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@shafiq28
Hi, I'm Sajid from Mymensingh, Bangladesh. I love your writing so much. It's both inspiring and life-affirming. I hope you would continue to write more stories. Lots of love. :)
Aww thank you! I haven’t updated @shafiq28 in many years because life got hectic (moved countries twice, got involved in new projects) but I’m glad my writings help :)
The Harry Potter soundtrack recorded with traditional Indian musical instruments (mostly).
This would have been a little bit better if the keyboard was a harmonium, but zomg that fingerwork.
This blog has been in hiatus for some time because I've had a ton of life changes, but I figure y'all would appreciate this.
You’d think a witch working down in the Department of Mysteries would know better than to go about flaunting a criminal record. Or to continue breaking the law, for that matter.
Padma Patil kept on. You could say it was a challenge, of sorts, one that she kept up even after being hauled up in front of the Wizengamot no less than three times. People said the only reason she’d got off scott-free was because she was a war-hero. Maybe they weren’t wrong; maybe war heroes were invulnerable, maybe they played by rules that others weren’t privy to.
It wasn’t as if it was a big offense. A minor infraction of the rules, a regular flaunting of the Statute of Secrecy. One little hole in the blind the wizarding world had pulled over the muggles’ eyes. But the way they went on about it, Merlin, you’d think it was the end of the world - putting us all in danger by her blatant disregard for the rules.
Of course, no one asked them why they thought a magical carpet was more likely to be spotted than a broomstick. A magical carpet - that was unusual and that was enough. Never mind that it was far more comfortable, far more efficient than a broom. It was odd, it was out of place, it was an infraction of the Statute of Secrecy.
Padma kept on flying her carpet. One day they’d figure it out. One day they’d realize it wasn’t simply about the Statute of Secrecy but something much larger. A whole way of living rendered invalid and meaningless by one petty little law - something they worried about because they knew and they couldn’t separate the threads of the magical and non-magical the same way these men from the Ministry could.
Till then they could keep slapping on the handcuffs as much as they bloody well liked. She was in bloody good company.
They trip over the words, the syllables and sounds sitting strangely on their tongues. Latin. Greek. Old English, the language of the Saxons. Words that can be meant, but never felt. They move their wrists, but the movements are all wrong. Too fluid, too flowing, not the precise jerky movements that declare forthright intent and blunt direction and no appreciation for the finer points of the whys and wherefores.
To understand this, you must remember that the wands came to them only in 1829.
No, that’s wrong. You might think, therefore, that they had a choice in the matter, but they didn’t. In 1759, for the first time, they were told they couldn’t practice magic the way they did anymore. It was the British, the muggles, as the Confederation called it. They couldn’t have them know about magic and they needed a way to make sure there weren’t any violations of the Statute of Secrecy. A trace.
The trace does not work on wandless magic, or ritual magic, of course. Oh, a signal registers, yes. Magic has been used, that much is clear - but who? There is no way of pinpointing it.
It starts out that way, in 1759. In 1829, they learn for the first time that their magic, all wandless, is inferior to that of the magic produced by the wand. Wand magic is swift, precise and immediate - it is the future of magic. When put that way; a choice between lingering in the romantic past or moving into the future and accepting progress; there is only one choice to be made. To take up wands and learn new words. Another language, that is what it boils down to in the end. Their language is old, but too old - that is something you thought would never have been said by men and women who value, above everything else, ancient bloodlines and ancestries that can be traced back centuries. Age, it seems, is virtuous only as far back as the founding of the Greek kingdoms.
Two centuries. That is enough and yet not enough. It sits wrong. Something is missing - and they do not know what.
Some of them, they invent their own spells. Spells they really feel, because magic, magic is about thought, emotion and will coming together in one swift moment and then exploding, coursing through one’s veins to create, to do, to be. In the end, these polyglot spells are truly theirs - neither here nor there, just like them and so, easier to be felt and to be willed into existence. In the end, magic is their heart and if they cannot feel their magic - does not that take something so very fundamental away from them?
Some of them, they break their wands and perform wandless magic alone once they have outgrown the reaches of the Ministry and the International Confederation of Wizards. Talented witches and wizards who will never receive the adulation that those who perform magic without wands in England, in Europe, will be awarded for daring to go beyond the bounds of normal magic. They will disappear completely - law abiding citizens in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong kind of magic for the rest of their lives with nothing but the quiet comfort that they are doing magic the way it was once done by their ancestors to keep them company.
There are others who refused to take up wands, who refused to hide from the muggles and to give up their old ways of magic. They are called criminals nowadays. Whole groups of people, just like that, because they would not comply with the Statute of Secrecy.
And lastly, there are those who one day look at their wands and ask themselves if it might not be better to send the muggle friends of these witches and wizards who were so concerned for their safety - for the continued secret of their existence - back home where they belonged. Who ask themselves if their wands, once tools of their oppression, might not be turned against their oppressors. Who will ask themselves, why should we stand by in silence while our comrades-in-arms suffer for the sake of secrecy and the safety of men and women who live pampered lives in a faraway land - who will never know what it means to starve or to watch men die or to have to turn one’s collar points down for fear that it might give offense to a well-dressed English gentleman?
And having answered those questions, those are the witches and wizards who will take up their wands - who have taken up their wands and fought because magic is not magic and non-magic but magic is magic is magic, because magic was given to them all, because it is their land and their identity.
Those witches and wizards; they are the ones who will never be remembered in Hogwarts, or for that matter, any of the history books they use to teach them there. Zuhair Shafiq. Parvati Zuhair Shafiq (nee Chatterjee). Siddhant Patil. Ram Chandra Azad. Padma Mukherjee. Ramesh A. Rajkumar. Sunil P. Jadhav. Joseph de Silva. Sharda Rajagopalachari. Sana M. Syed. The All-India Jadukara Azaadi Association. Thousands of names that would take far too long to list - witches and wizards who asked themselves why and found they had no answer, not until they took up their wands and fought for freedom.
You could argue that their fight was in vain. In 1950, the Indian Ministry of Magic was formed and signed the Statute of Secrecy. But the fight for freedom, the fight against these wands is a struggle that will continue, always continue until once again the magic sits comfortably in their skin and their tongues no longer stumble over spells and they find that they can move their wrists as they were once wont to - and the magic will burst forth and they will be as they have never been for two hundred years.
That, that, is freedom. That is independence.
Just a reminder that submissions for Resistance/Independence week (8th - 15th August) are open and will be open for that time period.
Resistance/Independence week will focus on stories of resistance by wix against colonialism, various forms of systematic...
