Love, InshAllah

As salaam alaikum,

A friend of mine in 2008 encouraged me to write for this anthology, and I did, and insha'Allah it'll be my first piece of published writing. I wrote a short autobiographical piece called, "A Man's Hands," which I think I excerpted at my old journal at the time. That story was about my discovering that me and a non-Muslim classmate liked each other while still holding onto the image of MTQ (who I named Sadiq in the story) and trying to decide for myself what it meant for me to be a Muslimah in the face of a burgeoning relationship.

Well, that relationship didn't happen (womp womp womp), but another one did, so I guess it's still a relevant story. I still had to evaluate what it meant for me to be a Muslimah in a relationship with someone who does not identify as Muslim.

Yes. So it doesn't have to be an actual relationship, just our experiences. Heh, I suppose at this point, I could do a follow-up. I would have to come up with a different name for B. But I don't think I'd do that to him, fronting him like that, haha.

Anyway, check this out!

Dear friends,

As many of you know, we started an anthology project a few years ago entitled Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women. We received some incredible submissions and great feedback from agents and publishers. We’ve been asked to include more stories and are reaching out in the hopes that you will consider writing and/or help us spread the word.

We are soliciting auto-biographical stories written by American Muslim women on love, sex, dating or courtship. While we prefer that authors write under their real names, we recognize that some topics – including sex, sexual orientation, polygamy, mutah marriages, etc. – are sensitive, so we are accepting a limited number of anonymous submissions.

If you are interested in submitting a piece, please send a first draft (1500-4000 words) by Monday, February 28^th to relationship[dot]anthology[at]gmail[dot]com.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thanks for your help and support!

Love,

A & N

Muslims, Wake Up!

As salaam alaikum,

I just thought I'd put this out there for all of those who have used this statistic in talking to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, reverts and otherwise--that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Okay. I saw this in the NYT first but I prefer the CNN version:

The Muslim share of the global population will rise primarily because of their relatively high birth rate, the large number of Muslims of childbearing age, and an increase in life expectancy in Muslim-majority countries, according to the report, "The Future of the Global Muslim Population."

Conversion will play relatively little part in the increase, the report anticipates. It says little data is available on conversion, but what little there is suggests Islam loses as many adherents via conversion as it gains. (emphasis added)

- CNN.com, World Muslim Population Doubling, report suggests

First of all, NYT's version of the article was a very different, less objective tone. The underlying sentiment, I felt like, was, "Have no fear, oh white folk! Muslims will not overtake the world population." And when I say white folk, I am calling to mind the call for Europeans to reproduce more as they have fewer and fewer children. And I'm like, really, is this a race? Pun not intended. Is this a race or competition to see what group can dominate in terms of the world population? Have the number of children that you will and don't worry about it!

And this is exactly what I've been saying all along...if people were suddenly cognizant of how many billions of Muslims there were on earth, and if they see all Muslims as potential extremists and terrorists, now that we're about to make up over a quarter of the world's population with this so-called youth bulge, heh, if our extreme nature were true, there'd be much cause to crap one's pants right about now, and for the next 20 years as this growth continues.

So on that front, people need to just calm down.

The second part of that, though, is what I'm telling you we need to wake up about. I don't exactly identify as a revert, but eh, close enough. A lot of times when we talk about conversion to Islam, I hear many a Muslim cite the fact that Islam is the fastest growing religion, as if conversion is the source of our increases in numbers. That's false advertising, baby.

I'm not one to eat up statistics without that proverbial grain of salt, but I've rarely heard this as part of the conversation...what do you say? That as many Muslims leave Islam as people are converting to it? That the main numbers are from babies being born to Muslims? Uhhh, you don't say?

What have I got to say to that? No duh!

It may be a coincidence of the current article on Altmuslimah by a revert, or the predilection of some of my Muslimah friends on facebook, but I've been hearing a lot of stories of disillusioned reverts to Islam over the last couple of weeks. And I know those aren't just all suddenly cropping up, many have been there. None of these have been, by the way, people who have left Islam. One commenter on the site of one sister, a "native" Muslim, stated that it's a wonder that she stayed Muslim after her experience.

