All posts tagged: writing

Beyond Esoteric Muses

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“At moonset  I was born  Dawn leaned over the universe  And night’s breast  In rage tore its tunic.”  ~Malika al-Assimi   —  The women are for expansion. Sinuous, flexuous, their gentle force pervades through the motley Silk Road, at moonrise, at moonset, captured in the archaic record of the times and sealed in the arc of the human story. A woman’s story.  The archaic Muslim woman. Muse of orientalist writing: the literary cannon across time and distance; folk tales and oral traditions; beguiling the senses of male poets; and perplexing the ethnocentric gaze. Yet what was the lesser explored reality of the Muslim woman of the Medeival period and the Middle Ages, the woman who was infinitely more than a captivating and well-documented beauty and object of desire? Who were the woman merchants of Abbasid Baghdad; the caravan investors of Damascus; the property-owning widows of Cairo; and the brains behind marriage alliances through which salient and pivotal trade networks would proliferate and flourish? The powerful women from grasslands of Central Asia to the oscillating deserts of …

Occupied Alphabet

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I.I use google translate to convey English phrases in Arabic sometimesA client tells me she is depressedAnd her father has been having tremors since the war startedBut usually when he is doing typically stressful things like dealing with an angry customer orFixing that damn light in the bathroom that won’t stop flickering even though the bulb is for sure new I type in the word “somatic” to try and figure out how to explain the correlation between the brain and the bodyAnd my insides laugh mockinglyUsing english to explain the destruction that the they third person pronoun have caused I think we got the order wrong in grad schoolThe disease cannot also be the medicine My people do not understand healing as a clinical hourThis lexicon of pain is not a researched and deliberately punctuated abstract,it is a slangAnd its letters are clear on the back of my grandma’s hands who birthed nine babies and buried some tooand knew to sweep the floors when it got too much and knew to pet the cat when …

Surfing along Morocco’s Western Coast: In Conversation with Local Surf Maroc

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At MZAB, we were fortunate to get in touch with the team at Local Surf Maroc, a locally owned Moroccan surf school and surf camp in Tamraght, along the Western Coast of Morocco in Taghazout Bay. In the interview, we explore the founder Rachid’s story, what it was like growing up an ocean child, and the transformative nature of water. Read on as we learn what to pack for a surfing retreat, the powerful moments water can bring to the word Rachid lives by. Q1 Thank you so much for the interview! At MZAB we love adventure, modern day and adventurers and exploring cultural history, ritual and artefacts. Tell us more about yourselves (Christina and Rashid) and the inspiration behind Local Surf Maroc. Rachid (the founder) grew up with the ocean always within view. His earliest memory of being an ocean child was when his family would go to Killer Point to collect mussels to cook for dinner that same evening. With his father being a fisherman, Rachid was introduced to swimming among waves and local …

In Conversation: Artist Dalya Ismail on Impressionism, the Nostalgia of Sudanese Kinship and the Destiny of Names

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Dalya Ismail is the founder of creative studio D.I. Design and is an interior designer and artist of Sudanese origin residing in the UAE. Read below as we caught up with her on her formative years, lines of poetry she lives by and the sanguine years she spent in Sudan. Thanks for allowing us to interview you Dalya, at MZAB we love your art, and the culture you represent. Tell us more about your upbringing, what got you involved in artistic expression and turning points in your formative years that influenced your work  Thank you so much! My upbringing played a major role in my art and design journey having been exposed to many cultures and ways of being all my life. I was born in the US, spent my formative years in Sudan, then moved to Sultanate of Oman. I spent my late teen and adult life in different parts of Canada and currently reside in the UAE. Despite the heavy influence of my travels on my current artistic expression, it was those few …

Nature is the First Witness

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Crescendos hum, the Nile snarls against new banks, the Hornbill’s beak opens skyward sinking in uliginous ground, brown coconuts refuse to crack open, the Atlantic will not carry blue ships. Vying toddler’s smile suddenly droops to his shoulders. A newly developed embryo wishes to degrow. Accra’s night air crystallises upon an inconsequential second. And the silence. The silence of The Book quietly observes these sighing eulogies. These magnificent sighing eulogies of a clamouring natural kind.

