This essay examines the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—to show how grief, when dislocated from its centres, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Jaan-e-Haseena offers the work of impassioned cultural organizing around the fabulation of Pakistani transness as a means of disrupting and reconstructing ontologies of indigeneity and survival. · THE VERTICAL Opinion · Lahore This essay examines the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—to show how grief, when dislocated from its centres, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Jaan-e-Haseena offers the work of impassioned cultural organizing around the fabulation of Pakistani transness as a means of disrupting and reconstructing ontologies of indigeneity and survival. "Nomi G in schizophrenic time I" (2025), photograph, courtesy of the writer. mourning in schizophrenic time I. I n the margins of Shia geographies, ritual is often modulated by proximity to power, risk, and memory. Māṭam, rhythmic chest-beating performed during Muharram, tends to surge with speed, volume, and physical force in Shia-majority zones like Karbala, Qom, and areas of southern Lebanon. But in peripheral or diasporic communities, such as those in Pakistan’s Sunni-majority regions or in Indonesia, māṭam often becomes slower, shaped by local constraints and the need for cautious survival in hostile environments. The tempo of mourning is not just a cultural register, but a geographic one; rhythm marks distance from safety. Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry sees the protagonist’s quiet unraveling met with dismissal by an Afghan refugee who, invoking deeper trauma, repositions his own survival as the legitimate benchmark for suffering. This exchange does not directly map onto caste, but echoes what Akhil Kang calls upper-caste victimhood : the act of weaponizing one’s suffering to foreclose or delegitimize others’ expressions of pain. In both cases, grief is stratified: some forms are allowed to be loud, fast, and public (like māṭam in Karbala), while others are contained, policed, or rendered excessive. Caste, here, becomes less about origin and more about access to public mourning, about who is allowed to linger in loss and who is asked to move on. In the budding stages of my gender-mutation as a Syed-Shia Zaidi, I found myself drawn to the expanded aesthetic and temporal imaginaries offered by rave scholars like McKenzie Wark and Juliana Huxtable . The conceptual interplay between caste, time, tradition, and the body made intuitive sense. Māṭam for me is no longer just a religious rite but a temporal logic that mirrors how I live and move. In the context of my life, work, and history, it makes sense to cognize māṭam as a kind of sanctioned schizophrenia: a public display of grief for someone never met, a body long dead but made urgently present through sound and pain. It sutures past and present into a single rhythm, collapsing historical time into the immediate now. In this sense, it enacts what Deleuze and Guattari call “ schizo-temporality ”, the refusal of linear time, the refusal to let the past stay in the past. The mourned are always returning. The ritual is a wound that won’t close; a beat that insists and manifests into a cultural practice surviving generational accusations of heresy. The recursive temporality of māṭam, then, finds echoes in the sonic ruptures and visual residues of contemporary trans art in Pakistan. This essay, and the work it contains, are situated in that schizoid rhythm: where mourning is method, illegibility is survival, and art becomes afterlife. This schizophrenic temporality also aligns closely with Black paraontological thought : Frank Wilderson III writes about Blackness occupying a position not simply of exclusion from the category of the human, but of foundational antagonism to it. Blackness is not marginal to ontology, it is the rupture that reveals its limits. Similarly, Pakistani transness, especially as embodied by moorat performers and khwaja-sira rituals, inhabits a space of ontological impossibility. Paraontology, put simply, names the condition of being that which both exists within and disrupts dominant frameworks of existence. This is not about comparing Blackness and transness, nor collapsing them. Rather, Zenaan-Khana (a trans-led, multi-disciplinary art collective) and its work echoes paraontology in the way it renders Pakistani transness as a figure not of lack, but of structural impossibility. It is not a minoritized identity seeking inclusion, but a structural non-being indigenous to this land, struggling to remain. II. Zenaan-Khana’s visual and sonic practice inhabits this paraontological terrain. Our Boiler Room set in 2025 marked a shift, a curated refusal that belonged to a new generation. Rather than reproducing inherited forms of ritual, we set out to disrupt the dominant aesthetics of elite cultural production in Pakistan: event spaces owned by white-collar elites, anti-paindoo (a colloquial Punjabi and Urdu term, often used in urban Pakistan to describe someone from a rural or rustic background. Depending on context, it can carry a pejorative sense of “backward” or “unsophisticated.”). In their politics, ironically in charge of curating multiculturalisms. We channeled the dissonance of Gen-Z moorats: pulsing beats, industrial noise, synthetic rupture. It was less about recognizable grief and more about building a sonic texture of disidentification . Our set cracked open Lahore’s elite space-time by refusing smooth transitions or legible representation. We merged mujra rhythms with underground Black soundscapes, shifting BPMs to mimic breathlessness and collapse. At one moment, a Somali trans artist reinterpreted Islamic devotional terms over a distorted, syncopated beat; in another, I rapped my song Bakwas , a critique of the male gaze on trans bodies, layered over a chopped-and-flipped sample of Rihanna’s Rude Boy . These fragments weren’t meant to cohere. They glitched, tangled, and surged. What emerged was a sonic narrative unraveled by longing, surveillance, ecstasy, and rupture. What we performed was not representation; it was sanctioned schizophrenia staged at the edge of collapse. To truly understand this tactic, one must return to what scholars like Saidiya Hartman and Christina Sharpe describe as the afterlives of structural violence. Hartman’s “ afterlife of slavery ” is not just about historical trauma, it is about ongoing conditions that frame Black life as always already dead. Sharpe’s wake work names how Black existence navigates grief that never ends. Pakistani trans life is also wake work. We are asked to live without lineage, perform without legitimacy or care, and survive without history. Our practice extends beyond sound. The visual work showcased here, developed with Misha Japanwala as the project maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab (wilted roses on a battlefield), is not supplementary to this essay: it is its embodied continuation. This piece emerges from the same conditions of sanctioned schizophrenia: scattered timelines, ontological foreclosure, ritual excess, and aesthetic refusal. But this was not an abstract exercise. A (name redacted), an iconic Lahori trans-femme and longtime collaborator, co-ideated the shoot with me, as well as other designers, friends, and a retired mujra artist deeply connected to many of the muses in our campaign. Together, we sat with the muses, listening to stories of exile, longing, and survival, and asked: what does a fugitive image look like? We staged shots that lingered in the affects of dislocation. This image is not a token of trans life; it is its fragment, its echo, its unfinished utterance. Saidiya Hartman’s idea of “the afterlife of slavery,” posits death not as an event but as a condition. Similarly Zenaan-Khana’s work asks: what does it mean to be a body whose ritualized mourning, whose māṭam, is itself a form of failed ontological recognition? What does it mean to grieve a self that was never legible? What kind of time is this? III. The moorat figure, an Urdu term reclaimed in recent years through movements like the Sindh Moorat March (SMM), carries with it a layered history of religious excess, colonial residue, and social abandonment. Once used ambiguously, even derogatorily, moorat is now being politicized as a counter to Western gender terminology, refusing the flattening translations of “transgender” or “nonbinary.” The moorat performs what might be called a schizophrenic temporality— not in the pathological sense, but in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms: a breaking down of dominant flows of time and coherence. But unlike D&G’s celebration of deterritorialization , here schizophrenia is not freedom. It is a way of enduring dislocation. It is survival in fragmentation. The images in maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab do not seek to explain, they glitch. They fold history into flesh, grief into gesture, rupture into residue. The trans body here does not aim for legibility or inclusion; it mourns its own exclusion from the ontological field. Its visibility is always ephemeral/unstable. Its presence is always partially posthumous. Take, for instance, N (name redacted): a trans woman who runs a house for trans sex workers in Narowal. After surviving a brutal act of violence where her ex-boyfriend shot her leg for leaving him, N now moves through the world with a prosthetic. She is not a symbol of victimhood, but of refusal, of organizing beyond state visibility, of care that persists even when the body is denatured. How does one represent this? Not with clarity, but with tension. Our visual work strives to hold this contradiction: the simultaneous presence of mutilation and resilience. It asks how to archive fugitive ethics, how to remain faithful to their opacity without rendering them legible for the comfort of the viewer. Paraontological realities echo through our work, staging Pakistani transness not as a minoritized identity, but as a structure/fabulation/imagination of non-being, a body whose relation to the visual field is one of misrecognition. In that sense, the visual art accompanying this essay does not close an argument, it opens a wound. It performs what theory can only gesture toward: the feeling of life after the possibility of life. This is how we mark time: holding the ephemeral to extend its impact in this moment of subcontinental psychosis. This is how we remain. This is our proposition: not clarity, but sensation. Not theory for the page, but affect rendered legible through performance and image. Between misrecognition and survival, we find a form. Between ontology and paraontology, we mark presence, not as claim, but as trace. What remains is not always evidence. Sometimes, it’s a psychotic pulse that doesn’t stop. That is where we build a politics. maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab also builds on the legacy of the Moorat March, one of the most disruptive and generative trans political formations in recent years. A movement that directly birthed the incentive that I needed to advocate for a space like Zenaan-Khana in Lahore. SMM is not just protest. It is legacy work. It continues a lineage of trans, queer, Shi’a-oriented and feminist organizing in Pakistan, grounded not in global human rights discourse but in indigenous ethics and moorat epistemologies. It marks a return to gender plurality as cultural inheritance, reviving cosmologies of embodiment that the colonial and postcolonial state sought to erase. Crucially, it is not just symbolic. It is materially disruptive. SMM builds grassroots power in Sindh, cultivates new kinships across class and caste, and challenges the state’s monopoly on gender recognition. It is precisely within this political genealogy that Zenaan-Khana’s current visual collaboration with Misha Japanwala emerges. The images (including the one offered here) do not illustrate the march; they carry its aftershocks. They hold the schizoid time of moorat rebellion: ishq-filled, subversive in their expression of trans-psychosis, glitching in fragmentation. They don’t document, but distort. And in doing so, they uphold a politics of wake, of misrecognition, of remaining. There is no pride in cultural organizing during genocide. But there is grief. There is glitch. There is residue. And sometimes, that’s enough to break something open. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Opinion Lahore Pakistan Gender Violence Essay Ceremony Culture Culture work schizo-temporality Shia geographies Shia Matam Mourning performance performance art afterlife wilted roses Sindh Moorat March Zenaan-Khana Cultural organizing solidarities queer and shia beyond symbolism religious rite Karbala reclamation grief victimhood paraontology Pakistani transness Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 27th Oct 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

This essay examines the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—to show how grief, when dislocated from its centres, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Jaan-e-Haseena offers the work of impassioned cultural organizing around the fabulation of Pakistani transness as a means of disrupting and reconstructing ontologies of indigeneity and survival. This essay examines the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—to show how grief, when dislocated from its centres, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Jaan-e-Haseena offers the work of impassioned cultural organizing around the fabulation of Pakistani transness as a means of disrupting and reconstructing ontologies of indigeneity and survival. "Nomi G in schizophrenic time I" (2025), photograph, courtesy of the writer. Artist Lahore AUTHOR · AUTHOR · AUTHOR 27 Oct 2025 th · THE VERTICAL REPORTAGE · LOCATION mourning in schizophrenic time I. I n the margins of Shia geographies, ritual is often modulated by proximity to power, risk, and memory. Māṭam, rhythmic chest-beating performed during Muharram, tends to surge with speed, volume, and physical force in Shia-majority zones like Karbala, Qom, and areas of southern Lebanon. But in peripheral or diasporic communities, such as those in Pakistan’s Sunni-majority regions or in Indonesia, māṭam often becomes slower, shaped by local constraints and the need for cautious survival in hostile environments. The tempo of mourning is not just a cultural register, but a geographic one; rhythm marks distance from safety. Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry sees the protagonist’s quiet unraveling met with dismissal by an Afghan refugee who, invoking deeper trauma, repositions his own survival as the legitimate benchmark for suffering. This exchange does not directly map onto caste, but echoes what Akhil Kang calls upper-caste victimhood : the act of weaponizing one’s suffering to foreclose or delegitimize others’ expressions of pain. In both cases, grief is stratified: some forms are allowed to be loud, fast, and public (like māṭam in Karbala), while others are contained, policed, or rendered excessive. Caste, here, becomes less about origin and more about access to public mourning, about who is allowed to linger in loss and who is asked to move on. In the budding stages of my gender-mutation as a Syed-Shia Zaidi, I found myself drawn to the expanded aesthetic and temporal imaginaries offered by rave scholars like McKenzie Wark and Juliana Huxtable . The conceptual interplay between caste, time, tradition, and the body made intuitive sense. Māṭam for me is no longer just a religious rite but a temporal logic that mirrors how I live and move. In the context of my life, work, and history, it makes sense to cognize māṭam as a kind of sanctioned schizophrenia: a public display of grief for someone never met, a body long dead but made urgently present through sound and pain. It sutures past and present into a single rhythm, collapsing historical time into the immediate now. In this sense, it enacts what Deleuze and Guattari call “ schizo-temporality ”, the refusal of linear time, the refusal to let the past stay in the past. The mourned are always returning. The ritual is a wound that won’t close; a beat that insists and manifests into a cultural practice surviving generational accusations of heresy. The recursive temporality of māṭam, then, finds echoes in the sonic ruptures and visual residues of contemporary trans art in Pakistan. This essay, and the work it contains, are situated in that schizoid rhythm: where mourning is method, illegibility is survival, and art becomes afterlife. This schizophrenic temporality also aligns closely with Black paraontological thought : Frank Wilderson III writes about Blackness occupying a position not simply of exclusion from the category of the human, but of foundational antagonism to it. Blackness is not marginal to ontology, it is the rupture that reveals its limits. Similarly, Pakistani transness, especially as embodied by moorat performers and khwaja-sira rituals, inhabits a space of ontological impossibility. Paraontology, put simply, names the condition of being that which both exists within and disrupts dominant frameworks of existence. This is not about comparing Blackness and transness, nor collapsing them. Rather, Zenaan-Khana (a trans-led, multi-disciplinary art collective) and its work echoes paraontology in the way it renders Pakistani transness as a figure not of lack, but of structural impossibility. It is not a minoritized identity seeking inclusion, but a structural non-being indigenous to this land, struggling to remain. II. Zenaan-Khana’s visual and sonic practice inhabits this paraontological terrain. Our Boiler Room set in 2025 marked a shift, a curated refusal that belonged to a new generation. Rather than reproducing inherited forms of ritual, we set out to disrupt the dominant aesthetics of elite cultural production in Pakistan: event spaces owned by white-collar elites, anti-paindoo (a colloquial Punjabi and Urdu term, often used in urban Pakistan to describe someone from a rural or rustic background. Depending on context, it can carry a pejorative sense of “backward” or “unsophisticated.”). In their politics, ironically in charge of curating multiculturalisms. We channeled the dissonance of Gen-Z moorats: pulsing beats, industrial noise, synthetic rupture. It was less about recognizable grief and more about building a sonic texture of disidentification . Our set cracked open Lahore’s elite space-time by refusing smooth transitions or legible representation. We merged mujra rhythms with underground Black soundscapes, shifting BPMs to mimic breathlessness and collapse. At one moment, a Somali trans artist reinterpreted Islamic devotional terms over a distorted, syncopated beat; in another, I rapped my song Bakwas , a critique of the male gaze on trans bodies, layered over a chopped-and-flipped sample of Rihanna’s Rude Boy . These fragments weren’t meant to cohere. They glitched, tangled, and surged. What emerged was a sonic narrative unraveled by longing, surveillance, ecstasy, and rupture. What we performed was not representation; it was sanctioned schizophrenia staged at the edge of collapse. To truly understand this tactic, one must return to what scholars like Saidiya Hartman and Christina Sharpe describe as the afterlives of structural violence. Hartman’s “ afterlife of slavery ” is not just about historical trauma, it is about ongoing conditions that frame Black life as always already dead. Sharpe’s wake work names how Black existence navigates grief that never ends. Pakistani trans life is also wake work. We are asked to live without lineage, perform without legitimacy or care, and survive without history. Our practice extends beyond sound. The visual work showcased here, developed with Misha Japanwala as the project maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab (wilted roses on a battlefield), is not supplementary to this essay: it is its embodied continuation. This piece emerges from the same conditions of sanctioned schizophrenia: scattered timelines, ontological foreclosure, ritual excess, and aesthetic refusal. But this was not an abstract exercise. A (name redacted), an iconic Lahori trans-femme and longtime collaborator, co-ideated the shoot with me, as well as other designers, friends, and a retired mujra artist deeply connected to many of the muses in our campaign. Together, we sat with the muses, listening to stories of exile, longing, and survival, and asked: what does a fugitive image look like? We staged shots that lingered in the affects of dislocation. This image is not a token of trans life; it is its fragment, its echo, its unfinished utterance. Saidiya Hartman’s idea of “the afterlife of slavery,” posits death not as an event but as a condition. Similarly Zenaan-Khana’s work asks: what does it mean to be a body whose ritualized mourning, whose māṭam, is itself a form of failed ontological recognition? What does it mean to grieve a self that was never legible? What kind of time is this? III. The moorat figure, an Urdu term reclaimed in recent years through movements like the Sindh Moorat March (SMM), carries with it a layered history of religious excess, colonial residue, and social abandonment. Once used ambiguously, even derogatorily, moorat is now being politicized as a counter to Western gender terminology, refusing the flattening translations of “transgender” or “nonbinary.” The moorat performs what might be called a schizophrenic temporality— not in the pathological sense, but in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms: a breaking down of dominant flows of time and coherence. But unlike D&G’s celebration of deterritorialization , here schizophrenia is not freedom. It is a way of enduring dislocation. It is survival in fragmentation. The images in maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab do not seek to explain, they glitch. They fold history into flesh, grief into gesture, rupture into residue. The trans body here does not aim for legibility or inclusion; it mourns its own exclusion from the ontological field. Its visibility is always ephemeral/unstable. Its presence is always partially posthumous. Take, for instance, N (name redacted): a trans woman who runs a house for trans sex workers in Narowal. After surviving a brutal act of violence where her ex-boyfriend shot her leg for leaving him, N now moves through the world with a prosthetic. She is not a symbol of victimhood, but of refusal, of organizing beyond state visibility, of care that persists even when the body is denatured. How does one represent this? Not with clarity, but with tension. Our visual work strives to hold this contradiction: the simultaneous presence of mutilation and resilience. It asks how to archive fugitive ethics, how to remain faithful to their opacity without rendering them legible for the comfort of the viewer. Paraontological realities echo through our work, staging Pakistani transness not as a minoritized identity, but as a structure/fabulation/imagination of non-being, a body whose relation to the visual field is one of misrecognition. In that sense, the visual art accompanying this essay does not close an argument, it opens a wound. It performs what theory can only gesture toward: the feeling of life after the possibility of life. This is how we mark time: holding the ephemeral to extend its impact in this moment of subcontinental psychosis. This is how we remain. This is our proposition: not clarity, but sensation. Not theory for the page, but affect rendered legible through performance and image. Between misrecognition and survival, we find a form. Between ontology and paraontology, we mark presence, not as claim, but as trace. What remains is not always evidence. Sometimes, it’s a psychotic pulse that doesn’t stop. That is where we build a politics. maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab also builds on the legacy of the Moorat March, one of the most disruptive and generative trans political formations in recent years. A movement that directly birthed the incentive that I needed to advocate for a space like Zenaan-Khana in Lahore. SMM is not just protest. It is legacy work. It continues a lineage of trans, queer, Shi’a-oriented and feminist organizing in Pakistan, grounded not in global human rights discourse but in indigenous ethics and moorat epistemologies. It marks a return to gender plurality as cultural inheritance, reviving cosmologies of embodiment that the colonial and postcolonial state sought to erase. Crucially, it is not just symbolic. It is materially disruptive. SMM builds grassroots power in Sindh, cultivates new kinships across class and caste, and challenges the state’s monopoly on gender recognition. It is precisely within this political genealogy that Zenaan-Khana’s current visual collaboration with Misha Japanwala emerges. The images (including the one offered here) do not illustrate the march; they carry its aftershocks. They hold the schizoid time of moorat rebellion: ishq-filled, subversive in their expression of trans-psychosis, glitching in fragmentation. They don’t document, but distort. And in doing so, they uphold a politics of wake, of misrecognition, of remaining. There is no pride in cultural organizing during genocide. But there is grief. There is glitch. There is residue. And sometimes, that’s enough to break something open. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Opinion Lahore Pakistan Gender Violence Essay Ceremony Culture Culture work schizo-temporality Shia geographies Shia Matam Mourning performance performance art afterlife wilted roses Sindh Moorat March Zenaan-Khana Cultural organizing solidarities queer and shia beyond symbolism religious rite Karbala reclamation grief victimhood paraontology Pakistani transness Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

