BANAZ: A LOVE STORY

They disappear the girls,
But it's the men who blur, for me.

Whose father, did what, when,
With whose aid, why - I care less

About them. And only about you.
You remain. You and your name

Haunt me, but not as ghostly mystery.
There was nothing insubstantial

About you. In fact, there was so much
That it has spilled over, across time,

Crossed the bridges of your world
And mine, so you live with me now,

Swimming in the river of my thoughts.
I hope you don't mind.

(c) Shaista Tayabali, 2018

They wanted us to forget her. They tried to erase her, in a suitcase, strangled and abandoned, buried. No, evil, you did not succeed. We honour her, still. Her name is on our lips, in our poems, crossing borders on the wind. Banaz Mahmod. In 2012, Deeyah Khan and Andrew Smith documented her story in a film they titled Banaz: A Love Story. She was born 16 December 1985, and killed 24 January, 2006. She was Iraqi Kurdish. She lived in Wimbledon, London. And she fought to save her own life.  
(poem shared via dverse poets)

AMAL, NADIA, HANYA AND MICHELLE

For some years I stopped actively seeking out music. I'm not sure why. Music is memory, and not all memory is happy or sad; some memories are layered with depression, anxiety, fear, loneliness. Lately though, thanks to Desert Island Discs, I have found myself returning to music. I love the unexpected choices. I find myself delving deeper into the archives, particularly glad when I discover philanthropists like Sigrid Rausing and humanitarian activists like David Nott, vascular war surgeon. My favourite episode is with Aung San Suu Kyi - I think it is the only occasion when the interview takes place not in the BBC studio, but in Burma, in Daw Suu's home.

These days I am inspired by Amal Clooney, international human rights lawyer, currently attorney to a young 23 year old Yazidi girl, Nadia Murad, who managed to escape her captors and be smuggled out of Mosul to Stuttgart. She has recently been named a UN Goodwill Ambassador, but of course this involves her telling and retelling the tales of crime that were committed upon her person, and the bodies of thousands of women still remaining in the camps.

A friend of mine asked if I wanted to be part of a new book club; the first book we read was Hanya Yanigahara's A Little Life - a book that divided readers last year. Some thought it relentless in its portrayal of the suffering of its central character, Jude. And others, like myself, though no less fatigued by such a detailed rendition of a broken life, found truth in a narrative that does not see its way to an easy resolution. Nadia Murad may have escaped ISIS, but she will never be able to forget. We, in our lives of comfort, safety and daily entertainment, may find it a little too easy to imagine that suffering can be papered over. Especially the suffering of girls, of women.

And so to remind us to shore each other up, and stay alert and conscious to the ever present denigration of girls and women, we have our big sister Michelle Obama, a truly admirable mentor, to speak for us. She reminds us we are right to hold our boys and men to a higher standard than those among them who enslave, assault and abuse with impunity. Some of us, Michelle and myself included, and hopefully you too, reader, know men with integrity, refined intelligence, kindness and a strong sense of justice. To them we turn and hold out our hands. In the fight for human rights, we need each other. We have always needed each other.

WRITING IN AND OUT OF THE MARGINS: A GOWN FOR MALALA

On BBC radio, there used to be a programme called A History of the World in 100 Objects: the presenter takes a single object and pursues its history and relevance through time, engaging us in discovery and connection. Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, is currently exploring 600 years of German history looking at objects as small as ducats, as crafted as Riemenschneider's limewood sculptures and as pivotal as the Friedrichstraße station.
Manuscripts like Luther's 1541 Bible examine the creation of an entire language.

In Princeton, New Jersey, Pulitzer prize winning novelist Toni Morrison's lifetime works, manuscripts, drafts and proofs are finally being added to the permanent library collection at Princeton University. As writers, we seem particularly fascinated by the crafting process, the scribbled postscripts, the writing in the margins in the hands of our greats that become invisible in the final work.

On a shelf at home is a copy of Brontë's Jane Eyre that belonged to my aunt Saida. From childhood, until she recently died, my aunt had two best friends called Zia and Pushpa (known throughout their lives as The Girls). Aunty's copy of Jane Eyre, which I first read when I was a girl, has pencil scribblings throughout the pages, but particularly beside the 'juicy' romantic bits. Saida and The Girls passed the book around during class and their comments range from silly to naughty to incomprehensible inside jokes. The experience for me was then, as it is now, deeply satisfying.

I often buy books for friends, but find myself hesitating to write inscriptions. Recently I sent my beloved Mary a copy of Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision - and wrote with such a faint pencil that she almost missed the inscription altogether. I can't understand why I am so loathe to leave any mark in a book. Do you have any ideas? My shelves are full of books I love, and return to, and reach instinctively for even if simply to hold them. Why am I afraid to leave my mark, pencil or otherwise, in the margins? I was here. Is that not something of importance? Do I feel so insignificant in the scheme of things that I may as well leave no mark?

Last week, I left this reductive, diminishing voice at home and walked on to a stage, and became a Master of Arts graduate. I wore the gown with pride, tossing my tasselly hat about (carefully, so as not to dislodge the single bob pin holding it down - I had lent my other bobby pin to a fellow grad whose hat was rocketing about, bobbypinless).

I walked on to the stage, thinking of Malala Yousafzai, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, feeling proud that I am an educated woman. Knowing she would be proud of me.

A THEORY ON HAPPINESS: 100 DAYS, 200 GIRLS

A friend alerted me to an online community activity called #100happydays. 100 days, 100 pictures, 100 moments of happiness recorded and shared between friends or the wider public. I was intrigued by the aspect of a happiness discipline, which strongly resembles a gratitude list. If something makes you happy, you are grateful to it, for it. I have been 'playing along' for a week, although this is a practice I made a part of my life ten years ago, when I realised my definition of happiness was the ability to be grateful.

On 14 April, 200 heavily armed militants in 20 vehicles burnt down a school in Chibok, Abuja, Nigeria, and stole 200 schoolgirls. One schoolgirl for each terrorist. The name of the group translates as 'Western education is forbidden', and the leader has his name mentioned in news reports. It angers me that I know his name, have seen his face; what of the girls? I only want to know their names, and see their faces. But when I do, I pray when not if, what will I see written on their faces? That is the real terror.

It has been three weeks, and 11 more girls have been abducted. We are aware, we are awake to this crime, and can do nothing to prevent the trauma the girls must already have suffered.

This month continues the twenty year anniversary of the 100 days of genocide that took place in 1994, in Rwanda, beginning April 7th.

Always, behind the facts are names...

How are we to look into the face of our own happiness without seeing the trauma and unhappiness of others? Our minds are fragile things, and our spirits need to be nurtured and nourished so that we can bring our children up into a world of hope and possibility and joy.

I think this might be the true purpose of the #100happydays movement. It seems frivolous at times. And at other times, absolutely essential.