robes was sitting near the karma, the face of the mask was lined with the sign of Ba. The boat was cut by time and the arrows fell into fragments from the sky, it was sleet and darkness fell on the world, sedately, absurdly.
The boat sailed past her and she slammed her window shut so that the light as bright as the sun itself would not kill her, the tinted glass of the windows did not let in bright light.
She was still crying and her tears flowing down formed a small sea in the corner room, tiny Dolphins lived there, crabs, clams, there were two whales...
Someone softly rang the doorbell, she didn’t want to open it, came up on tiptoe, looked into the peephole, and covered the unknown light breaking through from there with her palm, she won’t come out, she doesn’t want to, she won’t go out for several days, she ...
And something there in another room broke and the sea left, and the fish and crabs with it, and no one can say that it existed, not a drop remained ...
Then the day came, a little later than the night, and after a little sleep, she went to her place... She didn’t need anything.
Somewhere far away a man screamed, he fell and screamed, at first she was frightened, then she closed her eyes and fell asleep, everything in mine passes her by, everything is like dust and it is impossible to collect it.
Creator
He spread a large white sheet of paper on the floor, but found no paint or pencils. He had rulers, compasses that didn’t have a thin pencil lead, leaking empty refills, sharpeners and rubber bands, a lot of things, but none of them could leave even a small mark on paper. He sighed, took
a knife in his hand, substituted a container with a dried crust of an old carcass and made a small incision.
Primordial
Why did they come here and from where?
“Before, there was no sea here.
And one of the girls, stretching, got up from the ground, and leaned on her friend. They were all thin and transparent, almost human, but...
- “They flooded our dwellings, our gardens!”
- “But they’re not to blame! They can’t end their lives! They too ... just like us!”
- “I think you need to think carefully! Like all of us! Disperse! The council is over ... For today at least.”
Their subtle bodies gradually began to disappear into the jungle to merge with trees and bushes, with flowers and birds...
Tale about her
- “Do you know the fairy tale about the beautiful girl?”
“The one that dies at the end!?”
“No, the one who saves her friend.”
- “No, I don’t know. Is she interesting?”
- “Maybe not for you. But I loved her very much as a child.”
She tilted her head slightly...
- “And then there was no sea yet?”
- “No, the sea appeared later. Our ancestors told us that it came from some crack in the sky, and that once the dolphins spoke the same language as us, and then we all had a fight and stopped talking to each other. The sea came from there from the big world and it was small, like a puddle, on which you like to jump in the morning, like a basin of water.
- “Tell me your story! I should like it too!”
Creator
He crawled on the floor for a long time, fumbled for a long time and tried to make something similar to a human face or figure, spoiled the paper and did not succeed. Then he turned the leaf over, looked at the setting sun and pink fluffy clouds and made a few strokes with a pen, outlined the eye and drew a fiery muzzle, outlined the mane and tail sprinkled, circled long thin legs with large hooves with round movements, drew two large strong wings with small feathers .
First
The doorbell rang twice, then there was a knock, and she quietly approached the door and peered into the whitish light of the peephole.
At last she dared to ask: “Who is there?”
- “We came to check the water supply, a neighbor from the apartment below wrote that it was flooded from above ...”
- “Why are there two of you?”
- “We are plumbers and we always work together. You can check by calling our service.”
She looked around and found no sign of untidiness and decided to open it.
- “I’ll open it for you! Wait a little bit.”
She unhooked the chain and unlocked the door, opened it a little, sniffed the air, then flung it wide open.
- “Where is your bathroom here? Toilet? Kitchen?”
- “To the right! Go to the right!”
They went into the dark corridor. And the gray darkness swallowed them up.
Story
“-That girl was very fragile and thin, such as usually get sick a lot and live at home a lot, they travel little and see little around ...”
- “Is it such a feature or were they all like that then?”
- “It was her personal feature and she got hit hard by others ... She was not loved at school because she was very smart, her parents did not like her because the main thing for her was logic ...”
- “I think it was very difficult for this girl to try to seem like everyone else!”
- “Once her friend needed help and he called her for a very long time, but she did not hear until the boat sank, then the girl went out to sea, she did not see her friend’s boat and began to look for her, but she found ... And then, she looked into the depths and saw the body and the boat, then she went down to the cave to the big snake and asked him for advice, he said that it was necessary to go underground.When she plunged down on her pie, she saw that there was light there, only blue and dim ... And then she noticed the black river and her friend on the boat, she called him for a very long time, but he did not hear, and then a raven sat on the nose of her pirogue and told her that she needed to make a sacrifice ... - “What a sacrifice ? What could she be?”