This essay examines the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—to show how grief, when dislocated from its centres, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Jaan-e-Haseena offers the work of impassioned cultural organizing around the fabulation of Pakistani transness as a means of disrupting and reconstructing ontologies of indigeneity and survival. This essay examines the varied temporalities and intensities of māṭam—a form of ritual mourning in Shia Islam—to show how grief, when dislocated from its centres, takes on different velocities and visual registers. Jaan-e-Haseena offers the work of impassioned cultural organizing around the fabulation of Pakistani transness as a means of disrupting and reconstructing ontologies of indigeneity and survival. "Nomi G in schizophrenic time I" (2025), photograph, courtesy of the writer. Artist · THE VERTICAL REPORTAGE · LOCATION mourning in schizophrenic time LOCATION Jaan-e-Haseena . 27 Oct 2025 th . Letter from our columnist . I. I n the margins of Shia geographies, ritual is often modulated by proximity to power, risk, and memory. Māṭam, rhythmic chest-beating performed during Muharram, tends to surge with speed, volume, and physical force in Shia-majority zones like Karbala, Qom, and areas of southern Lebanon. But in peripheral or diasporic communities, such as those in Pakistan’s Sunni-majority regions or in Indonesia, māṭam often becomes slower, shaped by local constraints and the need for cautious survival in hostile environments. The tempo of mourning is not just a cultural register, but a geographic one; rhythm marks distance from safety. Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry sees the protagonist’s quiet unraveling met with dismissal by an Afghan refugee who, invoking deeper trauma, repositions his own survival as the legitimate benchmark for suffering. This exchange does not directly map onto caste, but echoes what Akhil Kang calls upper-caste victimhood : the act of weaponizing one’s suffering to foreclose or delegitimize others’ expressions of pain. In both cases, grief is stratified: some forms are allowed to be loud, fast, and public (like māṭam in Karbala), while others are contained, policed, or rendered excessive. Caste, here, becomes less about origin and more about access to public mourning, about who is allowed to linger in loss and who is asked to move on. In the budding stages of my gender-mutation as a Syed-Shia Zaidi, I found myself drawn to the expanded aesthetic and temporal imaginaries offered by rave scholars like McKenzie Wark and Juliana Huxtable . The conceptual interplay between caste, time, tradition, and the body made intuitive sense. Māṭam for me is no longer just a religious rite but a temporal logic that mirrors how I live and move. In the context of my life, work, and history, it makes sense to cognize māṭam as a kind of sanctioned schizophrenia: a public display of grief for someone never met, a body long dead but made urgently present through sound and pain. It sutures past and present into a single rhythm, collapsing historical time into the immediate now. In this sense, it enacts what Deleuze and Guattari call “ schizo-temporality ”, the refusal of linear time, the refusal to let the past stay in the past. The mourned are always returning. The ritual is a wound that won’t close; a beat that insists and manifests into a cultural practice surviving generational accusations of heresy. The recursive temporality of māṭam, then, finds echoes in the sonic ruptures and visual residues of contemporary trans art in Pakistan. This essay, and the work it contains, are situated in that schizoid rhythm: where mourning is method, illegibility is survival, and art becomes afterlife. This schizophrenic temporality also aligns closely with Black paraontological thought : Frank Wilderson III writes about Blackness occupying a position not simply of exclusion from the category of the human, but of foundational antagonism to it. Blackness is not marginal to ontology, it is the rupture that reveals its limits. Similarly, Pakistani transness, especially as embodied by moorat performers and khwaja-sira rituals, inhabits a space of ontological impossibility. Paraontology, put simply, names the condition of being that which both exists within and disrupts dominant frameworks of existence. This is not about comparing Blackness and transness, nor collapsing them. Rather, Zenaan-Khana (a trans-led, multi-disciplinary art collective) and its work echoes paraontology in the way it renders Pakistani transness as a figure not of lack, but of structural impossibility. It is not a minoritized identity seeking inclusion, but a structural non-being indigenous to this land, struggling to remain. II. Zenaan-Khana’s visual and sonic practice inhabits this paraontological terrain. Our Boiler Room set in 2025 marked a shift, a curated refusal that belonged to a new generation. Rather than reproducing inherited forms of ritual, we set out to disrupt the dominant aesthetics of elite cultural production in Pakistan: event spaces owned by white-collar elites, anti-paindoo (a colloquial Punjabi and Urdu term, often used in urban Pakistan to describe someone from a rural or rustic background. Depending on context, it can carry a pejorative sense of “backward” or “unsophisticated.”). In their politics, ironically in charge of curating multiculturalisms. We channeled the dissonance of Gen-Z moorats: pulsing beats, industrial noise, synthetic rupture. It was less about recognizable grief and more about building a sonic texture of disidentification . Our set cracked open Lahore’s elite space-time by refusing smooth transitions or legible representation. We merged mujra rhythms with underground Black soundscapes, shifting BPMs to mimic breathlessness and collapse. At one moment, a Somali trans artist reinterpreted Islamic devotional terms over a distorted, syncopated beat; in another, I rapped my song Bakwas , a critique of the male gaze on trans bodies, layered over a chopped-and-flipped sample of Rihanna’s Rude Boy . These fragments weren’t meant to cohere. They glitched, tangled, and surged. What emerged was a sonic narrative unraveled by longing, surveillance, ecstasy, and rupture. What we performed was not representation; it was sanctioned schizophrenia staged at the edge of collapse. To truly understand this tactic, one must return to what scholars like Saidiya Hartman and Christina Sharpe describe as the afterlives of structural violence. Hartman’s “ afterlife of slavery ” is not just about historical trauma, it is about ongoing conditions that frame Black life as always already dead. Sharpe’s wake work names how Black existence navigates grief that never ends. Pakistani trans life is also wake work. We are asked to live without lineage, perform without legitimacy or care, and survive without history. Our practice extends beyond sound. The visual work showcased here, developed with Misha Japanwala as the project maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab (wilted roses on a battlefield), is not supplementary to this essay: it is its embodied continuation. This piece emerges from the same conditions of sanctioned schizophrenia: scattered timelines, ontological foreclosure, ritual excess, and aesthetic refusal. But this was not an abstract exercise. A (name redacted), an iconic Lahori trans-femme and longtime collaborator, co-ideated the shoot with me, as well as other designers, friends, and a retired mujra artist deeply connected to many of the muses in our campaign. Together, we sat with the muses, listening to stories of exile, longing, and survival, and asked: what does a fugitive image look like? We staged shots that lingered in the affects of dislocation. This image is not a token of trans life; it is its fragment, its echo, its unfinished utterance. Saidiya Hartman’s idea of “the afterlife of slavery,” posits death not as an event but as a condition. Similarly Zenaan-Khana’s work asks: what does it mean to be a body whose ritualized mourning, whose māṭam, is itself a form of failed ontological recognition? What does it mean to grieve a self that was never legible? What kind of time is this? III. The moorat figure, an Urdu term reclaimed in recent years through movements like the Sindh Moorat March (SMM), carries with it a layered history of religious excess, colonial residue, and social abandonment. Once used ambiguously, even derogatorily, moorat is now being politicized as a counter to Western gender terminology, refusing the flattening translations of “transgender” or “nonbinary.” The moorat performs what might be called a schizophrenic temporality— not in the pathological sense, but in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms: a breaking down of dominant flows of time and coherence. But unlike D&G’s celebration of deterritorialization , here schizophrenia is not freedom. It is a way of enduring dislocation. It is survival in fragmentation. The images in maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab do not seek to explain, they glitch. They fold history into flesh, grief into gesture, rupture into residue. The trans body here does not aim for legibility or inclusion; it mourns its own exclusion from the ontological field. Its visibility is always ephemeral/unstable. Its presence is always partially posthumous. Take, for instance, N (name redacted): a trans woman who runs a house for trans sex workers in Narowal. After surviving a brutal act of violence where her ex-boyfriend shot her leg for leaving him, N now moves through the world with a prosthetic. She is not a symbol of victimhood, but of refusal, of organizing beyond state visibility, of care that persists even when the body is denatured. How does one represent this? Not with clarity, but with tension. Our visual work strives to hold this contradiction: the simultaneous presence of mutilation and resilience. It asks how to archive fugitive ethics, how to remain faithful to their opacity without rendering them legible for the comfort of the viewer. Paraontological realities echo through our work, staging Pakistani transness not as a minoritized identity, but as a structure/fabulation/imagination of non-being, a body whose relation to the visual field is one of misrecognition. In that sense, the visual art accompanying this essay does not close an argument, it opens a wound. It performs what theory can only gesture toward: the feeling of life after the possibility of life. This is how we mark time: holding the ephemeral to extend its impact in this moment of subcontinental psychosis. This is how we remain. This is our proposition: not clarity, but sensation. Not theory for the page, but affect rendered legible through performance and image. Between misrecognition and survival, we find a form. Between ontology and paraontology, we mark presence, not as claim, but as trace. What remains is not always evidence. Sometimes, it’s a psychotic pulse that doesn’t stop. That is where we build a politics. maidaan-e-jang mein murjha gulaab also builds on the legacy of the Moorat March, one of the most disruptive and generative trans political formations in recent years. A movement that directly birthed the incentive that I needed to advocate for a space like Zenaan-Khana in Lahore. SMM is not just protest. It is legacy work. It continues a lineage of trans, queer, Shi’a-oriented and feminist organizing in Pakistan, grounded not in global human rights discourse but in indigenous ethics and moorat epistemologies. It marks a return to gender plurality as cultural inheritance, reviving cosmologies of embodiment that the colonial and postcolonial state sought to erase. Crucially, it is not just symbolic. It is materially disruptive. SMM builds grassroots power in Sindh, cultivates new kinships across class and caste, and challenges the state’s monopoly on gender recognition. It is precisely within this political genealogy that Zenaan-Khana’s current visual collaboration with Misha Japanwala emerges. The images (including the one offered here) do not illustrate the march; they carry its aftershocks. They hold the schizoid time of moorat rebellion: ishq-filled, subversive in their expression of trans-psychosis, glitching in fragmentation. They don’t document, but distort. And in doing so, they uphold a politics of wake, of misrecognition, of remaining. There is no pride in cultural organizing during genocide. But there is grief. There is glitch. There is residue. And sometimes, that’s enough to break something open. ∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 JAAN-E-HASEENA is a Lahore-based performance-activist, musician, and video-artist whose work explores the radical potential of cultural production for trans liberation in Pakistan. Her debut song “Izzat” became the official anthem of the Sindh Moorat March, catalyzing a community of resistance and chosen kinship. Drawing on her upbringing, her art emerges from a politicized consciousness shaped by sectarian violence, digital queer discovery, and grassroots organizing. MAHNOOR AZEEM is an illustrator, writer, and recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is based in Lahore. Opinion Lahore Pakistan Gender Violence Essay Ceremony Culture Culture work schizo-temporality Shia geographies Shia Matam Mourning performance performance art afterlife wilted roses Sindh Moorat March Zenaan-Khana Cultural organizing solidarities queer and shia beyond symbolism religious rite Karbala reclamation grief victimhood paraontology Pakistani transness Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

For years, “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” a rallying cry from the 1970s by Zeinab Shaath, was a lost cultural artifact until it was recovered in 2017. In 2024, British-Palestinian label Majazz Project and LA-based Discostan released an EP with the titular song, sitting with startling ease alongside contemporary Palestinian music. BOOKS & ARTS The Tortured Roof AUTHOR AUTHOR AUTHOR For years, “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” a rallying cry from the 1970s by Zeinab Shaath, was a lost cultural artifact until it was recovered in 2017. In 2024, British-Palestinian label Majazz Project and LA-based Discostan released an EP with the titular song, sitting with startling ease alongside contemporary Palestinian music. SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Profile Palestine Zeinab Shaath Music Culture Art Art Activism Resistance Peaceful Resistance Methods of Resistance Majaaz Project Discostan Artifact History Egypt Lebanon Poetry Lalita Punjabi Politics of Ethnic Identity political activism Displacement Nakba Gaza Political Organizing Guitar Acoustic Composer Composition Liberation The Urgent Call of Palestine Rally Protest Poetry Ismael Shammout Palestine Liberation Organization Culture and Arts Division Music Video Occupation Militarism Discovery EP Collaboration Freedom Freedom of Movement Memory Conflict Censorship Genocide Anti-Zionism Communication Community Folk Music Global Protest Muqata Shadi Zaqtan Tamer Nafar Palestinian Music Hip Hop Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. DISPATCH Profile Palestine 2nd May 2025 Fifty-four years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl named Zeinab Shaath sat in her bedroom in Alexandria, Egypt, with a guitar and a poem. Her older sister had handed her “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” written by Indian poet Lalita Punjabi, and told her that she couldn’t come out of her room until she had composed music to accompany the words. Shaath came from a politically active family. Her father left Palestine in 1947, just months before the Nakba led to the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians , but he always maintained that they would all return one day. Her Lebanese mother was constantly hosting Gazan students at their home and organizing many fundraisers for Palestine. The musician had been singing for a few years but was hesitant about starting the project. She had never composed music before and was still determining how to become more involved in political organizing. Nonetheless, she got to work. Two days later, she had composed a track that elevated the defiant tone of the poem. Across a fervently strummed acoustic guitar, Shaath sings in an unwavering, golden vibrato that builds intensity and verve as the song progresses. “Liberation banner, raise it high,” she declares in the song's last few seconds. “For Palestine, let us do or die.” Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. Shaath’s powerful voice and unequivocal message resonated widely. In the early 1970s, “The Urgent Call of Palestine” became a rallying cry heard (and subsequently censored) around the world. Shaath’s sister played it on her radio station where it immediately gained popularity. Shaath went on to perform it—and a collection of other musical adaptations of Palestinian protest poetry—everywhere from Beirut to Berlin to Baghdad. The song especially moved Palestinian artist Ismael Shammout , who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Culture and Arts division in Beirut. He filmed Shaath singing the song in what some historians consider the first Palestinian music video. The master copy of the footage, along with countless other cultural artifacts by Palestinian artists, were stolen from Beirut in 1982 during a mass looting by the Israeli Occupation Forces. “Urgent Call” seemed lost for years until Israeli scholar Rona Sela fought to have it declassified in 2017, by which time momentum around Shaath’s work had lessened. But in March 2024, Shaath started a new chapter in her career: an EP of songs, first released via the PLO in 1972, including “Urgent Call,” was reissued as a collaboration between the Palestinian-British label Majazz Project and the Los Angeles-based label Discostan. Arshia Haq and Jeremy Loudenbak, who run Discostan, discovered the EP via the UK collector James Shambles and then reached out to Mo’min Swaitat, the archivist and label runner behind Majazz Project , to see if he wanted to co-release the album. Swaitat had encountered the record already and felt it was “the greatest Palestinian record we’ve ever had.” Haq and Loudenbak were piqued by the record’s contemporary resonance. “When we play the music in record stores, people stop and listen,” says Loudenbak. “[The state] attempted to erase these songs from the cultural imagination, but they have had an incredibly long life.” “I’m struck by the very hopeful voice of a 16-year-old calling us together.” In March 2024, Arshia Haq, Jeremy Loudenbak, Zeinab Shaath, and Mo’min Swaitat met with me via Zoom to discuss the project . Haq and Loudenbak were in Los Angeles, Shaath in Cincinnati, and Swaitat in London. Shaath and Swaitat reminisced about their homeland. Shaath recalled the beaches her cousins visited until the early hours of the night in 1993 after the first Oslo Accord , which gave them slightly more freedom of movement, as well as the green almonds and olives they brought to her family when they visited Egypt. Swaitat traced his love of music to the memory of the weekly wedding songs he had heard played from car speakers, which created a “psychedelic orchestra” of sound and would continue playing in the streets until 3 am. Of course, their grief emerged in lockstep. By the time we spoke, Shaath had lost 27 members of her extended family in Palestine since Israel’s attack on Gaza began in October of 2023 . Swaitat, meanwhile, had been on the phone all night: Israeli forces had just invaded Jenin. Album cover. Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. Teenage Shaath originally composed “The Urgent Call of Palestine” at a historic moment for Palestinians. Six years before she wrote the song, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) came into being, intending to restore an independent Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And just three years before, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, The Sinai Peninsula, and East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War of 1967 . The amount of Palestinian land that Israel controlled doubled during this conflict, despite later attempts from Egypt to regain control of some of the land. Over half a century later, Shaath’s protest music is just as relevant. Israel has been imposing a land, sea, and air blockade on Gaza since 2008. As of October, 2024, airstrikes in North Gaza continue, even as the ambit of Israel’s attacks has expanded to Lebanon. Incomplete estimates claim that Israel’s systematic campaign of genocide since October has killed over 50,000 Palestinians , according to official numbers. In a piece about Palestinian rap, Vivian Medithi writes that it can feel frivolous to over-emphasize art’s radical potential in such times. And yet, Medithi argues, Israel’s censorship of Palestinian art, music, and culture—especially at protests—is proof of its power. After all, cultural expression is a means of record-keeping, a counter to Israel’s attempts to control narratives about their genocide and occupation in international news and social media. Swaitat explicitly calls Shaath’s project a “failure of the Zionist plan” because it so clearly documents Palestinian resistance, connecting Palestinians across the world. “One of the main targets of Zionism is Palestinian identity and knowledge systems, which is where we save our memory,” he says. “They don’t think of us as a group of people who should exist, and they don't want us to have any control over our cultural heritage or communication.” Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. In addition to the poem written by Lalita Punjabi, the three other tracks on Urgent Call are adapted from poems by three Palestinian poets. As she sings their words, Shaath takes on various identities. A proud parent of eight demanding that history remember him and his family. A political prisoner dreaming of returning to their homeland, and a Palestinian citizen finding the strength to survive in the stones of their walls, in “every drop of rain dribbling over the ceiling of the tortured roof.” Shaath’s plainspoken cadence unites these disparate perspectives She sings alone on each song, her vibrato piercing across simple chord progressions strummed on an acoustic guitar. And yet, the songs feel communal, not only because the various perspectives she adopts offer multiple entry points into the music but also because the sparse folk arrangements use candid, repetitive language that encourages the listener to sing along. “Because these songs are composed in direct language, they can be held and carried by people of different ages, from children to people of an older generation,” says Haq. “The musical compositions lend themselves to being repeated, almost like mnemonics.” On “Resist,” Shaath’s call to action is clearly stated and deeply felt: “They slapped down a paper/And a pen before my nose…The paper they wanted me to blemish/Said ‘Resist’/ The pen they wanted to disgrace/ Said ‘Resist, oh, resist.’” On “I Am an Arab,” Shaath repeats the titular phrase with such force that it lingers long after the song finishes. Shaath also directly involves her audience. With her arrangements so minimal and vocals so rich, it feels as if Shaath’s looking you in the eye, candidly asking rhetorical questions: “Can’t you hear the urgent call of Palestine?” “Are you angry?” It is often argued that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is too complex for the average person to comprehend. Shaath’s phrasing cuts through this fallacy with defiance, her vocals evoking longing, fury, and grief to make the reality of Palestinian suffering entirely clear. Beyond Shaath’s efforts to involve the listener in these specific songs, a broader sense of community informed her activism, too. Not only do the lyrics come from translated works of numerous poets, but they were also written at a time of tremendous creative innovation and organization by other Palestinian artists. Many Palestinian artists were spurred into action following the Six-Day War of 1967. The Third Cinema Movement in the 1960s and 1970s established a transnational anticolonial framework for artistic expression. In 1973, the League of Palestinian Artists was created to unify the output of artists across Palestine and “bring a sense of political urgency” to their work: the sound of an entire movement of artists refusing to be silenced . In addition to the organizing and art happening around her, Shaath also looked to Americans protesting racism and segregation in their country, as well as their government’s involvement in Vietnam, for political inspiration. “I would sing ‘ We Shall Overcome ,’ which is used in the U.S. in Black activist spaces, but it was also a Joan Baez song,” Shaath says. “It was very much relevant to us as Palestinians. We sang that, and everyone would sing with me.” You can hear the influence of activists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the plucky, acoustic folk melodies she deploys on the project, as well as her use of guitar and English lyricism. “I used English lyrics because Arabs and Palestinians all know our own history,” she tells me. “We needed the world to know. Even though it’s not a Palestinian or Arab instrument, I thought the guitar would be attractive to the outside world. I felt that people would listen to a song much more than they would read a whole book.” The title track of Urgent Call was—and continues to be—uniquely global in its construction, production, and impact. An Indian woman wrote a poem in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. A few months later, a Palestinian woman living in Egypt transposed the poem into a song that moved hundreds of thousands around the world. Over decades, it became part of an artistic anti-imperial movement that thought beyond borders and saw all struggles as intertwined. This year, American and British archivists are bringing it to entirely new audiences in their countries and beyond. Zeinab in Lebanon. Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. For Shaath, it’s surprising—and saddening—that her music still resonates so widely. “It blows my mind after all these years,” she says. “Our suffering is still continuing, that’s what it means.” Which also lends credence to Palestinian music as a valuable form of resistance: it must continue. Indeed, Shaath is part of a cohort of Palestinian musicians who recall the past, commune with fellow activists, and create by thinking with street protests. Palestinian rapper Muqata’a samples records his grandparents listened to and had to leave behind when they fled their homes. Oud players in Egypt today revive music that initially served as a protest against Israeli occupation in 1967. Alternative musician Shadi Zaqtan pioneered the Palestinian blues genre to express his sorrow at the ongoing genocide. The daring of this work lies in the strategies of truth-telling in composition: most of these musicians use the most direct, unflinching language possible to document their stories. Often, their work sits alongside darker, more personal reckonings about the reach of their work.“For most of my life, I stupidly believed that art exists to change the world,” Tamer Nafar, often credited as the grandfather of Arab hip hop, has said . “Now, I think about art more like the black box flight recorder on an airplane: it won’t navigate the landing; it’s here to document the crash.”∎ Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Next Up:

