Monday Matter: Dead stars and the disaster-verse

Your biweekly Foreign Bodies roundup

Every other Monday, I send subscribers and gift recipients of immigrant mental health and storytelling newsletter Foreign Bodies stories I recently inhaled and adored. This is also a chance to do some housekeeping and give shout-outs and all that jazz.

Word vomit: Dualities

This morning at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul was beaten and arrested by Israeli forces. He was on scene with his crew and other reporters to cover the army’s fourth raid into the hospital, where thousands of civilians, including medical staff and patients, remain trapped.

I read this and am enraged at fellow American journalists more than anyone else in the world. Then I open a silly text from a friend that makes me laugh and hate myself for forgetting my anger for even a moment.

I read about another flour massacre and still don’t understand how those words can couple, flour and massacre. My dog hiccups and I smile and hate myself for smiling. I watch a video unboxing the nonsense inside those floating aid packages from our guilty government and find myself at another protest, screaming at the president.

We go out for my friend’s 34th and a mutual friend tells me he sees me and feels me and hurts, too, and then, to keep myself from weeping at this birthday dinner for someone who has saved me in so many ways, I down two whiskey cocktails knowing well and good I can’t hold my liquor. I am grateful for the acknowledgement and don’t know what to do with the weight of it.

It has been 163 days since Oct. 7 and 27,702 days since May 14, 1948. I can’t go anywhere without wearing a keffiyeh either draped over my shoulders or tied to my purse. I read Ingrid Rojas Contreras’ essay in Letters to a Writer of Color on writing trauma and think about my therapist’s advice and try to convince myself that joy is essential to the fight.

I see this tweet: As things get increasingly dire politically, I think it will be important to learn to love the fight. Part of you must find pleasure in defiance, refusal, and even sabotage. That’s needed for longevity.

I think about the laughter at protests. The kids in keffiyehs who always want to hog the mic, the Palestinian aunty who always screams with such passion no one knows what she’s saying but that’s OK, she can scream and we’ll listen for hours. I laugh when I think about the cops whose patronizing body language dwindles as protesting momentum increases, as cars honk in our favor, as speakers call them out one by one. “Pigs!” they yell.

I report for 285 South on a political fracturing among South Asian activists in Georgia over that guilty president of ours and think I might do more of this, that it might be a good use of my time, my anger, my skills as a writer and reporter who is still so furious with the state of American media. I try to believe the work means something.

I’m learning to let the anger guide me to the work and the work guide me to the joy and the joy guide me back to anger and so on. I’m learning to love it all, nervously, cautiously, ruefully. I don’t know what else to do but.

A show of solidarity

One piece of evidence to remind us we’re not alone, that our struggles for liberation are undeniably intertwined

Ireland 🫱🏻‍🫲🏽 Palestine

Resource(s) of the week

Something helpful and interesting and cool (*storytelling opportunity)

• *Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest: Open to writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry who have yet to publish or self-publish a book, the 2024 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest runs through May 15. Award: $2,000, review from Aevitas Creative Management and a one-year subscription for one winner per genre. More info at pshares.org.

• *Lampblack literary magazine, a publication committed to the advancement of Black literature and more, is open to poetry and prose submissions. Submit up to 5 pages of poetry or 15 pages of prose to magazine@lampblacklit.com with your name, title of submission and genre in the subject line. Accepted submissions receive $350. More info here.

• *Palestinian writers: The National Writers Union and Study Hall have compiled a database of editors specifically looking to work with Palestinian writers (journalists, essayists, fiction writers, poets etc.) for English-language publications; your work does not have to be about the war. Please email sauravsarkar2000@gmail.com or Roshan.Abraham@gmail.com. Hat tip: Jen Soriano.

• Suicide Response Training for Ohio Imams and Religious Leaders: On Saturday, April 27, Shaykh Dr. Rania Awaad — cofounder of Muslim holistic mental and spiritual wellness org Maristan — and my old pal Dr. Sadiya Dhanani are holding a special training for Ohio religious leaders, individuals who are often first responders in preventing and responding to mental health crises in faith communities. Apply at tinyurl.com/ohioSRT24. Cost: $15/person.

What I’ve been reading lately

Stories and essays I’m loving, with an emphasis on decolonized readings for Palestine

• Into the Disaster-Verse (Kamil Ahsan, SAAG Anthology): “If this is dying, death sure is noisy. It’s all gotten a bit much, see. All this anticipation of extinction. Almost as if we’ve all signed some collective suicide pact, waiting in the wings to be euthanized. Almost none of us have any ability to change things, which has ossified into an excuse for some very loud resignation.” This beautiful, lengthy essay, which reads like a real fever dream, was eight years in the making. It’s a reflection on disaster of all kinds — global, relational, intimate. It traverses the personal, the political. I feel lucky to know Kamil even a little. Read here.

• Humanity is Not an Abstract Concept (Lana Bastašić, LitHub): “I’ve had people tell me that as a writer I should only think about writing, but this to me is the ultimate triumph of neoliberal capitalism: a voluntary, almost self-congratulatory blindness to that which doesn’t concern my job.” For writers of conscience. Read here.

• To be a Gazan during Ramadan (Noha Beshir, Letters From a Muslim Woman): “I am ashamed of my plush blankets/my soft bed/my full belly/ashamed of the 3 course iftars I will eat/when the sun sets/and the plates of shakshuka and ful/with coffee and jam/I will down without thought/in a hurry before dawn/What does it mean to be a Gazan/during Ramadan/to be a Canadian/during Ramadan/to know that my worldly fortune/is dumb luck/not of my doing/to know/I could be you/and you could be me.” I don’t know who sent this to me, but I am ever grateful. Read the full poem here.