zahara is a waitress on the weekends and a poet any time else. for a list of her prolific achievements, please click here.
Because I’m a reflection of everybody I know
'Mirrors of me' is a 4-part installation comprised of poetry, inscribed onto mirrors, about people in my life, that shaped my life.When I talk about them, I talk about me. Actually, everything I talk about is about me: being as there is, there is no way to divide the body from its experience.The only life I know is the one I have.‘Mirrors of me’ says: here’s how I see you, through myself. Of course, when an individual looks into the mirror, they see my words but their own reflection. Which, again, is how we move through life, in our own island universes.You’re reading a book and understanding nothing of what the author meant, except for how it may pertain to your own experience. You can’t even try. All you are is you.
In any case, I love you so much I saw me.
the essay that didn't get me a scholarship to new york
“Go back to your country!” My mother is from Bangladesh, my father is from Jamaica, and I was born in England. My country has no geopolitical affiliations or co-ordinates. My country cannot be pinned down on any world map. My country is found in the cities where everybody is an immigrant, and I am native only to the pulsating heart of culture that has been fused by the immense pressure brought by the density of opposing lifestyles, all harboured in the same tower block.I recall a chance encounter I had with an older Asian lady, at a cafe, years back. She told me about her life, how she was born in a rural village in China, and came to London as a seamstress, so she has carpal tunnel now. How she sewed her daughter's wedding dress but they barely speak anymore, because they have become so foreign to each other, some misunderstanding that can only be told of mothers and their children. I told her how I’d argued with my amma often in my youth because, when speaking Bengali, I’d use the familiar you instead of the formal one; how my mixture of cultures was an odd fusion that could only be found in England, or certain boroughs of New York; how I like to sing and I love to write. That day, we both left the place a little fresher, buoyant with the hope of another generation. Our upliftment was twofold: because of what we had shared between each other, but also because of the chords we had unknowingly struck in each other's internal worlds. Communication is a chain of approximations, refracted by our own conditions. It is the exploration of this, between individuals, that piques my interest as a researcher.The study of how language and meaning transforms during its passage between people, focussing on culturally shaped schemas, is an area of utmost interest. I say a sentence, but my accent homogenises the words thought and fought, and it means something else now. What has been lost? What remains shared between us? A word is not a static thing. Instead it must be viewed like a box, that we fill with associations and implications. Drawing on qualitative research methods such as serial reproduction, phenomenology, and contemporary understandings of memory and cultural transmission recognises the fluid boundary between objectivity and interpretation.. In New York, nobody looks like anybody else, and everybody has a story to tell. Research into how stories mutate as they move between individuals, audiences and cultural contexts is especially significant when these ideas are inflated to a larger scale. The assumption that language can impart a perfect depiction of internal realities sets stage for gross misunderstandings that shape politics, society, and collective memory.By its nature, writing is essentially iterative, making it both the method and the subject of this research. Authors pull from ideas that have come before, each book a simulacra of the next. Language does not transmit. It transforms. Writing is a collaboration between author and reader. Prose does not lie fixed on the page, but instead fluctuates between various interpretations until somebody reads it. Using the immersive framework of creative writing and spoken word performance, the work aims to document the diversion between what is explicitly said and what is implicitly understood. Spoken word is a fitting vehicle to capture these micro-misunderstandings in real-time. During a performance, we are intimately privy to a participant’s channel of distortion, through observation of their multi-modal communication processes. Supplemented with post-project discussions that seek to unveil the experiences that have led to certain inferences, the work investigates what changes as language moves between people, and how these changes arise.Inquiry into the core phenomenon of my research is not a task that can be undertaken in isolation. Rather, it seems imperative to hold discussion with a varied range of people, lending itself towards project-based learning that is integrated deeply into the communities it aims to understand. The study orbits around connection to its environment, and the location in which it takes place needs to contain a range of demographics; of high density and close proximity; that are unafraid of open dialogue.New York City is a living environment of serial reproduction, and offers a density and immediacy of interaction difficult to replicate elsewhere. There are 800 languages spoken in the city. 800 different ways to misunderstand each other. 800 different opportunities to culturally probe these misunderstandings. The interaction style of the population matters. The UK is characterised by a certain stoicism that bars us from the vulnerability that drives connection. Whether happy or sad, Keep Calm and Carry On. The nature of this country battles with my identity as a second-generation immigrant whose ancestral culture is of openness and warmth. I code-switch between repression and sincerity, depending on my environment. My answers to questions are filtered: meaning is shaped before it is spoken, making it harder to observe. In the US, the direct interaction style allows the process of transformation to become more externally visible, and as a result of this, iterated collaboratively.This opportunity offers room for a two-way exchange. Bringing a situated perspective shaped by the intersection of my various identities, I aim to use my ability to catalyse conversation through a relational leadership style to study how our differences shape the interpretations of what we mean to say. This work does not end on the aeroplane home. By means of practice-based research in the US, taking advantage of their open communication style, I hope to better recognise the process of linguistic understanding, even when made implicit by cultural conditioning. The British way is aloofness, to hide the fear of becoming a burden upon others. As a country, we are so afraid of taking up space in other people's lives. But I can think of no better existence than a life filled with everybody I find connection with. There is no shame in being human.