Your question about magic different because of location was brilliant! If there were stronger witches in say Egypt why didn't they come forward and stop LV from trying to take over the wizarding world? Maybe they were unaware of it and that the secret ancient wizards of Egypt and Morocco do not interact with the wester wizarding world as they do not know of it's existence? Maybe there lack of a wand makes them seen as inferior to western witches and so are ignored by the western world! WHO KNOWS
I don’t think they were unaware or that it was a matter of strength of magic or lack of magic (I mean the whole point me and petrichorlore were making was that their magic was stronger due to a connection with ancient languages/the oldest languages in the world; therefore they didn’t have need of a wand)
Maybe there’s also intricate politics tied up in the magical world mirroring the muggle world: the magical folks can’t really interfere/don’t want to interfere with the affairs of the West—and there wasn’t any indication that Voldy had plans to conquer the world/or that he had forces outside of England (unless there was in the text but I’m forgetting now since it’s been a while). So like basically a ‘not our problem’ type of thing.
Or maybe they would’ve intervened if Voldy threatened international security (kind of like how everyone jumped into WWI after certain countries were invaded/people killed). So I think if after Voldy was successful in taking over the UK he would’ve expanded outwards, and THEN the international magical community would have banded together to stop him?
Yeah I feel like if it had been an international problem there would have been an international battle. In the real world, you can’t actually invade another country to help unless they ask for it without a huge amount of risk (according to my World Issues teacher).
I have this idea of a Wizarding UN and that with Voldemort it could have been a situation like Syria. It could have been that giving help might have caused other wizarding countries to fight whoever helped (in very broad and generalistic terms: China and Russia and Iran helping Syria vs Everyone Else), for political reasons.
Then you have the problem of choosing who to back (I don’t think pureblood supremacy is only a British Wizarding problem), and whether or not to fight civilian resistance groups, or the Snatchers.
I don’t think anyone would want another World War like with Grindlewald, and tbh, the simpler solution would have been to let the Brits deal with it, and I guess aid refugees?
Of course, lovespiper is making an interesting point (while I kinda ran on a tangent). Other wizarding communities could very well be hidden from each other or ignorant of each other. But I think that would be the smaller communities, only because it doesn’t make sense trade-wise (I remember in The Philosopher’s Stone there was talk of flying carpets not being banned in certain countries or something? And also, how would you explain Bill’s work in Egypt?)
As for the superiority some wixen might feel over those who use wands, I bet anything in the world that that’s the case sometimes, just like with the pureblood thing. departmentsofmysteries had a really interesting ficlet thing about wands potentially originally being a thing forced on people in detention camps to limit their magic use, which I thought was interesting.
The wand origins idea was a collab headcanon by thepostmodernpottercompendium and essayofthoughts, which they were kind enough to let me riff on for departmentsofmysteries.
The idea of a wixen UN/global alliances and relations is REALLY fascinating. I always equated the International Confederation of Wizards to the UN. And I wondered, couldn’t they have at least imposed sanctions on Voldemort’s Britain, or something?
I think part of the answer might be that the magical community is quite small. Hogwarts is usually estimated to have housed about 300-400 students AT MOST? Granted, there may have been a family here and there who decided not to send their kids to school, but even at a wildly overblown estimate of 100 home-schooled magic kids, that’s 500. Double it to account for the under-elevens. 1000. Then there are their families, and the single/childless/etc. 10K? 20K? The entire British wixen population is barely the size of a small town. Even if other major players in the International Confederation have ten times that many (America, Russia, China…) the magical population, globally, is MINUSCULE. Setting aside the issues that raises w/r/t sustainable population… It also means they are likely v. much spread out, with small pockets isolated in semi-magical communities like Godric’s Hollow, or Hogsmeade. And not as likely to have a highly organized form of government. Britain’s electoral system is shady at best (the Minister is said to be “appointed,” likely by the Wizengamot, but who appoints the Wizengamot? WHO?) and America is comparatively “new world” by wixen standards, I should think. It might be a total mess over there. Or maybe they’re locked in a race with Russia to land the first magical being on Mars… Maybe they don’t have peacemaking troops to spare because there are, like, 200 wizards in all of Hong Kong and they’ve got their own shit to deal with, thank you very much. Maybe, with such limited numbers, the sacred 28 families have connections all over the globe and there are just as many Malfoys/Notts/Mulcibers stirring up trouble in New York as London.
Maybe some of them thought Voldemort had the right idea.
Tangentially, can we envision what sort of contingencies the Int. Confederation would have re: Mutually Assured Destruction? These people can come up with HORCRUXES, they probably have some pretty twisted tricks up their sleeves.
International wizarding relations are MY JAM, and always have been, and I wished JKR had expanded on this more.
I’m looking up the international response to the Bangladesh Liberation War to see if I can make some sort of comparison. What stuck out to me was that very few countries got involved, even the UN barely made a dent, and when other countries did get involved it wasn’t because they had any strong feelings about Bangladesh but because they wanted to fight against their actual enemies. US supported Pakistan because they thought that if India (who supported Bangladesh) took over Pakistan they’d be spreading Soviet communism. The Soviets supported Bangladesh mostly to get at United States and China (who was also an ally to Pakistan and was one of the last countries to recognise Bangladesh as an independent country). Bangladesh’s own issues weren’t really of any particular importance to anybody; they were just convenient props for other countries’ own issues.
In HP canon flying carpets are banned in the UK, but are pretty common in South Asia and the Middle East. In one of the books there’s a mention of a businessman named Ali Bashir who gets really frustrated over this ban. In my Shafiq 28 verse the Bideshis are super frustrated about this ban, seeing it as a form of imperialism and racism (and this is probably one of the few things they’d be allied with the Maghribis/Pakistanis about).
I don’t know that they’d send people over to war unless specifically asked (as mentioned earlier). I see the international magical world as being a lot more segregated than the international muggle world - there’s obviously some sort of European alliance (Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, Hogwarts) but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of cooperation or understanding - especially when it leads to stupid stuff like banning flying carpets because they look too much like Muggle things while allowing flying brooms and Portkeys and Floo networks. And hey, have we seen the Brits be particularly interested in all the other countries when those countries are in conflict? Or are they all “not my problem”?
What could be possible is the other countries sending over aid after the war. Looking at this list of international response to Hurricane Katrina I see pretty amazing things like Bangladesh (which is much poorer than most of the world) giving $1 million.
This is also making me think of the response to the First Wizarding War, which we know has some parallels to WW2 (and it’s implied that the Nazi reign and Grindelwald’s rule were linked). It seemed that the international (really European) response to the Holocaust was mostly in housing Jewish refugees - I could see the Muggleborns escaping to nearby countries to protect themselves from the Snatchers (that would be a great fic idea actually: all these Muggleborn refugees from the UK now living outside the UK, maybe even outside the magical world, interacting with current-day refugees from the Eastern world who are being treated like shit, maybe some of them buy into that nonsense while some others become pro-refugee activists simply because they know what it was like even if others don’t think so because hey you’re British what do you know about being a refugee).
