That’s a teeka I’m wearing. It’s a jewel piece worn in Pakistan typically. Last photo for tonight, I promise. Exhausted but what a lovely day, alhumdulillah.
Nikkah. Baraat. :) #Lahore, #Pakistan.
@mehreenkasana
mehreenkasana @ almost everywhere
That is such a kind, generous thought, thank you so much, jaan. It means a lot.
I rarely post now - except for the photos, occasional links - but I remember most of you here, the ones who have interacted with me and I hope you all are doing well, doing good. I am so busy with my thesis, my family, writing and getting work done and I have to admit: This less-frequenting-of-Tumblr has been very, very productive. That said, I have several books that I’ve read as well as essays, and I intend on sharing them with the readers here soon.
A re-reading of A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes and short essays by Saadat Hasan Manto and the work on the politics of spatial effect by Nigel Thrift in addition to work by Susan Sontag has been very, very refreshing.
Walima. :)
The only photo I, myself/as in from my own hands/not by cousins, managed to take from my cousin’s wedding today and that too came out incomplete.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ”Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (via everygreatcity)
i think about this often. the obligations of sisterhood. when we recognize each other as sisters in the struggle we are making a commitment to each other. someone said (i can’t remember who) they didn’t want comrades, they wanted sisters, and i feel the same way.
(via nomadmanifesto)
And can we speak of the audacity that can accompany notions of Muslim sisterhood?
Don’t sister me when you’ve just casually thrown around the word ‘abd
(via kawrage)
Globalization, shaped by a very patriarchal mindset, a capitalist, patriarchal mindset, has actually aggravated the violence against women, that we are living in a very violent economic order to which war has become essential—war against the earth, war against women’s bodies, war against local economies and war against democracy. And I think we need to see the connections between all these forms of violence, which impact women most. Whether it’s climate change or biodiversity erosion or seed monopolies, all of it is connected. It’s one piece.
This violent economic order can only function as a war against people and against the earth, and in that war, the rape against women is a very, very large instrument of war. We see that everywhere. And therefore, we have to have an end to the violence against women. If we have to have the dignity of women protected, then the multiple wars against the earth, through the economy, through greed, through capitalist, patriarchal domination, must end, and we have to recognize we are part of the earth. The liberation of the earth, the liberation of women, the liberation of all humanity is the next step of freedom we need to work for, and it’s the next step of peace that we need to create.
”the war started when I turned 13, and now I’m 23.
ugh.
George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and the entire lot. Genocidal scumbags.
And no, Obama admin isn’t any better. Nothing changed when it comes to USA’s obsession with using ‘freedom’ and ‘liberation’ as its central and hypocritical theme in its belligerent, warmongering foreign policy; it only gets worse.
Someone send this message to academicians who can’t stop worshiping the likes of Samuel Huntington, and those who see the inhabitants of the world as finite objects for conclusive analyses. A pox on thee.
My companions met some of the tres glamorous Hijra of Lahore, Pakistan last week. Predictably immaculately dressed. It is Lahore, after all.
Lahore is always alive, always vibrant, always beautiful.
Norouz va sale no be hame mubarak bashe! Saale khubi dashte bashid, va omidvaram hame be arezuhashun beresan. Dua mikinum ke hamesha zaera saaya madar o pidar taan bashid. Many boos. :)
That’s great and all. Since the occasion puts emphasis on peaceful beginnings and since the Obama admin seems very enthusiastic about wishing everyone a happy Norouz, how about less belligerency toward Iran now. For example: Demanding to lift the sanctions and stop propagating lies about Iran to instigate war. Or is that off the agenda?
Got it.
This need to both question national imperatives and to insist at the same time on one’s place in the nation is especially important, after 9/11, for people from immigrant families, who must negotiate their right to dissent at a time of crisis and intense pressure to swear allegiance to the nation. Narrative scholars Smith and Watson state that despite our modern, and very American tendency t to take individual autonomy for granted – and thus to to regard the foundational status of personal experience as the basis for analysis “of knowledge about the world and ourselves” (31) – we must also remember that our interpretations of meaningful experiences are socially produced. A citizen’s sense of belonging within a nation – especially nation like the United States, which prides itself on a fragmented, yet collective identity based on multiple immigrant histories — depends on her/his community’s inclusivity, indicated by both tacit and overt means.
[…]
Afghan American Mahvish Khan’s memoir is thus a truth-telling device that intervenes in the Othering narrative of terror associated with the Arab/Middle Eastern body, and her narrative presence mediates an existence for those whose bodies have been erased under a massive tangle of laws during the GWOT. Through her interviews with the detainees at Guantánamo Bay and their families in Afghanistan, we are able to comprehend the devastating psychological effects on those who experience the systematic methodology used first to label certain persons as terrorists, and then to extract information from their terrified bodies. By disseminating and publicizing these individuals’ stories, Khan’s personal narrative also offers — for those who could not appear before the U.S. public to tell their own stories — a possibility of agency; her memoir poses key questions about human rights to an American public that might eventually be persuaded to right the wrongs inflicted on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
M. Neelika Jayawardane in “Scandalous Memoir” – Mahvish Khan’s My Guantánamo Diary – I - Chapati Mystery
Air strikes in Pakistan’s borderlands.
Important read on drone strikes.
U.S. drone strikes have been conducted in Somalia and Philippines, and to a larger extent in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has carried out extensive studies on the death toll of civilians in each country under American missiles.
Initiated by the war criminal George Bush, aggressively increased by your favorite Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama. A political reality that is deliberately neglected by international and national media.