For years, “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” a rallying cry from the 1970s by Zeinab Shaath, was a lost cultural artifact until it was recovered in 2017. In 2024, British-Palestinian label Majazz Project and LA-based Discostan released an EP with the titular song, sitting with startling ease alongside contemporary Palestinian music. BOOKS & ARTS The Tortured Roof For years, “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” a rallying cry from the 1970s by Zeinab Shaath, was a lost cultural artifact until it was recovered in 2017. In 2024, British-Palestinian label Majazz Project and LA-based Discostan released an EP with the titular song, sitting with startling ease alongside contemporary Palestinian music. Vrinda Jagota Fifty-four years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl named Zeinab Shaath sat in her bedroom in Alexandria, Egypt, with a guitar and a poem. Her older sister had handed her “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” written by Indian poet Lalita Punjabi, and told her that she couldn’t come out of her room until she had composed music to accompany the words. Shaath came from a politically active family. Her father left Palestine in 1947, just months before the Nakba led to the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians , but he always maintained that they would all return one day. Her Lebanese mother was constantly hosting Gazan students at their home and organizing many fundraisers for Palestine. The musician had been singing for a few years but was hesitant about starting the project. She had never composed music before and was still determining how to become more involved in political organizing. Nonetheless, she got to work. Two days later, she had composed a track that elevated the defiant tone of the poem. Across a fervently strummed acoustic guitar, Shaath sings in an unwavering, golden vibrato that builds intensity and verve as the song progresses. “Liberation banner, raise it high,” she declares in the song's last few seconds. “For Palestine, let us do or die.” Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. Shaath’s powerful voice and unequivocal message resonated widely. In the early 1970s, “The Urgent Call of Palestine” became a rallying cry heard (and subsequently censored) around the world. Shaath’s sister played it on her radio station where it immediately gained popularity. Shaath went on to perform it—and a collection of other musical adaptations of Palestinian protest poetry—everywhere from Beirut to Berlin to Baghdad. The song especially moved Palestinian artist Ismael Shammout , who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Culture and Arts division in Beirut. He filmed Shaath singing the song in what some historians consider the first Palestinian music video. The master copy of the footage, along with countless other cultural artifacts by Palestinian artists, were stolen from Beirut in 1982 during a mass looting by the Israeli Occupation Forces. “Urgent Call” seemed lost for years until Israeli scholar Rona Sela fought to have it declassified in 2017, by which time momentum around Shaath’s work had lessened. But in March 2024, Shaath started a new chapter in her career: an EP of songs, first released via the PLO in 1972, including “Urgent Call,” was reissued as a collaboration between the Palestinian-British label Majazz Project and the Los Angeles-based label Discostan. Arshia Haq and Jeremy Loudenbak, who run Discostan, discovered the EP via the UK collector James Shambles and then reached out to Mo’min Swaitat, the archivist and label runner behind Majazz Project , to see if he wanted to co-release the album. Swaitat had encountered the record already and felt it was “the greatest Palestinian record we’ve ever had.” Haq and Loudenbak were piqued by the record’s contemporary resonance. “When we play the music in record stores, people stop and listen,” says Loudenbak. “[The state] attempted to erase these songs from the cultural imagination, but they have had an incredibly long life.” “I’m struck by the very hopeful voice of a 16-year-old calling us together.” In March 2024, Arshia Haq, Jeremy Loudenbak, Zeinab Shaath, and Mo’min Swaitat met with me via Zoom to discuss the project . Haq and Loudenbak were in Los Angeles, Shaath in Cincinnati, and Swaitat in London. Shaath and Swaitat reminisced about their homeland. Shaath recalled the beaches her cousins visited until the early hours of the night in 1993 after the first Oslo Accord , which gave them slightly more freedom of movement, as well as the green almonds and olives they brought to her family when they visited Egypt. Swaitat traced his love of music to the memory of the weekly wedding songs he had heard played from car speakers, which created a “psychedelic orchestra” of sound and would continue playing in the streets until 3 am. Of course, their grief emerged in lockstep. By the time we spoke, Shaath had lost 27 members of her extended family in Palestine since Israel’s attack on Gaza began in October of 2023 . Swaitat, meanwhile, had been on the phone all night: Israeli forces had just invaded Jenin. Album cover. Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. Teenage Shaath originally composed “The Urgent Call of Palestine” at a historic moment for Palestinians. Six years before she wrote the song, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) came into being, intending to restore an independent Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And just three years before, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, The Sinai Peninsula, and East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War of 1967 . The amount of Palestinian land that Israel controlled doubled during this conflict, despite later attempts from Egypt to regain control of some of the land. Over half a century later, Shaath’s protest music is just as relevant. Israel has been imposing a land, sea, and air blockade on Gaza since 2008. As of October, 2024, airstrikes in North Gaza continue, even as the ambit of Israel’s attacks has expanded to Lebanon. Incomplete estimates claim that Israel’s systematic campaign of genocide since October has killed over 50,000 Palestinians , according to official numbers. In a piece about Palestinian rap, Vivian Medithi writes that it can feel frivolous to over-emphasize art’s radical potential in such times. And yet, Medithi argues, Israel’s censorship of Palestinian art, music, and culture—especially at protests—is proof of its power. After all, cultural expression is a means of record-keeping, a counter to Israel’s attempts to control narratives about their genocide and occupation in international news and social media. Swaitat explicitly calls Shaath’s project a “failure of the Zionist plan” because it so clearly documents Palestinian resistance, connecting Palestinians across the world. “One of the main targets of Zionism is Palestinian identity and knowledge systems, which is where we save our memory,” he says. “They don’t think of us as a group of people who should exist, and they don't want us to have any control over our cultural heritage or communication.” Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. In addition to the poem written by Lalita Punjabi, the three other tracks on Urgent Call are adapted from poems by three Palestinian poets. As she sings their words, Shaath takes on various identities. A proud parent of eight demanding that history remember him and his family. A political prisoner dreaming of returning to their homeland, and a Palestinian citizen finding the strength to survive in the stones of their walls, in “every drop of rain dribbling over the ceiling of the tortured roof.” Shaath’s plainspoken cadence unites these disparate perspectives She sings alone on each song, her vibrato piercing across simple chord progressions strummed on an acoustic guitar. And yet, the songs feel communal, not only because the various perspectives she adopts offer multiple entry points into the music but also because the sparse folk arrangements use candid, repetitive language that encourages the listener to sing along. “Because these songs are composed in direct language, they can be held and carried by people of different ages, from children to people of an older generation,” says Haq. “The musical compositions lend themselves to being repeated, almost like mnemonics.” On “Resist,” Shaath’s call to action is clearly stated and deeply felt: “They slapped down a paper/And a pen before my nose…The paper they wanted me to blemish/Said ‘Resist’/ The pen they wanted to disgrace/ Said ‘Resist, oh, resist.’” On “I Am an Arab,” Shaath repeats the titular phrase with such force that it lingers long after the song finishes. Shaath also directly involves her audience. With her arrangements so minimal and vocals so rich, it feels as if Shaath’s looking you in the eye, candidly asking rhetorical questions: “Can’t you hear the urgent call of Palestine?” “Are you angry?” It is often argued that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is too complex for the average person to comprehend. Shaath’s phrasing cuts through this fallacy with defiance, her vocals evoking longing, fury, and grief to make the reality of Palestinian suffering entirely clear. Beyond Shaath’s efforts to involve the listener in these specific songs, a broader sense of community informed her activism, too. Not only do the lyrics come from translated works of numerous poets, but they were also written at a time of tremendous creative innovation and organization by other Palestinian artists. Many Palestinian artists were spurred into action following the Six-Day War of 1967. The Third Cinema Movement in the 1960s and 1970s established a transnational anticolonial framework for artistic expression. In 1973, the League of Palestinian Artists was created to unify the output of artists across Palestine and “bring a sense of political urgency” to their work: the sound of an entire movement of artists refusing to be silenced . In addition to the organizing and art happening around her, Shaath also looked to Americans protesting racism and segregation in their country, as well as their government’s involvement in Vietnam, for political inspiration. “I would sing ‘ We Shall Overcome ,’ which is used in the U.S. in Black activist spaces, but it was also a Joan Baez song,” Shaath says. “It was very much relevant to us as Palestinians. We sang that, and everyone would sing with me.” You can hear the influence of activists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the plucky, acoustic folk melodies she deploys on the project, as well as her use of guitar and English lyricism. “I used English lyrics because Arabs and Palestinians all know our own history,” she tells me. “We needed the world to know. Even though it’s not a Palestinian or Arab instrument, I thought the guitar would be attractive to the outside world. I felt that people would listen to a song much more than they would read a whole book.” The title track of Urgent Call was—and continues to be—uniquely global in its construction, production, and impact. An Indian woman wrote a poem in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. A few months later, a Palestinian woman living in Egypt transposed the poem into a song that moved hundreds of thousands around the world. Over decades, it became part of an artistic anti-imperial movement that thought beyond borders and saw all struggles as intertwined. This year, American and British archivists are bringing it to entirely new audiences in their countries and beyond. Zeinab in Lebanon. Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. For Shaath, it’s surprising—and saddening—that her music still resonates so widely. “It blows my mind after all these years,” she says. “Our suffering is still continuing, that’s what it means.” Which also lends credence to Palestinian music as a valuable form of resistance: it must continue. Indeed, Shaath is part of a cohort of Palestinian musicians who recall the past, commune with fellow activists, and create by thinking with street protests. Palestinian rapper Muqata’a samples records his grandparents listened to and had to leave behind when they fled their homes. Oud players in Egypt today revive music that initially served as a protest against Israeli occupation in 1967. Alternative musician Shadi Zaqtan pioneered the Palestinian blues genre to express his sorrow at the ongoing genocide. The daring of this work lies in the strategies of truth-telling in composition: most of these musicians use the most direct, unflinching language possible to document their stories. Often, their work sits alongside darker, more personal reckonings about the reach of their work.“For most of my life, I stupidly believed that art exists to change the world,” Tamer Nafar, often credited as the grandfather of Arab hip hop, has said . “Now, I think about art more like the black box flight recorder on an airplane: it won’t navigate the landing; it’s here to document the crash.”∎ Fifty-four years ago, a sixteen-year-old girl named Zeinab Shaath sat in her bedroom in Alexandria, Egypt, with a guitar and a poem. Her older sister had handed her “The Urgent Call of Palestine,” written by Indian poet Lalita Punjabi, and told her that she couldn’t come out of her room until she had composed music to accompany the words. Shaath came from a politically active family. Her father left Palestine in 1947, just months before the Nakba led to the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians , but he always maintained that they would all return one day. Her Lebanese mother was constantly hosting Gazan students at their home and organizing many fundraisers for Palestine. The musician had been singing for a few years but was hesitant about starting the project. She had never composed music before and was still determining how to become more involved in political organizing. Nonetheless, she got to work. Two days later, she had composed a track that elevated the defiant tone of the poem. Across a fervently strummed acoustic guitar, Shaath sings in an unwavering, golden vibrato that builds intensity and verve as the song progresses. “Liberation banner, raise it high,” she declares in the song's last few seconds. “For Palestine, let us do or die.” Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. Shaath’s powerful voice and unequivocal message resonated widely. In the early 1970s, “The Urgent Call of Palestine” became a rallying cry heard (and subsequently censored) around the world. Shaath’s sister played it on her radio station where it immediately gained popularity. Shaath went on to perform it—and a collection of other musical adaptations of Palestinian protest poetry—everywhere from Beirut to Berlin to Baghdad. The song especially moved Palestinian artist Ismael Shammout , who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Culture and Arts division in Beirut. He filmed Shaath singing the song in what some historians consider the first Palestinian music video. The master copy of the footage, along with countless other cultural artifacts by Palestinian artists, were stolen from Beirut in 1982 during a mass looting by the Israeli Occupation Forces. “Urgent Call” seemed lost for years until Israeli scholar Rona Sela fought to have it declassified in 2017, by which time momentum around Shaath’s work had lessened. But in March 2024, Shaath started a new chapter in her career: an EP of songs, first released via the PLO in 1972, including “Urgent Call,” was reissued as a collaboration between the Palestinian-British label Majazz Project and the Los Angeles-based label Discostan. Arshia Haq and Jeremy Loudenbak, who run Discostan, discovered the EP via the UK collector James Shambles and then reached out to Mo’min Swaitat, the archivist and label runner behind Majazz Project , to see if he wanted to co-release the album. Swaitat had encountered the record already and felt it was “the greatest Palestinian record we’ve ever had.” Haq and Loudenbak were piqued by the record’s contemporary resonance. “When we play the music in record stores, people stop and listen,” says Loudenbak. “[The state] attempted to erase these songs from the cultural imagination, but they have had an incredibly long life.” “I’m struck by the very hopeful voice of a 16-year-old calling us together.” In March 2024, Arshia Haq, Jeremy Loudenbak, Zeinab Shaath, and Mo’min Swaitat met with me via Zoom to discuss the project . Haq and Loudenbak were in Los Angeles, Shaath in Cincinnati, and Swaitat in London. Shaath and Swaitat reminisced about their homeland. Shaath recalled the beaches her cousins visited until the early hours of the night in 1993 after the first Oslo Accord , which gave them slightly more freedom of movement, as well as the green almonds and olives they brought to her family when they visited Egypt. Swaitat traced his love of music to the memory of the weekly wedding songs he had heard played from car speakers, which created a “psychedelic orchestra” of sound and would continue playing in the streets until 3 am. Of course, their grief emerged in lockstep. By the time we spoke, Shaath had lost 27 members of her extended family in Palestine since Israel’s attack on Gaza began in October of 2023 . Swaitat, meanwhile, had been on the phone all night: Israeli forces had just invaded Jenin. Album cover. Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. Teenage Shaath originally composed “The Urgent Call of Palestine” at a historic moment for Palestinians. Six years before she wrote the song, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) came into being, intending to restore an independent Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And just three years before, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, The Sinai Peninsula, and East Jerusalem after the Six-Day War of 1967 . The amount of Palestinian land that Israel controlled doubled during this conflict, despite later attempts from Egypt to regain control of some of the land. Over half a century later, Shaath’s protest music is just as relevant. Israel has been imposing a land, sea, and air blockade on Gaza since 2008. As of October, 2024, airstrikes in North Gaza continue, even as the ambit of Israel’s attacks has expanded to Lebanon. Incomplete estimates claim that Israel’s systematic campaign of genocide since October has killed over 50,000 Palestinians , according to official numbers. In a piece about Palestinian rap, Vivian Medithi writes that it can feel frivolous to over-emphasize art’s radical potential in such times. And yet, Medithi argues, Israel’s censorship of Palestinian art, music, and culture—especially at protests—is proof of its power. After all, cultural expression is a means of record-keeping, a counter to Israel’s attempts to control narratives about their genocide and occupation in international news and social media. Swaitat explicitly calls Shaath’s project a “failure of the Zionist plan” because it so clearly documents Palestinian resistance, connecting Palestinians across the world. “One of the main targets of Zionism is Palestinian identity and knowledge systems, which is where we save our memory,” he says. “They don’t think of us as a group of people who should exist, and they don't want us to have any control over our cultural heritage or communication.” Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. In addition to the poem written by Lalita Punjabi, the three other tracks on Urgent Call are adapted from poems by three Palestinian poets. As she sings their words, Shaath takes on various identities. A proud parent of eight demanding that history remember him and his family. A political prisoner dreaming of returning to their homeland, and a Palestinian citizen finding the strength to survive in the stones of their walls, in “every drop of rain dribbling over the ceiling of the tortured roof.” Shaath’s plainspoken cadence unites these disparate perspectives She sings alone on each song, her vibrato piercing across simple chord progressions strummed on an acoustic guitar. And yet, the songs feel communal, not only because the various perspectives she adopts offer multiple entry points into the music but also because the sparse folk arrangements use candid, repetitive language that encourages the listener to sing along. “Because these songs are composed in direct language, they can be held and carried by people of different ages, from children to people of an older generation,” says Haq. “The musical compositions lend themselves to being repeated, almost like mnemonics.” On “Resist,” Shaath’s call to action is clearly stated and deeply felt: “They slapped down a paper/And a pen before my nose…The paper they wanted me to blemish/Said ‘Resist’/ The pen they wanted to disgrace/ Said ‘Resist, oh, resist.’” On “I Am an Arab,” Shaath repeats the titular phrase with such force that it lingers long after the song finishes. Shaath also directly involves her audience. With her arrangements so minimal and vocals so rich, it feels as if Shaath’s looking you in the eye, candidly asking rhetorical questions: “Can’t you hear the urgent call of Palestine?” “Are you angry?” It is often argued that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is too complex for the average person to comprehend. Shaath’s phrasing cuts through this fallacy with defiance, her vocals evoking longing, fury, and grief to make the reality of Palestinian suffering entirely clear. Beyond Shaath’s efforts to involve the listener in these specific songs, a broader sense of community informed her activism, too. Not only do the lyrics come from translated works of numerous poets, but they were also written at a time of tremendous creative innovation and organization by other Palestinian artists. Many Palestinian artists were spurred into action following the Six-Day War of 1967. The Third Cinema Movement in the 1960s and 1970s established a transnational anticolonial framework for artistic expression. In 1973, the League of Palestinian Artists was created to unify the output of artists across Palestine and “bring a sense of political urgency” to their work: the sound of an entire movement of artists refusing to be silenced . In addition to the organizing and art happening around her, Shaath also looked to Americans protesting racism and segregation in their country, as well as their government’s involvement in Vietnam, for political inspiration. “I would sing ‘ We Shall Overcome ,’ which is used in the U.S. in Black activist spaces, but it was also a Joan Baez song,” Shaath says. “It was very much relevant to us as Palestinians. We sang that, and everyone would sing with me.” You can hear the influence of activists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the plucky, acoustic folk melodies she deploys on the project, as well as her use of guitar and English lyricism. “I used English lyrics because Arabs and Palestinians all know our own history,” she tells me. “We needed the world to know. Even though it’s not a Palestinian or Arab instrument, I thought the guitar would be attractive to the outside world. I felt that people would listen to a song much more than they would read a whole book.” The title track of Urgent Call was—and continues to be—uniquely global in its construction, production, and impact. An Indian woman wrote a poem in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. A few months later, a Palestinian woman living in Egypt transposed the poem into a song that moved hundreds of thousands around the world. Over decades, it became part of an artistic anti-imperial movement that thought beyond borders and saw all struggles as intertwined. This year, American and British archivists are bringing it to entirely new audiences in their countries and beyond. Zeinab in Lebanon. Image from the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath. For Shaath, it’s surprising—and saddening—that her music still resonates so widely. “It blows my mind after all these years,” she says. “Our suffering is still continuing, that’s what it means.” Which also lends credence to Palestinian music as a valuable form of resistance: it must continue. Indeed, Shaath is part of a cohort of Palestinian musicians who recall the past, commune with fellow activists, and create by thinking with street protests. Palestinian rapper Muqata’a samples records his grandparents listened to and had to leave behind when they fled their homes. Oud players in Egypt today revive music that initially served as a protest against Israeli occupation in 1967. Alternative musician Shadi Zaqtan pioneered the Palestinian blues genre to express his sorrow at the ongoing genocide. The daring of this work lies in the strategies of truth-telling in composition: most of these musicians use the most direct, unflinching language possible to document their stories. Often, their work sits alongside darker, more personal reckonings about the reach of their work.“For most of my life, I stupidly believed that art exists to change the world,” Tamer Nafar, often credited as the grandfather of Arab hip hop, has said . “Now, I think about art more like the black box flight recorder on an airplane: it won’t navigate the landing; it’s here to document the crash.”∎ SUB-HEAD ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Clare Patrick (Our) Worlds and (Plant) Wisdoms Kareen Adam · Nazish Chunara A Dhivehi Artists Showcase From the personal collection of Zeinab Shaath (1972). SHARE Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Profile Palestine Zeinab Shaath Music Culture Art Art Activism Resistance Peaceful Resistance Methods of Resistance Majaaz Project Discostan Artifact History Egypt Lebanon Poetry Lalita Punjabi Politics of Ethnic Identity political activism Displacement Nakba Gaza Political Organizing Guitar Acoustic Composer Composition Liberation The Urgent Call of Palestine Rally Protest Poetry Ismael Shammout Palestine Liberation Organization Culture and Arts Division Music Video Occupation Militarism Discovery EP Collaboration Freedom Freedom of Movement Memory Conflict Censorship Genocide Anti-Zionism Communication Community Folk Music Global Protest Muqata Shadi Zaqtan Tamer Nafar Palestinian Music Hip Hop VRINDA JAGOTA is a writer, union organizer, and social media manager based in Brooklyn. She currently contributes to Third Bridge Creative , organizes with Newsguild , and works with Naya Beat, previously at Pitchfork . 2 May 2025 Profile Palestine 2nd May 2025 ZEINAB SHAATH is a Palestinian-Egyptian singer-songwriter. She is known for the song "The Urgent Call of Palestine", released in 1972. Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

