When was your “Malala Moment”?

Still Sundays.

November 16, 2014.

1. ISIS continues with their cowardice by perpetuating barbaric violence.

2. Pakistan’s elite, the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation (APPSF), have just called to ban Malala Yousafzai’s memoir and because that alone is not disgraceful, they have proclaimed an “I-Am-Not-Malala-Day” to dehumanize a brave survivor of terrorism.

3. Jon Stewart’s conscientious efforts to adapt the memoir And Then They Came For Me by Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari into the film Rosewater is being reviewed as Jon Stewart’s attempt to break into film-making instead of giving it the attention it deserves, specifically, how social media is making tyrants more—not less—dangerous.

4. Apparently no one has ever seen a single issue of Playboy (not even in their imaginations if they have indeed led such a sheltered life) and hence the recent, almost comedic, Internet obsession over  Kim Kardashian’s (who is only famous, in her own words, because of social media) nude photos which she claims weren’t photoshopped.

I wish people were obsessing over any of the above except the last one. But that is not what social media is for. Yes, it can be used for good, but mostly it is useless. For every useful article, there are 1 million more that are useless. For every good book review, there are 1000 unhelpful personal opinions on Goodreads.

In a world where we are celebrating a narcissist (and I mean this word in a very clinical sense) who has done absolutely nothing to advance our fractured humanity and yet dehumanizing a young girl who was shot in the head for speaking Truth, I feel quite helpless sitting here trying to make sense of any of it. But words are the only tool I know which help me make sense of this very deranged planet.

Tonight I finished reading The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan. When I began reading it due to a random recommendation by an 11-year-old (these days some of the most magical things that are carving the trajectory of my next creative steps are in the form of “serendipitous nudges,” as I have started to call them, by a very special group of young writers and artists), I didn’t know it was a work of fiction based on the younger life of Pablo Neruda.  Despite having read many of his poems, I didn’t know that the famous Chilean poet was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. The main character’s name is simply Neftali Reyes and the back of the book didn’t hint at any connection. As a writer, I found inspiration in the work because although written for a younger audience it still uses magical realism in its narration. As an educator, I felt it’s a great text to teach writing, historical research, historical fiction and poetry (although this is too abstract a concept for the makers of the Common Core national standards who can’t seem to grasp that rigorous learning and curiosity can’t be broken down into neat genres, and innovative critical thinking can’t be tested by a simple (or complex) standardized test.  As a reader, I was moved to tears. The author had ever so delicately presented the painful experiences of a child from a child’s perspective who had no idea he could continue writing under his father and country’s authoritarian regimes let alone go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and become one of the most widely read poets of all time.

“Grief, uncertainty, and disappointment assaulted Neftali. How could a government arrest someone for writing what he knew, in his own heart, to be true? Should all writers pass along only the beliefs of their government? How could a writer be considered treasonous when all he did was present another view? Were not two views better than one? Was it not better to ask questions of readers and allow them to make up their own minds? He stood and paced, filled with an urgency to respond, to defend, to fight” (332-333).

Pablo Neruda’s The Book of Questions is not far from me tonight; I want to know what he would ask.

Whom can I ask what I came
to  make happen in this world? 

There is so much I want to ask. I want to ask: Is the smell of a pop culture icon’s flatulence directly proportional to the size of their posterior? I want to ask: Will the government of Pakistan ever stop being an embarrassment to those who now live in exile? Does exile have a taste that the tongue gets used to? Because words certainly have an aftertaste.

Speaking of questions, my father who was a keynote speaker at an event honoring Malala, had some answers. My brave father who, as a neurologist, tried to explain fundamentalism as a disease of the mind, a neurological disorder, long before terrorism became a common subject offered this.  My father said there is a Malala inside each individual. His earliest Malala Moment was when he had to learn the Quran as a young boy and he didn’t understand why would the Quran’s first sentence begin with “in the name of God”—if this was the “word of God” was God beginning with another God? he asked. Who was the narrator?  His other Malala Moment was when he didn’t understand how power as  universal as a God punish a young kid for not fasting? He said inside all of us, when we are children, we have these divine “Malala Moments” where we are blind to fear and question dogma, control, hypocrisy presented by adults or institutions. Most of us get slapped or spanked for our “Malala Moments” but Malala Yousefzai got shot in the head. And the best way to honor her commitment to Truth is for all of us to speak up about Truth. He joked that if Jesus was on Social Media he would probably only have 12 real followers.

Truth is not a dish prepared by counting the number of servings.

I leave you with this inspiring video of my brother doing headstand variations  because what is most needed right now is our ability to stand on our heads with grace.

Who can convince the sea to be reasonable?

(Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions)

 

I don’t for a second believe there doesn’t exist some system of checks and balances despite all the injustices. With or without religion, the Universe has never hesitated to auto-correct.

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