Raven said that any part of her body, and even hair. Then she cut off a lock of her hair and gave it to a black bird, he took it in his beak and carried it to the altar with fire. Her hair burned and the raven flew back to her, - “Hurry up, swim up to your friend’s boat and tell him to follow next to you, but not behind you, but right next to you so that you can see him, you can’t blink otherwise, your friend will stay here forever. Remember that!” And the raven ascended into the dark depths of the other world.
She looked around and found her friend, swam up to his boat and told
him: “Follow me!” He didn’t recognize her, she knew that from his constricted pupils.
He swam next to her for many days and nights, she lost track of everything that was happening, her eyes burned unbearably from the salt water, but she did not blink even when they drank into the light, from a deep crevice. She took a deep breath and instantly drifted off to sleep. He turned around and recognized her in the light of a sunny day, and supported her body so that the girl would not drown, so they swam to their land.
- “It seems to me that this fairy tale is too long, there is little action in it, but a person takes a lot of time for one episode from his life ...”
“There’s a lot of action, even more than you think! Do you know who that girl was?”
- “No! Someone from...”
- “It was your grandmother! And my mother!”
- “I could not even suspect that she was so young!”
“We are all young when we are young and we age with time. She was very brave!”
A warm evening came and put them to sleep.
Creator. Completion
When he finished, there was a crimson stroke of a horse with eagle wings on a piece of paper. He daubed the seal several times in black ink and placed a small, inconspicuous seal of his name in the right corner.
BŐRDZSEKI (Kopasznak)
Original in Hungarian by Károly Lencsés English Translation by
Ágnes MegyeriEgy néptelen pénteken lementem a b ő rdzsekiért Nő kellett, s tegnap a lépcsőház alatti kisbolt előtt jól állt rajtad. Eső húzta szín a tíz emelet panelfalán sötétből világos barna. A cserzett rész, gyűrődés a könyökhajlat. Hegység az atlaszban.
Hajnal. Volt sötét. Ültem egy szép molett csajjal a Jerevántól nem messze az utcapadkán. Csezd meg molett lány. Elhagytalak mielőtt megismerhettelek. Kopasz szólt rám. A dzsekije rajtam. Faszáúl eltakarta a hiányosságaim, és akkor ott áll Ő… Hé Karesz!
…gyere haza! Mamával baj van. Mi a faszom? Egyszer jövök el, és a kishúgom nem bírja éjfélnél tovább. Na jó. Nehéz volt a mamára vigyázni. Konyhától a kis szobáig hosszabb az út mint sem gondolnád. Egész napos műszak… Tivornyázott benne a séta!
…most azt mondom hűha… a kabát hívta hívta a nyíregyházi csonka kopottfog falak között gyalog. Végül semmi nem volt a mamával. hazamentem hagytam a nőt. Ittunk még valamit, tettünk vettünk. Ki volt az a csaj? Nem tudom… még hajnalban visszaadtam a dzsekit.
LEATHER JACKET (To Baldie)
On an empty Friday I walked downstairs to get the leather jacket Needed a woman and yesterday, in front of the corner shop under the block of flats you looked good in it. Colour drawn by rain on the sidewall of ten floors light brown from dark. The swarthy part, the crease is the crook of the arm. Mountain in the atlas.
Dawn. Was dark before. Sat with a pretty plumpish girl not far from the Jereván on the curb. Screw it, plumpish girl. Left you before I could get to know you. Baldie put me in my place. His jacket on me. Covered my faults fucking well, and then there she stands… Hey, Karesz!
… come home! Something’s wrong with Mama. What the fuck? I go out just once and my little sister can only manage until midnight. Yeah, okay. It was hard to look after Mama. From the kitchen to the small room it takes longer than you’d think. Full-day shift… Walk was racketing about in it!
… now I say wow… the jacket called walking among the maimed battered walls of Nyíregyháza. In the end there was nothing wrong with Mama. walked home, left the woman. Had another drink, bustled about. Who was that girl? I don’t know… gave the jacket back at dawn.