KOKOKO!, an experimental music collective from the DRC, has navigated political censorship and the country’s struggles with energy exploitation to create a sound that electrifies the present. Using repurposed household materials as instruments and makeshift cables for amps, they fuse French and South African house with Congolese folk to produce innovative live and stereo listening experiences. Their latest album, BUTU— “the night”—calls on audiences to bear witness to the cacophony of Kinshasa after dusk as a commentary on the political state of Congo at large. KOKOKO!, an experimental music collective from the DRC, has navigated political censorship and the country’s struggles with energy exploitation to create a sound that electrifies the present. Using repurposed household materials as instruments and makeshift cables for amps, they fuse French and South African house with Congolese folk to produce innovative live and stereo listening experiences. Their latest album, BUTU— “the night”—calls on audiences to bear witness to the cacophony of Kinshasa after dusk as a commentary on the political state of Congo at large. BUTU (2024) album cover. Image courtesy of KOKOKO! Artist Congo AUTHOR · AUTHOR · AUTHOR 17 Feb 2025 th · BOOKS & ARTS REPORTAGE · LOCATION Lights Out in Kinshasa At a show in Kinshasa, electric wires glow red and drip from the ceiling. Massive grooves do not relent. Then, the amp explodes. Still, electronic group KOKOKO! and their audience are undeterred. “When this happens, nobody panics,” KOKOKO! producer and keyboardist Xavier Thomas tells me over Zoom. “We just rewire some things; maybe we don't tell people how long it's going to be. Then, the gig comes back at full intensity.” The duo came together in 2017, when Thomas aka Débruit, who is French, traveled to Kinshasa to work on a documentary about the city’s performance art scene. While there, he met Makara Bianko, a Congolese musician who was putting on daily live music performances, at the time, that lasted for hours and involved dozens of dancers. Thomas, Bianko, and a number of other musicians began by playing at a block party inside a building that was under construction. They had such a great time that they decided to form a group together. KOKOKO! Image courtesy of the artists. A video they released shortly afterwards featured snippets of their songs. In it, the group explained how they fashioned instruments out of everyday objects like detergent bottles and tin cans because they love electronic music but don’t always have access to instruments to make the music in conventional ways. KOKOKO!’s experimental production approach garnered so much attention that they were invited to go on a 12-stop tour of Europe before even releasing a single. They went on to tour the US, release their critically acclaimed 2019 debut album, Fongola , and play shows like Boiler room and NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. KOKOKO! make a maximal, frenetic, and innovative blend of punk, trance, Congolese folk, and bits of Kwaito – a genre of house music that originated in South Africa. Makara Bianko, who is the vocalist and band leader, sings with propulsive, declarative wail delivered in “fast short loops.” And Débruit, who has been DJing French house music (combined with musical influences from Turkey, Tunisia, and of course, The Congo) for over two decades, takes production credits for his signature squirming basslines, blaring, distorted synths, and booming percussion. Though, it’s not just the intensity of KOKOKO!’s performances that causes the equipment at their shows to glow and burst at shows. The Congo produces a number of resources that are used to make technology like smartphones, batteries, and laptops. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the country. Citizens rarely benefit from these resources or from the prosperity possible from its sale. On the contrary, a quarter of the country’s population of 111 million people. Interviews with over 130 people led Amnesty International to report that entire communities are being forced to leave their homes as mining companies expand operations. “The cables we were using were really cheap,” Thomas says in his diagnosis about the exploding amplifier. “I would take a plug apart and it would be just one thread of metal instead of a bunch of braided ones. The people in the Congo produce so many resources, but most can’t benefit from them.” It’s how people living in Kinshasa adapt to and resist this neglect that inspires KOKOKO!’s new album BUTU , which means ‘the night’ in Lingala. Scientists estimate that the Congo River that runs next to the city generates around 100,000 MW of electricity—enough to power the entire country of France. Locals, however, confront frequent power cuts as energy is largely sold outside of the country. According to the World Bank, only 19% of the country’s citizens have access to electricity. Due to its location near the equator, night falls early and quickly in the city. So, in the sudden, consuming darkness, the sounds of daily life—cars whizzing down the street, people finishing off their last errands of the day before heading home, churches competing with nearby clubs for passerbys’ attention — are amplified. “Kinshasa is never quiet,” Bianko says, “there is always somewhere to go party, always a performance, whether it’s in everyday life and how people act to be resourceful or the way people dress. People in Kinshasa do everything to stand out from the chaotic and difficult backdrop of the city. Everyone wants to be one special character out of 18M.” In capturing the night, KOKOKO! also bring a sense of mystery into their music. On opener “Butu Ezo Ya,” Bianko welcomes the listener into his world: “The night is coming /Come in enter all of you / The darkness is coming / Come enter and witness it.” As the chanted vocals layer and wind through field recordings of car horns grinding synth, you feel swathed in the falling night and all the disarray and excitement it will bring with it. The forthcoming details of the night are never specified, but you know they will be notable enough to warrant witnessing together. KOKOKO! Image courtesy of the artists. It appears that this communal witnessing serves as a political tool, too. The citizens of the DRC face intense censorship from the government. The government regularly shuts down the internet, especially during election periods. They can also criminalize journalism without stating any specific reasons, and in 2021 banned songs that were critical of the government. BUTU shares frustration at this political reality with the listener. There are moments of explicit critique: one song is titled “My country doesn’t like me” but most of the lyricism is opaque to avoid censorship. “Here in DRC, sometimes we need to disguise some meaning. Either the story is about something else but the message is the same, or we use words that sound similar to forbidden ones. We can’t really talk openly so it’s for the listener to discover.” “Mokili” begins with a handful of chanted imperatives: “Leap! Makes you jump! Grab it! Defeat him! Help! Open!” that transition into a melody about the world turning upside down. As with “Butu Ezo Ya,” it’s unclear if the words are sung with a sense of excitement or dread. Sonically, KOKOKO! pushed their production forward with Butu to capture this sense of political overwhelm. “We wanted the rolling rhythms, the music loops, and Macada’s powerful voice to be almost overwhelming,” Thomas says, “We wanted the music to have lots of information, lots of rhythms, and lots of vocals.” Fongola had a raw, improvised feeling that’s been replaced with lusher, more cohesive electronic production on KOKOKO’s latest album. While the earlier compositions relayed a sense of verve and spontaneity, the songs on BUTU build into tidal waves of emotion. On “Telema,” the call and response vocals enliven an already propulsive backdrop of grumbling synth and drums that surge forward like a forest fire. “Mokolo Lukambu” spotlights the honeyed undulations of Bianko’s vibrato, which relays a tangible feeling of longing. These burning, fluorescent songs are so poignant because of their multivalence. With BUTU , KOKOKO! celebrate the beauty of their city and lives while protesting the inhumane conditions the government imposes on them there. They keep playing even as the amp explodes, inviting us to bear witness, all while keeping the dance alive.∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Review Congo Music KOKOKO! BUTU Arts Experimental Music DRC Censorship Politics French South African Live Music Production Bandcamp Instruments Recycled Materials Fongola Debut Boiler Room NPR Tiny Desk Punk Trance Folk Kwaito House music Turkey Tunisia Synth Percussion Technology Natural Resources Cobalt Environmental Science Migration Performance Resist Congo River Lingala Energy Electricity Equator State Government Narrative Banned Music Journalism Criminality Critique Kinshasa Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

KOKOKO!, an experimental music collective from the DRC, has navigated political censorship and the country’s struggles with energy exploitation to create a sound that electrifies the present. Using repurposed household materials as instruments and makeshift cables for amps, they fuse French and South African house with Congolese folk to produce innovative live and stereo listening experiences. Their latest album, BUTU— “the night”—calls on audiences to bear witness to the cacophony of Kinshasa after dusk as a commentary on the political state of Congo at large. KOKOKO!, an experimental music collective from the DRC, has navigated political censorship and the country’s struggles with energy exploitation to create a sound that electrifies the present. Using repurposed household materials as instruments and makeshift cables for amps, they fuse French and South African house with Congolese folk to produce innovative live and stereo listening experiences. Their latest album, BUTU— “the night”—calls on audiences to bear witness to the cacophony of Kinshasa after dusk as a commentary on the political state of Congo at large. BUTU (2024) album cover. Image courtesy of KOKOKO! Artist · BOOKS & ARTS REPORTAGE · LOCATION Lights Out in Kinshasa LOCATION AUTHOR . AUTHOR . AUTHOR . 17 Feb 2025 th . Letter from our columnist . At a show in Kinshasa, electric wires glow red and drip from the ceiling. Massive grooves do not relent. Then, the amp explodes. Still, electronic group KOKOKO! and their audience are undeterred. “When this happens, nobody panics,” KOKOKO! producer and keyboardist Xavier Thomas tells me over Zoom. “We just rewire some things; maybe we don't tell people how long it's going to be. Then, the gig comes back at full intensity.” The duo came together in 2017, when Thomas aka Débruit, who is French, traveled to Kinshasa to work on a documentary about the city’s performance art scene. While there, he met Makara Bianko, a Congolese musician who was putting on daily live music performances, at the time, that lasted for hours and involved dozens of dancers. Thomas, Bianko, and a number of other musicians began by playing at a block party inside a building that was under construction. They had such a great time that they decided to form a group together. KOKOKO! Image courtesy of the artists. A video they released shortly afterwards featured snippets of their songs. In it, the group explained how they fashioned instruments out of everyday objects like detergent bottles and tin cans because they love electronic music but don’t always have access to instruments to make the music in conventional ways. KOKOKO!’s experimental production approach garnered so much attention that they were invited to go on a 12-stop tour of Europe before even releasing a single. They went on to tour the US, release their critically acclaimed 2019 debut album, Fongola , and play shows like Boiler room and NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. KOKOKO! make a maximal, frenetic, and innovative blend of punk, trance, Congolese folk, and bits of Kwaito – a genre of house music that originated in South Africa. Makara Bianko, who is the vocalist and band leader, sings with propulsive, declarative wail delivered in “fast short loops.” And Débruit, who has been DJing French house music (combined with musical influences from Turkey, Tunisia, and of course, The Congo) for over two decades, takes production credits for his signature squirming basslines, blaring, distorted synths, and booming percussion. Though, it’s not just the intensity of KOKOKO!’s performances that causes the equipment at their shows to glow and burst at shows. The Congo produces a number of resources that are used to make technology like smartphones, batteries, and laptops. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the country. Citizens rarely benefit from these resources or from the prosperity possible from its sale. On the contrary, a quarter of the country’s population of 111 million people. Interviews with over 130 people led Amnesty International to report that entire communities are being forced to leave their homes as mining companies expand operations. “The cables we were using were really cheap,” Thomas says in his diagnosis about the exploding amplifier. “I would take a plug apart and it would be just one thread of metal instead of a bunch of braided ones. The people in the Congo produce so many resources, but most can’t benefit from them.” It’s how people living in Kinshasa adapt to and resist this neglect that inspires KOKOKO!’s new album BUTU , which means ‘the night’ in Lingala. Scientists estimate that the Congo River that runs next to the city generates around 100,000 MW of electricity—enough to power the entire country of France. Locals, however, confront frequent power cuts as energy is largely sold outside of the country. According to the World Bank, only 19% of the country’s citizens have access to electricity. Due to its location near the equator, night falls early and quickly in the city. So, in the sudden, consuming darkness, the sounds of daily life—cars whizzing down the street, people finishing off their last errands of the day before heading home, churches competing with nearby clubs for passerbys’ attention — are amplified. “Kinshasa is never quiet,” Bianko says, “there is always somewhere to go party, always a performance, whether it’s in everyday life and how people act to be resourceful or the way people dress. People in Kinshasa do everything to stand out from the chaotic and difficult backdrop of the city. Everyone wants to be one special character out of 18M.” In capturing the night, KOKOKO! also bring a sense of mystery into their music. On opener “Butu Ezo Ya,” Bianko welcomes the listener into his world: “The night is coming /Come in enter all of you / The darkness is coming / Come enter and witness it.” As the chanted vocals layer and wind through field recordings of car horns grinding synth, you feel swathed in the falling night and all the disarray and excitement it will bring with it. The forthcoming details of the night are never specified, but you know they will be notable enough to warrant witnessing together. KOKOKO! Image courtesy of the artists. It appears that this communal witnessing serves as a political tool, too. The citizens of the DRC face intense censorship from the government. The government regularly shuts down the internet, especially during election periods. They can also criminalize journalism without stating any specific reasons, and in 2021 banned songs that were critical of the government. BUTU shares frustration at this political reality with the listener. There are moments of explicit critique: one song is titled “My country doesn’t like me” but most of the lyricism is opaque to avoid censorship. “Here in DRC, sometimes we need to disguise some meaning. Either the story is about something else but the message is the same, or we use words that sound similar to forbidden ones. We can’t really talk openly so it’s for the listener to discover.” “Mokili” begins with a handful of chanted imperatives: “Leap! Makes you jump! Grab it! Defeat him! Help! Open!” that transition into a melody about the world turning upside down. As with “Butu Ezo Ya,” it’s unclear if the words are sung with a sense of excitement or dread. Sonically, KOKOKO! pushed their production forward with Butu to capture this sense of political overwhelm. “We wanted the rolling rhythms, the music loops, and Macada’s powerful voice to be almost overwhelming,” Thomas says, “We wanted the music to have lots of information, lots of rhythms, and lots of vocals.” Fongola had a raw, improvised feeling that’s been replaced with lusher, more cohesive electronic production on KOKOKO’s latest album. While the earlier compositions relayed a sense of verve and spontaneity, the songs on BUTU build into tidal waves of emotion. On “Telema,” the call and response vocals enliven an already propulsive backdrop of grumbling synth and drums that surge forward like a forest fire. “Mokolo Lukambu” spotlights the honeyed undulations of Bianko’s vibrato, which relays a tangible feeling of longing. These burning, fluorescent songs are so poignant because of their multivalence. With BUTU , KOKOKO! celebrate the beauty of their city and lives while protesting the inhumane conditions the government imposes on them there. They keep playing even as the amp explodes, inviting us to bear witness, all while keeping the dance alive.∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Review Congo Music KOKOKO! BUTU Arts Experimental Music DRC Censorship Politics French South African Live Music Production Bandcamp Instruments Recycled Materials Fongola Debut Boiler Room NPR Tiny Desk Punk Trance Folk Kwaito House music Turkey Tunisia Synth Percussion Technology Natural Resources Cobalt Environmental Science Migration Performance Resist Congo River Lingala Energy Electricity Equator State Government Narrative Banned Music Journalism Criminality Critique Kinshasa Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

KOKOKO!, an experimental music collective from the DRC, has navigated political censorship and the country’s struggles with energy exploitation to create a sound that electrifies the present. Using repurposed household materials as instruments and makeshift cables for amps, they fuse French and South African house with Congolese folk to produce innovative live and stereo listening experiences. Their latest album, BUTU— “the night”—calls on audiences to bear witness to the cacophony of Kinshasa after dusk as a commentary on the political state of Congo at large. · BOOKS & ARTS Review · Congo KOKOKO!, an experimental music collective from the DRC, has navigated political censorship and the country’s struggles with energy exploitation to create a sound that electrifies the present. Using repurposed household materials as instruments and makeshift cables for amps, they fuse French and South African house with Congolese folk to produce innovative live and stereo listening experiences. Their latest album, BUTU— “the night”—calls on audiences to bear witness to the cacophony of Kinshasa after dusk as a commentary on the political state of Congo at large. BUTU (2024) album cover. Image courtesy of KOKOKO! Lights Out in Kinshasa At a show in Kinshasa, electric wires glow red and drip from the ceiling. Massive grooves do not relent. Then, the amp explodes. Still, electronic group KOKOKO! and their audience are undeterred. “When this happens, nobody panics,” KOKOKO! producer and keyboardist Xavier Thomas tells me over Zoom. “We just rewire some things; maybe we don't tell people how long it's going to be. Then, the gig comes back at full intensity.” The duo came together in 2017, when Thomas aka Débruit, who is French, traveled to Kinshasa to work on a documentary about the city’s performance art scene. While there, he met Makara Bianko, a Congolese musician who was putting on daily live music performances, at the time, that lasted for hours and involved dozens of dancers. Thomas, Bianko, and a number of other musicians began by playing at a block party inside a building that was under construction. They had such a great time that they decided to form a group together. KOKOKO! Image courtesy of the artists. A video they released shortly afterwards featured snippets of their songs. In it, the group explained how they fashioned instruments out of everyday objects like detergent bottles and tin cans because they love electronic music but don’t always have access to instruments to make the music in conventional ways. KOKOKO!’s experimental production approach garnered so much attention that they were invited to go on a 12-stop tour of Europe before even releasing a single. They went on to tour the US, release their critically acclaimed 2019 debut album, Fongola , and play shows like Boiler room and NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. KOKOKO! make a maximal, frenetic, and innovative blend of punk, trance, Congolese folk, and bits of Kwaito – a genre of house music that originated in South Africa. Makara Bianko, who is the vocalist and band leader, sings with propulsive, declarative wail delivered in “fast short loops.” And Débruit, who has been DJing French house music (combined with musical influences from Turkey, Tunisia, and of course, The Congo) for over two decades, takes production credits for his signature squirming basslines, blaring, distorted synths, and booming percussion. Though, it’s not just the intensity of KOKOKO!’s performances that causes the equipment at their shows to glow and burst at shows. The Congo produces a number of resources that are used to make technology like smartphones, batteries, and laptops. 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the country. Citizens rarely benefit from these resources or from the prosperity possible from its sale. On the contrary, a quarter of the country’s population of 111 million people. Interviews with over 130 people led Amnesty International to report that entire communities are being forced to leave their homes as mining companies expand operations. “The cables we were using were really cheap,” Thomas says in his diagnosis about the exploding amplifier. “I would take a plug apart and it would be just one thread of metal instead of a bunch of braided ones. The people in the Congo produce so many resources, but most can’t benefit from them.” It’s how people living in Kinshasa adapt to and resist this neglect that inspires KOKOKO!’s new album BUTU , which means ‘the night’ in Lingala. Scientists estimate that the Congo River that runs next to the city generates around 100,000 MW of electricity—enough to power the entire country of France. Locals, however, confront frequent power cuts as energy is largely sold outside of the country. According to the World Bank, only 19% of the country’s citizens have access to electricity. Due to its location near the equator, night falls early and quickly in the city. So, in the sudden, consuming darkness, the sounds of daily life—cars whizzing down the street, people finishing off their last errands of the day before heading home, churches competing with nearby clubs for passerbys’ attention — are amplified. “Kinshasa is never quiet,” Bianko says, “there is always somewhere to go party, always a performance, whether it’s in everyday life and how people act to be resourceful or the way people dress. People in Kinshasa do everything to stand out from the chaotic and difficult backdrop of the city. Everyone wants to be one special character out of 18M.” In capturing the night, KOKOKO! also bring a sense of mystery into their music. On opener “Butu Ezo Ya,” Bianko welcomes the listener into his world: “The night is coming /Come in enter all of you / The darkness is coming / Come enter and witness it.” As the chanted vocals layer and wind through field recordings of car horns grinding synth, you feel swathed in the falling night and all the disarray and excitement it will bring with it. The forthcoming details of the night are never specified, but you know they will be notable enough to warrant witnessing together. KOKOKO! Image courtesy of the artists. It appears that this communal witnessing serves as a political tool, too. The citizens of the DRC face intense censorship from the government. The government regularly shuts down the internet, especially during election periods. They can also criminalize journalism without stating any specific reasons, and in 2021 banned songs that were critical of the government. BUTU shares frustration at this political reality with the listener. There are moments of explicit critique: one song is titled “My country doesn’t like me” but most of the lyricism is opaque to avoid censorship. “Here in DRC, sometimes we need to disguise some meaning. Either the story is about something else but the message is the same, or we use words that sound similar to forbidden ones. We can’t really talk openly so it’s for the listener to discover.” “Mokili” begins with a handful of chanted imperatives: “Leap! Makes you jump! Grab it! Defeat him! Help! Open!” that transition into a melody about the world turning upside down. As with “Butu Ezo Ya,” it’s unclear if the words are sung with a sense of excitement or dread. Sonically, KOKOKO! pushed their production forward with Butu to capture this sense of political overwhelm. “We wanted the rolling rhythms, the music loops, and Macada’s powerful voice to be almost overwhelming,” Thomas says, “We wanted the music to have lots of information, lots of rhythms, and lots of vocals.” Fongola had a raw, improvised feeling that’s been replaced with lusher, more cohesive electronic production on KOKOKO’s latest album. While the earlier compositions relayed a sense of verve and spontaneity, the songs on BUTU build into tidal waves of emotion. On “Telema,” the call and response vocals enliven an already propulsive backdrop of grumbling synth and drums that surge forward like a forest fire. “Mokolo Lukambu” spotlights the honeyed undulations of Bianko’s vibrato, which relays a tangible feeling of longing. These burning, fluorescent songs are so poignant because of their multivalence. With BUTU , KOKOKO! celebrate the beauty of their city and lives while protesting the inhumane conditions the government imposes on them there. They keep playing even as the amp explodes, inviting us to bear witness, all while keeping the dance alive.