Blood Letting and Grief Rituals
I wrote these three pieces sometime in the past year and read them at my dear friend Ana Armengod’s book release for 17 Years of Slumber in June of 2024.
Writing about tattoos and bloodletting ceremonies and public wailing and memory holding snap in and out of this current moment the way that the past 7 months have felt
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I’m reviving the ancient tradition of blood letting.
Blood bonding.
These marks don’t fade, they hold memory
The marking of time to let it be known a transformation has occurred here.
There can be no revolution without it.
And the small revolutions that build up to bigger ones are not lost on me.
But tonight I’m alone. By the motel pool drinking pomegranate soju out of an ice cup and listening to Sudanese jazz.
I cut my thumb on the bottle and have been leaving bloody fingerprints everywhere - not because I want to
but because I don’t have a band-aid.
And this motel that is cheap but not the cheapest one in Long Beach.
I read the reviews. It has a nostalgia to it.
And I’m thinking about how good being alone is for writing.
I wake up early and don’t use the pool.
The world around me is a facade that demands a bulldozer to be ran through it.
And the tension in the air just waiting for that moment.
Edging
The violent colonial reality that separates Americans from the effects of our oppulence
In the wake of multiple genocides
8 thousand Syrians swallowed by the earth last year
The world that moves so fast, tragedy after tragedy how can anyone keep up?
When strangers make racist remarks behind my back, loud enough for anyone to hear,
I don’t correct their use of pronouns.
Even though I’m in the liberal hell that is the San Francisco Airport.
Yoga rooms. Gender neutral bathroom stalls
And a dog room with artificial grass and a fire hydrant
that a close friend pissed on because he could.
Instead I sweat and try not to spit in anyone’s face before I get to my gate.
I fantasize a bulldozer ripping through the terminal.
I found myself screaming a language I’m still learning
Finding the words in real time
More comfortable with mistakes
And less in love with people I thought I would be in love with forever
Writing less but also still writing
Just to catch up. Not for any other reason
Just to archive the mundane and the tragic and the joy when it comes
All parts of living. To remember
My Jidu lost his memory towards the end of his life
He couldn’t ask. He couldn’t respond. But he could sing.
And when he would sing tears would stream down his face
I think about reviving the ancient tradition of sacrifice
Not tainted by evangelical dogmatic practice but something else that runs deeper
Not related through blood but through shared mythology.
In a broken world
A shared desire.
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Where does your anger live?
Is it inside your body that is weak from fasting and sleepless nights?
Is it trapped in your throat? Voice lost from screams that are never heard
Is it in your blood? Coursing through veins and passed down from generations that swallowed anger for your survival.
Is it in your tears? Streaming down cheeks warmed by the sun coming in from your window on a Sunday.
Is it inside your work? Not palatable or relatable to the masses
Afraid of anger and what it could bring
Anger so big it cannot make it through most doorways or fit on most pages.
Anger so deep I couldn’t possibly tell you where it started
Anger that I foolishly thought I could not possibly feel more of.
But it grows and swells, rippling through space like a riot
And it threatens to destroy our home and everything in it.
They tell me anger is a tool but I feel immobilized.
Rendered ineffective consumed by raw emotion that is inescapable
Is the only way to act reasonably to be removed? Dulled down?
Numb to my environment?
“Just doing what I can”?
Pressure builds when it is suppressed
Rots when it is still
When I see my own face,
Calm in the mirror
Lips tight, eyes heavy
Ravines where my cheeks once were
A bitter taste in my mouth
Known by generation after generation
That swallowed anger
Fashioned it into a tool
And used it to fight
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Written for my great Situ Nassema Dayoub who I’m named after. I’m grateful to cary your blood in my veins.
Disassociated some place above my physical form - I look down on the body I’ve made.
A place of worship. Built by the memories of ghosts related by both blood and spirit.
Every apparition that inhabits my altar is crucial to its architecture.
I set out food for them.
An offering of pomegranates, halawa and rose water.
The question that’s been haunting me since I first read the words - “How do we care for the ghosts that take such good care of us?”
I care for my body with the knowledge that it is the culmination of many ghost’s accidental conception
Our ancestors prove to us that our lives are livable because they have in fact been already lived.
I can wake up with the knowledge that these eyes have opened before. And will open again. I’m always existing in the middle of a past I’ve never seen and a future I will never know.
I write to shed light on a subject that's been haunting me for every year I’ve been alive.
This body is not just mine.
I’ve shared it with countless lovers and every ancestor whose memories live within me. I’ve offered it as an example. A blueprint, a map on my flesh of someone (like everyone else) trying their best to get free.
I glance down to my altered skin. Almost every inch is filled with skulls, snakes and flowers.
A client's mother once told him - after seeing the tattoo I made on her son
“Its like graffiti on a marble wall”
What she doesn’t know is that we are constructing the temple we’ve found ourselves inhabiting. Finding more and more presence with every alteration.
I wasn’t born knowing myself. I’ve learned about myself by seeing my own reflection.
I saw reflections of me by studying older dykes, feeling so incredibly drawn to them.
Seeing their photos in books and in manuscripts.
Hearing whispers of their existence in stories that always contained a tinge of envy. I started studying my history. A queer arab transsexual history.
The lived reality suggested in the studio portraiture of Hashem El Madani. A Diaspora struggle shown on every face caught on film.
“The past is in the present - in the form of haunting. This is what we imagine for queer history, since it involves openness to the possibility of being haunted - even inhabited by ghosts”
(Carla Freccero “Queer Spectralities: Haunting the Past”)
Possessed by the past,
I hold stories and experiences that spill over the edges
of the here and the now.
Memories of our bodies intertwined
not knowing at which point I entered and you began.
Knowing that it is not “god who’s in our hearts” but our very selves within the heart of god.
Being in love connected me the legacy of meaning making.
I learned that an experience is not lessened because it has been shared.
For surely the love that you and I are experiencing now is the same love that flowed through Audre Lorde, Mamoud Darwish, Khalil Gibran.
The love that countless ancestors found realized in corners, whispers and dreams.
And we can only hope to experience it again and again.
The definition of magic is ritual with intent
Each tattoo is a ritual and the best tattoos I’ve made were not made by me at all but rather uncovered.
Letting the ancestors do their work. Letting the image organically unfold.
Some of the most valuable tattoos I’ve ever made were absolutely free.
A gift with more intention poured in than if it were bought.
Someone asked me if I was sick of doing the same tattoos. Repeating the same image. Over and over again.
It's only repetition in the way that ritual is.
Each time I am grateful. Each time I am grateful.