Zainab Zahra Syed: Preservationist
Performance poet and producer Zainab Zahra Syed speaks of home: in place, in people and in herself.
By Museum of Freedom and Tolerance
Zainab Zahra Syed
Zainab Zahra Syed
Zainab Zahra Syed is a preservationist; to her, the need for radical change sits together with the need for preservation of old values.
Syed was born in Lahore, Pakistan, but grew up in Islamabad before moving to Romania, Yemen, Wales (where she attended the first United World College), the United States (where she attended Brown University) and eventually Australia.
Syed is an award-winning poet and performance poet, a producer at Performing Lines WA and an asylum seeker detention centre liaison for the Australian Red Cross.
When I was growing up – and I didn’t realise at the time that this would lead to my being a writer or a poet – I had this sense of wanting to hold onto things that I thought were going to escape me.
She also co-founded Pakistan’s first poetry slam, which is now a celebrated art form across the country, and co-founded Perth’s illUMENate: U + ME For Humanity Festival, providing a space for culturally and linguistically diverse people to celebrate their identities.
Looking for ladybugs (2020) by Zainab Zahra Syed and Duncan WrightMuseum of Freedom and Tolerance
Looking for ladybugs
Zainab Zahra Sayed performs her poem Looking for ladybugs in this short film directed and produced by Duncan Wright. Footage of Sayed's performance is layered over photographs from her family living in Lahore, Pakistan.
Looking for ladybugs
For Amina Saigol.
A Door to Somewhere (2019) by Imtiaz HaqueMuseum of Freedom and Tolerance
There is an ice cream stand on the corner of salt and pepper restaurant.
Tucked behind Lahore’s busiest bazaar
It is not glamorous.
It is not fashionable
Except to Lahore’s oldest families
The ice cream machine’s silent hum has graduated to a groan but few hear it.
My mother speaks of it with fondness.
It is the only place that still stands from both of our childhoods.
In Lahore, if ever there were street names, we were never taught them.
I learnt to navigate my city through memory.
My memory a patchwork of colors
The traffic like spilt paint
The sky a glittering collage
Beside the broken swing my first toothache,
Behind the juice stand my first bike ride
Playing with ladybugs in my grandmother's garden
The smell of mud after monsoon rain
Licking ice cream off my hands
At best, it is messy.
Yet, no matter how far I stray,
I cannot forget the taste of home.
If I shatter this vessel of past impressions.
I risk spilling the memories guiding me back -
So years later when I return home
I still speak in dusty sidewalks, afternoon cricket and sweet mangoes
only to find someone else has scribbled over my city’s pages.
When I go to the ice cream stand
A man comes to take my order
He looks at me as though I am a memory
I do not ask him how much it will cost
I know power cuts must have hiked up the prices.
Nowadays my city wonders if the angels are on vacation
And if the ladybugs are ever coming back
There used to be so much sky
Now there doesn’t seem to be enough space.
But I know, no matter how frayed the edges of our city have become,
How broken the silence may be,
There is always a storm before a revolution.
So I’ll make sure to bring my dancing shoes to this monsoon season
When the rains stop
I will land my eyes on the most vibrant kite I can find
See how brilliantly it shimmers against a dusty sky
And when the dust settles
I will be found looking for ladybugs in my grandmother’s garden.
When the dreamers stop believing I will show them their dreams are nothing less than fairy dust
Their speech, nothing but answered prayers
If our porcelain hearts are chipped
It means we have lived.
So tip all of your fears into a giant bucket
Dip a brush inside them
Add in the messiest memories
Paint the canvas a masterpiece.
You cannot unlearn your city
Or shed the color of your skin
So put it back on
Then take a step forward and watch the canvas glow
Your city is welcoming you home.
Syed's poetry speaks of the idea of home, of belonging; but to where, to what? There are many homes, many allegiances in Syed's work: a home in Lahore, in Pakistan, a sense of belonging to her Muslim faith and her lineage, which connects back to the Prophet Muhammad.
Because we moved around so much, I really started to question where I belonged. I started to retrace my family’s history and the history of my faith, Islam. I wanted to create a vision for my future that was based on some kind of understanding of my past.
This talk of home is never concrete. It oscillates between her childhood garden in Lahore, and the places she finds herself - in Wales, in Providence, in Bucharest, in Sana'a, in Perth, in between.