∎ SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Review Congo Music KOKOKO! BUTU Arts Experimental Music DRC Censorship Politics French South African Live Music Production Bandcamp Instruments Recycled Materials Fongola Debut Boiler Room NPR Tiny Desk Punk Trance Folk Kwaito House music Turkey Tunisia Synth Percussion Technology Natural Resources Cobalt Environmental Science Migration Performance Resist Congo River Lingala Energy Electricity Equator State Government Narrative Banned Music Journalism Criminality Critique Kinshasa Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 17th Feb 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Palestinian-American actor and playwright Sadieh Rifai confronts the mental toll of occupation, war, and the American dream in her world premiere, The Cave. · BOOKS & ARTS Interview · Chicago Palestinian-American actor and playwright Sadieh Rifai confronts the mental toll of occupation, war, and the American dream in her world premiere, The Cave. Poster, and photos of the play, courtesy of A Red Orchid Theatre (AROT) . The Mind is a Theater of War Sadieh Rifai has performed on Chicago’s premier stages, working with the likes of Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwrights Tracy Letts and Stephen Karam. Following the preview performances of her playwriting debut at A Red Orchid Theatre (AROT), where she is an ensemble member, we spent precious dwindling hours discussing theater as a collaborative form, the Islamophobia of the 1990s, and what it means for her to stage a play that explores (among other things) the haunting afterlife of violence under occupation, in the shadow of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Ahsan Butt Tell me what it was like being in the room with Tracy Letts workshopping August: Osage County , which, of course, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. How did you get there? Sadieh Rifai When I first came to Chicago, I auditioned for the school at Steppenwolf, where the ensemble members taught viewpoints, and Sheldon Patinkin, who helped invent Second City, led the improv sessions. It was an incredible experience. After I finished there, I was asked to audition for a new play by Tracy Letts, August: Osage County . I had no idea how important it was going to be. I auditioned, but they wanted a Native American woman for the role. Still, they asked me to participate in the workshop. It lasted about a week and included Michael Shannon, who would later become my fellow ensemble member at AROT, Mike Nussbaum, the oldest living actor before he passed, and Amy Morton, one of my favourite actors. Sitting at that table, I learned so much. Tracy opened up about the play, explaining that it was based on his life—his grandfather had committed suicide, and this was the story of that. I remember him saying that when he showed the play to his mother, she told him, “Thank you for being so kind to my mother.” That always stuck with me because if you have seen the play, you would think that woman is a monster. But Tracy was so vulnerable in the room. The title of the play came from a poem written by his mentor. Before that, I had always assumed that playwrights did not want even a single word changed—that every line had to be said exactly as written. But in that room, I saw true collaboration. Amy Morton would ask, “Can I cut this word? It is getting caught in the sentence.” Tracy would say, “Cut it, cut it.” There were things he fought for, but in other moments, he was so open. That experience made me aware of what I wanted to create one day. I wanted to write my own story. But I did not yet have the confidence to do it. Still, it was my dream to build something like what they had in that room. AB Did you always want to be in theater? SR At my wedding, my younger brother told a story about our childhood. We grew up in our grandparents’ house in Galesburg, Illinois, which was an old schoolhouse. It had an auditorium, classrooms that became our bedrooms, and even lockers. The building was run-down but magical. There was also a stage. We used to put on puppet shows, slipping behind the curtains to perform. He asked, “Do you remember this?” When I said no, he just went, “Great, glad I brought it up.” My brother is incredibly smart. He could do no wrong as a student. I, on the other hand, am dyslexic. I was never a good student, never understood. But one day, my mother took me to see Jesus Christ Superstar . Ted Neeley was performing—he was the original Jesus—and Carl Anderson, the Judas from the movie, was there too. Afterwards, we got to talk to Ted Neeley. He was the nicest guy, telling us about filming in the Middle East. I think my mother knew early on that I was not going to be some kind of scholar. The things that interested me were always art, music, and theatre. And acting, though I was not good at anything yet, there was a part of me that just knew I could do it. We also lived in Vegas when I was young. My mom was a change-girl, and my dad worked in another hotel. She would take us to see this show called Splash— women dressed like mermaids, holding their breath underwater, and performing synchronized swimming routines. We also saw Sigfried & Roy , all the magic shows, David Copperfield . For us, until it became a dangerous place, when my cousin was murdered, it was like the schoolhouse: magical. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Aaliyah Montana, and Kirsten Fitzgerald in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai at A Red Orchid Theatre. Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Your play, The Cave , follows a mixed family like your own, a Palestinian father and Swedish-American mother with two kids, who also move from Las Vegas to a more suburban, white town after the murder of their nephew (the kids’ cousin). The father, Jamil—under the strain of the tragedy, their new life, the specter of a coming war, and past experiences he’s never talked about—begins to hear voices. Some may see it as a post-9/11 play because Islamophobia is such a prevalent theme, but the play is set in the ’90s, during the first Gulf War. For those of us, who are…a bit older, we remember what that time was like. What was your experience during the period in which the play is set? SR I still remember one of my teachers taking me in front of the classroom and saying, “This war is happening and Sadieh’s family believes Sadaam Hussein is in the right. And we are fighting that. So just know that is what her family believes.” There were other instances where she wouldn’t allow me to sit near other kids. I knew she didn’t like me and that’s a weird thing to know when you’re a kid. It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t want to believe it. But my parents believed me. They had a parent-teacher conference and whatever happened behind closed doors with that teacher led to me and my brother being home-schooled for a while. We knew we were being blacklisted within the community. At first, everyone was friendly. But then we stopped getting invited to birthday parties, and parents wouldn’t let their children play with us. I don’t know if we’ll ever know the reason. Maybe it was because they saw my dad dressed in a thobe and assumed he was radical. Maybe they were afraid of Islam. But a friend of mine, Sara, recently showed me a 1990 Atlantic cover—a brown man with a beard, the words “The Roots of Muslim Rage” plastered over his face, an American flag reflected in his eyes. Seeing that image was important to me because that was the climate back then. The propaganda was thick. Of course, after 9/11, it only got worse. AB What was your dad’s attitude toward assimilation? SR My father never wanted his children to erase their culture. He wanted us to fit in, but he also wanted to ensure we understood what it meant to be Palestinian. We had loads of Palestinian shirts. Even if we got sent home for wearing them, he would say, “Wear the shirt. If they send you home, we will change you.” He wanted us to learn Arabic, go to Friday prayers, know the Quran, understand the beauty of the religion. And we were interested in McDonald’s and the mall. Even when he tried to do things we enjoyed, like taking us to the mall, he would still have to pray. I remember him stepping into the JC Penney bathroom and coming out to do a short prayer. And I remember turning red, convinced everyone was looking at us. Now, I think that is beautiful, but at the time, I was embarrassed. Natalie West, John Judd and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB What drew your parents together? SR Honestly, they both had a lot of growing up to do. They met young. There was an excitement in meeting someone so eager to learn about another culture. And my mother was unlike any woman he had ever met. She did not take shit from anyone. She rode motorcycles. She grew up in Knoxville, Illinois—this tiny place—with a lot of poverty. She had no wealth, no prestige. And then my father came into her life and saw her for who she was. There was nothing on paper that said they should match, but they just got each other. They loved razzing each other. They laughed a lot. When you spend your whole life with one idea of what the world is, and someone comes along and completely changes the narrative, that is thrilling. They learned from each other. AB There are many biographical similarities between your father, Shawki, and Jamil, the father in the play. Is Jamil your father? SR Jamil isn’t my father, but they share traits. They are also at different points in their lives. I do remember my dad at the time the play is set, but not in the way he is now. There was such a heavy burden on his shoulders then; he was a different person. My dad now is very light. He is more of a storyteller and prankster. He can tell a joke, and it will last ten minutes, with the punchline being Ross Perot—so old and outdated—and he will be crying with laughter. But that was part of who he was then too. My mom tells this story: when she met my dad’s brothers for the first time, she wanted to make a good impression, so she asked my dad how to say “It is so nice to meet you” in Arabic. My dad told her a phrase. She went up to each of my uncles and said it. My dad was laughing so hard. She turned to him and asked, “What did I just say to them?” He said, “You told them they have shit on their mustache.” AB That’s so interesting to me as a writer. There’s a memory aspect to it, because Jamil isn’t who your father is now, and it feels like there’s maybe a fog around that period…and then it’s also necessarily an act of creation, because you have to fit the character to the play. SR I had a conversation with a friend, a director in the ensemble, Shade Murray. I was having a hard time writing dialogue between Bonnie and Jamil. I said, “I cannot remember the things my parents would talk about.” He said, “You do not have to write your parents. You are married. You know what it is like to be in a marriage. You know what those conversations are.” I noticed that I was pausing the writing to try to find what they would have said—something I did not have access to because we were sent out of the room for difficult conversations. Aaliyah Montana and H. Adoni Esho in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Jamil has a romanticism about Palestine. Did your father as well? SR My dad was born in Hebron, seven years after the Nakba. He was one of ten kids. He only speaks in short stories, never with detail. But he told me once that he was holding his newborn sister when his mother said, “Run.” He said people had come into the house. There was screaming. They had guns. And he held his sister, running, not knowing where he was going. He would have been four. That was one of those moments that changed him, experiencing real fear. Having his mother tell him to leave—not knowing if that meant it was the last time he would see her. He tells another story from when he was older. A soldier came up to him and said, “I want to meet with you, Shawki,” They were trying to get information from him. They kept offering him tea, coffee, cigarettes. He said he felt that if he accepted anything, he would be cooperating with them, that he would be used as a spy or a pawn. So he put three cigarettes in his socks to make it clear he did not want anything from the soldier. When he first came to the United States, my uncle picked him up from the airport. They were driving when a police officer pulled them over. My dad immediately reached for all of his paperwork. My uncle said, “Shawki, I was speeding. They are not here to check your paperwork.” My dad realized then that there were no checkpoints everywhere. He had assumed every state had them. So he would just drive, drive, and drive. There was safety in that. But he never wanted to lose his citizenship. He had to go back every four years. By that time, he was already an American citizen, but he needed to fly back and stay long enough to renew his citizenship. Many people could not afford to go back and lost theirs, but he always made a point of it, no matter our financial situation. He loves Palestine and hates it. There is the desire to be there—and then, when he is there, the realization that he is under occupation. Photos of Sadieh's father, Shawki, courtesy of her. AB How did you write this play? SR I was at a low point in 2020. I was not working as an actor. At one stage, my husband and I moved to Indiana, and I took a job at Trader Joe’s. I struggled with depression, and it became overwhelming. I kept listening to podcasts where actors and directors would say, “Just write it; write the bad play.” But the idea had lived in my head for so long that I was afraid to put it on the page. I did not even know what software to use. I did not feel intelligent enough to structure it properly. Then I started, slowly. A paragraph, then another. Eventually, I had a scene. Then I thought there should be a scene before it, or after it. It was such a gradual process, and it took a long time. I was terrified to show it to anyone. Kirsten Fitzgerald, our artistic director at AROT, and my friend Jess McCloud kept encouraging me: “Just write it, even if it is bad—you will have written a play.” Kirsten even said, “If you need some money, we can find some through AROT to help you keep writing.” That allowed me to reduce my hours at Trader Joe’s. AROT kept asking when I would have some pages, and I kept saying it is not ready. That went on for a year. When I finally handed in a first draft, it was not even a play—just twenty chaotic pages. But they trusted me and told me to keep going. They gave me another check, and I wrote another draft, then another. I think I am on draft thirty now, and I still have rewrites to finish before tonight. Guy Van Swearingen and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Does your acting experience help? SR As an actor, I know when something is overwritten. If a line does not fit naturally in your mouth or keeps slipping from memory, it means something is off. During workshops, I can hear when dialogue should be condensed or when more context is needed. I am always thinking from the actor’s perspective because I have been that actor in the room. When actors make a “mistake” and swap out a word, it is usually because they have instinctively chosen a better one—something that flows more naturally. AB Your career, and the plays you have been involved in, tell a dark and compelling story about America. You were in the world premiere of The Humans by Stephen Karam, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award winner for Best Play. I saw it in Los Angeles, and it unsettled me. There is an explicitly haunting moment, but more than that, the play feels like a failed exorcism of post-9/11 American anxiety. The Cave carries a similar ambient anxiety, but its source is inverted—it is the experience of the “other” in America. What is your relationship to this country? SR I consider myself very lucky that Stephen Karam is a friend. I love him dearly, and he is a genius. When we first received the script for The Humans , we knew it would have a major Broadway run, but we began with a Chicago production, where Stephen made significant revisions. I remember getting goosebumps reading that play. He had already written successful works, but this one was deeply personal, full of uncomfortable moments. We all knew from that first table read that it would resonate powerfully. It takes you on a journey you are not prepared for. But my relationship with America is complicated. You are referring to these quintessentially American plays, yet I have also played Dorothy three times. I loved playing her, even though I knew I did not look like her. I wanted to capture her hope, innocence, and dream-like qualities. Even in The Humans , they are all Irish. Stephen told me there are darker Irish people in Ireland! I love that I have been able to play these roles, albeit with a caveat. As for American culture, it is everything I know—SNL, Sesame Street. If I am overseas and Arachnophobia is playing in Arabic, I can sit through it and understand it completely. The language is irrelevant; I know the beats. I am American—for better or worse. AB Are you feeling pressure putting this play up? SR I do not sleep at night. Some of the things I think about—things AROT would rather I did not dwell on—my mind refuses to let go of. They are investing a lot of money into this play. It’s a large cast. It’s a world premiere, which means no one knows what this play is yet. Even the word “Palestinian” appearing in flyers and emails is enough to be seen as taking a side. We have two young actors—amazing young women—and I feel an instinct to protect them. When I see news reports about fake bombs being planted at venues where Middle Eastern singers are set to perform, about death threats and targeted violence, it is really scary. It was suggested that, since I love podcasts, we should pitch my family’s story to This American Life . My immediate fear was for my father and family in Texas. Not only am I worried about this new play going up, about whether it will be received well in the city, or about the theatre potentially losing money, but I am also worried about people being harmed. And I do not want to disappoint anyone. During rehearsal, someone asked me, “Are you afraid people will think Jamil is a bad man?” That is something I have thought about for over a decade. I do not want anyone in this play to fit into simple categories of good or bad. People are a combination of millions of things that make them human. The last thing I want is to paint someone in broad strokes—as a good person, or a good father. What matters to me is that we see Jamil trying. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Kirsten Fitzgerald, and Aaliyah Montana. Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Given the last year of day-after-day, live-streamed genocide, during which most American theaters have proven their irrelevance, what do you feel and what do you wish for the future of the form and its institutions? SR The silence speaks volumes. It’s the realization, within your own group of people, of who doesn’t stand by you. I have watched babies in incubators cry and starve until they are black and decaying. I feel as though I’ve seen the worst in humanity. As someone who seeks the good in people, it is the worst sort of darkness I can imagine. I had a friend say, “You can’t spend hours watching those videos,” and I thought, how dare you . All we can do is witness: witness somebody’s pain, understand that it's real, somebody screaming for their children. That’s all I can do right now, besides marching and boycotting. In fifteen years, I hope there will be no hesitation in putting these stories on stage. That when the genocide is in history books and taught in schools, theatres will feel compelled to tell Palestinian narratives as part of their regular programming, rather than treating them as a special selection. There are many theatres eager to stage plays by non-white playwrights. AB Will you feel a bitterness if that future comes to fruition and theaters begin tackling this genocide fifteen, twenty years from now? SR It is something I long for so much that I hope I would only feel relief. The history of being a woman has taught me that we fought for centuries to secure the rights we have now. I know others struggled before me, and I hope, when that time comes, we will acknowledge that there was a period when our voices were silenced, when we were afraid to tell these stories. I hope to sit in those theatres and see how far we have come. The Cave opened on January 30 at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago . The regular run begins on February 13 and continues till March 16. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Chicago Palestine A Red Orchid Theatre Sadieh Rifai American Dream Theater of War The Cave Palestinian-American Actor Playwright Occupation Gulf War Conflict Nakba Theater Play Islamophobia History Mental Health Premiere Storytelling Memory Middle East United States Assimilation Migration Culture Biography Community Family Tracy Letts August: Osage County Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. 10th Feb 2025 AUTHOR · AUTHOR Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Palestinian-American actor and playwright Sadieh Rifai confronts the mental toll of occupation, war, and the American dream in her world premiere, The Cave. Palestinian-American actor and playwright Sadieh Rifai confronts the mental toll of occupation, war, and the American dream in her world premiere, The Cave. Poster, and photos of the play, courtesy of A Red Orchid Theatre (AROT) . Artist · BOOKS & ARTS REPORTAGE · LOCATION The Mind is a Theater of War LOCATION Ahsan Butt . Sadieh Rifai . 10 Feb 2025 th . Letter from our columnist . Sadieh Rifai has performed on Chicago’s premier stages, working with the likes of Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwrights Tracy Letts and Stephen Karam. Following the preview performances of her playwriting debut at A Red Orchid Theatre (AROT), where she is an ensemble member, we spent precious dwindling hours discussing theater as a collaborative form, the Islamophobia of the 1990s, and what it means for her to stage a play that explores (among other things) the haunting afterlife of violence under occupation, in the shadow of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Ahsan Butt Tell me what it was like being in the room with Tracy Letts workshopping August: Osage County , which, of course, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. How did you get there? Sadieh Rifai When I first came to Chicago, I auditioned for the school at Steppenwolf, where the ensemble members taught viewpoints, and Sheldon Patinkin, who helped invent Second City, led the improv sessions. It was an incredible experience. After I finished there, I was asked to audition for a new play by Tracy Letts, August: Osage County . I had no idea how important it was going to be. I auditioned, but they wanted a Native American woman for the role. Still, they asked me to participate in the workshop. It lasted about a week and included Michael Shannon, who would later become my fellow ensemble member at AROT, Mike Nussbaum, the oldest living actor before he passed, and Amy Morton, one of my favourite actors. Sitting at that table, I learned so much. Tracy opened up about the play, explaining that it was based on his life—his grandfather had committed suicide, and this was the story of that. I remember him saying that when he showed the play to his mother, she told him, “Thank you for being so kind to my mother.” That always stuck with me because if you have seen the play, you would think that woman is a monster. But Tracy was so vulnerable in the room. The title of the play came from a poem written by his mentor. Before that, I had always assumed that playwrights did not want even a single word changed—that every line had to be said exactly as written. But in that room, I saw true collaboration. Amy Morton would ask, “Can I cut this word? It is getting caught in the sentence.” Tracy would say, “Cut it, cut it.” There were things he fought for, but in other moments, he was so open. That experience made me aware of what I wanted to create one day. I wanted to write my own story. But I did not yet have the confidence to do it. Still, it was my dream to build something like what they had in that room. AB Did you always want to be in theater? SR At my wedding, my younger brother told a story about our childhood. We grew up in our grandparents’ house in Galesburg, Illinois, which was an old schoolhouse. It had an auditorium, classrooms that became our bedrooms, and even lockers. The building was run-down but magical. There was also a stage. We used to put on puppet shows, slipping behind the curtains to perform. He asked, “Do you remember this?” When I said no, he just went, “Great, glad I brought it up.” My brother is incredibly smart. He could do no wrong as a student. I, on the other hand, am dyslexic. I was never a good student, never understood. But one day, my mother took me to see Jesus Christ Superstar . Ted Neeley was performing—he was the original Jesus—and Carl Anderson, the Judas from the movie, was there too. Afterwards, we got to talk to Ted Neeley. He was the nicest guy, telling us about filming in the Middle East. I think my mother knew early on that I was not going to be some kind of scholar. The things that interested me were always art, music, and theatre. And acting, though I was not good at anything yet, there was a part of me that just knew I could do it. We also lived in Vegas when I was young. My mom was a change-girl, and my dad worked in another hotel. She would take us to see this show called Splash— women dressed like mermaids, holding their breath underwater, and performing synchronized swimming routines. We also saw Sigfried & Roy , all the magic shows, David Copperfield . For us, until it became a dangerous place, when my cousin was murdered, it was like the schoolhouse: magical. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Aaliyah Montana, and Kirsten Fitzgerald in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai at A Red Orchid Theatre. Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Your play, The Cave , follows a mixed family like your own, a Palestinian father and Swedish-American mother with two kids, who also move from Las Vegas to a more suburban, white town after the murder of their nephew (the kids’ cousin). The father, Jamil—under the strain of the tragedy, their new life, the specter of a coming war, and past experiences he’s never talked about—begins to hear voices. Some may see it as a post-9/11 play because Islamophobia is such a prevalent theme, but the play is set in the ’90s, during the first Gulf War. For those of us, who are…a bit older, we remember what that time was like. What was your experience during the period in which the play is set? SR I still remember one of my teachers taking me in front of the classroom and saying, “This war is happening and Sadieh’s family believes Sadaam Hussein is in the right. And we are fighting that. So just know that is what her family believes.” There were other instances where she wouldn’t allow me to sit near other kids. I knew she didn’t like me and that’s a weird thing to know when you’re a kid. It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t want to believe it. But my parents believed me. They had a parent-teacher conference and whatever happened behind closed doors with that teacher led to me and my brother being home-schooled for a while. We knew we were being blacklisted within the community. At first, everyone was friendly. But then we stopped getting invited to birthday parties, and parents wouldn’t let their children play with us. I don’t know if we’ll ever know the reason. Maybe it was because they saw my dad dressed in a thobe and assumed he was radical. Maybe they were afraid of Islam. But a friend of mine, Sara, recently showed me a 1990 Atlantic cover—a brown man with a beard, the words “The Roots of Muslim Rage” plastered over his face, an American flag reflected in his eyes. Seeing that image was important to me because that was the climate back then. The propaganda was thick. Of course, after 9/11, it only got worse. AB What was your dad’s attitude toward assimilation? SR My father never wanted his children to erase their culture. He wanted us to fit in, but he also wanted to ensure we understood what it meant to be Palestinian. We had loads of Palestinian shirts. Even if we got sent home for wearing them, he would say, “Wear the shirt. If they send you home, we will change you.” He wanted us to learn Arabic, go to Friday prayers, know the Quran, understand the beauty of the religion. And we were interested in McDonald’s and the mall. Even when he tried to do things we enjoyed, like taking us to the mall, he would still have to pray. I remember him stepping into the JC Penney bathroom and coming out to do a short prayer. And I remember turning red, convinced everyone was looking at us. Now, I think that is beautiful, but at the time, I was embarrassed. Natalie West, John Judd and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB What drew your parents together? SR Honestly, they both had a lot of growing up to do. They met young. There was an excitement in meeting someone so eager to learn about another culture. And my mother was unlike any woman he had ever met. She did not take shit from anyone. She rode motorcycles. She grew up in Knoxville, Illinois—this tiny place—with a lot of poverty. She had no wealth, no prestige. And then my father came into her life and saw her for who she was. There was nothing on paper that said they should match, but they just got each other. They loved razzing each other. They laughed a lot. When you spend your whole life with one idea of what the world is, and someone comes along and completely changes the narrative, that is thrilling. They learned from each other. AB There are many biographical similarities between your father, Shawki, and Jamil, the father in the play. Is Jamil your father? SR Jamil isn’t my father, but they share traits. They are also at different points in their lives. I do remember my dad at the time the play is set, but not in the way he is now. There was such a heavy burden on his shoulders then; he was a different person. My dad now is very light. He is more of a storyteller and prankster. He can tell a joke, and it will last ten minutes, with the punchline being Ross Perot—so old and outdated—and he will be crying with laughter. But that was part of who he was then too. My mom tells this story: when she met my dad’s brothers for the first time, she wanted to make a good impression, so she asked my dad how to say “It is so nice to meet you” in Arabic. My dad told her a phrase. She went up to each of my uncles and said it. My dad was laughing so hard. She turned to him and asked, “What did I just say to them?” He said, “You told them they have shit on their mustache.” AB That’s so interesting to me as a writer. There’s a memory aspect to it, because Jamil isn’t who your father is now, and it feels like there’s maybe a fog around that period…and then it’s also necessarily an act of creation, because you have to fit the character to the play. SR I had a conversation with a friend, a director in the ensemble, Shade Murray. I was having a hard time writing dialogue between Bonnie and Jamil. I said, “I cannot remember the things my parents would talk about.” He said, “You do not have to write your parents. You are married. You know what it is like to be in a marriage. You know what those conversations are.” I noticed that I was pausing the writing to try to find what they would have said—something I did not have access to because we were sent out of the room for difficult conversations. Aaliyah Montana and H. Adoni Esho in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Jamil has a romanticism about Palestine. Did your father as well? SR My dad was born in Hebron, seven years after the Nakba. He was one of ten kids. He only speaks in short stories, never with detail. But he told me once that he was holding his newborn sister when his mother said, “Run.” He said people had come into the house. There was screaming. They had guns. And he held his sister, running, not knowing where he was going. He would have been four. That was one of those moments that changed him, experiencing real fear. Having his mother tell him to leave—not knowing if that meant it was the last time he would see her. He tells another story from when he was older. A soldier came up to him and said, “I want to meet with you, Shawki,” They were trying to get information from him. They kept offering him tea, coffee, cigarettes. He said he felt that if he accepted anything, he would be cooperating with them, that he would be used as a spy or a pawn. So he put three cigarettes in his socks to make it clear he did not want anything from the soldier. When he first came to the United States, my uncle picked him up from the airport. They were driving when a police officer pulled them over. My dad immediately reached for all of his paperwork. My uncle said, “Shawki, I was speeding. They are not here to check your paperwork.” My dad realized then that there were no checkpoints everywhere. He had assumed every state had them. So he would just drive, drive, and drive. There was safety in that. But he never wanted to lose his citizenship. He had to go back every four years. By that time, he was already an American citizen, but he needed to fly back and stay long enough to renew his citizenship. Many people could not afford to go back and lost theirs, but he always made a point of it, no matter our financial situation. He loves Palestine and hates it. There is the desire to be there—and then, when he is there, the realization that he is under occupation. Photos of Sadieh's father, Shawki, courtesy of her. AB How did you write this play? SR I was at a low point in 2020. I was not working as an actor. At one stage, my husband and I moved to Indiana, and I took a job at Trader Joe’s. I struggled with depression, and it became overwhelming. I kept listening to podcasts where actors and directors would say, “Just write it; write the bad play.” But the idea had lived in my head for so long that I was afraid to put it on the page. I did not even know what software to use. I did not feel intelligent enough to structure it properly. Then I started, slowly. A paragraph, then another. Eventually, I had a scene. Then I thought there should be a scene before it, or after it. It was such a gradual process, and it took a long time. I was terrified to show it to anyone. Kirsten Fitzgerald, our artistic director at AROT, and my friend Jess McCloud kept encouraging me: “Just write it, even if it is bad—you will have written a play.” Kirsten even said, “If you need some money, we can find some through AROT to help you keep writing.” That allowed me to reduce my hours at Trader Joe’s. AROT kept asking when I would have some pages, and I kept saying it is not ready. That went on for a year. When I finally handed in a first draft, it was not even a play—just twenty chaotic pages. But they trusted me and told me to keep going. They gave me another check, and I wrote another draft, then another. I think I am on draft thirty now, and I still have rewrites to finish before tonight. Guy Van Swearingen and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Does your acting experience help? SR As an actor, I know when something is overwritten. If a line does not fit naturally in your mouth or keeps slipping from memory, it means something is off. During workshops, I can hear when dialogue should be condensed or when more context is needed. I am always thinking from the actor’s perspective because I have been that actor in the room. When actors make a “mistake” and swap out a word, it is usually because they have instinctively chosen a better one—something that flows more naturally. AB Your career, and the plays you have been involved in, tell a dark and compelling story about America. You were in the world premiere of The Humans by Stephen Karam, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award winner for Best Play. I saw it in Los Angeles, and it unsettled me. There is an explicitly haunting moment, but more than that, the play feels like a failed exorcism of post-9/11 American anxiety. The Cave carries a similar ambient anxiety, but its source is inverted—it is the experience of the “other” in America. What is your relationship to this country? SR I consider myself very lucky that Stephen Karam is a friend. I love him dearly, and he is a genius. When we first received the script for The Humans , we knew it would have a major Broadway run, but we began with a Chicago production, where Stephen made significant revisions. I remember getting goosebumps reading that play. He had already written successful works, but this one was deeply personal, full of uncomfortable moments. We all knew from that first table read that it would resonate powerfully. It takes you on a journey you are not prepared for. But my relationship with America is complicated. You are referring to these quintessentially American plays, yet I have also played Dorothy three times. I loved playing her, even though I knew I did not look like her. I wanted to capture her hope, innocence, and dream-like qualities. Even in The Humans , they are all Irish. Stephen told me there are darker Irish people in Ireland! I love that I have been able to play these roles, albeit with a caveat. As for American culture, it is everything I know—SNL, Sesame Street. If I am overseas and Arachnophobia is playing in Arabic, I can sit through it and understand it completely. The language is irrelevant; I know the beats. I am American—for better or worse. AB Are you feeling pressure putting this play up? SR I do not sleep at night. Some of the things I think about—things AROT would rather I did not dwell on—my mind refuses to let go of. They are investing a lot of money into this play. It’s a large cast. It’s a world premiere, which means no one knows what this play is yet. Even the word “Palestinian” appearing in flyers and emails is enough to be seen as taking a side. We have two young actors—amazing young women—and I feel an instinct to protect them. When I see news reports about fake bombs being planted at venues where Middle Eastern singers are set to perform, about death threats and targeted violence, it is really scary. It was suggested that, since I love podcasts, we should pitch my family’s story to This American Life . My immediate fear was for my father and family in Texas. Not only am I worried about this new play going up, about whether it will be received well in the city, or about the theatre potentially losing money, but I am also worried about people being harmed. And I do not want to disappoint anyone. During rehearsal, someone asked me, “Are you afraid people will think Jamil is a bad man?” That is something I have thought about for over a decade. I do not want anyone in this play to fit into simple categories of good or bad. People are a combination of millions of things that make them human. The last thing I want is to paint someone in broad strokes—as a good person, or a good father. What matters to me is that we see Jamil trying. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Kirsten Fitzgerald, and Aaliyah Montana. Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Given the last year of day-after-day, live-streamed genocide, during which most American theaters have proven their irrelevance, what do you feel and what do you wish for the future of the form and its institutions? SR The silence speaks volumes. It’s the realization, within your own group of people, of who doesn’t stand by you. I have watched babies in incubators cry and starve until they are black and decaying. I feel as though I’ve seen the worst in humanity. As someone who seeks the good in people, it is the worst sort of darkness I can imagine. I had a friend say, “You can’t spend hours watching those videos,” and I thought, how dare you . All we can do is witness: witness somebody’s pain, understand that it's real, somebody screaming for their children. That’s all I can do right now, besides marching and boycotting. In fifteen years, I hope there will be no hesitation in putting these stories on stage. That when the genocide is in history books and taught in schools, theatres will feel compelled to tell Palestinian narratives as part of their regular programming, rather than treating them as a special selection. There are many theatres eager to stage plays by non-white playwrights. AB Will you feel a bitterness if that future comes to fruition and theaters begin tackling this genocide fifteen, twenty years from now? SR It is something I long for so much that I hope I would only feel relief. The history of being a woman has taught me that we fought for centuries to secure the rights we have now. I know others struggled before me, and I hope, when that time comes, we will acknowledge that there was a period when our voices were silenced, when we were afraid to tell these stories. I hope to sit in those theatres and see how far we have come. The Cave opened on January 30 at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago . The regular run begins on February 13 and continues till March 16. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 AHSAN BUTT is a writer and software engineer. His fiction and essays have appeared in West Branch, Split Lip Magazine, The Normal School , and The Rumpus , among others. SADIEH RIFAI is a Chicago-based actor and ensemble member at A Red Orchid Theatre. She has performed at American Theatre Company, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. On screen, her credits include Chicago Med , Easy (Netflix), Patriot (Amazon), and Shining Girls (Apple TV). A graduate of the School at Steppenwolf, she received the Princess Grace Award in 2011. Interview Chicago Palestine A Red Orchid Theatre Sadieh Rifai American Dream Theater of War The Cave Palestinian-American Actor Playwright Occupation Gulf War Conflict Nakba Theater Play Islamophobia History Mental Health Premiere Storytelling Memory Middle East United States Assimilation Migration Culture Biography Community Family Tracy Letts August: Osage County Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Palestinian-American actor and playwright Sadieh Rifai confronts the mental toll of occupation, war, and the American dream in her world premiere, The Cave. Palestinian-American actor and playwright Sadieh Rifai confronts the mental toll of occupation, war, and the American dream in her world premiere, The Cave. Poster, and photos of the play, courtesy of A Red Orchid Theatre (AROT) . Artist Chicago AUTHOR · AUTHOR · AUTHOR 10 Feb 2025 th · BOOKS & ARTS REPORTAGE · LOCATION The Mind is a Theater of War Sadieh Rifai has performed on Chicago’s premier stages, working with the likes of Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning playwrights Tracy Letts and Stephen Karam. Following the preview performances of her playwriting debut at A Red Orchid Theatre (AROT), where she is an ensemble member, we spent precious dwindling hours discussing theater as a collaborative form, the Islamophobia of the 1990s, and what it means for her to stage a play that explores (among other things) the haunting afterlife of violence under occupation, in the shadow of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Ahsan Butt Tell me what it was like being in the room with Tracy Letts workshopping August: Osage County , which, of course, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. How did you get there? Sadieh Rifai When I first came to Chicago, I auditioned for the school at Steppenwolf, where the ensemble members taught viewpoints, and Sheldon Patinkin, who helped invent Second City, led the improv sessions. It was an incredible experience. After I finished there, I was asked to audition for a new play by Tracy Letts, August: Osage County . I had no idea how important it was going to be. I auditioned, but they wanted a Native American woman for the role. Still, they asked me to participate in the workshop. It lasted about a week and included Michael Shannon, who would later become my fellow ensemble member at AROT, Mike Nussbaum, the oldest living actor before he passed, and Amy Morton, one of my favourite actors. Sitting at that table, I learned so much. Tracy opened up about the play, explaining that it was based on his life—his grandfather had committed suicide, and this was the story of that. I remember him saying that when he showed the play to his mother, she told him, “Thank you for being so kind to my mother.” That always stuck with me because if you have seen the play, you would think that woman is a monster. But Tracy was so vulnerable in the room. The title of the play came from a poem written by his mentor. Before that, I had always assumed that playwrights did not want even a single word changed—that every line had to be said exactly as written. But in that room, I saw true collaboration. Amy Morton would ask, “Can I cut this word? It is getting caught in the sentence.” Tracy would say, “Cut it, cut it.” There were things he fought for, but in other moments, he was so open. That experience made me aware of what I wanted to create one day. I wanted to write my own story. But I did not yet have the confidence to do it. Still, it was my dream to build something like what they had in that room. AB Did you always want to be in theater? SR At my wedding, my younger brother told a story about our childhood. We grew up in our grandparents’ house in Galesburg, Illinois, which was an old schoolhouse. It had an auditorium, classrooms that became our bedrooms, and even lockers. The building was run-down but magical. There was also a stage. We used to put on puppet shows, slipping behind the curtains to perform. He asked, “Do you remember this?” When I said no, he just went, “Great, glad I brought it up.” My brother is incredibly smart. He could do no wrong as a student. I, on the other hand, am dyslexic. I was never a good student, never understood. But one day, my mother took me to see Jesus Christ Superstar . Ted Neeley was performing—he was the original Jesus—and Carl Anderson, the Judas from the movie, was there too. Afterwards, we got to talk to Ted Neeley. He was the nicest guy, telling us about filming in the Middle East. I think my mother knew early on that I was not going to be some kind of scholar. The things that interested me were always art, music, and theatre. And acting, though I was not good at anything yet, there was a part of me that just knew I could do it. We also lived in Vegas when I was young. My mom was a change-girl, and my dad worked in another hotel. She would take us to see this show called Splash— women dressed like mermaids, holding their breath underwater, and performing synchronized swimming routines. We also saw Sigfried & Roy , all the magic shows, David Copperfield . For us, until it became a dangerous place, when my cousin was murdered, it was like the schoolhouse: magical. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Aaliyah Montana, and Kirsten Fitzgerald in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai at A Red Orchid Theatre. Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Your play, The Cave , follows a mixed family like your own, a Palestinian father and Swedish-American mother with two kids, who also move from Las Vegas to a more suburban, white town after the murder of their nephew (the kids’ cousin). The father, Jamil—under the strain of the tragedy, their new life, the specter of a coming war, and past experiences he’s never talked about—begins to hear voices. Some may see it as a post-9/11 play because Islamophobia is such a prevalent theme, but the play is set in the ’90s, during the first Gulf War. For those of us, who are…a bit older, we remember what that time was like. What was your experience during the period in which the play is set? SR I still remember one of my teachers taking me in front of the classroom and saying, “This war is happening and Sadieh’s family believes Sadaam Hussein is in the right. And we are fighting that. So just know that is what her family believes.” There were other instances where she wouldn’t allow me to sit near other kids. I knew she didn’t like me and that’s a weird thing to know when you’re a kid. It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t want to believe it. But my parents believed me. They had a parent-teacher conference and whatever happened behind closed doors with that teacher led to me and my brother being home-schooled for a while. We knew we were being blacklisted within the community. At first, everyone was friendly. But then we stopped getting invited to birthday parties, and parents wouldn’t let their children play with us. I don’t know if we’ll ever know the reason. Maybe it was because they saw my dad dressed in a thobe and assumed he was radical. Maybe they were afraid of Islam. But a friend of mine, Sara, recently showed me a 1990 Atlantic cover—a brown man with a beard, the words “The Roots of Muslim Rage” plastered over his face, an American flag reflected in his eyes. Seeing that image was important to me because that was the climate back then. The propaganda was thick. Of course, after 9/11, it only got worse. AB What was your dad’s attitude toward assimilation? SR My father never wanted his children to erase their culture. He wanted us to fit in, but he also wanted to ensure we understood what it meant to be Palestinian. We had loads of Palestinian shirts. Even if we got sent home for wearing them, he would say, “Wear the shirt. If they send you home, we will change you.” He wanted us to learn Arabic, go to Friday prayers, know the Quran, understand the beauty of the religion. And we were interested in McDonald’s and the mall. Even when he tried to do things we enjoyed, like taking us to the mall, he would still have to pray. I remember him stepping into the JC Penney bathroom and coming out to do a short prayer. And I remember turning red, convinced everyone was looking at us. Now, I think that is beautiful, but at the time, I was embarrassed. Natalie West, John Judd and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB What drew your parents together? SR Honestly, they both had a lot of growing up to do. They met young. There was an excitement in meeting someone so eager to learn about another culture. And my mother was unlike any woman he had ever met. She did not take shit from anyone. She rode motorcycles. She grew up in Knoxville, Illinois—this tiny place—with a lot of poverty. She had no wealth, no prestige. And then my father came into her life and saw her for who she was. There was nothing on paper that said they should match, but they just got each other. They loved razzing each other. They laughed a lot. When you spend your whole life with one idea of what the world is, and someone comes along and completely changes the narrative, that is thrilling. They learned from each other. AB There are many biographical similarities between your father, Shawki, and Jamil, the father in the play. Is Jamil your father? SR Jamil isn’t my father, but they share traits. They are also at different points in their lives. I do remember my dad at the time the play is set, but not in the way he is now. There was such a heavy burden on his shoulders then; he was a different person. My dad now is very light. He is more of a storyteller and prankster. He can tell a joke, and it will last ten minutes, with the punchline being Ross Perot—so old and outdated—and he will be crying with laughter. But that was part of who he was then too. My mom tells this story: when she met my dad’s brothers for the first time, she wanted to make a good impression, so she asked my dad how to say “It is so nice to meet you” in Arabic. My dad told her a phrase. She went up to each of my uncles and said it. My dad was laughing so hard. She turned to him and asked, “What did I just say to them?” He said, “You told them they have shit on their mustache.” AB That’s so interesting to me as a writer. There’s a memory aspect to it, because Jamil isn’t who your father is now, and it feels like there’s maybe a fog around that period…and then it’s also necessarily an act of creation, because you have to fit the character to the play. SR I had a conversation with a friend, a director in the ensemble, Shade Murray. I was having a hard time writing dialogue between Bonnie and Jamil. I said, “I cannot remember the things my parents would talk about.” He said, “You do not have to write your parents. You are married. You know what it is like to be in a marriage. You know what those conversations are.” I noticed that I was pausing the writing to try to find what they would have said—something I did not have access to because we were sent out of the room for difficult conversations. Aaliyah Montana and H. Adoni Esho in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Jamil has a romanticism about Palestine. Did your father as well? SR My dad was born in Hebron, seven years after the Nakba. He was one of ten kids. He only speaks in short stories, never with detail. But he told me once that he was holding his newborn sister when his mother said, “Run.” He said people had come into the house. There was screaming. They had guns. And he held his sister, running, not knowing where he was going. He would have been four. That was one of those moments that changed him, experiencing real fear. Having his mother tell him to leave—not knowing if that meant it was the last time he would see her. He tells another story from when he was older. A soldier came up to him and said, “I want to meet with you, Shawki,” They were trying to get information from him. They kept offering him tea, coffee, cigarettes. He said he felt that if he accepted anything, he would be cooperating with them, that he would be used as a spy or a pawn. So he put three cigarettes in his socks to make it clear he did not want anything from the soldier. When he first came to the United States, my uncle picked him up from the airport. They were driving when a police officer pulled them over. My dad immediately reached for all of his paperwork. My uncle said, “Shawki, I was speeding. They are not here to check your paperwork.” My dad realized then that there were no checkpoints everywhere. He had assumed every state had them. So he would just drive, drive, and drive. There was safety in that. But he never wanted to lose his citizenship. He had to go back every four years. By that time, he was already an American citizen, but he needed to fly back and stay long enough to renew his citizenship. Many people could not afford to go back and lost theirs, but he always made a point of it, no matter our financial situation. He loves Palestine and hates it. There is the desire to be there—and then, when he is there, the realization that he is under occupation. Photos of Sadieh's father, Shawki, courtesy of her. AB How did you write this play? SR I was at a low point in 2020. I was not working as an actor. At one stage, my husband and I moved to Indiana, and I took a job at Trader Joe’s. I struggled with depression, and it became overwhelming. I kept listening to podcasts where actors and directors would say, “Just write it; write the bad play.” But the idea had lived in my head for so long that I was afraid to put it on the page. I did not even know what software to use. I did not feel intelligent enough to structure it properly. Then I started, slowly. A paragraph, then another. Eventually, I had a scene. Then I thought there should be a scene before it, or after it. It was such a gradual process, and it took a long time. I was terrified to show it to anyone. Kirsten Fitzgerald, our artistic director at AROT, and my friend Jess McCloud kept encouraging me: “Just write it, even if it is bad—you will have written a play.” Kirsten even said, “If you need some money, we can find some through AROT to help you keep writing.” That allowed me to reduce my hours at Trader Joe’s. AROT kept asking when I would have some pages, and I kept saying it is not ready. That went on for a year. When I finally handed in a first draft, it was not even a play—just twenty chaotic pages. But they trusted me and told me to keep going. They gave me another check, and I wrote another draft, then another. I think I am on draft thirty now, and I still have rewrites to finish before tonight. Guy Van Swearingen and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave . Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Does your acting experience help? SR As an actor, I know when something is overwritten. If a line does not fit naturally in your mouth or keeps slipping from memory, it means something is off. During workshops, I can hear when dialogue should be condensed or when more context is needed. I am always thinking from the actor’s perspective because I have been that actor in the room. When actors make a “mistake” and swap out a word, it is usually because they have instinctively chosen a better one—something that flows more naturally. AB Your career, and the plays you have been involved in, tell a dark and compelling story about America. You were in the world premiere of The Humans by Stephen Karam, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award winner for Best Play. I saw it in Los Angeles, and it unsettled me. There is an explicitly haunting moment, but more than that, the play feels like a failed exorcism of post-9/11 American anxiety. The Cave carries a similar ambient anxiety, but its source is inverted—it is the experience of the “other” in America. What is your relationship to this country? SR I consider myself very lucky that Stephen Karam is a friend. I love him dearly, and he is a genius. When we first received the script for The Humans , we knew it would have a major Broadway run, but we began with a Chicago production, where Stephen made significant revisions. I remember getting goosebumps reading that play. He had already written successful works, but this one was deeply personal, full of uncomfortable moments. We all knew from that first table read that it would resonate powerfully. It takes you on a journey you are not prepared for. But my relationship with America is complicated. You are referring to these quintessentially American plays, yet I have also played Dorothy three times. I loved playing her, even though I knew I did not look like her. I wanted to capture her hope, innocence, and dream-like qualities. Even in The Humans , they are all Irish. Stephen told me there are darker Irish people in Ireland! I love that I have been able to play these roles, albeit with a caveat. As for American culture, it is everything I know—SNL, Sesame Street. If I am overseas and Arachnophobia is playing in Arabic, I can sit through it and understand it completely. The language is irrelevant; I know the beats. I am American—for better or worse. AB Are you feeling pressure putting this play up? SR I do not sleep at night. Some of the things I think about—things AROT would rather I did not dwell on—my mind refuses to let go of. They are investing a lot of money into this play. It’s a large cast. It’s a world premiere, which means no one knows what this play is yet. Even the word “Palestinian” appearing in flyers and emails is enough to be seen as taking a side. We have two young actors—amazing young women—and I feel an instinct to protect them. When I see news reports about fake bombs being planted at venues where Middle Eastern singers are set to perform, about death threats and targeted violence, it is really scary. It was suggested that, since I love podcasts, we should pitch my family’s story to This American Life . My immediate fear was for my father and family in Texas. Not only am I worried about this new play going up, about whether it will be received well in the city, or about the theatre potentially losing money, but I am also worried about people being harmed. And I do not want to disappoint anyone. During rehearsal, someone asked me, “Are you afraid people will think Jamil is a bad man?” That is something I have thought about for over a decade. I do not want anyone in this play to fit into simple categories of good or bad. People are a combination of millions of things that make them human. The last thing I want is to paint someone in broad strokes—as a good person, or a good father. What matters to me is that we see Jamil trying. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Kirsten Fitzgerald, and Aaliyah Montana. Photo by Evan Hanover. AB Given the last year of day-after-day, live-streamed genocide, during which most American theaters have proven their irrelevance, what do you feel and what do you wish for the future of the form and its institutions? SR The silence speaks volumes. It’s the realization, within your own group of people, of who doesn’t stand by you. I have watched babies in incubators cry and starve until they are black and decaying. I feel as though I’ve seen the worst in humanity. As someone who seeks the good in people, it is the worst sort of darkness I can imagine. I had a friend say, “You can’t spend hours watching those videos,” and I thought, how dare you . All we can do is witness: witness somebody’s pain, understand that it's real, somebody screaming for their children. That’s all I can do right now, besides marching and boycotting. In fifteen years, I hope there will be no hesitation in putting these stories on stage. That when the genocide is in history books and taught in schools, theatres will feel compelled to tell Palestinian narratives as part of their regular programming, rather than treating them as a special selection. There are many theatres eager to stage plays by non-white playwrights. AB Will you feel a bitterness if that future comes to fruition and theaters begin tackling this genocide fifteen, twenty years from now? SR It is something I long for so much that I hope I would only feel relief. The history of being a woman has taught me that we fought for centuries to secure the rights we have now. I know others struggled before me, and I hope, when that time comes, we will acknowledge that there was a period when our voices were silenced, when we were afraid to tell these stories. I hope to sit in those theatres and see how far we have come. The Cave opened on January 30 at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago . The regular run begins on February 13 and continues till March 16. SUB-HEAD Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. 1 Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to customize this theme across your site. You can update and reuse text themes. Interview Chicago Palestine A Red Orchid Theatre Sadieh Rifai American Dream Theater of War The Cave Palestinian-American Actor Playwright Occupation Gulf War Conflict Nakba Theater Play Islamophobia History Mental Health Premiere Storytelling Memory Middle East United States Assimilation Migration Culture Biography Community Family Tracy Letts August: Osage County Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 5 Heading 6 Heading 6 Heading 6 On That Note:

Anne Carson and Ismat Chughtai's narrative devices exemplify unreliable and ethically dubious characters that go "to the edge of what can be loved." It is an epistemic approach that rightly repudiates the commonplace idea that the purpose of fiction is to make the Other relatable. BOOKS & ARTS Fictions of Unknowability Torsa Ghosal Anne Carson and Ismat Chughtai's narrative devices exemplify unreliable and ethically dubious characters that go "to the edge of what can be loved." It is an epistemic approach that rightly repudiates the commonplace idea that the purpose of fiction is to make the Other relatable. IN HER verse novel Autobiography of Red , Anne Carson writes, “Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition.” The sentence signals a turn in the protagonist Geryon’s coming-of-age storyline. Caught between adolescence and young adulthood, Geryon falls in love with the art of photography and a young man who “knows a lot/about art.” It causes his mother to complain, “I hardly know you anymore.” Geryon’s own vision develops against his lover’s ways of seeing, like images forming on transparent films exposed to light. But consider how Geryon’s access to his lover’s perceptions must be limited by his own perspective, his own frames of reference. Geryon, and us readers, would be mistaken to think that a picture and its framework can be clearly told apart. Autobiography of Red tracks how both love and art are so often bounded up with problems of perception. When Geryon’s mother asks him what he loves about the young man he is seeing, Geryon hesitates and finesses. He then becomes preoccupied with other thoughts like, “‘How does distance look?’ is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless / within to the edge / of what can be loved. It depends on light.” Geryon is reflecting on photography and philosophy when he should be talking about the man he loves. Or, he is thinking of the man he loves and scaffolding his thoughts with analogies and abstractions. After all, love, like photography, organizes the flux of experiences, gives our memories and perceptions a certain slant, and creates the semblance of intimacy out of distance. In Autobiography of Red , Carson adapts the myth about the slaying of the monster Geryon by Hercules into a contemporary coming-of-age tale and love story, told from the point of view of Geryon. From the winged monster’s perspective, the celebrated Greek hero is a figure worthy of love. What Geryon does not know is that this love will wreck his life. Throughout, Carson depicts the anxiety stemming from the desire to see other people and things as they are in themselves— ding an sich , as Kant would put it—and the impossibility to do so. “Up against another human being one’s own procedures take on definition” is not a truism. It conveys the longing for clarity—the kind of clarity one hopes to find in a definition. However, love and deftly crafted art confound rather than offer clarity. The best fictions I have read, the ones that have moved me to try my own hand at writing, accomplish a tricky task. In them, language gives uncertainty the glaze of clarity. Shimmering sentences entice me into assuming I have arrived at something—something like “meaning”—when the journey may have only just begun. Do writers need to worry at all about the ethical implications of choices in narrators, characters, and their quandaries of knowledge? The lack of clarity is an epistemological problem: it is a problem of knowing, or more precisely, a problem of unknowing. This problem forms the basis of fictions as varied as Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog (trans. by Ivy Litvinov), Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaaf (trans. as The Quilt by Syeda Hameed), Clarice Lispector’s Amor (trans. Katrina Dodson), and the 2022 Caine Prize shortlisted story Collector of Memories by Joshua Chizoma. Literary historical arguments have been made for the dominance of the problem of knowing and unknowing—i.e. epistemological problems—in early twentieth-century fictions, including works of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Henry James. Proust, Woolf, Joyce, and James depend on the language of light and sight, perhaps inspired by photography, an emerging technology at the time, to construct their characters’ and narrators’ perceptual problems. In Joyce’s Araby , for instance, the narrator becomes infatuated with a girl he sees at dusk, “her figure defined by light.” The boy falls in love with a silhouette. Whom he cannot quite see becomes the very image of divinity. Anne Carson, WG Sebald, and Aleksandar Hemon, all writing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, are “new” modernists in this sense (well, “metamodernists” if you care for trendy academic terms). But if we step outside the constraints of literary historical arguments, founded on corpuses carved out of the chaos of everything written and published in a period of time—on figures cut out of the shapeless ground––then we see how the problem of knowing is the wellspring of fiction. Sometimes in a self-aware way, at other times inadvertently, writers make craft choices that animate the difficulty of knowing anyone or anything. Writers elaborate upon the problem, magnify or atomize it, even if they cannot solve it. There are two aspects related to this issue that I wish to address here: how and why unknowability can be built into stories, and the ethical implications of such design. The question of ethical orientation arises in response to a cliché that circulates in public discourses about the function of literature: literature cultivates empathy. We know the Other and learn to love this Other, or at least care for them while reading their stories. Fiction can make the Other relatable. So it goes. Reading is thus construed as a virtuous undertaking. To not violate such an ethical contract, what can the good writer do? The writer can make the world a little more knowable. That, however, is a restricted and restricting view of literature. In fact, I believe writers—particularly, writers of fiction—often move us and absorb us without making the worlds and the characters that inhabit these worlds fully knowable. The Nature of Blindspots in “Lihaf” The narrator of Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaaf is neither Begum Jan nor her masseuse Rabbo. It is not even Begum Jan’s husband, the Nawab who is busy philandering with young boys. The story is told by Begum Jan’s adopted niece who has a dreadfully inadequate understanding of and insufficient language for what she sees. The narrator was a small girl when she lived with Begum Jan. Years later, Begum Jan’s erotic relationship with Rabbo lingers as a “terrifying shadow” in her mind. When the narrator sees Begum Jan initially, the woman appears to be the “very picture of royalty.” What follows is a description of Begum Jan—her eyes, hair, skin—from some distance. Between light and shade, day and night, something happens. This “something” becomes a story worth telling precisely because the narrator, even as an adult, does not fully recognize what she saw, and has little understanding of Begum Jan’s experiences. Recounting the past, the narrator, an adult at this point, says (in Syeda Hameed’s translation): "Rabbo had no other household duties. Perched on the four-poster bed she was always massaging Begum Jan's head, feet or some other part of her anatomy. If someone other than Begum Jan received such a quantity of human touching, what would the consequences be? Speaking for myself, I can say that if someone touched me continuously like this, I would certainly rot." Reading this, in the aftermath of the profuse commentary Lihaaf has generated for depicting homosexuality, we smile knowingly. We know what the narrator does not. But, I think, Lihaaf endures as a story because we still do not decisively grasp all its internal movements. For example, the narrator remembers her own “adoring gaze” on Begum Jan that transformed the older woman’s face into that of “a young boy,” which is intriguing given the Nawab’s (Begum’s husband) dalliances with young boys in the same house. The narrator also offers to take Rabbo’s place—to comfort Begum Jan, “scratch her itch”—without seemingly understanding Rabbo’s role in Begum Jan’s life. Soon after, Begum Jan “lies down” with the narrator and transforms into a “terrifying entity.” Lihaaf sustains both under- and overreading into its elliptical narration. What exactly happens after Begum Jan offers to “count” the narrator’s ribs? Why can the narrator no longer look at Begum Jan without feeling a sense of terror as though the older woman would engulf her? Was it because she began to project her fear of same-sex relationships onto her harmless physical intimacy with Begum Jan and therefore started “feeling nauseated against her warm body”? Or was the narrator—a child at the time—molested by Begum Jan but did not have the language to process the experience? In Carson’s Autobiography of Red , when a young Geryon is molested by his elder brother, he too cannot name what has happened to him. The verses tell us Geryon “let his brother do what he liked” and himself tried to disengage from the bodily experience by taking refuge in imaginative thinking. Lihaaf ’s narrator may be similarly scaffolding her actual suffering by inventing the image of monstrous shadows cast on the walls of Begum Jan’s house. The consensus is that Chughtai used a naïve narrator to recount a tumultuous relationship witnessed in childhood to veil the story’s focus on homosexuality. The narrator is a tool that allowed Chughtai to tackle what was taboo at the time. But without the narrator and her blind spots, we do not have much more than a scandalous tale of a clandestine affair here. Characters whose perceptions are inhibited for any number of reasons are commonplace in fiction precisely because their points of view generate tension, humor, and conflict. And when these characters serve as narrators, as in Lihaaf , we get the (in)famous unreliable narrator. Some unreliable narrators lie, but others misrepresent and misinterpret experiences because they do not know any better. There are also instances of narrative unreliability wherein the narrator is not a fully dramatized character but seems close to one or more of the characters in the story, as is the case with Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog and Lispector’s Amor . I will discuss another such story shortly, but before we get there, let’s pause for a moment to reflect on the supposed unreliability of narrators in fiction. To claim a made-up story’s narrator is unreliable or to read a character’s perception as limited is to also suggest that there are greater truths, more reliable versions of the incidents out there—somewhere beyond this particular character’s and/or the narrator’s horizon of understanding. Against that greater truth, unreliability takes a certain definition, but how do we access this truth? Is the truth something readers carry with them to the fictional world? Is Lolita’s Humbert Humbert unreliable because common sense and our own ethical values say so? If the answer is an unequivocal yes, then we must accept that had our common sense and ethical values been any different, Humbert Humbert could be read as a reliable narrator. In other words, unreliability would not be a feature of the story but a matter of the reader’s perception. I can decide whether a narrator is reliable or not. Who can stop me? This is in line with the conventional idea that says our response to fiction (and art in general) is subjective. However, I don’t believe the reader has that much liberty entering the fictional world. What is more, I would go a step further to say that the best writers find crafty ways to limit the reader’s freedom, so the reader cannot escape the burden of uncertainty, casting aside the problem of unknowing by appealing to absolute relativism (“my truth is as good as yours”). Fiction offers an interpretive latitude or flexibility—an unsettling openness but not exactly autonomy. Unreliability, like unknowability, can be traced to craft decisions. Now we are back to where we started. What or where is the knowledge in a story against which we measure characters’ and/or narrators’ perceptual limitations? What is the basis for our judgment? I would suggest—drawing upon the narrative theorist James Phelan—that this broader horizon of knowledge is conveyed through the overall structure of the narrative. It is a function of certain textual patterns. To claim a made-up story’s narrator is unreliable or to read a character’s perception as limited is to also suggest that there are greater truths, more reliable versions of the incidents out there—somewhere beyond this particular character’s and/or the narrator’s horizon of understanding. Against that greater truth, unreliability takes a certain definition, but how do we access this truth? Is the truth something readers carry with them to the fictional world? Phelan distinguishes between various possible ethical positions elicited in fiction. Relations among tellers (author, narrators), characters, and audiences shapeshift over the course of a narrative’s unfolding. Characters behave a certain way, which leads to certain consequences. The narrator tells the story a certain way—stands somewhere in space, time, and ideologies, in relation to the