Now, not all of the people leaving Islam are the converts. A lot of the people are those "native" Muslims who sought alternative ways to live life. Okay. But the notion that (the way that we practice) Islam is so great that look, people are just flocking to the religion, giving up their white privilege to grow beards and don hijabs (as so many of the conversion stories featured, often, are of white Americans) is an exaggeration.

We are in crisis. Muslims are in crisis. We may cry and whisper masha'Allah when we hear conversion stories, witness a shahadah, and I know I did, the first shahadah I witnessed after becoming practicing. It's touching, but we cannot ignore that people who call themselves Muslims are doing horrendous things, resulting in dire consequences for the Muslims and non-Muslims in the communities surrounding them, loved ones of victims, and having reverberations for Muslims everywhere.

As someone who was barely a nominal Muslim before 9/11, I have no idea what it was like before we became synonymous with terrorists in certain circles. But as a practicing Muslim after 9/11, I know that it is hard to come from a place where you were at once everyone else and then suddenly become this other, often finding yourself the token, trying to avoid being grand apologist. It's not a good look.

All of this to say...it is really hard, especially living in the West, to become Muslim...and not in the practice as much as in the identity with this religious group. I align myself in practice and identity, before that statement is taken incorrectly. Reverts need a lot of support, and I'm seeing across the blogosphere that it's not just me that feels like they're not getting the minimal necessary to be able to sustain not only the identity, but the practice. Those who opened them with welcome arms as they first became interested in the religion disappear soon after the shahadah.

What kind of ummah is that?

This is not new. Br. Dr. Jeffrey Lang talks about it in his book, which I'll have to reread at some point.

So stop using the "fastest growing religion" line, please. We should not be so smug. What is the state of those in our religion? There's a lot of uplifting and essential soul saving we need to do on a grand scale, some within our own communities. We need to be more activists than some of us are apologists right now.

I say this because I know I'm one of them, God have mercy on me.

"We all know that sometimes life's hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your life times that and twice its double
That God knew exactly where He wanted you to be placed
So when you say you're in it but not of it
Make sure you're not making this a place sometimes called Hell..."

- Stevie Wonder, "As."

Out in the Rural

As salaam alaikum,

My most recent career aspirations, specifically working in a community health center for some part of my career, were inspired by this film, entitled "Out in the Rural" (1970), about one of the first community health centers in the country.


Out in the Rural from Luis Manriquez on Vimeo.

For more information about the CHC movement in the United States, visit the NIH's "Against All Odds" exhibition, specifically the section of community health, subsection "On Common Ground."

I'll include below the email that I sent to family about it, which gives a little bit of background about Dr. Jack Geiger, who also is one of the founding members and former president of Physicians for Human Rights, and how he became involved in this movement. Seriously, masha'Allah!

A little background...

Dr. Jack Geiger, as a medical student, traveled to South Africa and was part of a rotation in a small clinic in a rural, Zulu tribal reserve called Pheola in Natal, based in the only medical school in the country at the time that would train blacks. Headed by two South African physicians and founded in the 1940s, years before the Apartheid government would shut it down, it employed what its founders called community-oriented primary care (COPC). These centers were set up to be care for the people, by the people, run by the people...taking communities and focusing not only on their needs and their assets, empowering them to be able to run their own health center, thus encouraging education and entrance of the youth into the very lucrative health field. It also addressed many of the social determinants of health, including poverty and racial discrimination, through programs within the center.

Geiger came back to the United States and completed his training, writing a thesis about this COPC model and deciding that this should be put in place in the United States.

In this world where so much depends on opportunity, right place and time, his interest and work in community-centered care coincided with Johnson's War on Poverty, and Geiger's model for providing health care for the poor was what was used to begin the community health center movement (CHC) in the United States.