Better times

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What will you say when the clouds break to show you a sun you’ve been seeking in yourself What will you say when the better time finally arrives cool, collected, a light seeping through white teeth What will you say when tired wrists will weigh heavy with the bracelets of Kisra when the life you used to mourn will become the coolness of your eyes when the secrets of the heart will dance- collide to make a heart well lived- a life well lived. K.Y. Djassi is a poet and writer based in the UK.

Childhood

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I am nostalgic for the future. Those days of hushed murmurings in Wolof and the razor sharp innocence I wish to find again tomorrow. I feel I am without roots, circumventing a shadow that has for so long been my bed. Waking up to dreams has for too long been a reality. These are the days where the people we have made home in depart one by one, taking parts of ourselves with them. These are the days where the aged who have the most rights to life here must leave. Yes. Such are the inner recesses of my mind. All types of weeds grow here and all manner of indigenous flora must be pruned. One day I may let the green coiling fingers reach and reach until verdant leaves surround my thoughts. Until the sun rises again and the dappled light of childhood resurfaces and pours out of my head. Soukeyna Osei-Bonsu is a poet and writer based in London. She is author of the chapbook “All The Birds Were Invited To A Feast In …

k.eltinaé, borders and butterflies

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k.eltinaé is a Sudanese writer of Nubian descent and a third culture kid who with his poetry collection, negotiates borders and ideas as adroitly and beautifully as the argonaut that is the butterfly.  Vacillating between love and longing, displacement and arrival in his profound collection titled ‘the moral judgement of butterflies’ k.eltinaé’s body of work is at once arresting and searing, spiritual and heart wrenching. As my copy of his collection arrives, I eagerly open the pages to mine the words which have captured the startling rage, love and poetic musings of a writer who from culture to migration, war to peace has a lot to say about and to the world. – ‘nefsi’ I am upon the first reading drawn to read and re-read the poem ‘nefsi’ (translated from Arabic to mean ‘my soul’, ‘my own self’). For those that are on their own journey to self love / acceptance / those who are battling the troughs of their own minds and seeking words of affirmation which are just as impactful as West Indian …

The Railroads Know

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When time stopped I still carried the hope of moving with eyelids too tired to carry new baggage when I finally sleep in an attempt to shut out all that’s new or reset this body I wake up to an old day an old year and I am glued to bed not sure if inertia is a lack of direction or waiting to be saved. Not sure what it means to remain still when it feels like there’s nothing that remains. the railroads keep track of all you’ve lost on the waythat one time you carried the sorrow of an entire village but forgot to pack your feetor the time you emptied the cupboardshaboba always said you can never use what you display the railroads keep track of all you’ve traded on the wayremember the acceleration of your dreams picking up speed of legs racing oneanother and a child between your feet believing you’re a motorcyclehow do you break the cycle if all you do is jump tracks? the railroads listen and talk back but …

Express Shipping

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“no one puts their children in a boatunless the water is safer than the land” after Warsan Shire somewhere between the north and south polethere’s a boundary between a calendar dayand the next–if crossed right may cross outthe ink of yesterday and maybe evenfor a moment I will cease to exist briefly I used to think to express isto exorcise until I emptied my tank tryingto drive [..] out of my system, or is itto filter, a memory as selective as a cataloguesort: emotion low to high somewhere between my navel and diaphragmstands a piece of string, stuck but plays the saddestlullabies to keep me from sleeping or forgettinghe says all of the things I have not healed frombecome my muses and I stand at the border not knowing which is which–see there’s thisline between my navel and diaphragm that onlyI can see but it darkens, becomes more visibleselect: next day delivery somewhere between […..] and [….]I lost myself–no one ever tells you how tocalculate or declare your value, whereto collect the pieces or replacewhat …