themes in the art and drag performances of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto / Faluda Islam

 Artist and memory activist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr. created a drag persona to address issues of Islamophobia and homophobia in the world. Drag is ​​a performance

of gender that parody gender norms could shatter the illusion that there are only two genders – man and woman – and lead to a proliferation of genders; or rather to a recognition of, and ability to speak about, the already existing great diversity of genders, sexualities, bodies and pleasures (Evans and Williams, 2013).

 

In an interview, Zulfikar, also known as Zulfi, discussed his drag persona “Faluda Islam”: “She is a zombie, she was resurrected through Wi-Fi technology and the way she died was in the future queer revolution,” Zulfi explained. “She’s sort of an oracle… she’s able to give an insight into [the] past, present and future” (Burke, 2018). Faluda disrupts the binaries of organic-machine, male-female, even life-death with each performance as a queer Muslim icon.

Zulfikar Jr. is named after his late ancestor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was a prominent politician and leader of the People’s Party in Pakistan. In a way that subverts heteronormative expectations of Zulfi, he bravely entered the international art world with pieces that address his cultural background and extended the limits of the name in creating a drag persona. Zulfi recalled his father, Murtaza Bhutto’s assasination, when discussing this persona, and the themes he wishes to explore: “I talk about injustice, who gets the right to live or die, who is the decider of that,” says Zulfi. “War comes up, aspects of martyrdom come up, Islamophobia comes up.” (Burke, 2018) In my understanding, he is addressing the existential weight of being born a male in a Shi’a family and the expectations of martyrdom of such a gender identity. This responsibility was heightened during the Iran-Iraq war that started in the late 1980s when mostly Shi’a men as well as children in Iran fought their enemy combatants in Iraq.

Zulfi explained his ideas in an interview with Reconstructed Mag in May, 2020:

Why are we forced to make our children and families martyrs? What are the forces against us that make us go into these spaces that end in death? The drag character Faluda Islam questions this. The character is my attempt to look at revolution through a high femme lens (Bhutto, 2020).

 

Digitisation allows for “humans to mobilise memories that cut across the individual and the collective, the institutional and the corporate, the local and the global in ways that disrupt conventional binaries of the public and private, of the body and other” (Reading, 2016). Faluda exists digitally and in performances, disrupting the idea that a “man” protects “his women.” Faluda’s martyrdom and reincarnation as a Zombie may have been for all queer individuals, rather than for prolonging a heterosexual mode of reprdocution. Faluda as a Zombie, in Zulfi’s intention, also remembers the anti-imperialist slave rebellions in Haiti, where Zombies were an esoteric instrument to defeat the white settler-enslavers.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Zulfi’s other conventional artworks likewise explore the Shi’a Muslim’s conundrum of remembering assaults in Islamic history through lamenting the past, while other events celebrate masculinity as strength. As an artist, Zulfi highlights the inherent queerness of such an identity, despite the state’s priority to limit the identity as straight and one-dimensional. In critiquing the national imagery of a strong man, Zulfi said in an interview, in the context of his textile artwork series “Mussalman Muscleman”: “What for me is masculinity? It's softness” (Bhutto, 2017). In his works of a fictitious queer rebellion, he uses imageries of “brown and black body by creating glamorous queered future guerrilla fighters who do not fit neatly into categories of gender, race, faith, threat or desirable subject.” The works sought “to challenge the shifting borders between terrorist and freedom fighter as seen and named by the Anglo-Saxon world” (Bhutto, 2019). Memory, gender and technology are the themes explored by Bhutto’s works and the tools which allow him to express his ideas to a largely heteronormative public.

 

 

 

One of his exhibits

In “Future Faithful: Islamic Experiments in Space Exploration and Posthumanism” in 2021 at the Bass & Reiner gallery in San Francisco, U.S., Zulfi's artworks incorporate imagery of the calf as a reference to the second chapter in the Holy Quran, “The Heifer.”