While the Holocaust is going on, there was also a lot happening in Asia - locals fighting off Japanese and British rule, various liberation wars, so on and so forth. And each region is focused on their own thing, just because there’s just so much going on. We don’t really hear of anyone like the Patils or the Changs in Marauders or OotP-era storytelling - maybe because the ancestors of Cho and Parvati and Padma were too busy dealing with stuff back where they came from or fled those countries to settle in England for safety and deliberately did not want to get involved with another fuckin’ war, or they could do what a lot of the Bengali shipmen did in the US around the 20s and 30s and organise people there to fight against British rule. All these smaller pockets that may not have anything directly to do with Lord Voldemort but were still part and parcel of the wars.
Hell there likely was some fallout from Lord Voldemort’s actions on the rest of the world even in Harry’s years - remember all the chaos that broke out during the International Quidditch World Cup? It’s likely that some of the casualties were foreigners - think of the pressure they might have put on the British MoM for not taking care of their people (I think Pottermore actually does have some info from JKR about the international wizarding world really not being happy with the UK MoM). Kind of like how China is pretty pissed off with Malaysia now because they still don’t know where MH370 is.
But how much would Harry be aware of this sort of thing? He’s never seem particularly interested in the wizarding world outside the UK; even Beauxbatons and Durmstrang get barely a mention. Yes he now has international in-laws (Fleur, and to some extent Bill and Charlie) but does he enquire deeply into their work? Not really. The person in the core cast who gets the most international exposure and curiosity in the entire series is Ron - he’s well-versed in international Quidditch and was excited about going to Egypt. We haven’t seen Harry or even Hermione venture overseas.
OK, enough digression. I don’t really agree that magic would be stronger or weaker with a wand, without a wand, with root languages, without root languages, yadda yadda. It’d likely be different, but not really anything you can measure on an appreciable scale. But I do think the perception of magical quality does play a lot into international magical relations, and I’m not sure there is a lot of magical collaboration even with the International Council of Wizards (I’m assuming Supreme Mugwump is like the UN Secretary General?). But it’s well established in canon that the British Ministry of Magic is hella corrupt and broken anyway - so possibly after the war, now that there’s some other Government, international relations are much more established.
[[UPDATE: BAH I got my tangents crossed. The Snatchers thing was a product of the 2nd Wizarding War, not the 1st Wizarding War - though it is possible that something similar existed in the 1st war too. Carry on!]]
On the origins of magic: how the wands came to be. (4/?)
From: Postcolonial resistance in the mythologies of the magical peoples of the South Asian subcontinent ed. Sunil P. Patil (1991).
Old magic. Old magic old magic old magic.
How could people forget?
How could people forget the magic that had helped raise the great stones, that had marked the stars that pyramids pointed to, that had sunk ancient cities and raised rivers from deserts?
How could they forget?
All too easily, the answer rang back, all too easily. They had forgotten how to live, breathe and drink magic. Had forgotten how the men of yore had lived without wands; how without those twigs the magic was channeled through movement and sway and song and sacrifice. How without those twigs the only barrier to the magic you could make was yourself, was your own mind, your own sacrifice. How without those twigs you could do anything when you had enough strength.
Magic was a muscle, the elders said. Practice with it and it shall grow, just as by lifting rocks and timber each day your muscles shall grow. But take one of those sticks, those little twigs and you are using a lever to do that work for you, you are letting yourself be weak when you could be so so so strong.
The young ones ignored them, pointed at them laughed at these elders stuck in their old ways with dreams of a great and ancient past but naught to show for those dreams, and argued that now they were old how could they sway and sing and sacrifice? Was it not better to do less for more? To conserve, waiting for a greater task, The Great Task? Why offer themselves up mind, body and soul to magic when in a moment, with a mere flick of a wrist, with a wand they could do the same thing just as well? And these elders could lament wands all they liked, but they had nothing to show for all their boasts of glory, could not with such precision, with such finesse accomplish the things these children could.
The elders’ faces were impassive.
The elders’ faces betrayed nothing.
So it went, for years and years, the children slowly outnumbering the elders, growing proud and mighty in their strength until the elders worried. Worried that in their pride the children would grow reckless, would forget that magic was no toy but a powerful force, one to be reckoned with - one that would demand its pay.
A great council they summoned, drawing magical folk from every corner of the uncivilized world and told them of their fears - of how they feared the children had forgotten the old magics of the world, had forgotten what it meant to channel power and force, what it meant to be responsible.
They fought. Father against son. Mother against daughter.
And late that night elders from every corner of the uncivilized corners of the world met in an old forest, untouched by time and human hands, still throbbing with the ancient magic of the world, deep and dark. There they breathed their old and ancient magic for the very last time, letting it seep through their veins, rich and heady and intoxicating. Then with calls foreign to all, they rose and bound their children.
You want wands? they asked the magic they worshipped and worked with, You want levers and magic getting weaker?
Then so be it.
They bound the magic and their children all at once, forever cursing those who took in hand the twigs they called wands, weapons, to be doomed to a life torn away from the old magics of the world. So it was that when a child used a wand, working wandless came to be a burden, a path fraught with great difficulty that few except the most dedicated would ever tread.
It is their punishment. The consequence of their folly.
When you see them, with their wands, remember the old magic, the magic that you breathe, drink and live. It is this magic in your veins, the magic of the civilized lands of the world. Dusty, old with time. Exercise it, children, use it, concentrate, feel it, let it flow through you, lest it be taken from you and lost forever.
I am disappointed, of course, that father never got to see this book. I think he would have quite enjoyed it. Would have found plenty of good use for it in his research.
Naturally, as you might imagine, the book is popular only among a few select academic circles in the wizarding world. Wands as punishment? Sacrilege! Though I suppose one ought to be thankful it did not receive the Myths of Magical Europe treatment. A.R.
(Submitted by essayofthoughts, with a few minor edits on my part.)
Amar baccha! My children, listen, for I have a story to share with you.
In the beginning there was the Kund, the deep wellspring from where the first Ohm of the Universe flowed. Soon other sounds and utterances flowed through, forming brooks of syllables, joined into streams of words, joined into rivers of sentences, joined into seas of stories, joined into oceans of truth.
And each sound and syllable and word, each sentence and story and truth, each little drop carried with it the Power of Creation and Destruction, the Power of Language: together like the ebbs and flows of tidal waves, like drought and floods, like sunshine and rain.
Creation comes from Destruction comes from Creation.
And this Power, the Power of Language, this exists for all those who speak, listen, write, read. For all those that carry Language in their heads and in their hearts. For it is Language that is your birthright and it is Language that is your responsibility.
And Language is not to be restricted, to be hoarded as though it is some precious and rare gold or silver. No, Language is to be shared by all, for it is everyone's birthright, and everyone's responsibility, to partake in the ebbs and flows of Creation and Destruction.