With my classmates, I visited the first CHC in the United States, which was set up at the Columbia Point projects in Boston, MA in 1965. It is now called Geiger-Gibson after its founders and after Columbia Point was torn down. Columbia Point were projects built on a landfill where low-income blacks were separated by highway from low-income whites, very much in Boston fashion. Large trucks hauling trash sped up and down Mt. Vernon Street to the nearby dump at the time, resulting in the death of a little girl who was attempting to cross the street. Just as the community banded together, mothers hand in hand to stop the trucks from running their streets, the community was able to band together and make up an essential part of their community health center, including the clerical staff and practitioner staff, many people coming back to be medical assistants, nurses and physicians in the center in their old neighborhood.

The one featured in the film followed a similar model of home-grown staffing, in addition to a variety of needed social programs.

Community Health Centers still exist. Here's a link to the National Association of Community Health Centers: http://www.nachc.org/.

Here in Boston, there are 25, and I think more than 50 statewide. These not only provide health care for the uninsured and underinsured, but it provides quality, comprehensive primary care for anyone in the catchment area. I visited 7 different centers in Boston, and each have social programs in place as well. One had an obesity program for young people. Another had a special diabetes program. Yet another had an affiliated charter school for the black youth of Boston (who make up the majority of Boston Public Schools), whose college graduation rate is 7.4%. The school had a college graduation rate of 73% and a high school graduation rate of 100%.

I'm very excited to share information about these centers with you. These things have been around now for more than 45 years and have survived various challenges, including the Reagan administration, to be a social project that has unwavering bipartisan support. At a time when my generation barely knows what activism is, these centers were born in the time of and facilitated by the Civil Rights movement that is only taught indirectly and blandly in schools. The people who started these things are still running these things and are looking for new leadership.

So, here we come...

I also showed this documentary to B, and he was inspired by Dr. Geiger, especially in his thoughts for what he wanted to do with his career. I was, too, very much so, in a similar way. He's going to be at Tufts for the Physicians in Human Rights student conference in February. For several reasons but mainly because of time constraints on commitments, I haven't really done anything with PHR, but considering Dr. Geiger is aging and has cancer and this may be one of the few times I can hear him speak in person, I may put down $40 and haul myself over to Tufts and hear him and the other speakers. I don't know.

The Makings of You

As salaam alaikum,

My friend here at the med school wants me to sing at her wedding (April 30, iA), and this is the song she's chosen...and here's the version I've chosen to listen to, in addition to the original by Curtis Mayfield.




I'll learn it if I listen to it at least 8 times, so here I go...

Besides that, school has started back up again, and I'm to start my practicum, with a cubicle with my own computer and an ID badge and everything...so I must produce a good product! Onward I go...

Desexualizing Women

As salaam alaikum,

I've always wondered why I liked Lady Macbeth so much, and I think it's because of this whole thing:

"...Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,"

Unsex me here! Maybe it was the baby feminist within me as I read Macbeth in high school (I feel like 10th grade), but I just loved that line...of course, she's talking about, you know, preparing herself for murder, but, you know...

Unsex me here...way to go, Shakespeare!

That's what I thought about as I read an interview with Shaykh Suhaib Webb on Altmuslimah last week or so:

One thing is to go back to the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him) – his community was a very human community. Women would come to him and ask questions, and the religious outlook towards men and women was not sexualized by the Prophet (peace be upon him). What we’ve done is reinforce medieval religious constructs, which impart this strange, sexual way of looking at each other. I think we have to be very careful about who speaks to our youth about sensitive sexual topics, and we have to reinforce the idea of being the servants of God and human beings before being sex objects. Desexualizing women, in particular, is also very important...

When we look at women as only a potential fitna, or a potential iman destroyer, it becomes very problematic, and we often send the wrong message to Muslim women. - Shaykh Suhaib Webb, "Muslims Need to Start Branching Out into Social Services," Altmuslimah.com

Desexualizing women? Hmm, that's interesting. Interesting and oh so called for.