 

 

“mustaq-bel 2,” 2019. By Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Zulfi’s artworks reference traditional architecture and mythology. The calf has appeared prior as a sacrificial motif in Abrahamic traditions. This metaphoric practice has been substituted by the sheep or lamb in some ritual instances out of respect for others who found the sacrifice of the cow offensive, such as in India and Pakistan. In Sher Shah, Pakistan, a Shi’a saint’s shrine has been used by pious locals both as a shrine for fulfilling human prayers and a cow sanctuary, which demonstrates the power of cultural syncretism in the subcontinent (Khalid, 2016).  The popular press and general population in South Asia interpret spaces like shrines (dargah) as examples of tolerance, since both Hindus and Muslims participate in worship and place requests to the saint of the shrine. They burn incense (loban) and consequently experience therapeutic convulsions against evil spirits that possess them (haziri) (Bellamy, 2011). Sometimes they are places of refuge and sources of cures to illnesses and evil spirits, while other times they are Gedächtnisraum (memory spaces). The usages of these spaces have been altered by modernity, as witnessed by the declining numbers of cows at the Sher Shah shrine.

The textile works by Zulfi were “created to honor real and imagined queer guerrilla fighters from Shiite Muslim traditions of martyr and saint veneration” (Bass & Reiner, 2021). More than just remembering a scar from a millennium-old feud, Muharram rituals as well as Zulfi’s artworks both symbolize a rejection of illegitimate state authority, which many Shi‘as also regard as a key feature of their faith (Freitag, 1989). In Zulfi’s praxis, he is directly addressing wealth inequality of the present.

The evolution of Muharram rituals in South Asia from a religious ritual to an “urban ritual” can be observed from the level of urban negotiation among the multi religious participants (Nejad, 2015). The processions are not limited to one sect or codified in one practice and often have multiple meanings. Different communities establish their own tazia, (also spelled as ta‘ziyah and ta‘ziyeh) which symbolically represents martyrs’ tombs, and carry it to the area that symbolizes the battlefield of Karbala. Zulfi’s work of “Mercy 258 رحیم ۲۵۸” paid tribute to such a practice; his symbolic Karbala was the art gallery of his exhibition.

 

 

 

Mercy 258 رحیم ۲۵۸. by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Screen print on muslin, chiffon and raw silk, inkjet print on silk, various trimming and plastic sequins. 2020, 148 x 28 in

 

In conclusion, this essay has explored the drag persona Faluda Islam, along with other works by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to demonstrate the potency of memory in his artwork. As an activist addressing Islamophobia and homophobia, Zulfi uses both embodied performances, audiovisual recordings, as well as hand sewn textiles in his ongoing works. Memory both informs the work and energizes the viewers who share part of the knowledge systems and geographies as Zulfikar’s upbringing. The drag zombie Faluda Islam interrogated on the idea that gender is a learned memory that is hard to alter or evolve; rather, the gender practices may or may not survive a future apocalypse. Memory is both the medium and the message.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bass & Reiner. 2021. Future Faithful — Bass & Reiner. [online] Available at: <https://bassandreiner.com/zulfi> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Bellamy, C., 2011. The Powerful Ephemeral: Everyday Healing in an Ambiguously Islamic Place. University of California Press. 33.

 

Bhutto, Z., 2020. Live Interview with Reconstructed Mag.

 

—----------., 2019. [online] Praxis Center. Available at: <https://kzoo.edu/praxis/artists/zulfikar-ali-bhutto/> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

—----------. 2017. [online] The Tumeric Project. Available at: <youtube.com/watch?v=bc8VtrHA8QE> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Burke, S., 2018. Meet Faluda Islam, the Muslim Drag Queen From the Future. [online] Vice.com. Available at: <https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xjbgb/muslim-drag-queen-faluda-islam-zulfikar-ali-bhutto-queerly-beloved> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Evans, M. and Williams, C., 2013. Gender. Routledge.

