On borders, bodies and boundaries
Amidst news of a Black Pope, reduced tariffs for China and counting your kids' dolls, you can be forgiven for not noticing that India and Pakistan have agreed to a ceasefire. Perhaps you didn't even know that they were attacking each other. For decades, they have prepared for war, talked about going to war, or been at war. It feels unresolvable, especially as it's fueled by geopolitical factors and neocolonial aspirations (China, America, ahem). These two nations were borne of a colonial cleavage, cousins and enemies, bordered and boundaried.
"It is psychotic to draw a line between two places…it is psychotic to submit to violence in a time of great violence and yet it is psychotic to leave that home or country, the place where you submitted again and again, forever." Schizoprene by Bhanu Kapil
Sarah Aziza references this quote in her brilliant and moving memoir, The Hollow Half. In it, she explores her relationship to her Palestinian grandmother, poetically weaving in her journey with anorexia, sexual assault, love and belonging. The book is rich with connections—among the characters, to other writing, and to history. As the genocide of Palestinians continues, the book reminds me how we ignore history, letting tensions fester until they explode. How this willful ignorance is both a form of escape but also a recipe for destruction—of self, family, community. In speaking of her father and grandfather, Sarah says, "their bodies bore evidence of borders."
Like them, so many of us hold evidence of our borders. We too, have made what seems like a "psychotic choice," to leave behind a home or a country, a place that made us but may also have broken us.
Sometimes our journey is more metaphorical, leaving behind a version of ourselves, a self that held us but also harmed us. When we transition away from that self, we draw a boundary between what serves us and what suffocates us. And we emerge from this not whole, but healed. I wish this for you, for me, for all of us.
Sayu