Of course, Muslims are not the only ones that do this. I know of few cultures that have not oversexualized women in one way or the other. We can certainly see it in the West, where it has been normalized in the last century that women wear less clothing than men. It's not the clothing that's the issue, ultimately. I would argue that such oversexualization was minimal if existent even in cultures where men and women wore loin-cloths, women with their breasts exposed as compared to here unnamed Muslim societies where a woman in hijab can be expected to be verbally assaulted with lewd comments if she walks down the street. Umm, cough. It's the attitudes that go along with the clothing that determine the oversexualization...

...and so many of us Muslims, yes, are guilty of this. I remember once a brother stating that he was annoyed by even being in the presence of "sisters," saying that hearing their high-pitched speech and laughter tempted him and made him only think of marriage when around them. And by marriage, of course he means sex...

And herein lies the danger. Not only are potential interactions with fellow Muslims undermined with these attitudes, but marriage is falsely equated with sex...there is sex in marriage, yes, but marriage is so much more than that. And I feel like attitudes like, "I hear giggling Muslim women and all I think about is marriage," is a terrible reduction of this very important institution in our religion.

Oversexualization is a mug.

This is certainly not the case with all Muslims...but I think enough of us are like this that yes, as the good Shaykh stated, we need to do something about it in our communities. It is absolutely ridiculous that a Muslim man can be around non-Muslim women who, while running or in the summer, are outside with much of their bodies bared, and then when it comes to the modest sister in his own MSA, avoid her because of thoughts of "marriage." How utterly unproductive and paradoxical.

This is definitely the topic for youth discussions, as Shaykh Webb called for. However, I would recall the tactics in the Taleef Collective and also stress the importance of getting to the Muslims at the margins as well. The Muslims who will likely not show up for MSA meetings or go to the mosque actually are not nominal Muslims only as some may be led to believe. They identify as Muslims but they're in transition, they're trying to find their place, perhaps wanting to be embraced but don't know where to fit in. Getting to these young people (and when I say young people, I include the 15-24 demographic) and talking about these very relevant issues in their religion is essential...

There are some events that are segregated according to level of practice, but I don't think such discussions should be. So many Muslims I know have been hesitant to participate in, for example, my undergraduate MSA because of their wariness of the gender separation. For an MSA that impacts the optimum number of Muslim students, I think we need to reach out at those at the fringes...as one who lived at the fringe and so much desired to be "in," but never quite made it.

But the desexualization of women...that's a toughie. A lot goes into that and it has to do with the attitudes of both genders. I don't believe in the "I could be naked before you and you shouldn't look," school, and I don't ascribe to the "men cannot control themselves" school, either. Puh-leese. Certain things may make it hard for you, but you can surely control yourself. As a woman, I can't say what goes through your head, but knowing men (maybe too much about their sex lives), being friends with men, I know that men are capable of controlling themselves, yes, even if a naked woman is before them, so Muslim men should definitely be able to control themselves before a clothed Muslim woman.

Too much of the onus of morality is placed on females and then, placed on pieces of cloth. We are followers of the religion of people who think. Clothing, yes, is a part of modesty but modesty is so much more than that. And we are also followers of the religion of the middle path, yet too many of us stray from the middle path in favor of the easier to determine, more extreme path. And I think that's why women are oversexualized. No sex before marriage? Oh, that's easy...find ways to avoid women, having to look at them, having to cross their paths.

Unhealthy.

The middle path is hard, but this is the path Allah (swt) has meant for us. We are humans, and we stray from this path, but what we need to realize is that straying is legitimate straying in either direction. We may be more comfortable on the right than the left, but the real balance of our faith, because it is a balancing act for sure, is staying on that middle path...

Sex neutralizing women and encouraging balanced, modest gender relations is just one of the ways that we Muslims can be more moderate, and it will benefit all of us and those around us as well.

Bite

As salaam alaikum,

Let me take a few moments to reflect on the (to me) fast paced events of the last few months. Maybe that will help increase the illusion that I have two feet on solid ground.

Back in September, B, who is now my intended, told me that we should "hang out." I agreed, only because I knew he was interested in me, and this piqued my interest. He knew I am Muslim, he knew details of that story because I told it during book club (which was weird...can't remember how we got on the subject), and I was amazed that this Igbo Nigerian guy was still interested in me, even though he knew I was Muslim.