You are not the Master of Language, much like you are not the Master of Water or Air. You, all of you, are in Service to Language, much like you are in Service to Water or Air - Powers that create you, Powers that sustain you, Powers that destroy you.
There are some of you that will be entrusted to ensure the safety, sanctity, sanctuary of Language. You will be known as the Compassionate Ones, the Shafiqs, caretakers and custodians of Language and all those that wield it. It is your responsibility to care for the hearts and heads of those you serve, to ensure that their needs and desires are met, that they remain safe and protected and well. It is your responsibility to ensure that Language is shared freely, that Language is served for the greater good, that all hold access to Language and that your Language does not die before it is time.
And oh how its time will threaten to come! For there will be forces that claim to be Masters of Earth and Fire, claim their right to ravage your lands and control your people with ever-changing boundaries and restrictions. Forces that claim to be Masters of Water and Air and destroy all which you build in symbiosis to create that which dominates. Forces that claim to be Masters of Language, their own Language, while denigrating yours as lesser-than, impure, powerless.
And then there will be forces of your own. You claiming responsibility as privilege and using your custodianship as cruelty. You forgetting your own birthright and believing those that say your power can only be accessed by a select few through specific means foreign to you. You letting go of your Language, that which gives you Life, and forgetting all the syllables and stories and truths that it carries.
Destruction comes from Creation comes from Destruction.
The Power will still manifest, still create and destroy, even without your wielding of Language, even without those who speak and listen and write and read. It is Power that has existed before there was Humanity and will exist after there is Humanity, for it is Power that has created the Universe and will destroy the Universe.
Learn to approach Language with respect and responsibility, and you will gain strength, fortitude, prosperity, livelihood. But treat Language as though it is something you can control, restrict, deny, destroy, and you will find that it will control, restrict, deny, and destroy you.
And if you ever find that you are close to the brink of no return, return to the Waters: the oceans, the seas, the rivers, the streams, the brooks. Return to the wellspring, to the Kund, and call out for a new Ohm.
Remember this, baccha, for forgetting is the first step to Destruction without Creation.
[[source: Belinda Meggit So thepostmodernpottercompendium is hosting this really interesting series on the origins of magic which is now becoming an interesting story in progress. I have been meaning to write this story for a long time, ever since I found this picture in researching the bede, or gypsy boat people of Bangladesh: she's one of them. I knew she was the face of the dainee that mysteriously guides the Bideshis as soon as I saw her picture, and now I want to write her story. The line about the kund and the first ohm is from a piece by Minal Hajratwala, about being a kinky queer femme Indian woman. In the piece she plays a lot with language and draws the connection between "cunt" and "kund" - as in "kundalini". The name of the piece escapes me right now but it was performed in this year's Yoni Ki Baat in SF.]]
The English could laugh all they liked when they saw those charlatans peddling their amulets, lining the sides of Diagon Alley. But they were wrong to blithely dismiss all amulets as mere fripperies and fopperies, the province of the uneducated and superstitious.
After all, what did they know of magic outside of the narrow confines of their world?
But witches and wizards (and even muggles) from the Middle East knew a thing or two about warding and protection against dark magic - of how to trick the evil eye. What good was a shield charm once a curse had already been cast? What good was it to have the most powerful wards on one’s house, only to wander the streets completely unprotected?
Sheer folly.
But then these fools seemed to have a funny sort of magic, all yelling about and waving arms in a wild frenzy, with none of the subtlety, the cruelty of their magic - magic which necessitated protection at all time, for who knew when someone would cast their eye upon you and curse you, sweet, simple and painful?
A simple amulet, each nazar was carefully handcrafted in the fires of a glass-maker, an art nearly as old as time itself, and while it was being carefully molded, a skilled warder would mutter the incantations, weaving the magic into the very heart of the bead itself. The wards themselves were nearly as old as the glassmaking craft, many of them lost except in the oral tradition of these witches and wizards who dedicated their lives to crafting protective amulets to fend off the evil eye. Only the three Unforgivables would ever break through these wards, once one wore it against one’s skin. Every other curse was deflected, its magic broken and shattered on the spot.
Real wards for real magic.
These English witches and wizards could rightly laugh at the peddlers and hoaxsters along Diagon Alley. Those crudely made charms and amulets were not true ward magic, merely pale imitations - a relic of the imperialistic imagination of a magically impoverished people. These wizards and witches could laugh at them too, with their nazar dangling from simple rope threads ‘round their necks. Amulets and charms, mere superstition, yes, yes they could laugh at all their superstitious nonsense.
They would have the last laugh when those foolish men in masks came for them all.
(for readera)
[[I've mentioned nazar battus on this blog as being a common village magic charm for the Bideshis - here's how they came to be.]]
[[names!]]
[[so ever since Shafiq appeared in the Sacred Twenty-Eight list on Pottermore it's become a growingly-popular last name in fanfic, but there are some uses of Shafiq that kind of make me wince, even if unfairly.
The most jarring ones are the names where Shafiq is paired with a very bog-standard Anglo name - say Bob Shafiq or Jane Shafiq. Because the Potterverse isn't white-washed enough as it is? I often have to check myself when I see this happen because my own name is an English word (Tiara) and there are Anglo names that travel (Daniel, Sara), but even within my family tree that's fairly unusual.
The other extreme of this is picking very Arabic names and setting the characters as being from the Middle East. Yes, Shafiq is from Arab origin, but names travel! It's a common-ish Muslim name, and Islam has a lot of roots outside the Middle East - hell there are a lot more Muslims in Asia than Arabia. A lot of Africa is Muslim, Bosnia and surrounding Central Asia/Eastern Europe esque countries are Muslim, and there's all the converts and enclaves and intermarriages etc etc etc.
I've seen Bangladeshi Shafiqs and Malay Shafiqs (as well as variations on the spelling, such as Shafik and Syafiq) and I'm sure that there are Shafiqs of all sorts of ethnicities. I would love to see a lot more diversity not just in the naming, but also in the origin stories of these characters. How about, say, a Ali Shafiq, Malay wizard from Singapore? Or a Siti Nurain Shafiq from Jakarta? Or an Afroz Shafiq from the East Indian diaspora based in Kenya? Or or or...
So many possibilities for names, let's look outside the bog standard!]]
Agent Sparrow Field Report: October 26th, 2000
Lady Patricia Shafiq of Essex, matronly figurehead of the Ladies’ Snidget Preservation Committee of 1894, was widely known to despise humankind. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she did not discriminate between Muggles and Wixenkind: she simply disliked the company of everyone she met.
