On Refuge and Language

by Suheir Hammad

I do not wish
To place words in living mouths
Or bury the dead dishonorably

I am not deaf to cries escaping shelters
That citizens are not refugees
Refugees are not Americans

I will not use language
One way or another
To accommodate my comfort

I will not look away

All I know is this

No peoples ever choose to claim status of dispossessed
No peoples want pity above compassion
No enslaved peoples ever called themselves slaves

What do we pledge allegiance to?

A government that leaves its old
To die of thirst surrounded by water
Is a foreign government

People who are streaming
Illiterate into paperwork
Have long ago been abandoned

I think of coded language
And all that words carry on their backs

I think of how it is always the poor
Who are tagged and boxed with labels
Not of their own choosing

I think of my grandparents
And how some called them refugees
Others called them non-existent
They called themselves landless
Which means homeless

Before the hurricane
No tents were prepared for the fleeing
Because Americans do not live in tents
Tents are for Haiti for Bosnia for Rwanda

Refugees are the rest of the world

Those left to defend their human decency
Against conditions the rich keep their animals from
Those who have too many children
Those who always have open hands and empty bellies
Those whose numbers are massive
Those who seek refuge
From nature's currents and man's resources

Those who are forgotten in the mean times

Those who remember

Ahmad from Guinea makes my falafel sandwich and says
So this is your country
Yes Amadou this my country
And these my people

Evacuated as if criminal
Rescued by neighbors
Shot by soldiers

Adamant they belong

The rest of the world can now see
What I have seen

Do not look away

The rest of the world lives here too
In America

moments.

You could drown in memories like these, but she tried to swim free of them...Past tense, future imperfect. (Zadie Smith, White Teeth, 379)



my thoughts are embedded with contradictions, exceptions, to nearly everything i can think of.

when i say that i try to be momentary, how i rate the success of this endeavor is usually dependent on how able i am to separate myself from the past tense, future imperfect. it is a cleavage that is painful, while also exhilarating. these moments are my reckless moments. these moments are culminations of my disregard, my disdain, for my compulsiveness, my strivings for perfection in everything.

as far as i can remember, i have always been a big proponent of living in the moment. it is, perhaps, a reflection of my struggles, or lack thereof, to reconcile my life with my history, my desires with my strivings. my lack of enthusiasm for commitment to people and places beyond a particular moment have been a result of my lack of enthusiasm for committing to understanding who i am beyond a particular moment.

i am trying to reconstruct the possibilities of what living in the moment can mean, trying to connect the past with the future through this moment. this is turning out to be a bit more difficult, and perhaps more painful, than not.

yesterday, i read an article in the atlantic arguing that humans are predisposed to believe in the supernatural. while i found the argument as a whole to be highly questionable, even given my suspicion of religion, what intrigued me was the observation that we tend to view our bodies as separate from our souls, or our minds.

my dichotomous thinking on this runs into my dichotomous thinking in momentary living. in most things, i'm all or nothing - very rarely do i find myself comfortable in the middle of any spectrum. i may love intensely, with fierce loyalty, but not without demands, requirements.

so i want to be more momentary, but i'm not even sure what that means anymore. you want to know what i fear, why i'm changing definitions in the middle of all of this. i can't say for certain.

ideologue.

i'm having a hard time understanding the descriptions of our most recent supreme court nominees. it defies belief that we should be excited to think that someone doesn't have an ideology. in fact, the anti-ideology, anti-ideologue message that's been going around for some time now gave me such doubt of what i thought i believed that i had to look up "ideology" and "ideologue", confirming to myself that yes, ideology is an important thing to have in the world. in today's nyt, you can find an article entitled, "Court Choice Is Conservative by Nature, Not Ideology". ummm...what?

i wonder why so little of politics makes sense to me, why i understand so few governmental actions. and today, well. today, i think i figured it out: if everyone is running away from ideology, there is no consistency or coherence to anything. we are left holding pieces, rather than looking at the whole.

and we have all these white men stumbling around, saying, well, you know, i decide things based on merits. mmmhmmm. yes you do. the merits of white hegemonic male privilege. so that's what i think when i read about junior's "nature".

the only ones who can afford to claim they don't have an ideology are the ones whose ideology already rules.

oh. and hell yes, i'm an ideologue.

laughter.

this past weekend, i caught myself in the midst of raucous laughter and realized that i couldn't remember the last time i had laughed so hard that i had to remind myself to breathe, to be conscious of trying to take deep breaths, the result of which is more of a hiccup, which sounds so ridiculous that i laugh even harder at this, partly in embarassment, partly in wonder of these uncontrollable noises exiting my mouth, and all i can do is listen and laugh some more and wipe the tears from my eyes. the fact is, me laughing deliriously sounds and feels suspiciously like me crying my eyes out, and i've been a bit short on both as of late.