I accepted to "hang out" just to see what he was all about. I've "hung out" with other guys...in the time since I'd met him, there had been three or four, if you count the Muslim guy that I talked to for a bit. So there was nothing novel here. I would feel him out, see how Christian he was (because I was certain that all Igbos were Christian), and see where the relationship went.

We talked more and more, and I got the feeling he wasn't Christian. Every time I mentioned that I was Muslim, he took it in stride, listened attentively, didn't change the subject as many guys do and didn't seem perturbed. Come to find out, he believes in God but follows no organized religion. He has great respect for Muslims as one of his best friends is Muslim.

This man was a bold one! He knows about Muslims to a level that we went out to eat and he asked if I ate halal (I have to tell most people what that means), and expected me to follow some code of modesty...and he still asked me out?

At this point, I had convinced myself that he was a fool.

We went out for a month and a half, and come November, a few days after his birthday, I wondered what we were. It was awkward talking about it in public, where we'd go to a concert or a movie and he'd return me to my place, standing chastely outside of my apartment, wishing me goodbye (no kissing)...so I figured I'd invite him over while my roommates were home (seemed innocuous) so they could meet him and so we could talk more privately so we could decide where we were...

And, as often happens, our intentions lined up and he had the same question of me. I found myself suddenly and startlingly in a relationship with B, a God-fearing yet non-Muslim man.


Those of you who have read since then have read through me processing the hell out of this! That day in November (which was, in fact, Wednesday, November 17)...I felt in over my head. There have been a couple of missteps, a couple of poor decisions along the way, things I wasn't ready for, like our first kiss, frankly, even though for that month and a half I was confused why he hadn't tried to kiss me...haha, I was a big talker but when the time actually came, I was confused and a bit scared.

I handled things totally not how I thought I would handle them...how I've always imagined things in my head. And I realized, to a point, I've never really imagined myself in a relationship with a Muslim or a non-Muslim. Once I got myself there, I had no idea how I would drive it, what things we would do together to hold it together, when the turning points would be...meeting the parents, talking about marriage...how we would handle engagement, etc. So now I find myself with someone, and much unlike what has been my style so far in my adolescence and adulthood...I've had to make things up as I go. I haven't had time to ruminate and wax philosophical about what I think should be done...

But I'd been thinking about it. Both of my parents are happy. My mother is happy that I've found a God-fearing man so I can finally stop being so lonely and believing there was no one out there for me. My father is happy because I'm not only with a Nigerian, but an Igbo...he has a schema for this and not for anyone else, probably not even a black man, that I'd bring home. He's so content with that, he hasn't yet asked about B's religion...which I think will come later. B's concerned about that...I am less so. So, on the home front, B's like, pretty much best case scenario.

I knew I'd cross this road when I got here, but I often worried, abstractly, about whoever I would end up with asking my father's permission to marry me. I could imagine that ending badly if he were Muslim, especially if he weren't Nigerian or at least black. This man would have to really be invested in me/love me and have great diplomatic skills to win over my father.

I once considered arranging my own marriage, but I would feel no way comfortable doing that with the situation with my father.

I was between a rock and hard place because I do want the blessing from both of my parents when I do marry, and I feel like me starting out a marriage in opposition to my father would just amplify Daddy issues and introduce tensions into my married life that might be hard to overcome. My nuclear family is my rock, and though my father is Christian, he loves me (though you can't get a Nigerian man to say that), protects me, supports me...has raised me, with my mother, to be the woman that I am. He cares for my brother. His relationship with my mother hinges on their religious coexistence and harmony that is upset whenever I mark my religious territory, so I stopped.

B seemed like the best fit, but I do not love him for that.