When all of her children were grown and her husband (mercifully, she wrote in her journals) had died of a painful illness, Lady Patricia made a curious request of her eldest son, who was a renowned spellcaster. She asked to be transfigured into a ship. The sea, she claimed, was the only thing that understood her and the only thing in the world she could abide, apart from the Snidgets in her garden (but one does not transfigure onself into a bird, which is poor form). Lady Patricia’s son, understandably, refused. But under pressure from his exasperated siblings and what he described as “constant nagging” from his mother, he eventually relented.
Lady Patricia spent the rest of her days adrift at sea, lending her services to one unsuspecting crew after another. It was reported one day that she capsized in a storm, and the ship’s remains were discovered shortly afterward, badly damaged.
Inheritors of the Shafiq estate have often claimed that on stormy nights a ghost ship (specifically the spectral imprint of a ship, and not a real ship populated by ghosts) is in the habit of appearing quite suddenly in the drawing room with a flock of Snidgets roosting upon its sails.
The Department has received countless requests to investigate. But some claims are simply too ridiculous to be entertained.
[1] Addendum: For more on the series of Department cases related to the Shafiq estate, see the Ministry’s genealogical archives.
...what weird relative of mine ended up in England way back in 1894?! And apparently married some crochety lady that preferred boats to people?!
Then again, from what I can tell, we do seem to have a thing for boats...
was she the dainee my mother always talked about?
-- Ayesha
Haha, interesting that you chose that passage to illustrate your point, because in the Shafiqverse magic is supposed to be the domain of everybody. Those spells mentioned? Basic stuff. Cast spells to protect your paddy fields and place anti-evil-eye charms. Just reappropriated so that the upper crust can hire other people to do it. As far as skill levels go those are close to the quick-wand-magic variety!
Oh! But like preparing the fields! I thought that would take effort. And tantra is sort of ritualistic, from what I recall.
Gaaaaaaaah. I need more hours in the day to do research.
N.B. Oops I misread a thing. Sorry guys. We’re going to stick with the Notts and trance magic example.
[["tantramantra" is what Google Translate gives me for the Bengali word for "spells"; it has no relation to tantra as the spiritual (or heavily appropriated) practice.
There is some ritual involved, I'd imagine (the Shafiqverse has some disdain for the quick-cheap-easy flicks of the wand), but there are differing levels of complexity, and this ranks amongst some of the easier stuff. The picture I had in my mind was closer to, say, reciting a few prayers and setting up a scarecrow.
I could see a case being made for some more intense ritual maybe at the beginning, or once a year or so, but general upkeep? Eh, pay the gardener.
A better example of the kind of intense ritual you're talking about is this account of shopnojyoti, dream magic - the idea which I yanked from livesandliesofwizards and expanded on as a nearly-lost art.]]
CAN WE TALK ABOUT MIDDLE EASTERN WITCHES AND WIZARDS THOUGH. AND HOW THEY'RE SPELLS WOULD OBVIOUSLY NOT BE LATIN, GREEK OR ANGLO SAXON, BUT INSTEAD LIKE ANCIENT PHOENICIAN, OR SOMETHING. AND THAT THEIR TIES BETWEEN SPELLS AND MAGIC WOULD BE STRONGER SINCE THEIR WORDS ARE MORE ANCIENT AND FAR OLDER SO THEY'D BE WAY MORE POWERFUL???? SORRY FOR THE CAPS?????
NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR CAPS. PHOENICIAN SPELLS. ARAMAIC SPELLS. LANGUAGES MUGGLES DON’T KNOW ANYMORE THAT HAVE BEEN PRESERVED THROUGH WIZARDING SPELLS IN LITTLE POCKETS OF THE WORLD. SOURCE LANGUAGES NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO ADAPT OR CHANGE ANYMORE BECAUSE THE LANGUAGES HAVE DIED AND PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO CAUSE LIKE, A NUCLEAR FALLOUT. IM SO EXCITED THANKS FOR THIS.
[[The entire foundation of Bengali/"Bideshi" (which I've appropriated to mean the magical enclave of Bangladesh sshhh) magic, as written in shafiq28, is the Bengali language. Bangladesh exists as a country because of the language: the magic runs deep and crosses muggle/magic lines.
There's likely some crossover with Arabic and Sanskrit too, given the origins of the Bengali language, and I can see Bengali magic also absorbing elements of those languages. And how what gets classified as "tantra" or whatever New-Agey spirit woo appropriation nowadays is really indigenous non-Anglo magic being played with by Western muggle-types who don't quite understand the power they wield.
Now I'm thinking of various holy texts as being the heart of a lot of magic, but that might put me into blasphemy territory. Then again, Malay shamans (bomohs) work with the Quran a lot, and I have vague memories of seeing this Bangladeshi holy/sort-of-magic man who would pray on our pencils and bless them for luck. So I can't see why the language thing wouldn't still apply. Maybe we've been rather misunderstanding the events of the Holy Books all this while.]]
[[Would anyone be willing to beta/critique/edit/give feedback for a short play I'm writing?]]
[[Hi all,
So between grad school and whereismh370 I've been a little too busy to work on shafiq28 or similar. However, I am making use of shafiq28 for something related and would appreciate some editing help.
I'm adapting this short story about Sabila and Faizal's decision to raise Ayesha primarily in English (based on a personal true story) into a 10-min performance piece for presentation at my MFA showing in April, as well as potentially the Short + Sweet Theater Festival.
Short + Sweet doesn't allow fanfiction, so I'm rooting the story in more realistic terms, and it's quickly turning into historical fiction: both parents survived the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War in their own way.
I haven't written a short play in a long time, and a lot of the war information is news to me too. I want to make sure I get the language right, as well as make it presentable. It doesn't have to be pitch-perfect or super polished, but I would like it to be good at least.
If you're willing to help look over the play, please let me know! You don't need to know Bengali or even have any particular experience in playwriting, though that helps.
Thank you!!]]
[[previously: one, two]]
Newly crafted headband? Check.
Kajol and rouge? Check.
Skinshade? Check.
Trixie dabbed on a splash of her lucky scent, a mix of vertiver and mint with thin slices of dirigible plum. It had become especially popular in these summer months for its cooling properties and she spent quite a bit of time brewing up bottles for her growing clientele, most of whom she met or would meet tonight.
Though for their bottles she left out the dirigible plum: that was her own little secret.
She placed a couple of those bottles in her bag, along with assorted sample bottles of some experimental mixes and a few other headbands, popped on a pair of red satin bar shoes, did one last mirror check, and made her way to Gatsby's.
***
Fern had been exaggerating somewhat about her connections to this semi-regular extravaganza. She didn't know Jay Gatsby - though to be fair, hardly anyone at the party knew him. Some people claimed to know him, but mostly he was myth and legend, perhaps apocryphal, extant only in the oohs and ahhs of the admiring.