 

Freitag, S., 1989. Collective Action and Community. Berkeley: University of California Press. 251.

 

Khalid, H., 2016. The changing fate of a Muslim shrine where cows are sacred. [online] The Caravan. Available at: <https://caravanmagazine.in/lede/thinning-the-herd> [Accessed 21 December 2021].

 

Nejad, R. M. 2015. "Urban Margins, A Refuge For Muharram Processions In Bombay: Towards An Idea Of Cultural Resilience". Südasien-Chronik 5. 341.

 

Reading, A. 2016. Gender and Memory in the Globital Age. Palgrave MacMillan.

Queering Paternity in Academia and Art

The book Jinnealogy: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi engages with important aspects of intercultural relations, both horizontally and vertically. The significant sites of South Asia are visited through ethnographies. Ruins such as Firoz Shah Kotla tell us of “Islam as an ethical inheritance and not a religious identity, the inheritance of a premodern past shared by Muslims and non-Muslims.” Yet inheritance also involves kinship, which is also shaped by religious identity and the more unsavory aspects of humanity, such as slavery.

Photo from "Story at every corner"

https://storyateverycorner.com/feroz-shah-kotla/

Sometimes the textual evidence in the book is a bit scant, which leads to strenuous conclusions, such as the uncritical citation of the work of Dr. Asma Barlas (2002). Barlas claimed that the Qur'an is egalitarian and anti-patriarchal. Dr. Taneja also entertains this notion by quoting the parts where Barlas notes that the Prophet Muhammad was not the father to any men but a daughter. The life of the Prophet happened as such, and some Muslims use the narratives to productively help them understand the text. I also took accepted the genealogy as suitably prescriptive in modern times for many years, until I read David S. Powers' book Muḥammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet. In the book, Powers showed that the Muhammad's adopted son, Zayd, was disowned. Zayd's recorded response to Muhammad's renunciation that he is not his son was affirmative: 

"I am Zayd bin Haritha زَيْد ٱبْن حَارِثَة‎," 

Haritha being his birth father's name. 

Readers also learn in Powers' book that Zayd was a former slave. It is interesting that the question of paternity continue to haunt the lives of ex-slaves even to this day. (If Zayd was born during Malcom X's time, perhaps he would have renamed himself as Zayd X.) And perhaps his response to the renunciation would have been different if his circumstances were different. But Zayd still had several progeny from his marriages with many wives. So the patriarchal genealogy continues, despite the fact that Zayd chose to recover his name before enslavement after his adopted father renounced their relationship. If I did not read Powers' book, I would continue to grapple with Barlas' argument and the baffling extent to which patriarchal relations exist throughout the Muslim world. Some men are choosing to use their kunya (Abu Leila, for example) with their daughters' names as a progressive move now. Yet many daughters of the Middle East continue to be identified within their patriline, as a person of a Muslim background noted in her essay for Sumou mag. (Read it here)

Mneera writes: "Last year, I decided to get my maternal lineage tattooed on my right arm—and through that, I will carry with me four generations of strong women who have given life to that tree but whose names, voices, and histories have been brushed away and made invisible. But I see you, now everyone sees you, and you will never be forgotten."

It is also interesting that in South Asia where caste is usually identifiable with one's last name, the practice of using one's father's name as a last name can replace the caste hierarchy of last names with a gendered hierarchy. This is usually done by South Asian Muslims who converted in the past two hundred years. In conclusion, I am slightly disappointed with the sweeping idealizations in this otherwise rich book by Dr. Taneja. If we are to inherit the rich past, it must be done with caution since much of the past is entangled with relations of slavery.

My own biological father practically stopped speaking to me some years ago when I did not feel comfortable calling him by his title on WeChat. A few years later, many Uyghur and Kazakh families started fracturing and disappearing, all the while performing their loyalty to the party on WeChat for self-survival. The little contact people had with their families continued to be hosted on this platform that otherwise censors most forms of minority expression. I was first astonished when I saw Uyghur people continue to use the app when they are overseas, fully aware that their activities are being watched by the genocidal state. Now, perhaps their behaviors makes more sense in the context of American slavery and its afterlife. 