…DE ELŐBB
Original in Hungarian by Károly Lencsés
English Translation by Ágnes
Megyeriezennel letiltom magamat. ezentúl minden szabad. tóba lépni. vízen járni. fellegeket átrendezni. jókedvűnek lenni. kiszállni a koporsóból. kábelek nélkül feltöltődni. virágot kiegyenesíteni. csuklóig nyúlni a napba. fogni egy marék fényt. nyelvre venni az Istent. megízlelni a betűit. integetni angyaloknak. csókra kelni. elrepülni. földön hasra feküdve csókolni a lábnyomokat. anya után négykézláb szaladni. átölelni a szelet. kiszagolni illatokat. befőttesüvegbe zárni. és ha eltelsz? bekarikázhatod a napot mint fontos dátum. aztán vissza az Addigtológiára de előbb…. …Bukowskival inni még egyet…
DRÁMA A PADLÁSON
Original in Hungarian by Károly Lencsés English Translation by Ágnes Megyeri
Por felpattan majd visszaül szétszedett cserépkályha kihűlt emlékmozaikból
sár, döngölt mennyezet, talpat támaszt a plafon lenézel magadra, mintha tükrön állnál egy álomba
fehér nyaláb tör be rézsút diavetítő neki nekem annak oda támasztott fürdőszobaajtó betört üveg vicsorog az elcsúszott pala egy fókuszpont magába vonz engem téged ezt azt na persze…úgy se hagyja magát… nőiség fordított háromszög üresen tátong parázna gondolat szárnyal szárnyas madárkarmú hárpiákkal s csontos lábuk köze a világ mit tagadnám
tető kitárult vagina gyúlt lángján üzekednek portollas galambok s a következő hang nagyon letisztult sarok elhagyatottsága elfelejtett dobozmagány dráma…
BUT FIRST
herewith I block myself. from now on anything is allowed. step into the lake. walk on water. rearrange clouds. be merry. get out of the coffin. recharge without cables. straighten flowers. dip into the sun up to your wrist. hold a handful of light. take God to your tongue. taste his letters. wave to angels. wake up to a kiss. fly away. kiss footprints lying flat on the ground. run on all fours after mother. hug the wind. smell out scents. lock them in jars. and if you are full? you can circle the day as an important date. then back to Addictology but first… … have another drink with Bukowski…
DRAMA IN THE ATTIC
Dust springs up then settles back stove taken apart; from memory mosaics grown cold mud, tamped ceiling, sole supported by the roof you look down on yourself, as if you stood on a mirror white beam breaks into a dream, athwart still projector bathroom door propped up against him me it there broken glass snarls shingle slid aside is the focal point draws me in, and you this and that yeah, sure… won’t let it happen femininity inverted triangle’s empty gape impure thought flies with winged bird-clawed harpies the world is between their bony legs let’s not deny roof opened up vagina aflame dust-feathered pigeons on heat the next sound is very clean desolateness of the corner forgotten boxed solitude drama…
ADITYA PANDE
TIME LAG IS A PLANETARY CONDITION
TIME LAG IS THE CONDITION THAT DEFINES THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE COLONY TO ITS METROPOLE
TIME LAG IS A MEDIATIC REALITY
[2011, Single Channel Video installation, B/W CRTV + DVD + Turntable + Stoneware + Mirror. Variable Dimensions]
<<Video Loop of morph between images of Dandi Salt March and Man on the Moon, revolving to the tune of Doordarshan’s original broadcast signature>>
© Aditya Pande, 2023
“Saare Jahan Se Sachaa” Words by AE ReifffIt’s the colony oof failing naught if you have choice. Johan flailing up the beach, Jonah called the neighbors in, Johan with a second breath like two halves of Isaiah get.
Three boys among the axeheads float
Master Mouse he will go forth.
Baby shall rattle when Daddy comes home and angels breathe in the face.
I am waiting for someone to turn on the light. Bridle and saddle these things to detail the escritoire idol written, dust crushed, whipped and ridden , through the rest who need an acre of land in Gilead.
Bullocks in Gilgal?
the sacrificers of men made idols of their own understanding to kiss the calves. Ephraim made altars to sin, altars shall be his sin. cannot tell if I am waiting for someone to kill me or for
Where have these not penetrated?
Every element in reassembly shrouds.
Sir, may I not sail with you?
Think how large your tooth when the dentist drills.
Both of us cry, distort our face.
The wireless between our bodies feels in the head when the other bites multiplied to billions.
Of course survivors baffle each huge storehouse, industrial stores and exiles unguarded, ingress and egress above and below.
The main huge poster of spiritual resistance is the Will.
First a huge clapboard in colonia, larger and abandoned after visits mon pere, je m’accuse. People crammed in small spaces in the dream yard of roof lots, shacks never improved or locked.
