This is my newsletter #42: Fathima Zahra

Dear Reader,

I don’t know about you, but I've been finding it hard to write. 

I dream of the sea most days. When I think of freedom, I think of my ankles planted in the water, body turned towards the sun like a sunflower that’s been repotted. My dreams have changed shape - eyes water at the thought of stretching a conversation over lunch at the Apple Blue Patisserie and wolfing down food made by someone else. Loafing around after class with friends, time falling away from us, laughter suspended in the air.  

When it’s safe to be outside again and hold each other without worry, I think of the deep joy. How many pockets our smiles will hold, how many detours in our conversations. Here’s to holding out for a new future. 

Seeking solace in:

This poem by Momtaza Mehri:  ‘In the period immediately following spectacular violence, a poem will often go viral on social media. It makes sense that poetry might offer a way out from that space of unrepresentable trauma—a path back to a social form where the true work of redress can take place. Sometimes, though, the turn to poetry feels both embarrassing and dangerous, like a child with a plastic stethoscope trying to treat a woman with a real heart attack.’

Struck by the  astute introduction and Momtaza’s poem as antidote and subversion against this very phenomenon.

Us by Zaffar Kunial: Despite having read Zaffar Kunial’s poems over the years, (The Word being my favourite so far) it is my first time reading through his collection. Love his play on language, anecdotal poems and the clarity in his poems. 

Ólafur Arnalds’ music: I’ve been lying my parents’ couch for the past half hour listening to him as I write - perfect lazy Saturday background score. 

Sharing a poem I recently wrote during my virtual residency at the Francis Crick Institute (in collaboration with Poet in the City). We were given a virtual archive of reflections from the people who were vaccinated at the centre and asked to use it as inspiration for our poems. In sorting through the entries, I was struck by someone who wrote that this time feels like purgatory. It made me think of previous periods of isolation and loneliness in my own life, where the world was pulsing outside of my door. 

Purgatory 

It’s like I’m back in the flat again - 
its walls, sun-licked and sand-swept 
the smell of baby powder and wet wipes.
Mum asks us to wash our hands 
and shed the outside before we cross
the threshold of her bedroom
to hold my baby sister. Days
pour into nights, the din of traffic
and azaan is all I know of the outside.
It swirls and skates without me.
On the afternoons that time stills 
into my parents’ snores, I slide into
their cupboard, close the door on myself.
Before the fear of small spaces,
before this ache for others’ hands and bodies,
I imagined ballrooms into the cramped cupboard,
wrapped myself in my mum’s shawls and abayas,
called myself a queen where no one can contest it.
I’ve outgrown that first flat,
my bed, the wide mouth of my room and 
the allotted spaces in supermarkets
and tube carriages.
I linger now at the choice of cereals, palm 
each mango that I take home. Pretend
this too is an intimacy.
I haven’t hugged a friend in fourteen months
so God sends me dreams where I do.
When the world opens up, I’ll be at the gates,
feet twitching, palms clenched, 
like it’s the first day of school and I’m ready 
to use all the words and ways of being 
I have only seen on TV.

Wishing you lemonade cooler on 17 degree days joy,
Zahra 

Instagram: @zeeforzahra3.0
Newsletter: Midnight Dispatch