I was determined not to "settle" for that. I mean, there were other reasons why I grew to like him, but there were two reasons that I would not let factor majorly in my feelings for him and decision to go forward with him along the marriage trajectory. One of those was my relationship with my father. Being with B has made the relationship with my father feel smoother, because with B, I'm more Nigerian, and I feel like he can know on a level higher than my lip service that my being Muslim is not forsaking my Nigerianness. However, there is no way in hell I would use B just to square things with my father, so I put this off to the side in considering our relationship.

The other reason I would not factor in is his kiss, let's say. We are obviously physically attracted to each other, and that's enough for me to know. I was concerned with other things, and my decision to marry him ultimately will be based on other compatibilities...spiritual compatibility, our friendship, confidence, trust...I had to know if this guy who does not call himself Muslim was worthy of me fulfilling half of my religion with him.

And that was the toughest part to reconcile. He doesn't call himself Muslim. Why do I say it like that? Hah, I feel like I'm setting myself up to be an apologist, but so be it.

I think about this guy who I met out in Cambridge when I went to a salsa club with my friends. He was Muslim. He drinks socially, regularly, and accidentally switched my drinks such that I almost consumed alcohol, which I've never done. He fasts alcohol for Ramadan. I mean, I'm not one to judge, because here I am, in a salsa club, something that I wouldn't have done years back. But he was Muslim, and he seemed absently interested in me, as he cursed, as he described his drunken debauchery, all of this.

Then, about a month later, B asked me out, and I discovered that he believes in God. He volunteers in the city and I've seen him give charity with his right hand, discreetly. He says grace over his food. He's abstained and is a virgin. He avoids alcohol and drugs. He doesn't curse.

And as I've discovered over the last couple of months, we're so very compatible in so many ways...in our interest in Africa and the African diaspora, current events, news, our tastes in documentaries and comedies and the way we watch these, the meticulous way we wash dishes to the things we find funny, the way we speak. At first I felt like it wouldn't be so but we've evolved such that we can talk about anything, everything...I can tell him what's on my mind, down to my trying to figure myself out as a Muslimah and what my relationship with him means for that. I mean, everything.

I'm more comfortable talking to him about these things than I have been comfortable talking to any Muslim besides my mother.

Given what I knew about B at baseline, the charity, the no alcohol, his ethics...add Muslim to that, and I would have had no question. But I realize that I'd been operating in such a way that being Muslim was enough on so many levels with no real thought to the brother's personal ethics and his possible compatibility with me.



To some, this will seem like a cop-out, my ending up with a non-Muslim, being a Muslimah, especially since I've intended to end up with a Muslim for so long, that which inspired me to become more practicing in college...so I could form myself into what would be a good Muslim wife. But in this experience I'm learning (because the lesson isn't over yet) about God and I'm learning...He knows what's best for us. I'm still struggling with the possibility that Allah (swt) could possibly intend for me a man who is not a practicing Muslim...struggling not in the sense that I'm losing sleep, but struggling because, against everything I once believed, it seems to be so.

But from that time, in March, my second time seeing B, getting that sudden and overwhelming feeling that I was "going to end up with him," not knowing what that meant, denying it for a wihle, and still not knowing anything about this man, until now, I know...I know in a way no one outside of my body can know, this is what Allah (swt) intends for me. It is with this man that I intend to grow and realize my purpose in this life, as a Muslim and as a citizen of this world.



I didn't write for a while because I felt like my entries and this very journal lacked the bite that it used to. So much of my persona here was fueled by righteous indignation, despair and hope. Faith in the face of doubt, and my primary doubt was if I was ever going to marry, if it were even possible for someone to love me. I know it to now be true. That doubt is gone, but in the process of living this doubt, living this despair, living this loneliness, I've learned so many things about my relationship with God, and I continue to.

I'm also learning what it really means to be Muslim. Because, as we all know, people who call themselves Muslim are not the only ones who submit themselves to God. And while I'll always identify as Muslim, and it's always my goal to become a better Muslim...I think I previously limited myself in what ways I could be Muslim because I thought I had to...but now I'm learning other ways to be...I'm making mistakes along the way, astaghfirullah, but at the end, I think I'll be where I need to be...

Allah (swt) doesn't lead astray those who come to Him, so I'm not afraid as long as I pray.