She did have a cousin in New York, Ladon Greengrass, and that cousin really did know how to bring people together. Having moved to New York soon after graduating from Hogwarts to visit Gatsby (an old friend, he claims, though Trixie never figured out if that was true), he became the American point of contact for the British wizarding travellers who, like him and his cousin Fern, were piqued by rumours of a weird and possibly dangerous land where thrill-seekers flouted prohibitions and statutes, where magic flowed as freely as prescriptions for firewhiskey, where the exotic were prized and revered.
It was this love for the exotic, as fleeting and fickle as it could be, that earned Trixie's keep in New York. The fabled Orient had also captured the dreams of the denizens here and Trixie's fashion and perfumery were much sought after by those that wanted to be especially hip to the Hindoo jive. Her chachas and fupis could barely keep up with the jamdani orders that Trixie transformed into flapper dresses that made their wearers float as light as the fabric flitting on their skin, made to glow by saffron-gold-laced potions adapted from recipes shared by a friend of her grand-mère's, the resident mambo of her Brooklyn enclave who adopted her as one of her own.
Family.
The mambo was not at the party tonight, nor were the weavers of the jamdani. The rest of Trixie's family weren't here either. Not her blood family - they were either long gone or far away, and she was an only child - but her rag-tag chosen family, Fern and Ailene and Florence and Walter, forged far south, almost a lifetime and another world away.
She did try to invite Walter up here, but he kept blowing her off, telling her that he had some 'business to do first'. Last she heard from Florence she was planning to move to Virginia to pursue further study, but nothing since. And Ailene, sweet powerful secretly-magical Ailene who'd given her the final boost to her move out here - Trixie couldn't get a hold of her. Walter had said that Ailene was 'in a spot of trouble, but she'll be OK I think' - and then nothing.
Trixie tried to not freak herself out, blame herself for something she doesn't even know has happened. Maybe she's just busy. Quiet. Nothing's wrong. Surely
As for Fern? Fuck Fern. Fern had, just one day and out of nowhere, left. Moved her wanderlust on, perhaps, to some other actual exotic part of the world. Maybe somewhere closer to where the jamdani or the saffron-gold had come from. Trixie didn't know: the only warning she got was when she bumped into Ladon one evening and he made an offhand comment about seeing Fern the day before she left, expecting Trixie to have known about her departure. Fern didn't even bother to say goodbye, leave any way to get in touch. As if Trixie didn't matter worth a damn.
Trixie wished she could forget Fern the way Fern had forgot her. She drowned herself in the parties, the perfumery and couture, the liquor-spiked candies and never-spiced-enough roasts - anything to keep her mind away from the fact that Fern had left her hanging.
She still cared.. Cared, even if they'll never meet again. Parties and potions do not stifle a caring heart, no matter how much she tried.
But anyway. Enough reminiscing. Trixie has work to do.
***
The swarms around Trixie made it hard for her to even get a sip of her lavender champagne, but that wasn't too much of a problem.
Her new headband had a panel that changed colours according to the current fancies of the wearer. She observed the colours of the people trying on her samples: lots of metallics and golds and silvers - not surprising given the moneyed crowd that tended to frequent Gatsby's parties. Splashes of reds and pinks, the passionate and lascivious ones, joining the perpetually smiling yellows and oranges in chatting up other headband-wearers and making connections. The occasional purples and jewel tones, many whom Trixie recognised as being similarly gifted in magic as she was, others who spoke of poetry and spirit and learning. The rare rainbows and colour-shifters, ones who loved all the world had to offer, never content with just one path, a constant explorer.
Walter? Strong silver. Florence? A light yellow, or pale orange. Ailene would be a deep amethyst or ruby. Fern, fucking Fern, she would have definitely been a rainbow.
Trixie's headband shifted colours, currently floating the same shade as her drink. She was collecting names and numbers for preorders - a cool couple of hundreds dollars's worth, not a bad haul for one night - when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Ladon. Oh. Hey."
"Greetings, dear Trixie. There's someone I'd like you to meet."
Trixie had not really spoken to Ladon since hearing the news of Fern's depature, asdes from the occasional pleasantries when crossing paths at Gatsby's. She could have asked Ladon more about Fern, where she'd gone and how she's been, but it's hard enough to get someone who chat for longer than a few minutes at these parties, let alone the rest of New York. Besides, if Ladon wanted to talk to her he could have made more of an effort to do so.
Trixie took down the last name, closed her notebook, and turned to face Ladon and his companion: a striking, strapping figure, his face hardened with scars and stubble, sporting one of the headbands that Ladon had borrowed from another party-goer. Teal.
"Looks...interesting on you," said Trixie, stifling a laugh. "You much of an outdoors person?"
The companion's eyebrows perked with cautious curiosity. "In a sense, yes," replied the companion. "How could you tell?"
Trixie explained the magical science of the headband to him: how they were based on the divinatory art of scrying, the panels made out of squares of black mirror coated with a specially brewed solvent giving it its colour-changing properties. Her adoptive mambo had used scrying mirrors often in her witching work to get the lay-of-the-land of the situation at hand, and aura-reading had just caught on as the latest spiritualist craze. Trixie saw an opportunity to combine her skills and cash in - everyone wanted every part of themselves to be pretty and glitzy, why not the soul?
"Ah, the old magic - I haven't seen this since I helped tracked the African jungle manticore over in Tanzania," mused the companion. "Indeed, the colours in your ornament remind me of the streelers I occasionally ran into - though perhaps their changes in colour were less metaphysical, more physiological."
Trixie wasn't sure what to make of this strange man's answer. He knew about magic - but that wasn't necessarily so unusual in New York, even if many didn't take it all that seriously. Yet he spoke of this magic as though it was a foreign, ancient, long-dead relic, the domain of the yet-to-be-civilized. Something to be studied by the ones more educated.
And what was all this about manticores and streelers?
Ladon stepped in: "I should introduce you two. Trixie, this is Newt Scamander, an old friend visiting from England, he's a magizoologist. Newt, this is Trixie Shafiq, she's a close friend of my cousin Fern, you may have been at Hogwarts at the same time. She's an artisan, mostly with clothing and perfumery and accessories...like that headband you're fiddling with."
Hogwarts. That fancy British magic school Fern talked about. So he too was magical.
"Hello Newt, fancy meeting you," said Trixie. "What's a magizoologist do?"
"I study animals - magical ones."
"Ah, explains your manticore business. Fitting name, by the by, Newt. Mind if I call you Figsy?"
"Figsy?"
"Y'know, like Fig Newtons. Damn good treats. You ever had one?"
"Can't say I have."
"Let me see if I can get some for you," said Ladon, waving down a waiter. Soon after the waiter returned with a tray of thick rectangular cookies; as Newt bit into one the cookie crust crumbled, revealing a tart dark paste.
"Hm, not bad," said Newt after finishing the cookie. Trixie smiled and helped herself to a few off the tray.