Jasmine
I
Every morning my father picks flowers from our garden & leaves them by my bedside so I always wake up to something beautiful
I grow up believing love blooms at night
& looks like the jasmine I gather in my palms & string into garlands,
its scent still sits heavy on my fingers as i sleep
Even now, this residue of love,
Its roots deep in the soil of my childhood garden
calls me home like a prayer.
II
When the cancer burns through the wheatfields
my father returns home to quell the fires
& finds only ash
At my grandfathers funeral my father buries his father
the soil holds my dada in its embrace,
while the residue of longing smells of burning
When my father becomes un-fathered
the waterworks in him scatter over the grave
weaving garlands of prayer
I watch him unravel at my feet
As the jasmine continues to bloom
& I learn love has no allegiance to grief
III
when they come for our father’s
only our brothers are present
& I wonder what happens to children who witness a father’s perecution
Whose children do we become
When our fathers are unfathered by their soil?
What becomes of prayer
When our tongues are full of triggers?
Is it still my language
If I speak in my fathers voice?
Is it still my fatherland
If it orphans my father?
I spend all night scrubbing away my allegiance to soil
Still, it clings to me like love
Calling me home –
But what becomes of home
When it unravels at his feet?
What becomes of love
When it betrays him on the battlefield?
What becomes of our fathers
If they cannot trace their way back to the gardens?
Does that make us daughters who wake up to nothing beautiful?
Do we still gather jasmine & string it into garlands?
Wrap it around our fingers & carry love like ammunition?
Does residue always look like longing?
When the ash sits heavy on our breaths
Do we still stand for prayer?
IV
Tell me, how do we continue to love a land that does not love us back?
V
In the morning we wake up without father
Or beautiful
Without land or language
The jasmine continues to bloom
& all i’m left with, are prayers
& all I’m left with, are prayers
There was a time when I wondered if opening my heart to other places made me less Pakistani. If writing poetry in English, and not Urdu, made me less authentic. But over time, I’ve grown more comfortable with un-belonging in the physical, tangible sense of the word - unbelonging to something or someone – instead I’ve learnt to find home in myself, particularly in the self that is tied to the values I hold most dear.
My maternal great grandfather changed our family name to haq, meaning truth, and left his children no inheritance except the name. On my paternal side, I come from the family of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him) – the Syed’s. For me, the inheritance of these names is belonging. So whether I am in Lahore, or Perth, whether I speak English or Urdu – as long as I am living up to their legacy, I am home.
Bloodline
In the year 680,
Karbala, Iraq
The Prophet Muhammad’s family tree is severed in the middle of a desert.
His granddaughter, Sayeda Zaynab walks the circumference of the earth,
Warning the people of Islam against the King who ordered the murder of her family,
(of my family,
the Syed’s,
descendants of Mustafa,
the beloved Muhammad PBUH)
She bows only before God
Proving to any who should ever doubt
A veiled woman
Is not a silenced woman.
In the year 1947,
Lahore, Pakistan
A whole generation of my ancestors walks across the border
From Delhi into Lahore in search of a lost voice.
Most take spears to their hearts,
Their bellies are ripped open
The soil is splattered with their sacrifice.
But they do not scream
They do not plead
And the city prepares for a funeral.
In the year 1991
Lahore, Pakistan
My mother whispers ancient prayers into her womb:
"My Lord, indeed I have pledged to You what is in my womb, consecrated [for Your service], so accept this from me. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing."
(Quran 3: 35-36)
My daughter, she says will be named Zainab, after the Prophet (PBUH)s granddaughter
She will inherit her voice
I will give her pen and paper
Show her the battle wounds of her city
The sacrifice of her ancestors
And their glory too
I will tell her:
Here, listen to your soil
Listen to the soil beneath that chest
How it lends itself to your pulse
You, meri jaan are made to speak
Speak in the voice of your ancestor
Speak for your bloodline has no history of being unhinged
I am born during Ramadan into an ancient bloodline
My name is a coveted heirloom
Zaynab, from the Arabic,
meaning a fragrant flowering tree
meaning that which glorifies someone; “the ab”, my father
meaning a woman rising against injustice
meaning this name is a map given to me at birth
meaning this is my inheritance
meaning Sayeda Zaynab’s voice finds home in me –
I too will not be silenced
Looking for ladybugs (2012), Jasmine (2018) and Bloodline (2015) by Zainab Syed. Read more about Syed here.
Words by Emma Pegrum.
Images courtesy of Imtiaz Haque and Zainab Syed.
Short film by Duncan Wright; stills taken from the film.
