Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury > Recent Status Updates

"In the Bantu schools, children were only taught in their home language. Zulu kids learned in Zulu. Tswana kids learned in Tswana. Because of this, we'd fall into the trap the government had set for us and fight among ourselves, believing that we were different."

"Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says "We're the same." A language barrier says "We're different." The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well."

"I don't care who you are, we all shit the same. Beyoncé shits. The pope shits. The Queen of England shits. When we shit we forget our airs and our graces, we forget how famous or how rich we are. All of that goes away."

"There was maybe one car for every thousand people, yet almost everyone had a driveway. It was almost like building the driveway was a way of willing the car to happen. The story of Soweto is the story of the driveways. It's a hopeful place."

"In America the dream is to make it out of the ghetto. In Soweto, because there was no leaving the ghetto, the dream was to transform the ghetto."

"Which made my prayers the best prayers because English prayers get answered first. How do we know this? Look at white people. Clearly they're getting through to the right person."

"My grandmother always told me that she loved my prayers. She believed my prayers were more powerful, because I prayed in English. Everyone knows that Jesus, who's white, speaks English. The Bible is in English. Yes, the Bible was not written in English, but the Bible came to South Africa in English so to us it's in English."

"Women held the community together. "Wathint'Abafazi Wathint'imbokodo!" was the chant they would rally to during the freedom struggle. "When you strike a woman, you strike a rock." As a nation, we recognized the power of women, but in the home they were expected to submit and obey."

"Their fathers were off working in a mine somewhere, able to come home only during the holidays. Their fathers had been sent to prison. Their fathers were in exile, fighting for the cause."

"The fact that I grew up in a world run by women was no accident. Apartheid kept me away from my father because he was white, but for almost all the kids I knew on my grandmother's block in Soweto, apartheid had taken away their fathers as well, just for different reasons."

"In Soweto you were always hearing about men getting doused with pots of boiling water-often a woman's only recourse. And men were lucky if it was water. Some women used hot cooking oil. Water was if the woman wanted to teach her man a lesson. Oil meant she wanted to end it."

"And you go to trial. The court is presided over by a judge. There is a docket. There is a prosecutor. Your defense attorney has to prove lack of motive, go through the crime-scene forensics, present a staunch defense. And your attorney's argument can't be "Witchcraft isn't real." No, no, no. You'll lose."

"I didn't have any friends. I didn't know any kids besides my cousins. I wasn't a lonely kid-I was good at being alone. I'd read books, play with the toy that I had, make up imaginary worlds. I lived inside my head. I still live inside my head. To this day you can leave me alone for hours and I'm perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have to remember to be with people."

"Children could be taken. Children were taken. The wrong color kid in the wrong color area, and the government could come in, strip your parents of custody, haul you off to an orphanage."

"Nine months after that yes,on February 20,1984,my mother checked into Hillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery.Estranged from her family,pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public,she was alone.The doctors took her up to the delivery room,cut open her belly,and reached in and pulled out a half-white,half-black child who violated any number of laws,statutes,and regulations-I was born a crime."

"I started laughing, too, and we stood there, this little boy and his mom, our arms and legs covered in blood and dirt, laughing together through the pain in the light of a petrol station on the side of the road in the middle of the night."

"Necklacing was common. That's where people would hold someone down and put a rubber tire over his torso, pinning his arms. Then they'd douse him with petrol and set him on fire and burn him alive. The ANC did it to Inkatha. Inkatha did it to the ANC."

"In South Africa, nobody gets involved in other people's business- unless it's mob justice, and then everybody wants in."

"I was the champion of the Maryvale sports day every single year, and my mother won the moms' trophy every single year. Why? Because she was always chasing me to kick my ass, and I was always running not to get my ass kicked. Nobody ran like me and my mom."

"Almost everything that's ever gone wrong in my life I can trace back to a secondhand car."

"I learned about how Christianity works: If you're Native American and you pray to the wolves, you're a savage. If you're African and you pray to your ancestors, you're a primitive. But when white people pray to a guy who turns water into wine, well, that's just common sense."

"Would they mourn a crow they didn't know? Humans do. I have, for the victims of 9/11, for children shot in schools, for fictional characters no less real than a fake crow."

"Now standing still, I am watching them and they are watching me, and we see each other hiding in plain sight."

"After a minute, he flew up to my face, inches away, eye to eye. I could feel a little breeze coming off his wings. He seemed fearless, and I was slightly con- cerned his little sword would pierce my eye. Was he curious? Was he being aggressive, warning me that he owned the feeder? Whatever his meaning, he had come back. He had acknowledged me. We have a relationship. I am in love."

"They are like the scar on my knee when I was a child in nature. It contains my disobedience and bravery, my curiosity and discoveries, my pain and refusal to cry."

"life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images"

"Perfection would have been the antithesis of spontaneity."

"I did find the most successful lure is also the cheapest."

"I meditated on the life force within each bird I drew, about their intelligence and vulnerability."

"I know I will never use all those art supplies. But I was gleeful buying all of it."