My biological mother, also in a series of startling moves, became employed by a company run by a Chinese man from Inner Mongolia. She practically became a cultural interpreter among the diverse employees, in addition to being the scientist. A white co-worker there asked her what his tattoo meant. It was the Japanese kanji character for Buddha, yet it looked like a Chinese character.

My mom did not know this character and later asked me. After I told her, she told him. He chuckled and said he thought it meant "father." And then in a characteristically American fashion, he said, Buddha is a father symbol of the east, so it is not that far off. If I was there, I would promptly correct him according to Buddhist principles which I have studied for many years. Yet on the other hand, it would be quite embarrassing since he cannot easily undo this etymological mistake on his body. 

Today, during eclipse season, I reminisce how many contemporary Chinese intellectuals claim that such and such Japanese or Korean practice came from China when they are visiting such places. In such a claim of lineage, Chinese intellectual tourists perhaps seek to recover paternity or the comfort of "family" standard. I do not know how many times tour guides faced the decision with asserting their individuality or accommodating such exclamations as benign. The novelist Changrae Lee delves into such uneasy patterns in many of his works that explore kinship and adoption.

I enjoy playing the qanun for disrupting such interactions and assumptions as well. While one could argue that the qanun originated from China, which has a long civilization and an instrumental relative called the guqin, today the social meaning of the music of the guqin largely diverges from the social meaning of the music of the qanun. Furthermore, after the Cultural Revolution, Chinese teachers of those times have been largely challenged by the generation that followed them in violent as well as non-violent forms. (For example: My mother told me that she wrote an essay denouncing one of her female teachers in 2nd grade.) Thus, the Confucian lineage of respecting teachers as father-mother figures has been challenged and negotiated since; just like the way slaves have been groomed to call their owners "Mother" and "Father" in the past and in the present.

BBC News: Maids for Sale

I remember a Saudi artist Abdullah who visited the Maghreb in recent years and surveyed the works of people there. His style focuses on the indigenous flavor of Saudi society, which might appear to some as orientalist since modern machinery is mostly absent from his works. In an interview on Instagram live during quarantine, he appreciated the artists, the galleries, and their creativity. Yet he also expressed that he was unsettled and upset that many people there drank alcohol to his interlocutor, who presumably would share his discomfort. I wondered if this sort of exclamation is parallel to the cultural paternity that Chinese tourists express when they visit Japan and Korea. 

Perhaps Africana Studies and Black studies face a similar issue today. If we are to claim a lineage from Africa while also accommodating the various forms of kinship and expressions of sexualities that exists in America today as well as in the past of Africa, then perhaps Black studies is the answer. But if there is an urge to preserve W. E. B. DuBois as the founding father of such studies, then Africana Studies perhaps is still the way to go. 

منيرة القادري - معرض أساطير الصحراء بقاعة ميونيخ الفنية

 منيرة القادري - أساطير الصحراء

يدرس معرض الفنان في Haus der Kunst ، ميونيخ ، عدم اليقين في تصوراتنا وخيبة أملنا في السياسة

تاريخ النشر 20 مارس 2020

المؤلف: Hanno Haunstein

يستكشف فيلم "الحارة المقدسة" للفنانة الكويتية منيرة القادري في "بيت الفن" الأساطير المتعددة وخلق الصحراء.

 قلب العرض هو مقطع الفيديو الذي يحمل نفس الاسم ، والذي يبدأ بقول الراوي "نحن  وبار": في إشارة إلى حفر النيزك والآبار في المنطقة الصحراوية المعروفة باسم ٱلرُّبْع ٱلْخَالِي ، والتي تغطي أجزاء من عمان والمملكة العربية السعودية , الإمارات واليمن.