IN THE COLONY
A HOUSE
Kiss if you must, kiss me three times! Vagrants, migrants, gypsies, tenants, homeless squatters, working men, blacksmiths, set up tables under the eaves. The shops turn to bazaar as the numbers swell. Various authorities demand documentation. Papers of refugees from the black briefcase, doors open and closed, close for good. Escape uncertain to the right piece of paper enable exit. A frog he would a-wooing go, discern that figure of a salvific lure, another huge warehouse unsecured. I promyse you it had a shrewde smell.
I went down to see the stuff and smell and ended up on my belly cutting black bags of wall, scissoring out red insulation dripping from the Wailing, prying out cracks between concrete, metal and wood. Sometimes mice droppings would fall from the smell, mouse or rot musk as I push up, balance, ease down a yard, feet sticking out among stones. Sighs of breath give up a blast which leaves me feeling pretty good. Not thinking at all to dismantle the word machine, I saw a fishpond on fire. By now you must see it too. You must; my pain is my pain and your pain is yours. It was raining when lightning struck. That year the dead from rays, an average per year when the fatalities added, hit by lightning they could no longer do and people know it is so. A 21-year-old and a man of 58 had to be hospitalized in that province,--altogether 55 and 60 million, rising to 70 while the moon gives light. Truth, elevating commodity through entertainment, whistled in the dark.
I thanke God that ye have taryed so longe
Now set eche of you on this rodde his honde.
The Great Wall Will separates Gloster from its planes, caught in the middle of a freeway rush. It adds to the unseen. Engineer with his hole in Foxy’s wall, the mirror psychiatrist who deconstructs the human form to merrie Mouse in the Mill. The telos purpose of earth not mass suggest, reports all toys in the backyard last day lit. Puddy ride being Saved From the End of the World. I told them they didn’t need me. Exercise the Power, Sons!
“Sothli if a strongere comynge above overcome him, he schal tak a wey alle his armeris, in which he tristide, and schal dele abrood his spuylis.” When the man in linen with the writing kit came round I wanted “the mark on my forehead of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things” --I Marked, those lives chosen, redeemed and forfeit before the beginning of the world, knew the beginning and end of armaments, went into battle with harpists and a chorus.
Some say its a wall of iron and steel that will bend and break. Some say it’s a bridge of the mind, an auld lang syne, Brubaker up against the wall, the will. One, a bridge, and Brubake a wall, all to which bumbo was therefore written, and also everything was therefore not written. Drink this stuff with gin. This second part is precisely the most important, little wat-like laddies on a train could also be a fish in a lake, organ molecules. Public sense data is not private to one’s self. If someone else had a part of the body in common, Brubaker’s hand for instance, and say that hand got stung or got held up, I would feel the pain in the same place. In the same lumpy body as much as the pilots who bomb cities feel the death below and walls rip up their edges, bones in embryo are birthed. I fall to my knees in Amsterdam. Destruction swirls. That’s a leap.
Jin and Faery up and down this humble-dum Group plane dreaming run.
A gaping wide-mouthed waddling frog, nerd pixie dust down Captain Beefheart’s Mother Ship into myth-be-fact.
Crack at the end of every precession not in Aristotle, but on popkin CNN, reincarnation hierarchies of the Medieval Renn.
Rolly Powley, pudding and pie, back to higher lower worlds away.
The tickling at your knee pretends we have to study the Mysteries. There is truth in doing. I won’t make a stew whether writing small metaphysical.
When you join a colony and retire by the pool with silk amid the horns of the moon that reach up from the ground, London Bridge must be rebuilt so you can wane.
By the light of the lava you cool.
By Lethe town, it’s difficult to get in, whereabouts being unseen. Spelunkers line up to chance the Dulce, rappel down comfortable dark holes, but nada iron and steel will bend and break, ceaseless must be rebuilt.
Fly away Jack, fly away Gill. At the Colony she converts. Each ‘Anthropocene’ epoch subverts attention:
Mistress Wren sent her Queen unto Spain, that woman of sin, who opened the door and let her in.
For if thee saveryth lyke a knave this creates as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravates existing conflicts. Basic Nova *technoique in the training Hege gave Snowden. Tolerance of evil brings in good money. Jack boy try to drown poot cat. Mouthful toleration of systematic brainwashing of the populace is the essence of tolerance to perpetuate struggle. Creating destructive tolerance to form
benevolent neutrality toward its own culture of subversion and dingle doosey.
Under the bridge, under the wall, there is a pit, there is a cave!