Yeah, some of the bite of Invisible Muslimah is gone, because I'll likely gripe about gender relations between Muslims less, I'll no longer speculate about relationships and what paradigm I'll work through because I'm in one, making it up as we go along, because B and I, we're in this together...

...but Invisible Muslimah will not cease to exist. I'll probably focus more on humanism and humanitarian issues, current events...and relationship/marriage issues will probably be more concrete.

Anyway, that's all...well, that's not all, but that's a lot of what I've been thinking through over the past couple of months.

Oh yeah, and it's clear to me now...if I ever publish RMD, I'm going to dedicate it to my mother. She has to read it first and help me fix it. B will help Mo sound more like a guy for me, and yeah. Though, he's already weirded out by the first two pages...I'm concerned, haha!

[uncensored]: Love / Haiti

As salaam alaikum,

So...I love him. Who? B. Yep. That's all.


Yesterday, I was so inspired, since I didn't have any reading for my Community Health Centers class, to translate the lyrics to the song, "Haiti" by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. So I did. It's probably rough in parts because I don't understand nearly any of the references in the third stanza. All with the help of Google translate.

Here's my favorite version of the song--the long version with Caetano Veloso only:




And here are the lyrics:

If you’re ever invited to ascend up to the courtyard
Of the House of Jorge Amado Foundation*

To see the front row of soldiers, almost all black
Wringing the necks of black delinquents,
Of mulatto thieves and others, almost white

Treated like blacks
Just to show the other almost-blacks,
(And they’re almost all black)
And the poor almost whites like blacks
How it is that blacks, the poor and mulattoes,
And the almost white/almost black that the same poor, are treated

 
And it doesn’t matter if the eyes of the whole world
Could, for a moment, rewind to a time
Where slaves were punished
And today, a drumming, a drumming
With the purity of uniformed high school kids
On the day of a parade
And the epic grandeur of a developing people
Attracts us, dazzles us, stimulates us

Nothing matters:
Not the trace of excess  
Nor the lens of Fantástico**,
Nor a Paul Simon CD
Nobody, nobody is a citizen
If you are going to see the party in Pelô***, and even if you’re not

Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti
Haiti is here
Haiti is not here

And on TV if you see a congressman in ill-concealed panic
Presenting any, but really any, any, any
Education plan

That sounds easy
That seems easy and fast
And it will represent a threat to democracy
On primary school level
And if that same congressman defends the adoption of capital punishment
And the venerable Cardinal says he sees so much spirit in the fetus
And none in the criminal
And if, while running the light, the old light, red, habitual
You notice a man pissing on the street corner over a glossy bag of garbage from Leblon****
And when you hear the smiling silence of São Paulo

Before the massacre:

111 defenseless prisoners, but prisoners are almost all black
Or almost black, or almost white/almost black that are the same poor

And the poor are like the rotten and everyone knows how blacks are treated
And when you go, turn towards the Caribbean
And when you fuck without a condom
And submit your intelligent participation in the blockade of Cuba...
 
Think of Haiti, pray for Haiti
Haiti is here
Haiti is not here


*Jorge Amado was a Brazilian author whose works dealt mainly with the poor black/mulatto populations of Bahia. His estate is preserved in Salvador and its supposed to promote the culture of Bahia.
** Fantastico is a popular Brazilian newsmagazine that shows up on their superchannel, Globo. It's like a week-in-review.
*** Pelo is a neighborhood in Salvador (as it's known to people in Bahia) that is a popular tourist attraction. It's the Historic Center of the Salvador, one where slaves were publicly beaten. The neighborhood is home to the first slave market on the continent.
****Leblon is the richest neighborhood in Rio. That's why the trash bag is glossy. It has the highest property values in all of Latin America.


I love B because I can translate this song, send him these lyrics, and he'll absolutely appreciate this more than anyone else I know. This is from an email I sent him yesterday. And of course, that's not the only thing...but it's little things like this that make us realize how much we make sense...

Keep me in your du'as!