"Good. Figsy it is, then."
"While we're on the topic of names - yours. Shafiq. Don't think I've heard that before, though it seems a little familiar. But anyway. Very unusual. Exotic."
Trixie had the very odd sensation of being examined, like one of Florence's teenage science experiments.
"Fancy yourself a little Oriental, I take it?" continued Newt. "It's such the rage, even in old Blighty town..."
Trixie winced. Yes, her 'exoticness' is what allowed her to be successful, but for heaven's sake, you don't call people Oriental, that's for rugs and knick-knacks.
"My name is mine," said Trixie, biting her inner lip to stop her from yelling. "'Trixie' was given to me by friends, but Shafiq was from my father - who was from the Subcontinent."
Newt, oblivious to Trixie's measured reaction, picked up another Fig Newton and tore off a bite to eat as he prattled on. "Ah, you're Hindoo? You don't look at all -"
Trixie yanked Newt's wrist, the cookie collapsing on the shiny tiled floor. Her skin shifted shades the same way as her headbands, moving from near-alabaster to dark chocolate. Her face rounded a little, her eyebrows fuller, her eyes so wide open they startled Newt and Ladon with their intensity.
"Don't tell me where you think I am from," snarled Trixie, gaze locked on Newt. "Everybody does, and they are always wrong."
Ladon was dumbstruck by Trixie's attitude, but Newt didn't seem to be particularly frazzled. Instead, he beamed, like a kid discovering a new toy.
"You're a Metamorphmagus!"
Trixie's grip returned and tightened on Newt's wrist. "A what now? Figsy, are you calling me some sort of animal?"
Newt pulled his hands away from Trixie and shook his wrists out. "Oh no, no no no. They're most definitely people, just a rare sort. Shapeshifters. They can change the way they look. Though the ones I know of tend to opt for less...subtle changes. Purple hair and duck faces, that sort of thing. Just a little fun, y'know."
"I don't know about fun, Figsy - I know about survival." Trixie could have shapeshifted into dynamite based on mood alone. "My parents taught me this to make sure no one could hurt me for thinking I was an alien. Things weren't so good for our kind. Still aren't."
"I don't understand. Surely shapeshifting in public would get you even more persecution from the Muggles?"
Muggles? The word seemed familiar, and yet...
"He means people without magic, Trixie," said Ladon. "You know, people not like us. Like the people who bought your headbands thinking it was just some silly fun."
Trixie's loud cackle held a hint of bitterness. "Honey. It's not your so-called Muggles I have to worry about. You go to New Orleans - hell, you leave this party and go to the real New York, and you'll see magic out in the open. Everyone knows and nobody cares. Where do you think this spiritualism jive all came from? No, you know who I'm more worried about? White folk."
Trixie's features shifted again, now more closely resembling one of the other flapper girls at this party - bright skin, cropped blonde hair, a dash of freckles. "My people are getting locked up for being the wrong color. My father's people - they didn't know what we are, White or Colored or Turkish or Malayan or Italian or what. One time the big lawmakers said we were White, which means we should be OK."
"But then people realised, people like my father - we're not exactly light-skinned. So we started getting in trouble." Trixie's features shifted back to the version that surprised Newt and Ladon: her usual, non-Magic-created self. "My mother's people, they would never be OK. They were Colored, the bad kind of Colored. Means you could get hauled up just for existing sometimes. They used to call themselves Hindoo to try and protect themselves, but then the White folk started hating Hindoos and now we're all in trouble."
Trixie suddenly had a flash of Fern: she wasn't exactly White either. But she was British, from a land where the magical ones lived apart from these Muggles. Do they treat their Colored folk the same way there? Was that why she disappeared? Walter, Ailene, Florence...? Is that why...?
"You could be arrested just for being not White?" said Newt in disbelief. "What a barbaric lot these Muggles are!"
"Oh don't be too sure that it was all Muggle, Figsy boy. As I said, everyone knows about magic. Some of those White people causing trouble for us were also magical. Catch you in a corner, chant some words - boom! Off a tree you hang, upside down, don't even need a rope."
"Hang off...wait, how did you survive?"
"We use glamour. This Metamorph thing you said it was. Both my parents knew what to do. They taught me glamour magic, taught me how to transform just enough so that I could blend in just enough to get by. Or stick out a little if the place was right. Like here - being a little unusual helps my business. But not too unusual or else they think I'm one of the waitstaff - or worse, that I cheated my way in. Look around, boys - you see anyone darker than these cookies round here?"
Ladon and Newt saw mostly people that looked just like them: White, European, not likely to have their ethnicity questioned by the authorities. They wondered if some of them were like Trixie, shifting themselves to safety.
But what if you weren't born a Metamorphmagus - well, as they know it, Metamorphmagi are born not made - but Trixie seemed to imply that this 'glamour' business could be taught - there didn't seem to be that many magical Colored people that they knew - were they all -
"You see, boys, when you have to walk through multiple worlds all the time, when you're never one nor the other, when what other people think you are is more important than what you think you are - you don't have to be some Metamorphwatsit. Or even magical like us."
Trixie looked out at the crowd in front of them, a mess of magic and glitz and illusions. Everyone dolled and suited up to present as fine society. Everyone, in their own way, using glamour magic.
"If you want to survive? You knew how to shapeshift."
[[source: Heather Romney some ideas from other blogs have been linked where relevant. SO VERY SORRY for the long delay. I've been busy with a show, and then MH370 has been sucking so much of my energy. I'm not entirely content with how it ends, mostly because there's one last small thing I want to make happen but don't know how. But I've been working on this for ages and wanted to get it out there. According to Bengali Harlem the South Asian immigrants were designated White for a while, and there had been many other POC that assumed themselves as "Hindoo" to gain the same racial protections, but it didn't last very long.]]
The Sacred Twenty Eight: The Noble and Most Ancient Houses of Shafiq and Shacklebolt (2/?)
Pictures, left to right: Jallianwala Bagh Massacre 1919, Non Cooperation Movement 1920-21, Dandi Salt March 1930, Bengal Famine 1943, Trains during the Partition 1947, Indhira Gandhi visits Bangladeshi refugee camps in Bengal 1971.
He does not understand, when he is five, why his mother is weeping for people in a far away place with a strange name which is not home.
When he asks her, she only cries harder, and his father grips him roughly by his shoulder and pushes him away, admonishing him for troubling his mother. Someday, his father says, you will understand.
(He does not tell them, after asking his ayah, that he still does not understand why they care about wicked people who think they can get away with murdering innocent people. Why should they care? They are not their people.)
He does not understand, two years later, when they return from the Halloween ball at the Ministry of Magic; the wrath of Kali herself writ large upon his mother’s countenance (though she has long since given up her old family gods) and his father’s eyes shining with the same light of battle which must have once shone in their forefathers’ eyes as they swept out of the Hindu Khush following Muhammad of Gor.