after i caught my breath, the giddiness remained, and the smile lasted for quite some time. i realized that while i may think of myself as quick to laughter, i'm much more of a snorter. ugh. i'm still wrestling with that realization. the thing is, laughter is so much better than snorting - musically and otherwise. i generally disdain people who snort because i associate it with pomposity and arrogance. so how the hell did i become a snorter? when did that happen?

i vaguely remember reading something awhile ago about how laughter triggers various chemical functions in the brain. this makes sense to me kind of. but the concept i can really hold on to, is that the very act of laughing deeply and uncontrollably feels so damn good because that sort of laughing requires intimacy with another person. laughter creates a certain kind of connectedness that reminds us of the relationship we have with each other as well as the parts of us we forget sometimes along the way to becoming responsible adults striving for this that or the other. and it makes sense to me that my laughing and crying sounds similar because both require intimate touchings.

so i guess i've spent a lot of time this weekend reflecting on all these things because i know that i've spent way more time snorting than laughing and crying combined for quite some time, and i've found it troubling because that tells me i haven't focused as much on my relationships with those i love as much as i need to. and if i haven't done that, then clearly i've been spending some time with myself, but it's been mostly about stuff that doesn't really thrill me. i haven't finished reading a book in months. it's been a long time since i've even picked up a book that wasn't about the lsats. i've read reviews of books, articles, things like that, but no books. i've spent so much time striving lately that i've largely neglected this woman who is doing all of this striving. hence the propensity for snorting. so there it is. not very pretty.

but here's the good news for me: clearly, i am still capable of laughing with my entire body. all is not lost. and to be honest, i really do think that some situations/people demand snorts. that's true. and dammit people, it's not just my fault that i haven't been laughing.

so it's monday, and i have law school apps to send out this weekend, and i'm premenstrual, and already feeling anti-social and grumpy about the aforementioned things and more i'm sure, but sometimes, i just need to remember who i don't want to be. i think george w. bush is a snorter. that's all i need to remember. that's enough to make me cry so hard it makes me laugh.

call me a cynic...

is anyone else uneasy about the media portrayal and the left's response to the fuss around sandra day o'connor's replacement? to be honest, i think karl rove's a helluva better political operative than the media and both wings seem to be giving him credit for these days - did anyone really think that harriet mier's had a shot in hell of being confirmed? her nomination did, however, suspiciously set the stage for a study of marked contrasts that has eased the way for samuel alito, jr. (please note the addition of another junior) who, by most accounts will not be facing a filibuster. after all, it's hard to filibuster a white man with such impeccable academic credentials and 15 years of judicial experience when everyone was busy a week ago vilifying harriet miers for her lack of intellectualism and experience before the senate hearings were even scheduled. and then she pulls herself out of consideration on thursday, and bush announces junior on monday. bush and his administration brilliantly shifted the conversation away from wanting another woman to replace o'connor (and/or a hispanic), to a demand for "credentials". and who has better credentials for the supreme court than white men? after all, it requires a vow to uphold the constitution. consider this your timely reminder that the constitution was written by rich white men who sought to protect their property rights, of which women and men of color were included. i've gotta admit that strategically, karl rove is hard to beat. call me a cynic if you want to, but i think the man is smarter than what people have been saying about him lately. i have a hard time believing that the bush administration is really in as bad of shape as the media claims, even though we all know that it is worse than the media will ever admit.

honor.

"You honor me with your grumpiness."

i gotta admit, the first time i heard that, i thought it was pretty corny. that was over a month ago. but sometimes, when a certain phrase refuses to leave my head or comes up most unexpectedly, i know it's something i need to think about. i love the woman who said this - i am hard pressed to think of anyone who matches her gentleness and grace in dealing with the world - and i learned of the quote from a retelling of the conversation that inspired her saying it, but i just thought it funny when i heard it the first time. because it is funny, i think.

but i've been thinking about it because it's been one of those things that i haven't been able to not think about, and maybe i found it funny initially because that's precisely opposite to what most of us are socialized to think about grumpiness and bad moods in general. most of the time, i'm just offended by pissy moods, which puts me in a combative pissy mood. i have a tendency to put on my *game face*, as it were, around people i care about because i don't want to worry them and frankly, because i have a lot of pride.

and part of it is that those who are closest to me bring out the best parts of me that i struggle to maintain otherwise. but i wonder how many of us alter our realities because we're afraid of what it would mean not to, especially around people we love. it's about how honest we are with each other about what's going on, but fundamentally, how honest we can be with ourselves. it's a tough proposition, this honor thing.

this is the first conceptualization of honor that doesn't make me sick. it just makes me notice myself more in relation to other people.