في الفيلم ، تلتقط طائرة بدون طيار الكثبان الرملية والتكوينات الصخرية بينما يروي الراوي قصة اكتشاف الحفر. وتصفه باستعارة ووصفته بـ "اضطراب النوم". كانت هذه حاشية مشهورة تشير إلى الدعم الاستعماري للحملة.

في عام 1932 ، عبر المستكشف البريطاني هاري سانت جون فيلبي الربع الخالي ، على أمل العثور على مدينة أوبار المفقودة ، والتي وصفها القرآن بأنها دمرها الله. ما وجده بدلاً من ذلك كان الحفر ، التي ظن خطأ أنها بركان. إن رغبة فيلبي في إعادة ثروة الصحراء إلى الوطن تشبه تلك الموجودة في صناعة النفط ، على الرغم من أن رحلات النفط لا تأخذ في الاعتبار الأهمية الدينية والتاريخية للمنطقة.

منيرة القادري ، هولي لين ، 2020 ، صنع. © مجاملة: الفنان. تصوير: منيرة القادري

في حين أن رتابة الصوت المخيفة والمحاكاة الحاسوبية تبدو غريبة ، فإن الكلمات نفسها شعرية ، ويبدو أنها تأتي من كل من المستقبل والماضي البدائي: "نحن جسد من الغبار ، ندمج ونرقص في دفعات من الحرارة والحب الذري". في الوعي الذاتي الهزلي ، يصف الراوي تأثير النيزك بأنه نداء: "هذه الأرض اقتربت منا".

تتجلى أساطيرهم بشكل أكبر في موسيقى جوقة الخلفية ، من تأليف أخت فاطمة القادري. يتم تعزيز الإحساس بالأصل المقدس للؤلؤ من خلال 46 منحوتة من الزجاج المنفوخ باللون الأسود مضاءة بمهارة أمام الشاشة ("Wabar Pearls ،" 2020). غالبًا ما يتميز عمل القديري بتقزحًا للمواد ، والتي تأخذ جودة عضوية بدلاً من استخدامها للأشكال الوظيفية. يتجلى ذلك في سلسلة "Alien Technology" (2014-19) ، وهي سلسلة من المنحوتات على شكل لقم الثقب.

Monira Al Qadiri, ‘Holy Quarter’, 2019, installation view, Haus der Kunst, Munich. Courtesy: the artist; photograph: Maximilian Geuter

منيرة القادري ، الحي المقدس ، 2019 ، منظر طبيعي ،Haus der Kunst، ميونيخ. مجاملة: فنان؛ الصورة: ماكسيميليان جوتر.

 تم تركيب إحدى هذه القطع في بهو Haus der Kunst ؛ يقف على ارتفاع ثلاثة أمتار مع حواف مسننة وسطح أسود لامع يشبه الزيت ، يبدو وكأنه حضور عنيف. يمكن العثور على الصلة بين البترول واللؤلؤ - وكلاهما ظهر مرارًا في أعمال القادري - في تاريخ الكويت: قبل اكتشاف النفط هناك في عام 1938 ، كانت الصناعة الرئيسية للبلاد هي صيد اللؤلؤ.

تتغير ألوان الحي المقدس أيضًا وتتعرج. يُظهر المشهد الافتتاحي الصحراء غارقة في ظل أحمر يشبه المريخ. في مكان آخر ، تغادر الطائرة بدون طيار البانوراما وتركز على واحة بنفسجية. تذكرنا صور العالم الآخر للقادري بأفلام مثل سولاريس أندريه تاركوفسكي (1972) وفيرنر هيرزوغ لدروس الظلام (1992). إنهم أيضًا يظهرون غرابة الصور الواقعية.

