#mashallahproject

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MAS#ALLAH by Storybrook Media

A little interview with Hawa on this project- a glimpse into some of the ideas orbiting MAS#ALLAH.

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'Identity' by Hana

I did this oil painting/oil pastel/paper + digital collage thing when I was 17.

So, back story, my mother is British and Christian, and my father is Moroccan and Muslim. Both me and my sister struggled a lot with our identities, racism, and islamophobia growing up. As a result of that I began resenting my Moroccan side and was embarrassed to even be seen with my dad - who like most Moroccans, made it no secret we were Moroccan, and I hated that. My sister and I lived most of our childhood through just one half of ourselves.

I had a revelation in my early teens. I started to love that side of myself more than I ever had before, it was the most empowering feeling. I began delving more into my fathers family history and fell in love with it. This is around the same time that I discovered my Amazigh roots, which if you know what to look for you’ll see hints of in this picture.

It’s not hard to guess what I was feeling when I did this. I know It just looks like one big jumbled mess and you can’t quite make out the whole image, but interpret that how you will.

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Family by Tonia [farsi]

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family

i learned in elementary school families grow on trees. i had to put my mother, father, grandparents, cousins, people my parents told me existed all on green paper leaves. One vein down the middle gave it life. Attached to an ugly brown stump with branches I learned to make by drawing a ton of "v's."

you, yes you, were a little leaf. i don't remember how long ago when you left dance lessons and storytelling as the only memories of you i had. i became a ballerina, i loved to dance so much. but your little leaf grew arms and picked itself off the ugly stump. i think maybe it didn't suit you the way your structured looks do.

maybe you fell freely towards the ground, maybe you were scared. something blew you away and i never knew where the tumbling took you.

in middle school i learned families didn't always have green leaves. my father's leaf turned brown and the veins in my leaf grew smaller. i was so dehydrated and tiny, my mother had to take me to the doctor. while an IV sat inside my right vein, the doctor prescribed me Boost bars and Velveta cheese to gain weight. i was still a ballerina.

in high school i drowned in small sizes and remained unnoticed. i stuck my nose in books and my head mostly dreamed in images i'd never seen before. overachiever with gap sweaters tied around my waist so my womanhood didn't leak and freak people out. i broke up with ballet and it tore my heart apart to know, for my family, art is not life.

in college i learned to love, and i learned to love books even more. i traded satin shoes for essays on foot binding and body modification. somehow fascinated with pushing bodies to the extreme, i never felt like bodies could ever hold all of human potential. my stem was letting loose from the stump and i think you were taking root somewhere

after college i "abandoned" family for finding my personal potential. i knew you were somewhere nearby and maybe could understand. maybe knew something about art and how it could fit in my life again. just a blip on my radar though, you never responded to my signals.

you're pretty now. gorgeous beautiful. i found you in a dark trough all the animals came to feed at. you're a leaf with pearl-lined veins and elegant edges. i burst, remembering when you taught me about peaches.

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Things I never say...

I never say I am 100% anything.

Made up of fears that I trust and faiths that I doubt,

Life can be a still contradiction in motion

I am envious of those who know

What they want

How they want it

How they’ll get it

Where they’ll go once they get it.

Sometimes I don’t know my brain from my heart and an overshare is sure to follow.

Now, I am sure that I will be taken care of.

Only because whether I stress or not, I am…

Taken care of.

Only because the rent miracle is a monthly show in devotion.

Only because my existence is living proof of surviving beyond expectation.

I was never expected to come out from under the black sheeps shadow

So I spontaneously combust firelight that burns snaps and crackles

I never say, “I smile all the time”

Stop asking me what’s wrong?

There is not enough seconds, hours, or days to answer that question

If you really care to know how I am start by looking into my eyes.

I have a natural frown

Sometimes my face gets tired of pinching the corners of my mouth to make people feel comfortable.

Letting the skin drop, chill, ripen.

Until its ready to produce bittersweet fruits of an emotional eruption

Feelings flow lava.

Create land to plant ideas

My pout is from the Sahara thru N. Afrika into the Crescent of civilization

And I think it’s sexy

A pout that says, “Go ahead, move me.”

To push through generations of everyday plight in this human experience

This face is culmination of what peace may look like.

African. Arab. Jew. Queer. Woman. Unapologetic.

Peace is never easy when everyone feels they’re right

A pout that says, “Inspire me.”

Into some sort of passionate response.

Either deepen this organic skeptism

Or shallow the springs that bubble excitement fromtwisted point of view

I never say, “You will always stay with me”

I fear not losing you

I mean, I fear losing you not

I mean, I am not afraid to lose you.

You were never mine and I love that about us

I am never yours and I never said I was

So the name game is not necessary

Call you Mother Father Lover Partner Money

You are free to go where your karma takes you

I never say, “This shit right here dosen’t scare the hell out of me.”

Because it does

In a way that pushes away all the voices that say, “DON’T”

So I did

& I am beyond happy

Beyond this skin

For the first time in, 

I don’t know how long.

Feeling like I am answering the call that I heard in the womb

In a dark maternal galaxy.

Black and Infinite.

Stardust swirling

Birth. Life. Death. SupaNovahhh

I never say, “Never”

Infinite energy that can not be extinguished

At some point I will say it all.

Just as it has all already been said done or sung

I will add my voice into the melting pot

Let it be poured into the molds that I design

Harden, to be melted, to be molded, to be golden.

To be everything I say it will be.

-Aima the Dreamer

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i could cry endlessly for the anger and sadness i brought back from afghanistan. 

there are mountains in my chest, and when i breathe, blood pumps through the valleys and frosts the peaks with cold hate breath in solidarity with my father's land. the pain of avalanches cripples me, ripping through my chest cavity and dissolving guts into a severe lack of appetite. my eyes are tired from wetness and my skin drenched. every trail of salt down my limbs is a memory line connecting me to the hopelessness of my people.

1. the cousin who jokes about sometimes just wanting to put a gun to his head because he either gives in to corruption or protects his morality and falls prey to corruption's deadly hand.  2. the blast outside the us army base killing 8 children excited to greet a missing friend, not knowing his chest was full of mountains of dynamite.  3. widows laying in middle of the street pity pits, too disconnected to beg. 

when i sit in the sun, i can feel salt lines harden into heavy wrinkles and my eyes turn that perfect blend of blue green; an ocean rocking to the blood orange moon.

the moon burns with anger, that every night it rises to illuminate a country naked and scared. sometimes the moon doesn't rise to blanket my people with night and all they have are the stars in the mountains, flickers of minute long gas lamps to see just enough of what might still be sacred when there is no light. my country is stripped bare and this is why we wear burqas.

we wear them to protect ourselves from the gaze of humans with a front cover poverty complex. to protect the mountains, the weariness of seeking refuge all over the world only to feel phantom pains of land crying dry tears please help. i don't know how to help other than to empty skull oceans and excavate the mountains in my chest, taking a page from colonizers to hurry toward the secret of flawless civilization myself. self-colonization is the path to peace, but my body knows war now.

i'm thanking the wrinkles in my skin for allowing me to stretch into transforming the anger into reflection, into remembering the inherited mourning of conflict- a place my mother once wore mini-skirts in.

Obscura by Hawa