Shafiqs are landowners and caretakers, yes, says his father, we grow and we create and we heal the land, but there is also anger in our hearts and when the time comes, we are warriors as well and all men quake when a Shafiq raises his arms to go to war.
(He tells his father he is not a Shafiq then, because there is no anger in his heart and his father only laughs and ruffles his hair and tells him that when he is older, the anger will burn in his heart too.
It is the last time, for a very long time, he hears his father laugh so openly.)
He does not understand, nearly twenty years later, why his mother both laughs and cries at the letter his father sends them from the old country, complaining about the damn bilatis thinking they’re clever by refusing to put us in prison. This is no laughing matter, being put in prison. It is wrong to break the law.
His mother silently hands him a book by a man called Olaudah Equiano and tells him that sometimes men make bad laws and it is for them, the ones who take care of their people, to fight those laws.
(He begins to understand, a few years later, when he realizes that his colleagues at the Ministry care more about Grindelwald’s war and its ill effects on England, not the millions starving back home, or the boats burning to keep the Germans (or the Japanese) from freeing his people; when they talk of oppression by muggles and he wonders what the non magical folk have ever done to them that can be compared to what they have done to his people - then he understands, they do not look beyond their navels, so they exaggerate their pain, these pampered dandies.)
He does not understand why his father is grim-faced and his mother cries and cries and cries when Clement Attlee finally gives their countries Independence and the bilatis leave. It is a time for celebration - they have finally won their war. People die all the time. Let them die; they are not their own, they are muggles they do not have magic.
His mother goes into hysterics when he says this and his father fixes him with such a stare, he nearly wets himself.
Are you a Shafiq? His father asks him, are you my son or a son of a pig? A fool that you spew such nonsense? Are you blind? Have the bilatis turned your brain to porridge?
(He understands, a little, when as he watches his mother’s body burn on the funeral pyre, the tears begin to flow. Death is not easy to see. His father gruffly tells him to be a man and stalks away. Proud and tall as always.)
He begins to understand even more, when he meets his Anglo-Indian wife’s family and he listens to them drawling away about how the homeland is dirty and stinky and his people are backward. They are your people, your forefathers he wants to yell, but smiles apologetically as his wife squeezes his hand sympathetically underneath the table.
He understands better, when he reads Macaulay’s Minute on Education (1835) and he reads these words:
We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
He finally understands properly, twenty three years later, why his mother wept when their people, once united by common cause against their oppressors, turn on each other and commit genocide over divisions created by those very same oppressors they fought to drive away. He understands, when not a murmur is heard in the Ministry of help to be sent to them - when British newspapers are silent about sending troops to help clear up the mess they made in the first place.
But by then it is too late to teach his son what it means to be a Shafiq; to be rich and yet have anger burn in your heart.
So he teaches his grandson instead. These are only stories to them both, but he sees the fire of anger in his grandson’s eyes when he teaches him the history they do not teach them at Hogwarts. Of how the men of this country went to their homeland and stole from them in the greatest sanctioned robbery in the history of the world - 2.5 billion pounds (probably a lot more) stolen to never be returned. Of how, for two hundred years, they were taught that their ways were inferior and foolish, based on superstition not science. Of how they burnt their boats and stole the very souls and identities of people by turning them British, by turning them against their own culture (like your father, he says regretfully).
Of how these very men turned their people against each other: one religion against each other, countries arbitrarily divided along the lines of religion leading to one of the largest massacres in history. Of how ten million of their people were displaced overnight, in a war caused by the same arbitrary division of nations along the line of religion and politicking - this time for culture and language, because truly what did people in Dhaka have in common with people in Islamabad besides a vague commonality the bilatis decided superceded all other commonalities? But now ten million people fit neither here nor there - they were not Bengali because they were muslims but they were not Pakistanis either (how could they be, those northeners were so different.) Ten million people with no identity, always to live unsure of themselves. This was the story of their people; magical or not, all of them were theirs.
And then many years later, his eyes are misty with tears as he watches his seventeen year old great grandson snap his wand and declare that he will not live as a bilati wizard among a people with no conscience and no guilt for their cruelty. He goes to muggle university instead, and then returns to his homeland to make a difference by working in a muggle NGO, practicing their old magic. The magic of their forefathers. And nobody serves him notice for using magic in the presence of muggles.
It is a start, he supposes, and then imagines his father would be proud. The anger has burnt in his heart and he has passed the flame of anger on. They will be caretakers, they will be warriors.
There will always be a Shafiq as long as they remember.
[Pic sources will be added later. Many thanks to notyourexrotic for helping with various bits of information and shaping this story (also for their incredible project shafiq28 which, I’ll be honest, shaped the headcanons for this one in a huge way). I never liked the whole Statute of Secrecy biz given its ramifications when you apply them to other countries outside of the Euramerican region - its similarities with the whole divide and rule policy which governed Brit colonial policies when they were leaving countries are far too close for comfort.]
[[re-reblogging for this as there's been an update to the original.]]
$2500 academic scholarship Think you embody the LeakyCon spirit? Have you seen the magic of storytelling work in your life? Going to college for the 2014/2015 school year? Then this scholarship is for you! The LeakyCon Scholarship is merit-based and can be used toward tuition for a degree-granting program at any 2- or 4-year college or university. Students with a cumulative GPA of at least 3.0 (4.0 scale) are encouraged to apply.
$5000 arts fellowship We’ve seen some amazing art coming out of the LeakyCon community, and we hope to see more of it! The LeakyCon Arts Fellowship will award $5000 to the artistic project which best reflects the ideals of LeakyCon. Funds can be used for project materials or as financial support for the artist while he/she creates his/her masterpiece. The winner will be invited to LeakyCon 2015 to present the completed project.
Jesus. It’s a little too late for me to apply to the academic scholarship, but $5000 for art? Wow, that is super generous.
An art project to do with fandom and storytelling, possible bonus points if Harry Potter. I immediately thought of something to do with Shafiq28, but am not sure what’s worth $5000 asides from living expenses. A trip to Dhaka? New Orleans and New York? Bangla language lessons? A stack of books?
My MFA advisor thinks I’m on to something with Shafiq28 and suggests I turn it into a book somehow. I would need to somehow change the context to make it less Harry Potter heavy simply due to copyright concerns (ah, why are you not in the public domain already), but otherwise…a Shafiq 28 novel? LeakyCon does ask what you plan to do with the project afterwards anyway. Hm.
Or maybe there’s another option I hadn’t thought about - maybe something to do with liminality, or sexuality, or identity, or the various other topics I already grapple with in my art. Or maybe put together than Wizarding Decameron (though why that needs $5000 I’m not sure.) Ideas?