Through the cable strands, through the cordage, telepathy of wires, one bridge of fire. Anyone who dares laugh says colonials need more nitrogen and phosphorus and that explains it. Microbiologists killed for phosphorus are like photophosphoric mice, which exercise extraterrestrial flags. Fly up, Columbus in the upper case empire groove. He cracked his throat with crowing.
“Timing, timing,” Mr. O’Gorman said in his Thanksgiving Address at Invention, but no matter what facts are prevented in amnesia, oh where or where can they be, the announcement and analysis has a party line, its ears cut short, its tail cut long.
J.D. Salinger was an early surgical napkin in the herd of fictitious Buggeers and Prawns. Comfort the five wits Master Humanyte, Syr. By your leve, I wer ryght loth you to greve. Anthropos science makes that swill. You may say technological subversion and conversion of natives for social, political, commercial end. These “Indians” need to shape shift skins for Caucasoid sraum and other sas-age ish goot, bolo-nie of course.
Pynchon said in ‘73: “Laszlo Jamf decreases to zero the stimulus he conditioned on Tyrone Slothrop as an infant, but “there can still be a silent extinction beyond the zero.” So launched a psychic state even less conditioned than a mind wipe. Can we build it up again? Build with iron and steel. Build Brooklyn with silver and gold. Cowslip and shad blow, said one dog to the other. If you don’t talk I must.
In the twenty years before high carillon of Pynchon Nazi hook, line, sinker to every western gov in guise, the best little donkey that ever was born, in Russia and Europe, Babylon and Rome, America was ready, means or not,
wudna I wollup him?
stuff him wi’ nuts, make him go with ‘is teal cock’d up?
Egypt and Sumer inhabited by gods. How do you go from free scientif to mind annihilation? What has my poor prisoner done?
Refinements commend depatterning and amnesifying. Two players form a bridge with uplifted arms. The others pass through in a line, each holding onto the one in front and hurrying, fearing they will be
caught by the descending arms.
With combined sleep-shock these heroes: CIA Allan Memorial Institute and Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, (American Psych Ass HeAD) accelerated the new world negative driving. In America the game often ends with a tug of war. to placate the river the bridge cannot be made. The bridge founded on a layer of children’s skulls. A felt back
loop OVER drugged, to get the nuts to crack, and sensory dep at the Society InvestigatIn London Bridge. Human Ecology broken down led inexorably to black outs, or as comics say, John Lilly flushed. Not quite as many tanked as later swam. He was a dolphin-man, burning. That’s how the bridge was kept from falling down before direct access to outsider myriads of psychedelic repos many drugs.
A bridge from here to there. A bridge to the stars, From Boston to Philadelphia and New York. A balcony around Saturn where onlookers play scrabble without reading the book. Blue book say somebody had a little part of our body in common down there. Gravel and stone will wash away, dance over them Laddie away. Buried to keep the bridge from falling down, buried with a candle in one hand
and piece of bread in the other. Food and light. He made merry work. This was imperfectly done because the Minneapolis collapsed. We was going o’er London Bridge and heard a crack. Wee Willie Winkle ran through town, called it Universal amplitude
A natural sway is coming to increase the Colonist’s step over Gog’s bespelder’d floor.
All is One had given her eggs to sell. Body electric piezo electric em rads hardend eggs in girls. Brubake said moving targets absorb less EM, but this human energy harvesting, generated from eyelids, venous return, arterial pulse, footsteps, motion of walking, loose clothing fitted with nano batteries, male conditioned females with estrogen, incomplete males, post gender, non reproductive, human neuters, take over repro to make the worker bee. The Resonance, waukrife laddie, that wana fa’ some sleep, takes a wisdom crowd to node. Synchronous lateral excitation. Two objects touch, vibrate to increase and we’re a’ dry wi’ o’t.
Other heroes of sacrifice were the Ultra Wolff, Precedent of the Neurolog and Mr. Hinkle who made Gittinger Assessment tinkle the army to ferret its ops. Here goes my lord a trot, my lady a canter, my master jock itch and here sits Lord Mayor with all his men. The pocketed icons Kesey, Ginsburg, Jerry Garcia, Burroughs, Leary, Chomsky on the payroll of the NLP of new control. Illumination was away from what was done.
Butter, lather, bony strike, hair cut, froth neck, we go wack.
They buried Terrance McKenna, they buried poor T. K, they buried poor Terr Kenna down.