events constituting the story. This, too, has an ethical dimension. And then the entire story, built out of specific narrative strategies, emanates an attitude toward the narrator as well as the characters. And of course, readers also bring their values to bear upon the story. Unreliability results from the misalignment of these various ethical axes. The misalignment is carefully constructed through a series of choices. Of course, craft choices can’t fully account for readers’ values, especially given that stories are read across cultures and historical periods, but many of the other variables contributing to unreliability are amenable to shaping. Take, for instance, Street of the Moon , a short story by Attia Hosain that was first published in The Atlantic in 1952 and later anthologized in her collection Phoenix Fled (1953). In Street of the Moon , the narrator seems to see the world through the eyes of Kalloo the cook and yet manages to distinguish the story’s attitude toward everything, especially women, from that of Kalloo’s. How does Hosain accomplish this? In the rest of this essay, I offer some answers. Ethical Conundrums in “Street of the Moon” Attia Hosain is a writer with a peculiar legacy. Every few decades her books are re-issued and then, apparently, go out of print. I suppose her refusal to identify with either India or Pakistan post-Partition made her an uneasy presence in the emergent national literary canons. But that is not all. Her stylistic inclinations diverge from those of her South Asian contemporaries like, say, Mulk Raj Anand. Introducing an edition of Hosain’s Phoenix Fled in 1988, Anita Desai notes, “Not for her the stripped and bare simplicity of modern prose—that would not be in keeping with the period—which might make it difficult for the modern reader not as at home as she with the older literary style, but it is in harmony with the material.” Hosain’s “material” is the pre-Independence feudal society of Lucknow. While I agree with Desai about Hosain’s style—it is different from “stripped” modern prose—I don’t think Hosain upholds an older literary style either. Did writers of an earlier era combine psychological and emotional realism (a hallmark of “modern prose” if there was one) with rich social drama in Hosain’s vein? I don’t think so. I assume what Desai means by “older” is that Hosain’s storytelling owes something to not only the English literature of her time but also longstanding Urdu literary and cultural traditions. Desai further states that Hosain’s short stories in Phoenix Fled are “truly interesting” for "[The] reconstruction of a feudal society and its depiction from the point of view of the idealized, benevolent aristocrat who feels a sense of duty and responsibility towards his dependents—women as well as servants. This character is something of a stock-in-trade with writers about the Indian scene of that period, but in Attia Hosain’s work he—or she—fades into the anonymous figure of the narrator, and the interest is focused upon the lively world of servants and their families…" Desai is suggesting there is a class difference between the narrators and the central characters of Hosain’s stories, which makes them interesting. If we read Street of the Moon with Desai’s comment in mind, then any misalignment in the ethical axes of the telling (the attitude of the anonymous third-person narrator) and the told (the central characters) would be chalked up to class differences. And it is not impossible to find fiction in which difference in ethics is simply a function of class-caste-gender distinctions, sometimes to rather patronizing effect. However, Street of the Moon is not such a story. And it is a problem if we conflate the self-effacing and non-characterized narrator speaking in the third-person with the strawman figure of “the idealized, benevolent aristocrat.” Hosain’s novel Sunlight on the Broken Column does have an aristocrat for a narrator (Laila, the rebellious daughter of a feudal family) but I find no clear reason as to why we must read Hosain’s short stories as though they were told by a similar figure, unless the story specifies so. I think the fact that we cannot fully pin down the narrator of Street of the Moon , that their values and beliefs keep shifting, makes the story a scathing and disturbing social portrait rather than a cautionary tale directed at men and women. Here's the beginning of Street of the Moon : "Kalloo the cook had worked for the family for more years than he could remember. He had started as the cook’s help, washing dishes, grinding the spices and running errands. When the old cook died of an overdose of opium Kalloo inherited both his job and his taste for opium. His inherent laziness fed by the enervating influence of the drug kept him working for his inadequate pay, because he lacked the energy and the courage to give notice and look for work elsewhere. Moreover, his emotions had grown roots through the years, and he was emotionally attached to the family. He had watched with affectionate interest the birth, childhood, youth and manhood of the sons of the house and felt he was an elder brother." Of his own age he was uncertain but felt young enough when opium-inspired. Eyes outlined with powdered soorma, tiny attar-soaked bit of cotton hidden in his ear his cotton embroidered cap set isn't angle, he went off and evening to the Street of the Moon. The morning after he would be slower of movement than usual, and when he weighed the flower, the lentils, the rice and fat for the day his hands would shake and Mughlani, who had charge of the stores, would shake her grey head and wheeze asthmatically: “You men, you are all animals even when your feet hang in their grave. What you need, Kalloo Mian is a wife to keep you at home.” “What I need is someone to help me in the kitchen it is hard work that makes my hands shake and my head grow heavy,” he would grumble. But the repeated suggestion took root in his mind and he brooded over the need to find himself a wife." Street of the Moon aids my thinking about perspectival blind spots as bases for fiction of unknowability (even when we do not have a naïve first-person narrator) because the events making up the story don’t seem to be particularly remarkable in themselves. E.M Forster maintained, “ Qua story, it can only have one merit: that of making the audience know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.” But I feel like I know what happens next in Street of the Moon —it is the portrait of a society where possibilities are finite if you are of a marginal class and gender. So, while reading, what holds my attention is not so much the chain of events but the angle from which Hosain’s narrator approaches them. As we see from the excerpt, the opening shines the lights on Kalloo, and the lights are harsh. The first sentence establishes what Kalloo does not know for certain (how long he’s been working for the family) and thereby sets up a pattern. We quickly learn Kalloo is addicted to a perception-altering substance. The habit has allowed him to develop a self-image—he feels a sense of kinship with the family he serves, though we are also prompted to suspect that this might be a convenient justification for him to avoid looking for work elsewhere. At any rate, his sense of kinship is not reciprocated—the family offers him “inadequate pay.” If the narrator remarks upon Kalloo’s laziness as an upper-class employer would, the narrator also remains forthcoming about his unacceptable working conditions that Kalloo’s employers would refuse to acknowledge. A little later, Kalloo’s son from his first wife (who is dead) highlights this in dialogue: “What great fortune have you piled up? I know the Collector Sahib’s khansama who gets sixty rupees a month, and has a help, you get twenty rupees like a plain barvarchi .” The design of the opening is such that both Kalloo and the family he works for are held culpable for keeping intact a suspect order for several years. In the second paragraph, we learn more about Kalloo’s distorted self-image. He imagines himself young (when he is not) and takes care of his appearance when he visits brothels. Here is a man, who is then dependent, and perhaps dangerously so, on seeing himself in a certain light to make it through a life that is hard and unjust, a life meant to be spent “in the smoke and heat of the kitchen.” The first character to explicitly judge Kalloo, besides the narrator, is Mughlani. Her voice reaches us through dialogue. She scolds Kalloo for acting against the norms of social respectability. Mughlani, like the narrator, perhaps also sees Kalloo as lazy, but then Mughlani also imagines there could be a cure for Kalloo’s maladies. Why Mughlani imagines a wife would mend Kalloo can be chalked up to social beliefs—a man with a wife would behave more responsibly (really?!). However, when we learn that the old gray-haired Mughlani is out of breath from dealing with Kalloo (“wheeze asthmatically”), we can speculate that Kalloo’s having a wife could ease some of Mughlani’s troubles. Probably Kalloo’s slacking off doubles the woman’s responsibilities. Her advice to Kalloo is thus not simply a nod to codes of social propriety, but also a ploy that could potentially relieve her. It is not impossible to find fiction in which difference in ethics is simply a function of class-caste-gender distinctions, sometimes to rather patronizing effect. However, Street of the Moon , is not such a story. And it is a problem if we conflate the self-effacing and non-characterized narrator speaking in the third-person with the strawman figure of “the idealized, benevolent aristocrat.” The two characters—Mughlani and Kalloo—are pitted against each other, and the collocation makes both slightly more vivid. While reporting both their behaviors and Kalloo’s thoughts, the narrator does not fully align with either. There is a distance between the nondescript, non-localizable anonymous narrator and these other characters, especially Kalloo, who begins at the very edge of what can be love, and over the course of the story gets pushed further away. The distance between the narrator and the characters accounts for the tone (choice of the verb “inherited” for both Kalloo’s job and addiction, for example), the comments on Kalloo’s “inherent laziness”, and other unsavory behavior. This distance is manifested in how Kalloo intends to develop a flattering self-portrait—hardworking, loyal, agile servant of a family that treats him like an elder brother—and how the narrator exposes the dubious mechanics (opium) developing the picture. Hosain’s narratorial tactics are similar to Carson’s here, though the thrust is different. In Carson’s verse novel, Geryon has internalized a monstrous self-image—he thinks he is “stupid,” “ugly,” and exists at the edge of lovability—but the narrator places his behavior alongside those of other characters, including his brother and his lover, to expose how these people manipulate Geryon into developing an abhorrent self-image so they can exploit him. Just when Kalloo wishes he had a wife, a suitable candidate appears. The widow working as Mughlani’s help goes to her village and returns with her beautiful daughter Hasina. The narrator tells us no one thought of the widow as “a living woman” before she brought Hasina; the widow was “a humble ugly shadow” in everyone’s eyes. It is her daughter’s presence that brings her to life. Once again, two characters seem to give form to each other. Kalloo, the narrator nudges us to notice, registers the girl’s presence. He is unhappy that he must cook for another person, but he empathizes with the widow when she says, “I am growing old, and need someone to care for me.” Mughlani is keen to discipline the girl who apparently “Sit[s] all day admiring herself.” Kalloo agrees with Mughlani. His empathy for Hasina’s mother and appreciation for Mughlani’s scheme of disciplining the young girl is related to his dissatisfaction with his own son. What is common to Hasina and Kalloo’s son is that they are young, and people like Kalloo and Mughlani gather that they will disturb the existing social order. One noteworthy detail here is that while Kalloo’s son is quoted as mocking his father, Hasina has not said anything at all in the story so far. However, soon after the exchange with Mughlani, Kalloo decides “Hasina’s eyes mocked him.” Kalloo is projecting the image of his own son onto Hasina. The narrator has not described anything specific Hasina has said or done that can reasonably be understood as mockery. In fact, half the girl’s face is hidden: “She was hiding her mouth with her ‘dupatta’…” In this encounter between Kalloo and the girl, we do not know what the girl is thinking or doing. However, a third character present on the scene suggests that Kalloo is under the influence of opium. Under influence, Kalloo assumes he knows Hasina. The narrator, however, has left her unknowable. Kalloo, much like the narrator of Lihaaf , believes he understands what he does not—that is all we need to know to mistrust him. Soon, Kalloo begins to be haunted by Hasina’s eyes—the liveliness in them and the “angry hate” in them upset him. The narrator charts how from Kalloo’s point of view, Hasina’s eyes and nose ring dance. It is all too much to bear for a man used to numbing his senses with opium. The narrator’s distance from Kalloo widens as more and more voices enter the story through dialogue. The polyphonic surface unsettles Kalloo’s gaze on Hasina, even though none of them protest Kalloo’s beliefs about her. In fact, the others often mirror Kalloo’s viewpoints as far as Hasina is concerned. However, they question Kalloo’s perceptions on other counts. Mughlani, for instance, points out that the feudal family does not fire Kalloo because he is ready to work for too-little pay and not because he is “family” to them. Just as the characters contest Kalloo’s beliefs, they also contest each other’s claims. When Mughlani says, “In my days we didn’t leave the room for forty days [before a wedding],” Hasina’s mother says, “Not so many surely.” The structure of Hosain’s narrative whereby each character contests and undercuts others’ views on various subjects causes us—readers—to doubt their perception of Hasina. Ten pages into the thirty-two-page story, we do not know Hasina beyond what these other characters believe about her, but the narrator has not given us reasons to fully trust the other characters. Indeed, they do not trust each other. Mughlani takes the lead in arranging Kalloo’s wedding with Hasina. The wedding is entertainment for the bored aristocrats and an occasion for the other servants to celebrate and assert their authority. Kalloo’s great desire for Hasina on the eve of their wedding is suspect. What makes his desire suspect is not the present-day readers’ values alone: twenty-first-century readers may find Kalloo’s and Hasina’s vast asymmetries in age and power fraught, but that is almost beside the point. Kalloo’s desire is suspect because he is the same man who had instigated Hasina’s mother to beat her and projected his son’s insolence onto the girl. The first unfiltered glimpse we get of Hasina’s interiority establishes her naivety. With her, the problem of knowing and unknowing assumes the form of innocence. She is excited about wedding gifts, and she imagines she can do as she pleases after she is married because her mother tells her so. We know Kalloo relatively more than Hasina does, and, of course, we have some sense of how he perceives her. Sure enough, as soon as the ceremonial garbs are shed, Kalloo is once again haunted by “Hasina’s cruel mockery,” only made harsher by the fact she is now his wife. The sexual encounters between Kalloo and Hasina, though not described in a lot of detail, record his disregard for her wishes. Anecdotally I can add that my students, too, hold characters in fiction to oddly specific ethical standards. Some express resentment for the narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body because the narrator is avoidant and noncommittal. Others don’t like Zadie Smith’s narrator in Swing Time because the narrator takes a lifetime to “see” how a dance performance she enjoyed as a child was performed in blackface and still admits to enjoying the dance. Her married life requires Hasina to find her own pain-numbing drugs: she takes pleasure in adorning herself, looking at her mirror image, admiring her new possessions. But even these are snatched from her, and it is not long before “her eyes lost their mischievous sparkle.” However, the sparkling eyes return, only for a short time, and everyone suspects this must be on account of her illicit relation with Kalloo’s son who is closer in age to her. Kalloo becomes vigilant and takes “very little opium” to make sure he does not lose his wife to his son. As it turns out, Kalloo’s suspicions are not misguided, and this is where the story’s ethical orientation becomes intriguing. If Kalloo was simply suspecting Hasina and nothing had happened between Hasina and Kalloo’s son, it would be one thing—we don’t trust Kalloo anyway—but that would make for a much simpler and weaker story. In Hosain’s story, Hasina has cheated on Kalloo. And when Kalloo sends his son away, Hasina continues to cheat—she begins to enjoy the attention of another servant. Hasina also loves touching luxurious items in the landlady’s room and steals some of them. She then elopes with the other servant who supposedly finds work for her, but given the story’s final scene it seems he sold her to a brothel. Hosain does not resolve the issue of conflicting perceptions. When we think we know a character, the character transforms ever so slightly under our gaze. This pattern replicates a similar pattern within the world of the story. And the pattern’s origin can be traced to the creative process. Fictions of unknowability succeed when the writer has risked going from a spaceless nook within to the very edge of what they know and love. Even though Kalloo’s suspicions about Hasina materialize, the story does not make him out to be a righteous figure, of course. Towards the end of the story, he sees her image (innocent, gay, mischievous) in his opium dreams. Then, apparently, he sees her “powdered face pallid in the harsh light” in the “Street of the Moon”—the red-light district. He runs away the moment he spots her because her reality threatens to obliterate the idealized portrait of her that he now cherishes. The cherished portrait conjures a subjectivity that he may have destroyed, but also, we remain uncertain about what Hasina was prior to being dragged into Kalloo’s world. Was she ever the idealized child Kalloo imagines her to be in the end? We do not know but we do know that Kalloo runs away from knowledge. That is the kind of person he is. There are a variety of things Kalloo does not remember and does not want to see. He cherishes oblivion. His perspective comes across as distorted not necessarily because we have a clearer view of the truth than him, but we have a clearer sense that his perceptions are excessively muddled. Is Hasina better off—happier—in the “Street of the Moon” than she was in the control of her obnoxious husband? Has her situation changed for better or worse? She was betrayed by a lover and ended up there. We don’t know much more than that. In the end, she is once more screened from our view—her interiority is inaccessible. We have been left with Kalloo, who carries on as he always has. Untrustworthy characters with dubious ethics like Kalloo, who neither reform nor face punishment, throw off balance the view of fiction (and literature more generally) as wholesome and instructive. Readers seem to worry a great deal about such unethical conduct on the part of authors. If Goodreads reviews are anything to go by, readers are disappointed when a story does not punish, kill, or “shut up” a character they cannot love. A reader asks, “Will someone tell me if any likable characters show up?” in a review of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov . Having taught literature and creative writing for some years now, anecdotally I can add that my students, too, hold characters in fiction to oddly specific ethical standards. Some express resentment for the narrator of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body because the narrator is avoidant and noncommittal. Others don’t like Zadie Smith’s narrator in Swing Time because the narrator takes a lifetime to “see” how a dance performance she enjoyed as a child was performed in blackface and still admits to enjoying the dance. Can writers never write about decent (“relatable”) people whose merits outweigh their flaws? My practiced move as a teacher is to ask students why they crave decency in fiction in this way. What sort of ethics prompts them/us to first see some “good” in people (well, characters) before caring for them? But for now, let me take the desire to find the “good” in Street of the Moon . Does Hosain’s story intend for the reader to empathize with Kalloo, to see some good in him? Or are we to feel for Hasina, though she does not remain decent (cheats, steals, elopes)? Who—which of these Others—have we learned to love in reading Street of the Moon ? These questions become subsumed in another question that has to do with craft decisions: with whom does the anonymous narrator’s allegiance lie in the story? In the strictest sense: neither Kalloo nor Hasina. What’s clear is that though the story closely tracks Kalloo’s point of view, the narrator does not fully align with him. And I think that is enough to make the story a complex fictional rendering of social life, rather than one that catalogs the evils of men like Kalloo or predicaments of women like Hasina. A story need not explicitly define its stance on subjects (women, misogyny, marriages). Instead, it may choose to shine the lights on everything it intends to negate: in this case, Kalloo’s gaze, his values. A narrative punishing Kalloo would be righteous but, in my opinion, quite pointless. Righteous narrators of fiction leave readers with a sense of comfort—we get to pretend we always knew right from wrong. But we really don’t. Not clearly anyhow. This is also why even in Carson’s Autobiography and Chughtai’s Lihaaf , characters who are ethically suspect do not face any radical consequences. Geryon’s untrustworthy lover does not grapple with chastising. Geryon’s failing—if it can be called a failing—seems to be his inability to extricate himself from those who abuse him. Towards the end of Autobiography , he accompanies his unrepentant lover to see an installation art piece resembling a volcano and concludes, “We are amazing beings.” In Chughtai’s story, the narrator who has recounted in some detail her peculiar childhood experiences comes to an incongruous conclusion: she will never tell anyone what she saw under Begum Jan’s quilt even if she was offered a large sum of money. These endings play with the readers’ concern for truth and their desire to see characters and events as they are in themselves while remaining unable to do so. Do writers need to worry at all about the ethical implications of choices in narrators, characters, and their quandaries of knowledge? From a writer’s point of view, I can see how ethics (often confused with socially defined morality) can be constraining. And should great art not fight constraints? But when writers talk of dispensing with ethics in their stories, they are usually talking of dispensing with moral (“good”) characters. The important thing to recognize is that ethics does not mean “good.” Ethics also does not mean a singular, well-defined position vis-à-vis a subject. To say stories have an ethical orientation is not to suggest that stories prescribe an easily digested pill to help enact social good. It is also not to say that stories’ ethical orientation would be the same as the orientation of any one or all of the characters. To say stories have an ethical orientation is to admit that craft decisions are never disinterested in ethics, though memorable stories, I think, have a hesitant ethics and this hesitancy is in their structure. In Street of the Moon , the pairing of characters, the contrasts Hosain works out in perceptions and points of view, the use of dialogue, and the slipperiness of the narratorial position on the unfolding events, contributes to the feeling of hesitancy. It is a story about the ways we obstruct knowledge and numb perceptions to bear what we must. ∎ ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: AUTHOR Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 Heading 5 AUTHOR Heading 5 Artwork "Wonderland 2" by Priyanka D'Souza. Watercolour on paper (2015) SHARE Facebook ↗ Twitter ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Essay Criticism Ismat Chughtai Modernism Anne Carson Quilt Autobiography of Red Geryon Aleksandar Hemon Clarice Lispector Craft Epistemology Attia Hosain Street of the Moon Ethics Characterization Longform Knowledge Lihaaf Dostoyevsky Narrators Ethical Standards for Fictional Characters Zadie Smith Swing Time Jeannette Winterson Written on the Body Goodreads The Brothers Karamazov Short Stories Translation Short Story Fiction Irreverence Affect Alienation Rhetoric Sensuality Queerness Sadness Absurdity Composition Pedagogy Authenticity Verisimilitude TORSA GHOSAL is the author of a book of literary criticism, Out of Mind (Ohio State University Press), and an experimental novella, Open Couplets (Yoda Press, India). Her fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Catapult, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Bustle , and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English at California State University, Sacramento, and a host of the Narrative for Social Justice podcast. Essay Criticism 28th Feb 2023 PRIYANKA D'SOUZA is an artist, writer, and art historian whose primary areas of research and inspiration are Mughal painting and natural history in early modern Europe. She is part of the artistic duo Resting Museum and winner of the 2022 Emerging Artist Award from the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art (FICA). On That Note: Heading 5 23rd OCT Heading 5 23rd Oct Heading 5 23rd Oct