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uncomfortably full sample
Across the room, there's a fish in a tank and it's making me miserable. The fish butts its head against the glass. When i was younger, and i got angry, i would slam my head into the wall over and over trying to make it all make sense. my skull crumpled into cardboard. i’m sorry for the times i blamed you. I know better now. Water. I want water. This come up is brutal. The world is blue and spatial, and i feel certain things bubbling up where i have worked extensively to keep them down. I’m sipping delicately, trying not to bring too much attention to myself, trying not to cause trouble. couldn’t even speak if i wanted to, my jaw all clenched and wired shut. Words thrum in my system, and seeing as i cant say anything, they get stuck and start dancing across my skin. Me and the fish lock eyes. his scales shimmer and my flesh pricks into goosebumps. we are one, brother. all of a sudden i got this feeling that the world was an aquarium, as in i was a small child here to explore, and sooner or later, something greater, better, would take my hand and lead me away from this place, in which i could only be an observer.I fucking love you, screams tasia. The ceiling is lower; the crowd, younger. We’ve changed scenery. I'm not sure how or when this occurred, though it probably has something to do with the £13 uber charge that's pinging up on my phone. not the only thing that's pinging here tonight. We’re at the shacklewell, which is where you go if you want to pretend that people still care about human interaction, and everyone is gurning, eyes sparking from different substances. i’m in the backroom and im holding hands with bea who’s holding hands with lilya who’s holding hands with tasia. I fucking love you too, someone says back. Takes a minute to recognise the voice as my own. Lilting. when i’m like this my tone takes on an airy quality, doesn’t break the surface tension, just skates right on top, buoyant and wispy. Trying to pin me down is like trying to leash a cloud. I dissipate at the first touch. new wave night and we’re all partying like it's the 80’s. Blue monday. I'm in the swing of it now, eyes shuttered by heavy lids, skin alive, and mouth searching for more. a tongue piercing is a great thing, i think.Somebody is pulling me forwards, and the interlinked daisy chain of girlfriends finds their way outside to the smokers where a phone is shoved into my face but every word on the screen is a squirming ant and somebody has flooded the nest so im blinking and blinking trying to pull the world back into focus my peel is hot but my insides are cold my body is outlined by a hiss where the two frontiers meet im shivering but im burning up and now i hear lilya calling me inviting me to meet someone and my eyes my eyes are falling on top of each other im trying to look out only to find myself inwards i can see my own organs my kidneys my liver my stomach all scarlet all churning these small dead things make me what i am and im supposed to believe im alive im here every cell of mine is calling towards something else the effort for even one of us to exist is so ridiculous it’s a miracle any of us are here at all but we’re all here my body tingles on the dancefloor i dont care if i don’t know you because i do i do the mdma rips down the partition wall and the music pumps me out into the veins of the night so i bleed away into various other people and lives and sayings and so forths dissipated into a thought in the collective consciousness i miss you but you’re not gone so i miss you more the only time we talk nowadays is when we are both asleep in the purgatory before REM at the bus stop waiting to go to our respective dreams even in the astral plane nobody is freeThe bass drones on and on and on.