[this in bold was excerpted and sent from Jerusalem. The Man Who Disappeared, as if unable to speak, applied nut to crack, does not imply the absence of thought,--yet without speech where is thought,-- in the dance resolved, those utterance in silence, not separate from the primal source--it took him by the left leg. Three times I’ve changed his name, Heavenly man not separate from
Spirit man and the truth of the Perfect man. Indeed five gnostics of the ancient Tzu give Sagey man and Superior man, not withdrawn from time and place to an Imperial Court far away, real or unreal abstracted mist, or if you like discovery red lanterns shining through the fog. Twenty seven different wigs in That Land That Appeared, Disappeared, Reappeared, cannot be seen or traveled to or touched without risking all, a place of orpheans. While he ran, they certify. They say your love and the silver rays will surely bring you home. Like men gone to plough so far from the present that this history has turned, supernatural receding to fabulous, the archaic wide, riddledy ro.
Now listed as Missing, literal bow-wows that cease making sound, but retranslatable a new one out. In all versions the arm with the sword reaches up, versions of which history too, depend on who tells it, whether from inside the belly or outside the armadoes of carracks that ballast its nose. I was so vexed I broke it in half, which left me all the following years to understand why. This hen of victimhood where all the characters are victims gets pushed around, except I would not for a Guinea evoke the ironic portion of their appeal. How many chickens have you got? Everybody loves a weakling Rabbit.
Kark Half Horse allows for these typos which critics blame for calling him a negro, Idyllaus Oklahamas to change the state, the modern mechanized technocrat serve. Steel bands, button pushers, but since ye think’t an easy thing, horns and satanic consequences unveiled as
if the clock offended the myth, conscripted time to say dance what ye have done, this mechanism, this job specialization of hell mass produced factory cogs of Sudetenland and Parkersburg above the moon, an insurance adjustor in miniature, where a hard mole has to pretend.
These cracks began finishing out the golden age of a thousand faces. Ten thousand faces before the surge, the fantastic imperial court apprehended by sense, the government of heaven attained its earth again. Which we recover, for who does not long for peace in the midst, many holes in a skimmer, except adrenalin relics of this future who speak prophetically to anyone who stakes everything on the throw,
Ziccoty, diccoty, one cast of faith
How that appeals, loving the particular, to take it by force, as the evangel says, the cat’s in a flurry, Elijah to come, as opposed to some transparent ground. Grace by spontaneous and irresistible being, not achieved through coercion or renunciation of life, but a gallop untouched by the contrary between freedom and necessity all the ages waiting. Take the Todaelde! A direct assault to reach by fierce troths of the race--what John and Elijah said in the appearing, the refiner whose Return they meet like calves released from the stall, trample the ashes under foot so many tales are told.
At least four people died by lightning strikes. All they had to offer was a screen to cover retreat from the colony...travel arrangements made, then blow the place up behind. Offer a body forever. For this they sold their sons, come weal, come woe, sold out the unborn, wasna that a dentie coo? a Garden of Delight, Kitty Bairdie immortality.
It’s pretty much beyond words so we make up non words, add faces and places and clothes and sea and any manner of likeness. We explore the world and then forget ourselves and give it away for kissing, for clapping, for loving, for proving. It is all thrown back the outer world, the gifts of life...what’s left, not the party lines we go our way without. A man returning after years of absence would know the place with his eyes closed by the rhythm of it, which wouldn’t matter even if he only imagined he was a moidert ass, who could hear the one great rhythmic clap.
People are left to wonder how they could not know to kick the usurper off his throne. Life among the culpable, sorry to admit, always blames another because it blames itself. Three children slid on the ice, freedom, freedom, mock and throw, the culpable fasts for the death of three deares, and the inculpable lays naked. One person in the crowd, loosed, runs in the street that they all did fall in. How could you know when you spend every day chasing the thing you sleep beside and see in the world in front, a tale in the sky, and smell in the air, that heart feeling controls?
Teach them at home! The ducks in the river are swimming away. Twice, Noah, Daniel, Job, the wise King of Tyre, symbol of that star. It’s like you precede them when you follow and live in a fall of
Jerusalem
that leads captive those who know. They know....
To speak of the first to doubt this in its verbal text, La foi de la loi, a Langnedoc chant, some editor in the language of deportation, as if he were an author who stood among three hundred jars of post exilic oil would pretend to write of worlds of colley birds and a part of a juniper tree. Ruins from the new song and dance of tabrets and pipes of those who walk among stones of fire. Blue clothes and embroidered promises of abundance killed stout stiff the azure pure spirituality finicky so conceived, merchants of all sorts, blue as Tarshish ships, dressed in blue to turn the spit. They delivered their gorgeous horses to bruise her teats, then took away her nose and ears, to speak of incorporated Maccabean notes, epigonous redactions of text, preludes to cut-up theology assembling layers. Here’s my awl and wax and thread.
