The Sweetness of Tears (36 page)
Read The Sweetness of Tears Online
Authors: Nafisa Haji
Several threads of personal and collective memory were mined and processed while writing the story of
The Sweetness of Tears.
When I was nine years old, my father accepted a two-year foreign assignment in the Philippines, and my family moved from Los Angeles to Manila. Among the many wonderful memories I collected there, two left an impression deep enough for me to want to explore in
The Sweetness of Tears.
On our first Good Friday in the Philippines, their curiosity piqued by what they heard about how the Passion of Christ was commemorated by some on the Catholic-majority island of Luzon where we lived, my parents took us on a drive into the countryside. There, I remember seeing somber processions of men engaged in self-flagellation like that practiced by Shia men during Muharram, something I had heard of but never seen. I saw chains and blades swinging, blood dripping down bare backs, and I heard my parents marvel at the similarity to sights they had witnessed as children in Pakistan, only here as the expression of a faith and culture very different from their own. The brutal acts of self-inflicted pain, rituals of atonement and remembrance of long-ago suffering, were the expression of something I spent years trying and failing to understand. The two tragedies they evoked—the Crucifixion and Karbala—were forever linked in my imagination.
About a year into our time in the Philippines, Islam and Christianity intersected again in an unusual way, closer to home. A colleague of my father’s, another expatriate, invited our family over for dinner. He was a devout Christian, the quintessential family man. I remember the long drive to his house, away from the swanky suburbs where most expatriates lived, into a neighborhood that was more authentically local. It was a lovely evening. The man’s children, older than me, kept me entertained, lending me a favorite book that I came to love, too. The dinner at their home was followed by an unusual request. The man and his family were returning to the United States earlier than they had planned and would be unable to fulfill a promise to host some guests from their church back in the States. Instead of asking another (Christian) colleague, the man asked my father (a Muslim) if he would be willing to put up the visitors, missionaries on their way to work farther north in Luzon. He believed that our home would be more “wholesome,” he said, alcohol-free and removed from the high-flying social engagements of others in the expatriate circle of coworkers he might have asked. My father, flattered by the confidence implied, agreed. The missionaries, two young women, stayed with us for only a few days, but the memory of their visit—their friendliness, their curiosity about our family and the country they were visiting, the mystery of what they were there to do, Protestants in a Catholic land—seeped into some of the characters of
The Sweetness of Tears.
Religious faith in general has played a significant part in recent public discourse, to the discomfort of many. Islam and Muslims—to some extent understandably, in light of how little they are known and understood in the United States—have become the object of intense fear, anger, and sometimes even vilification. But in certain circles there is also a high level of contempt directed at the Evangelical Christian community. Through the March/Pelton family in
The Sweetness of Tears,
I hoped to go beyond stereotypes about people of faith, to explore religious complexity through the stories of two families from different faiths.
Some of my fondest childhood memories are set in circles of wise, older women—my mother, aunts, grandmothers, great-aunts. I remember shocked squeals as particularly juicy snippets of gossip were exchanged, laughter accompanied by winks and waggling eyebrows as suggestive jokes sailed over my head when I was younger and then educated me about the mysteries of reproduction as I matured, tears shed at the recollection of past tragedies. My place in those feminine circles was assured—merely because I was female. Years later, I would come to understand the exclusive nature of that membership in a conversation with my younger brother. He recalled those moments of feminine solidarity from the outside, as someone who was told to leave the room, who heard the laughter and the squeals from the other side of the door, and noted the hushed fall of silence when he tried to break in, an unwelcome intruder whose outsider status became even more pronounced as he grew into the masculinity of adolescence and manhood that barred him forever from the confidences of those circles.
That conversation with my brother made me sad. It made me feel guilty about my access to a treasure of collective memories and sense of self that he and my male cousins were denied. It gave me a perspective on the balance of power between male and female that is far more complex than the one that typically defines women as victims. I saw, for the first time, that gender imbalance can be as painful for men as it is oppressive to women—even more so where legal and cultural norms are stacked against the feminine. This wasn’t a new idea. When yin and yang, male and female, are out of balance in any context, personal or public, everyone suffers. This was something else that I tried to explore in the character and story of Sadiq, who is traumatically severed from his mother and her world of song and stories—left adrift, alone, out of balance, and dangerous to anyone in his path. In the same way, he is cut off from the existence of his daughter, his biologically feminine legacy to the world. Sadiq is a man twice exiled from the feminine.
Something else on my mind that made its way into the themes of
The Sweetness of Tears
was war and its consequences. In the run up to the Iraq war, antiwar views were hard to hear in the mainstream media—among them cautionary comparisons, issued at whisper volume, with the Vietnam War. The nature of those comparisons, often derisively dismissed, was subject to interpretation, reflecting a historical divide in how the failures of Vietnam were perceived. Was Vietnam a failure because of how we had “cut and run”? Was it in how homecoming veterans had been treated? Was it in how the war had been conducted? Or was it in the fact that we had been defeated? The answers were unclear because this was a chapter of American history, among others, which we had never reckoned with honestly, our present and future still held hostage to the unresolved issues of the past. When the war began, I found myself glued to the coverage of “shock and awe” and later the dramatic scenes of Baghdad falling. Throughout, I winced at the way the names of places in Iraq were butchered in the mouths of newscasters—Karbala and Najaf—badly mispronounced, with no regard for their legendary significance for millions of people around the world. Karbala, that city synonymous with a 1,400-year-old tragedy, the inspiration for poetry and art, alive and vivid in the religious rituals and shrines located there, was witnessing tragedy again, on a massive, modern scale. I wondered whether we would ever have the fortitude to mourn our mistakes, whether we would again forget those who served, some of whom would come back permanently scarred, whether we could summon the empathy and attention that the widows and orphans we would one day leave behind deserved. For the characters in
The Sweetness of Tears,
reconciliation with the past requires a commitment to remember and mourn, honestly, the tragedies of their own making.