Monira Al Qadiri, ‘Holy Quarter’, 2019, installation view, Haus der Kunst, Munich. Courtesy: the artist; photograph: Maximilian Geuter

وفي نهاية الفيديو: "احذروا ، فالأرض عطشان وممزقها المرض" مثل الملاك النبوي ، تدل اللآلئ الأسطورية على مستقبل بائس: مستقبل يهزه الجفاف والفيروس ، وهو العصر القادم. لكن الفيلم الفني يقدم مخرجًا: "لنختار مصيرًا مختلفًا" ، كما يقول الصوت ، بينما تدور الكاميرا مغناطيسيًا نحو الحفرة. "تقبيلنا. تعبدنا. لا داعي للخوف". إنه هروب بديل من الواقع ، والذي يفضل الشهوة الخيال على الواقعية - وبالتالي يشعر بالخصوصية في دلالات عصرنا.

Mexico and Hispanic Art

While roaming around in Mexico, I got a better understanding of the men who wrote the canon of Latin American literature. On the one hand, they were orphans if they full out rejected Spanish colonialism.  But a part of them also loved their new home with more passion. Their knowledge was a privileged burden. Fuentes, through the voice of Artemio Cruz, suffered; Garcia Marquez suffered. All could compare themselves to the worse off Latin American country, e.g. The traffics situations or the drug sources. And yet American imperialism grew despite them all. What were the men supposed to write?

A dysfunctional clock commemorating the Armenian genocide in Colonia Roma

The mexico park adjacent to the spain park; where kids played 

A modernist car

A China clock tower commemorating the Sino-Mexican relations. dates back to Qing dynasty / 1800s

Edgar Allen Poe in public street art

The 20th century was the century of modern literature, and Latin America produced much better modern literature than China, yet they are strangely absent from mainstream institutions of China or the US.

Spanish translation of Tahar ben Jelloun's novella inside a cute cafe. He writes in French though his first language is Arabic. 

An art museum in the old city center host san exhibition the new generation of Mexico-based artists inspired by Marcel Duchamp and others' idea of Camp. I quietly note that none of whom are indigenous or black. The guard communicates to me the boundaries of the exhibition through a whistle, a non-linguistic sounds, hiding our mutual ignorance of each other's colonial language. A 40-year old woman and her accomplice try to steal my phone in a bookstore guarded by a suited security man.

Mothers of Mexico

Looking back at the 15-day trip, I did not have a single English discussion about literary books during my trip. Only magazines and a film. What is the weight of Spanish? The handsome pedlar of English language textbooks handed each out to the commuters. I notice the US flag printed on the cover. He scurried around the subway, retrieving them into a backpack like any ordinary contraband. A century of Magical Realism?

Selfie with a Che statue in a park with a lot of males, both statues and live ones. We avoid eye contact and soon I am the only living person in the park.

Dolled-up girls  in public notice my attire and compare themselves to me without holding back. Boys  are mostly more restrained.

I return to Massachusetts and notice more Aztec themed restaurants in well to do areas. I still have not finished Savage Detectives. The suicidal tendencies of some of the characters are impossible to offer an actual lesson for my trajectory, since the American continent has been so generous to me. I was slightly disappointed by Mexico City's structures, with all the malls, greatly resembling those cities of the US, yet I can still imagine a brighter future there. Just like all the other Latin American exiles. We share the ambivalence towards Europe, yet we all, enjoy our vacations abroad and Nouveau Vague aesthetics in films. We do not care if Spain was the original or copy of Mexico, as long as music keeps us dancing and the food tastes great.

 Academic works continue to explore the multiple meanings of Hispanidad.  Online, political controversy surrounding Hispanic issues continues. Latinx authors of the English language continue to languish without much praise while non Latinx authors benefit from their writings on issues related to the borders. 

Art Project on White(-passing) Privilege

As I am interacting with more and more immigrants in the East Coast, some common themes emerge: 1) peer group competition; 2) relative access to white privilege. It is partly due to the fact that we do not have access to many resources in general. Thus, we often appeal to our ethnic communities and are aware of how each person survives in white-supremacist America. But people who can sometimes pass as white also access that form of white privilege or white-passing privilege. This is an art project that has been born out of these themes.