Redactors dye satire on the head.
It is time to consider the last inevitable rupture and collapse of empire. Some branch of physics most plain, if single life doth grieve. Superposition. Alternate states in verse, possible selves in the billions. They chirrup digges and drackes, red-shonckes roninge, chickle, shackle, where all the choices made and not made lead to the not not made; settte up youer saile and rowe fourth, computer chips in the heel of the genome back to stone. You thought it was the head, but it’s the heel but you should find the shoe. Beyond
which we forever live.
I will oute of this towne, head bound the problem of the known. Alternative histories speculate. A shippe sone thou shall make thee. Their physics is an endless wheelbarrow beside red chickens. But what if someone said “I can assure you I feel the visual image to be two inches behind the bridge of my nose?” History Alice phantastes, no minority view. “I feel in my hand that the water is three feet under ground” explains unnatural war being lost along side winning the war it lost, the best of all possible worlds, censored for national secures. Oh no said the sparrow I won’t make a stew, these platitudes deny the heart of the little fish that caught its blood. History to this Trojan horse is hide. Who’ll make the shroud? this great conspiracy at the hands of the unknown cause. Oh do not ask what time to visit.
The thrush will sing, the bull will pull the bell. Meanwhile eat. I heard on Radio Zen rule eight, diverse, but his giblets make a nice pie too. Whitehead and Russell, Albert and Bertrand, su garganta, said:
DIVERSITY IS THE NEGATION OF IDENTITY
so I went to the antique mall and walked naked among the dealers and folk singing fidell-didell, tooteloo, feedle three alternative histories, all true.
Ask the cuckoo, stork and pee-wit scholar. Ask the cheek teeth of a lion.
Oh! what comes to the blessed Jerusalem to refresh the syght and felynge of all creaturs alyv? Our Jerusalem, hope of Whitman not Dario. Washington, Solomon, Roosevelt made war on the dogs on their money walks, miles of the desert past the blooming white cache. What I cannot see contrary you will see full necessary. Maybelline and Jack were high, raced to the pueblos to take the oath. Who knows but the words come out of the ground from some spring of Erebus, bitter water or clean, so clean it makes us see? But quien s’ha muerto? the wretched Beccotorto was upside down, fingers moving.
That’s why we lost the war, the orchids consuming old and young, narcotic unresisted, a hundred year drunk the only way old ways survive. We were too drunk for the colony and efforts to acclimatize, failed drunk. Pig-hog wilt thou be mine? Goldchaber! They say the orchids cannot be removed, they say we have grown dependent upon them. For centuries people faced the orchids, saw strange clouds, felt something seize their bodies they did not understand, died painful and surprising deaths. Felt the heel on their necks. And not given in or up. So by metaphor you know the Himmelskuchlichen is dead drunk while the machines take over the rest, the sixty worthy yeomen of the west. Would they had mastered anesthetic, not blindly welcome M. H+.
Your house is on fire, your children are gone. We had to kill the thing we love ourselves to prove our love...We had to sacrifice our women to prove our love—so many one-breasted ambling around as testimony to our adoration. Kill the thing we love. That is our legend. Dein Haus brennt, mutilation of the cooks of Colebrook, little cow, bitter Tod, forbidden she wadna be, your children will burn, nobody can say why fish have sores in the gulf, two semi-circles on a perpendicular meet, or autism rockets.
Our favority epithet of all, everything but GNP fell, dein Hauschen
brennt, dein muttershen flennt. I knew not where so I made a list here, Pray It Not Strange. Let down her milk in links, back links, vids, arts, potheads fliege among the gold. We have achieved our Historical Absolute like Doktor Hegel said long ago. We have made our nation reservation.
I was enumerating sleep hours, Miss Mouse, hiding kidneys in plain sight under a wonderfully made city of dreams, sitting to spin. The solar system weighed me down, planets and moons. They were all merry. Antares a bother and Betelgeuse, tweedle, deedle twino, the weight pressing on my head. Man they cannot decide when all is done whether In Cancer Laniakea, Virgo Rosh Hoshana, Capricorn Rome or Pagan Aries. Every memory, not all weight, one transcendent, some good dreams, present helps, so I like Adam.