When I’m writing, songs pop into my head. One of my favorite forms of procrastination entails spending inordinate amounts of time tracking down the tunes and putting together a playlist—sort of like a “soundtrack” for whatever I’m writing. This is helpful, too, for keeping track of the emotional threads running through the story. Certain songs get tied to certain moods, characters, or scenes that I’m working on. Just listening to them helps me find my place again, like opening the page of a book I’m reading to a favorite bookmark I’ve tucked into the pages.
The playlist for
The Sweetness of Tears
was ridiculously extensive:
1. “The Mission,” Ennio Morricone
2. “On Earth As It Is In Heaven,” Ennio Morricone
3. “Paradise City,” Guns N’ Roses
4. “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” Crystal Gayle
5. “Brown Eyed Girl,” Van Morrison
6. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Guns N’ Roses
7. “What Am I to You?,” Norah Jones
8. “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” Guns N’ Roses
9. “Love Me Tender,” Elvis Presley
10. “Ya Hussain Ya Hussain” (“Oh Hussain Oh Hussain”), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
11. “Ali Da Malang” (“Disciple of Ali”), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
12. “Dil-e-Nadaan” (“Naïve heart”), Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh (poem by Ghalib)
13. “Boys Don’t Cry,” The Cure
14. “Superman (It’s Not Easy),” Five for Fighting
15. “Hairaan Hua” (“I was shaken”), Abida Parveen
16. “The Long Way Home,” Norah Jones
17. “Where the Streets Have No Name,” U2
18. “People Are Strange,” The Doors
19. “Seven Years,” Norah Jones
20. “Come Away With Me,” Norah Jones
21. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Queen
22. “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” Nina Simone
23. “America the Beautiful,” Buffy Sainte-Marie
24. “I Am a Patriot,” Burns Sisters Band
25. “My Country Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” Buffy Sainte-Marie
26. “The General,” Dispatch
27. “Ave Maria Guarani,” Ennio Morricone
28. “People Like Me,” K’naan
29. “Wavin’ Flag,” K’naan
30. “Jailhouse Rock,” Elvis Presley
31. “Hound Dog,” Elvis Presley
32. “Don’t Be Cruel,” Elvis Presley
33. “Teddy Bear,” Elvis Presley
34. “Wooden Heart,” Elvis Presley
35. “All Shook Up,” Elvis Presley
36. “Can’t Be Still,” Booker T. & the MG’s
37. “Until It’s Time For You To Go,” Buffy Sainte-Marie
38. “Dil Hi To Hai” (“It’s only a heart”), Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh (poem by Ghalib)
39. “Aree Logo” (“Oh people
”
), Abida Parveen
40. “Bazeecha-e-atfaal Hai Duniya Mere Aage”
(“The World Before Me Is a Children’s Playground”), Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh (poem by Ghalib)
41. “I Am a Patriot,” Jackson Browne
42. “Yeh Jafa e Gham ka chara” (“The solution for this oppression of grief”), Abida Parveen (poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz)
43. “Allah Hoo” (“The Divine is”), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
44. “Illahi Aansoo bhari Zindagi Kisi Ko na De” (“Lord, please give no one a life full of tears”), Mehdi Hassan
45. “19 Miles to Baghdad,” Lizzie West & the White Buffalo
46. “Ya Ilahi” (“Oh Lord”), Shaam
47. “Universal Soldier,” Buffy Sainte-Marie
48. “Rock the Casbah,” The Clash
49. “Killing an Arab,” The Cure
50. “Rivers of Babylon,” Boney M.
51. “100 Years,” Five for Fighting
In addition, on my playlist was a selection of
noha
s and
marsia
s, including:
“Shabbir Ka Pursa” (“Condolence for Shabbir”—a title for Husain), recited by Asad Jahan
“Ghabraye Gi Zainab” (“Zainab will be distraught”), recited by Nasir Jahan
“Salaam e Akhir” (“The final salutation”), recited by Nasir Jahan
“Hussain Hai, Hussain Hai” (“Hussain, alas, Hussain”), recited by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
“Hussain, Hussain” recited by Noor Jahan
Most of the above
noha
s and
marsia
s can be heard/seen on youtube.com. The biggest surprise was finding a scratchy old recording of a
marsia
by Mir Anees, recited by the famous Lata Mangeshkar.
I was born and mostly raised in Los Angeles, California—“mostly,” because we moved around a lot and spent some time in other countries, too, including Pakistan, the Philippines, and England. I have a habit of bragging that I never spent more than two years in one school, until I taught at one for seven in inner-city Los Angeles. Before my son was born and after I finished my doctorate, my husband and I resumed the Gypsy lifestyle of my childhood, living in Boston and Chicago for a couple of years each before running away from the snow and home to California, this time to the Bay Area, where we are now settled.
I am the eldest in my family, with a brother behind me and a sister who keeps me feeling young because she’s a good number of years younger than I am.
I live with my partner, Ali, who, even better than overlooking my faults, seems to be truly blind to them; with my eleven-year-old son, Khalil, a budding musician, spelling bee champion, and very sweet guy; and my dog, Giovanni, who I had to get to prevent myself from being a smothering mother to my suddenly independent middle-school son—the added bonus with Giovanni is that he loves being cuddled and never talks back.
In between frenzied bouts of research and writing, I am honored to represent the International Association of Sufism as a member of the board at the Marin Interfaith Council, which is a haven for friendship, community, and understanding in a world where faith is too often the source and object of hostility and violence.
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