From Wikipedia 

White privilege (or white skin privilege) is the societal privilege that in some countries benefits white people over non-white people, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. 

One person who exercised white privilege while also claiming ethnic membership, for example, is Mahmoud "Al-Astoria". The last name is not his real last name since I have decided to take into account that he was once a friend of my partner Walid. Walid does not want to disclose his last name.

He uses his ethnic resources as well as his ability to pass as white to leverage his road to success in America. Such contradictions have led to many people's cynicism in regards to the label "people of color." I still find this label useful for progressive political mobilization, and hopefully, this project can keep some of the people in this community accountable.

Adrian Qian. "Certificate #1." Digital Media. 2019.

Thus, I have written this certificate to convey my dismay at such survival practices, since I am a person of color who will not pass as white in all visual interactions. (My voice, on the other hand, with its East Coast accent, can pass as white.) I also acknowledge the fluidity of race, and thus I do not invoke any authority on this subject other than my personal name in the certificate.

This is also subject to context because not everyone wants to have the white-passing privilege. In the Arab American context is it especially important to talk about this aspect because 1) some white(-passing) Muslims have dominated discussions on Islam in America and 2) there are some Arab immigrants who use the N-word in conversations. My professor, who is Lebanese American, has also used the N-word in class. One of my classmates voiced her concern with her peers, but I do not think any other steps were taken.

This documentary "Not Quite White" by Jamil Khoury is also useful for understanding the long historical process of Arab American identity formation.

Some personal factors are also involved in making this certificate, and some of you may detect my spite. Simply, Mahmoud decided to invite us over for lunch. We traveled 5 hours from Boston and was 20 minutes late. He ended up ditching us altogether and was spotted eating lunch instead at Walid's old workplace in Astoria, NY.

"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky"

(Title is quoted from Khalil Gibran's poem Sand and Foam.)

A reproduction of "The Divine World" alongside the roads of Bcharre, "one of the Gibranean visions (1908-1914)"

The second to last adventures Morgana and I made was to Bcharre in the Qadisha valleys. Although I have not read the Bible in a long time, the reputation of the cedar trees seems to precede even the country's capital. (In Boston, I see Lebanese products that use the cedar symbol as well.) So that was my main interest in visiting the place. Morgana was also read The Prophet, so the birthplace of Khalil Gibran also interested her.

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” 

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

July 22nd

We scheduled to meet each other in the Armenian neighborhood of Beirut to take the long distance bus. I didn't have a phone or internet access and the area had no clear meeting point. Neither of us had been here before. I was a bit agitated since we might not be in the same place and there would be no way of contacting the other. I asked a taxi driver and a policeman where the bus would be. They both pointed in the same direction. While I was walking in a different direction than what they said, just to make sure that it wasn't the right direction (gotta test things out!), Morgana called my name and I saw her. We greeted each other with much excitement. The policeman also corrected us in regards to the actual bus loading site and we went towards that way. While getting in the bus, I was a bit surprised we didn't have to buy tickets beforehand. The journey lasted for three hours. The driver played some music by Fairuz played in between. Many people came and left the bus. We ate Manaooshes I bought from the Hamra bakery (furon). The road was very dangerous and windy. The architecture was exclusively Christian. It is so hard to believe that this area is closer to Tripoli geographically than it is to Beirut. I became concerned as we pass through the fog and small towns since this was not my familiar terrain. Luckily Morgana knew; she was more worried about the driving since she survived an accident ion a similar windy mountain road. I was a bit dizzy when we left the bus but I didn't know it would get worse later on.

