A poem inspired by the sight a red and black kuffiyahs hanging underneath a "10 minute Cellphone Charge Service" in a tourist's haven on 6th avenue in between 15th and 14th street:
What is the power in a cultural symbol? Do I honor what it was What it became Or what it is becoming?
I said: what is the power in a cultural symbol? Function, freedom, or freemarket
Function Asr jahiliyah
Bedouins roaming South Arabia covered head in kuffiyah in deserts to protect from blazing heat and air replete with sand grains
Freedom 1930s With the threat of land stolen, nationalism emboldened by the wearing of the hatta Palis try to put a halt on British forces and divorce from European cultural imperialism
Freemarket 2000s
viva la revolicion to co-option and sometime cold weather solution On the necks of olsen twins cheney's daughter That soho boho making urban outfitters Richer ignorant of a time when the same scarf belonged to a resistor Riviera scarf, anti-war woven cloth,
U changed its name: Kuffiyah, hatta, shemagh Added fluorescent colors Magenta, sunburst, lime green Pounded your foot on it to stomp out its Arabness to make it more saleable to Americans
What happens when your promise of (and inspiration for) freedom turns into a cultural capitalist commodity?
Would i buy a Che shirt Cause jay rapped about it?
Parade red, black green To go with my Jordans, baggy jean, and a gangsta lean?
Tie a red string on wrist to add Kabalah to my spiritual list?
Buy a gold and diamond Jesus piece To demonstrate how i walk with his pauper swagger
People do u understand? How offended do u feel? When people co-opt for cool your cultural symbols of freedom?
Even more extreme than what it seem u love our scarves and hate my people
I'm sorry but u cant have both.
Next time u stroll on canal, chop it up with vendors on 14th street, peruse urban, Ask them if know the about
white miraculously unsullied in sandstorm the black pain tattooed on a white landscape
Ask them if they know that woman who wrapped it over her face to conceal her identity from the IDF's terror squad,
that Bedouin man who braved the Levant wind and desert storms The Iraqi refugee who sells red pistachio on damascene sidewalks The fellayeen covering their heads with red-checkered shades while doing fieldwork,
the Pali man proudly wearing and asserting his Arab nationalism in the face of a duplictious, abhorrent British imperialist army.
Ask them if they know what this fucking scarf means!
Tell me, What is the power in a cultural symbol?
What is the power in a cultural symbol co-opted to commodify for consumption?
After 4 and a half years of waiting, of stalkerishly following the filmmaker's every move, of hounding her down any chance I got, of watching and re-watching the online trailer, of forwarding and re-forwarding the trailer, of blogging anything affiliated with the film's stars and pr ogres, of feeling like a nerdy Star Wars fan-all of that Luvox-necessitating obsessive fixating was somewhat normalized yesterday. Because yesterday marked the long-awaited NYC screening of Pali-American filmmaker Jackie Salloum's Sundance entry "Slingshot Hip Hop" at the MoMA (actually the second of two this past weekend). In a future post I will provide a much more expansive review of the film. So for now, all I will say is that, just like our very own Mehammed, it was all that and a bag of batata-satiating obscenely high expectations set by half a decade's worth of hungering and craving.
But for now, enjoy Abeer's (the vocals behind the chorus for DAM's "Born Here" video) post film screening singing (sorry in advance for the random head moment towards the end of the video):
Early this morning a small explosion went off on the front of the Armed Forces Career Center in New York's famous strip of visual diarrhea, Times Square.
Care to read my early morning, breaking news analysis? As an Arab-American, I hold secrets in my mystical palms...
In case we do not understand what a small explosion at such an office could mean, the media are helping us by calling its source an "improvised explosive device," which are also what the US military calls the bombs used by Iraqi insurgents. Are they trying to scream "Iraq"? I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but such subtle suggestive cues are quite powerful. If they weren't, Times Square would not be riddled with advertisements.
Then again, why else would anyone target a military recruitment office? Is it out of solidarity with the insurgents, or anger at US militarism, or by a veteran who saw the measly benefits and care they get (or had to buy his own equipment), or a "home-grown terrorist," or an alienated college student who finds random shooting sprees so passe, or a prank?
I doubt we'll get an answer to this, but if the purpose is for us to rethink this war, I doubt it will work -- the vast majority is already against it. We're too busy soaking up tube, paying our credit card debt, and eating to do anything about it.
Okay, maybe we'll vote for Obama or that recent convert against the war, Clinton, but besides that, do not count on us to do much more.
Mayor Moneybags Bloomberg is going to give a press briefing at any minute. The police are considering whether this could be related to previous small explosions at the British and Mexican consulates in the past years.
While police search for clues, they are missing one obvious suspect. Just so I can beat the right-wing loonies to the punch, I will find the Arab-Muslim link to this.
The New York Timesrevealed that a Muslim, possibly Arab, man "witnessed it":
Mohammed Hossain, 39, whose coffee cart, is at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 44th Street, said he heard the explosion before 4 a.m. “I heard a loud noise and I turned around and saw smoke,” he said. “And then the cops were everywhere, within minutes.” Mr. Hossain, who has operated the cart for 15 years, said police asked him to close up until about 7:15.
15 years? Yeah right. He's just trying to get a little free publicity for his coffee cart, making it seem like a vintage establishment. A little waterboarding in Guantanamo can get the truth out of him.
Rudy Giuliani would have got the truth out of him.
Hopefully we can get one of the two NYC-based KABOBers on the scene, since they probably have nothing else to do.
How does one a sense of the pulse of a city? Sentiments of a people? Hit to the New York City Subway to discover the sentiments of the inescapable "New York Street."
With the artful stroke of the sharpie, here are poetically depicted reactions to Islam and 9/11 on the subway station walls and on corporate in-train ads. the sentiments of the inescapable "New York Street."
The walls of the Columbus Circle stop on the 1, A,C, D, and B
A close up-zeroing in on a reaction to a reaction:
Written on top of "AN" is "Asshole" and to the left of "911" is "DREAM ON, FOOL" and there is a swastika to the bottom right of the "n" in "AN."
And finally, the ever sensitive and astute observation on Islam:
One question: Why did homeboy feel compelled to air out his grievances with God on a flower delivery ad on the 1 train???
A poem inspired by the sight a red and black kuffiyahs hanging underneath a "10 minute Cellphone Charge Service" in a tourist's haven on 6th avenue in between 15th and 14th street:
