The day after Eid denouement…

Yesterday was Eid ul Adha, and I kept thinking to myself, I can’t wait to get back to work.

And I started asking myself if I’m a workaholic, and then I thought, nah! A workaholic would get more done.

I’m only partly kidding.

I’m at that stuck stage of a project.

I began working on this new novel idea and there were parts that I was quite happy with, and then all of a sudden, I stalled.

So I decided to approach the story from a different angle, and I was humming along and there were parts I was quite happy with and then again, I stalled.

I was trying to be disciplined, butt in chair kind of thing, but what do you do when it’s just not coming?

And then I asked myself the scary question: “Do I really want to write this story?”

It’s a tough one, because it’s a good story.

And I know I should write this story.

And I know it’s a really good idea.

But I feel like I’m just tired.

I’m pretty much exhausted.

And it doesn’t help to see all the stuff going on in the world.

At the risk of sounding a bit whiny, it’s like the forces are arrayed against us, and here I’m referring to ‘us’ as Muslims.

And yet not just Muslims, it’s like all marginalized people.

I spent a lot of last week supporting the struggle of the native community against the Dakota Access pipeline that was threatening to snake across sacred burial grounds and under the Missouri river.

If it burst it could poison the water supply of eighteen million people who counted on that water for their daily survival.

Originally the pipeline was supposed to cross near Bismarck, North Dakota but the people said, “Not in my backyard.” So they decided to put it on native land.

And so native communities gathered like they’ve seldom gathered to fight this.

And I couldn’t help asking myself, ‘Why should that even be an issue?’

It’s violating their treaties, again.

When I read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I kept getting appalled at the callousness of the people in the 1800’s. How could they treat the natives like this? And then when they’d decimated them, they wrote stories about the ‘noble’ savage, and sympathized with their plight and all that kind of baloney, while in fact, they were supporting politicians and policies that continued the carnage.

And when it’s pointed out to them, people nowadays complain about being held accountable for things that happened before they were born.

Yeah, but they’re happening now too, and what are you doing about it?

The apathy is astounding.

And people might wonder why me, a Pakistani Canadian would care what happens to the Native community, and the answer is simple, it’s because it’s about domination, and once America was done dominating the west, and the natives, they moved on to other countries. They put their military bases all over the world, made promises to help regimes maintain order, and basically have manipulated the entire world so that their own people (and here I’m talking about white people) would benefit. They rigged the trade treaties and spied using technology and infrastructure they sold these foreign countries, and they have created so much anarchy and bloodshed, just to keep the people they can control in power. Back in the eighteen hundreds it was in the name of manifest destiny, now it’s in the name of democracy, but when people they don’t like win a democratic election, they quickly barge in and create chaos ie. Iran, Algeria, Palestine.

And it makes me realize that we’re really not much better than animals. Animals have to fight for their survival.

If they don’t they’ll get eaten. Simple as that.

Look at Tibet and the Dalai Lama. They were taken over by China and they’ve been peacefully protesting for years, he’s been in exile for years and nothing ever happens to rectify the injustice.

People complain when the oppressed fight back, but would they lie down and allow the oppressors to roll over them if they were in that situation?

And then I thought to myself, white people are just privileged.

If they’re being oppressed they are not expected to take it. They expect the world to care, and it does. Even the ‘brown’ world. They care.

Oh dear, this is becoming such a depressing post.

I didn’t mean it to be.

But maybe you can’t always be upbeat. Maybe there are times when you need to assess what you’re really up against.

Take a deep breath.

And carry on.

The only alternative is to say nothing while they roll over you, and that simply isn’t an option.