I bought some yogurt once we arrived in Bcharre. The store owner, a woman with glasses, who looked around 38 years old, was discussing about a piece of paper. It took her some time to come attend to us. Later she said apologetically she had just got married. I realized the paper was probably the marriage certificate and I congratulated her. "Mubarak." (Not sure if it was the right Arabic  word) There was another wedding ceremony going on in the village as well, with much loud and joyous music. We were even eager to join the party but the specific location was less public than the music. We walked uphill to find our hostel where we made a reservation for the night. Morgana wisely took more breaks than I did. In the mean time we also stopped at a beautiful cathedral to take photos. I finished some salad given to me by Bayt Haleb when I bought Knafeh.

The hostel check in experience was quite odd. The female head of the household was not sure which reservation we had and later asked for our passports and information in quite a brusque manner. We were more than happy to leave the place to explore.

After we dropped our stuff at the hostel, Morgana and I went to a cute cafe: Morgana wanted eat some proper food. (In this area and perhaps beyond people served almonds and a special kind of nuts as appetizers). I was not hungry and just had cappuccino.

There were also some tourists from Beijing at the cafe. It was the one and only time I heard Chinese people speak in Chinese during my one month in Lebanon. But since it was customary to ignore one another, we did not greet. The view was amazing and we took turns taking photos. I exclaimed that I never have been to a mountainous area that had such wealth. It doesn't seem that the young people leave for the cities either. There's a lot of social activity and they are caught up with the, latest trends. Morgana also said that the stones used here are quite expensive.

We rushed to the Gibran museum because we were worried it might close. We were so surprised that it was high up in the mountains. I double checked with a man who was sitting at the gas station whether it was uphill or not. He seemed quite entertained that these two foreigners were going to go all the way up.

We had one hour and successfully toured the museum in due time.  Most of the rooms displayed Gibran's paintings that engaged with deep and heavy themes. Both Morgana and I loved the paintings, which  we did not know about before hand. He also drew portraits of his friends and acquaintances, which included Tagore and Carl Jung. I could see a lot of connections with psychoanalysis in his paintings. I would never have thought he would be from such a quaint and simple town given his engagement with rather dark and moody themes. The guide of the museum said it much better than I did: some men were born in caves but have minds of castles. It is quite interesting to think about how he bolsters or prevents the construction of a uniform Lebanese identity.

Gibran never lived at the site of the museum but he was buried here. His family members fulfilled his wishes despite initial difficulties from the religious order that owned the property. We spent some contemplative time in the thoughtful grave room that almost resembles a religious site for communion. Gibran's quote was also written in prominence in Arabic, French and English. Other Lebanese visitors were less inclined to be close to the dead.

Just before we left the museum, it dawned on me that I was suffering from high altitude sickness. I was nauseous and couldn't walk fast. I regretted drinking coffee. I sat for some time and ate almonds offered to me by one lady who socialized in the museum. Morgana, who has lived in the highest city in the world (El Pasco) and thus had no problems at 1500 meters, took care of me for the rest of the day. We walked arm in arm to a nice restaurant by the waterfall and ate some mezzes (snack dishes) for dinner. We discussed some of the friend group competition we experience as ambitious young people.

While walking back to the hotel, we passed through a lot of people who were also having dinner. It was so odd to be so close to people's houses. One young man even said hello from the inside of his house.

Some kind of Christian votive shrine

When we got back to the town center, were lucky enough to see the wedding fireworks shoot up in the sky amidst the old towny buildings. I made a nice video unexpectedly. While we were in awe of the fireworks, someone drove past us and shouted: "Bcharre! You welcome!" It took me a minute to realize he was saying you are welcome to Bcharre. It was a nice sentiment with some surprise. Looking back, we probably would have missed it if I wasn't slowed down by the high altitude sickness.

here are two short videos I made of the fireworks

We memorized some Arabic verbs and went to sleep. Luckily we were the only two in the room. Unluckily, in between 3am and 8am, the insomniac who also stayed at the hostel went in and out of our rooms just to talk a walk. The female householder  also chain smoked throughout the night. But our spirits were still high when we set out for the cedars the next day.

To be continued...