The list is long. How did he sustain his teeth? I like Noah do not hope. He felt the press down, linkum a leerie. I am like Jonah of national repentance. No problem with the circumcision of texts, lives like, to witness the dissolve, make the long walk, Babylon, Rome, Britain, America, but here I am, gaping, widemouthed. Here I am is what Isaiah said, here I am, send me.
The cuckoo comes in April, she sings a song in May, in June she beats a drum and then away. But just sober, with no vocation, no mantle. But a sober mind! following dreams and trails of the mountain history pressed down. Down and down. I found out this descent. A little fishy. That’s what they call the I can Abel pressed down Adam and Eve. I Isaac and Ishmael pressed down Abraham. I Jacob and Esau pressed down Issac. Backtrack forward. Up, Down, up, when the pize ails ‘em, that sober.
Cherubim and palm trees and every two faced man, young lion eating o’ pollywigs, doors with two leaves and thick planks, three stories guaranteed. To walk the vision I did not see where they put away the carcasses of kings. Looking east from the house and the law of the house, to measure the pattern, the way of the gate where the prince shall enter in linen peace, spirit, no wine, difference between the holy and profane.
4098
SUFI : HYPERSPACE // 14 PAINTINGS BY SUFI ARTIST RONNI AHMMED
The modern myths that Mysticism is either from the outer space or in our inner space only, have one thing in common - space. Mystic practices are journeys through a space. The sights and encounters en route are visions and visitations. Even the very modern Freudian myth that our unconscious is a space, has its origins in Jewish Kabbalah mysticism (Jonathan Garb, 2011). Mystic visions, practices and manifestations are space-specific, geographic (Peter Moore, 2005).
The following canvases are Sufi Islamic mystic spaces made visible for the uninitiated. Their geography is both Bengali and Arabic. Their names are both scriptural and apocryphal. They are by a practitioner, not an ethnographer. Unique in postmodern Indian subcontinent, these paintings continue the great pre-modern art of the Sufis. They are contemporary fabulations – of the science of subtle centre of Kulb (spiritual heart) and of Panjtan-i Pak (the Blessed Quincunx) made with Ladunnii-’ilm (God-inspired knowledge).
These are visions made flesh, and should be entered thusly. This major artist has resisted all his life - the colonies of cliched meanings, medium-boundaries and signature styles. His protean practice has reached a resolution here. These paintings are Light – made of the primordial Noor out of which the entire creation was created by Rabbil-’alamin (Lord of the Universe).
These light-paintings are just one step shy from becoming holograms.Ronni Ahmmed (Dhaka, Bangladesh, born 1971) has been widely exhibited, published and noted in our planet. These acrylic-on-canvas paintings are postPandemic, some as recent as this Summer. They are sized 2 ft x 2.5 ft.
Keys: (as)
ʿ alayhi as-salāmu
Peace be upon him
This expression follows after naming prophets. messengers and Imams in Islam (ra)
ra ḍ iya -llāhu ʿ anhū God be pleased with him
This expression is used when mentioning the companions of Muhammad but sometimes used with other godly persons, also used in feminine version. (sa)
salāmu -llāhi ʿ alayhī
Peace of God be upon him
This expression follows after naming Imams or angels. The feminine version is commonly used for historical Islamic women (e.g. Fatimah, Khadijah, Maryam, Asiya, Sarah, Eve, etc.). (saw)
ṣ allā -llāhu ʿ alayhī wa- ʾ ālihī wa-sallama
Blessings of God be upon him and his progeny and grant him peace
This expression follows specifically after uttering the name of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
01 Hudh Hudh bird bringing the news of Queen Bilkis’s glorious city to Hazrat Solaiman (as)
02 Jakkum tree of Jahannam
03 Angel Jibrail (as) blessing the great huge camel of Hazrat Saleh (as) 04 Soul in Barjogh
05 Petrified wife of Hazrat Luth (as)
06 Hur
07 Lauhe Mahfuj
08 Noor e Kaaba
09
The tree walked closer and announced He ( Prophet Muhammad (saw)) is the real, last and greatest prophet of Allah Pak
10 Hazrat Moulana Jalaluddin Rumi (ra) by the lake of eternity
11 Emperor Julkarnine heading towards the Kehkaf city on a four days of pitch black journey
12 Seven sleepers of Ashabey kahaf, those who went to sleep for 300 years by the order of Allah swt
13 Journey of Hazrat Khidir (A)
14 Sura Ikhlas
Words and Design by Lyn Hagan
WWW.STIMULUSRESPOND.COM
